Some students, but only some, can profit from spending the first 15 hours of class on phonological drills; some students, but only some, want to start out with 'What's your name and where are you from? some but only some thrive on the memorization of dialogs one group plans to drill wells for two years, another group plans to teach English, and still another expects to monitor radio broadcasts. Tolerance for one or another approach depends partly on the coordinator or supervisor of the program, partly on the past experience of the students themselves.[1]
The assumption about 'responsiveness' is close to the issue of 'relevance' that looms so large in the entire world of education today. We must not be too facile either in accepting a language text as 'relevant' merely because it is job-related, or in rejecting it as 'irrelevant' just because it spends most of the first lessons in talking about colored blocks of wood. As we have pointed out in chapter 1 (p.23f), the needs and interests that any student has, and to which a course may relate, are many and complex. Nevertheless, there are irrelevant courses, and almost any textbook may be made either more or less relevant to a given class.
- ↑ To cite one of a number of possible sources, Carroll (in Valdman 1966, p.96) asserts that 'one of the best-established findings of educational research is that a major source of variation in pupil learning is the teacher's ability to promote that learning. Exactly what this ability consists of is not certain, but we have strong evidence that along with knowledge of subject matter there is involved the teacher's ability to organize this content and present it with due regard for the pupil's ability and readiness to acquire it.'
34
