Learning Circle Task: Read Maley (1986) carefully. Discuss the following question with your learning circle group. (Evison 2010)

Group members: Gemma, Irene, Laia, Monica, Sean, Sunny

1. This article was written 20 years ago. To what extent does it appear 'dated' or modern to you?
We think the whole concept of the article is quite modern because in the problem section he talked about how little is new about how language is learnt, and how difficult it is to carry out reliable research. It seems we are in a similar situation today.

2. Look carefully at the 'Implications for teaching' section on p. 89. Consider both your learning of English, and your teaching experience, and reflect on the extent to which Maley's predictions have ‘come true’ in your own learning/teaching context.
As the role of being a teacher, every prediction has come true; however, as a student, none of them have come true. We think the role of teachers and learners’ role will change simultaneously. Teachers have more freedom to choose the materials that they want to use and it reflected a various kinds of knowledge and evidently broaden the horizon of learners. The interaction among students is a common phenomenon that we could see in nowadays classroom.

3. To what extent do the advantages listed on page 90 outweigh the disadvantages? Choose one of the following and justify it in light of your own experience (1 – advantages completely outweigh disadvantages, 2 – advantages partly outweigh disadvantages, 3 – neither outweighs the other, 4 – disadvantages completely outweigh the advantages).
Most of us all think that advantages partly outweigh disadvantages: it’s good that students can actually have opportunities to use the language for purposes. If learners have their own purpose and strong motivation it would definitely help them to improve their learning, stimulate them to have the urge to learn and have passion to study further. Also, it would be more efficient not only for student but also for teacher to teach what is relevant and necessary. Besides, CLT requires much preparation for teachers, and it’s a little bit nervous that teachers have lack of security of the textbook.

4. Maley lists six problems (pages 91-2). In the light of your own teaching experience, can you rank these problems from 1 (most serious) to 6 (least serious).

Generally speaking, we group have two different ranking answers, one of our ranking answer is that No.5 (individual differences) is the most serious and No.2 (the difficulty of carrying out reliable research) is the least serious; the other ranking answer is No.1 (how languages are actually learnt) is the most serious and No.5 (individual differences) is the least serious one. Apart from that, in between the most and least, we have various orders but we all more or less agree the most and least rank as we mentioned above.

5. Look at Maley’s list of 14 'principled decisions' on pages 92-94. Choose the three which you think are the most important and rank them 1, 2 and 3 (1 being the most important).

Because there are 14 choices, so six members of us all have different ranking of this answer, but generally our group think that the No. 1, 8, and 11 are the most important decisions.