Focusing on the Learner in the Chinese Language Classroom

Chapter 3: Focusing on the Learner in the Chinese Language Classroom
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Chapter 3: Focusing on the Learner in the Chinese Language Classroom
Summary of Main Ideas
The main idea in the chapter is that teaching practices should focus on the learner, which means assessing and addressing the needs of the individual students. These approaches often mean that teachers have to change their teaching behaviors wholly. For example, the author states that some teachers tend to copy what their teachers did. Imitating methodologies cannot be considered ideal for modern teaching practice, even though this behavior is unconscious. For example, a normal classroom or teaching session may comprise a teacher talking and students listening and taking notes. In such a setting, all the attention is on the teacher, making a teacher-centered class. The behavioral changes needed in a teacher may start with unlearning old approaches and learning the new ones. In this case, it can be argued that the author perceives the standards-based approaches as an opportunity for educators to renew their skills.
Having identified a student-centered approach, the author presents further ideas of how such a scenario can be achieved. Thus, learning is conceptualized as comprising skills-getting and skills-using. In teaching the Chinese language, skills-getting is where the learners learn new vocabulary, culturally appropriate interaction techniques, and sentence patterns. Skills-using entails students recognizing contextual cues and deciding what language and other communication strategies to use. The author pays greater attention to the aspect of skill-using, where...