Diane Larsen-Freeman

152 Content-based, Task-based, and Participatory Approaches Content-based, Task-based, and Participatory Approaches 153
'What do you see?' The students rep ly, 'a woman: And one student
adds, 'Men.' 'Who is the woman?' 'What is she doing?' the reacher
queries. The students decide that the woman is Lina, one of the women
who expressed her fear of being om in the city by herself after da rk. The
reacher con tinues with the questions. 'Who are the men? What are they
doing? Where are they?' The students reply as well as they can using the
English they know.
Next the teacher asks the stude nts to imagine how the people in the picture
feel. 'How does the wom an feci? Is she hap py. sad, afraid? Why?
How do the men feel? Do they like to stand in the street?' The students
reply to these questions.
The reacher then pursues a line of questioning that attempts to get Students
to relate the prob lem to their own experience. 'H as this ever happened
to you?' she asks, 'How did yOll feel? Did you leave the house?'
'In your coun try/culture arc people alone much ?' till' teacher asks inau
attempt to con rcxrualizc the problem . ' 1) 0 women walk in the streets
alone?' Finally, to end this segment of the class, the reacher invites the students
to discuss what they can do about this problem . She does this by
posing a series of questio ns: 'What can l.ina do about this? What do you
think will hap pen if she docs? What would yOll do nbour this?' and so
forth.
Since one of the suggestions for a solution to Linn's problem was to
have more street lighting installed in her neighbo rhood, the teacher asks
the class if they wou ld like to write a grou p letter to the mayor's office to
request better lighting. The stude nts think that this is a good idea, and
they take our their notebooks. The teacher elicits content for the letter
with questions such as 'What's important in this letter? How do you want
it to start? What do you want me to write? What comes next?' The
teacher faithfully records the students' answers, making sure not to
change their words. She reads the text aloud as she writes it and she
invites srudenrs to read alo ng. When they arc throu gh, the teacher asks
them if they want to change anything, pointing to each word as it is read.
When they are finished with their changes, each student reads one line.
They do this several times with students reading different lines each time,
The students next copy their group letter into their notebooks . Since
they intend to actually send the letter out , rhey want to make sure that the
English is good, She asks them to reread and edit the letter for homework .
They will read each other's letters next rime and incor porate any ncccssar
y revisions in the group lerrer before sending it our. The class concludes
by the students talking abou t what they liked in that evening's class
and what they did not like. They also respond to the teacher's questions
abo ut what they ha velearned and what they wan t to learn in the future.
Thinking about the experience
Let us examine the practices and principles of the participatory approach.
Observations
The teacher engages the
students in an initial discussion
about what is happening in their
lives.
2 The reacher poses a problem
that was voiced by several
women during a discussion
from a previo us class.
Principles
What happens in the classroo m
should be connected with what
happ ens outside that has relevance
to the students. The teacher listens
for themes in what students say
that will provide the content for
fut ure lessons.
The curriculum is not a
prcdcrcnnincd product, but the
result of an ongoing contextspecific
problem-posing
proc ess.