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Download - EnglishAgenda - British Council

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YLs’ answers to the question about what they disliked offered interesting insightstoo. As can be seen in Figure 4, almost half of Second Grade focal learners foundnothing to dislike. Less than a third liked everything in Grade Four, however.The most frequently mentioned things second graders disliked confirm that theteacher and classroom processes are very important to YLs. At the age of 8 theycomplained about their EFL teacher not paying as much attention to them as theywanted, disliked it ‘when the teacher writes something but there is not enoughtime to copy everything’; they also complained about their fellow students fightingamong themselves, arguing and interrupting games. In Grade Four their dislikeof some peers’ behaviour remained but complaints about the teacher were notfrequent. However, new things appeared: fourth graders disliked writing activitiesclaiming that it was hard and their hand hurt if they had to do it for a longer time.This indicates that physicality can impact on YLs’ disposition for FLL. Tests, aswell as other forms of learner assessment, emerged as a frequent cause of YLs’concern, probably as a source of language anxiety. Such impact of tests wasobserved in an earlier study on Croatian EFL learners (Mihaljević Djigunović, 2003).Participants’ attitudes to FLL and teaching were also measured indirectly byhaving each focal learner look at four pictures depicting four different classroomarrangements: a traditional teacher-fronted classroom, one in which group workwas going on, one in which YLs and their teacher were sitting in a circle on acarpet, and one that looked disorderly.7060605050404030302020101000traditionalgroup circle disorderly• grade 2• grade 4Figure 5: Replies to the question: ‘In which classroom would you learn Englishbest?’Results presented in Figure 5 clearly show that most learners preferred thetraditional teaching arrangement both in Grade Two and in Grade Four. Theyoffered interesting explanations for their choices: ‘Desks are all neat and kids arelistening to their teacher, and they are not fighting’, ‘Nobody jumps or shouts’, ‘Thereis peace and quiet’. It is interesting to note that learners who chose the traditionalarrangement came from all the seven school contexts, and their choice did notreflect their own classroom reality. It seems that YLs generally prefer organisedEarly EFL Learning | 175

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