assignment for week 8

It is difficult to give an overwhelming judgment to the language learning tasks designed by my colleagues as to whether they are ‘closed’ or ‘open’ because the degree of flexibility of the language learning tasks depends on the nature of the course.

First of all, all the language learning tasks are delivered to students physically. That is to say, the students will complete the tasks in the classroom, in the library or in the dormitory. No tasks are converted into Web format because internet is not easily accessible as in NIE. And because of this, going online becomes only too attractive so that the students are not able to concentrate on the learning tasks when they have the opportunity. Most of the time, the students are distracted by other interesting things online, instead of completing the tasks.

However, that situation does not affect the students to have ‘liberated’ or ‘free’ tasks. Some tasks are ‘liberated’ or ‘open’. If the tasks are concerning oral proficiency, they can be designed to be ‘liberated’ or even ‘free’ in that learners can be ‘actively involved in constructing knowledge for themselves with the assistance of a teacher or more knowledgeable peers’.

For example, in my university (and also in many other universities) there is English corner which is often arranged once a week where students may go and practice English speaking. Usually each class (usually English majors) will invent a discussion topic each week, and sometimes useful vocabulary or expressions are listed out by themselves. In this way, they are constructing knowledge for and by themselves, sometimes with sometimes without the assistance of a teacher. In this case, we can say the language learning tasks are ‘liberated’ or ‘free’.

However, when we consider the case of grammar learning, the tasks are ‘closed’ in that in my teaching context, the students are not able to construct knowledge for themselves and the students are ‘given a limited set of predetermined choices but the end result’. Even if some teachers find some useful exercise online designed by other people and may want the students to complete the tasks, the students are either difficult to get online or spend online time on surfing instead of completing the tasks; and it is impossible for the teachers to evaluate the students’ learning and understand where the students are.

By the way, our university does have an autonomous study center of English which is particularly facilitated for non-English majors. Various exercises or tasks are converted to the LAN so that the students are free to use it to study English. However, the whole system is not accessible outside the lab, and the students can only follow the procedures designed in advance; they have no freedom of constructing knowledge for themselves. The only freedom for the students is that they can choose tasks of different degrees of difficulty, to suit their own level, and assistance of more knowledgeable peers is not possible.

The ‘liberated’ or ‘free’ learning tasks are good for the students’ learning of language as well as the building-up of their aptitude of learning. However, it is not easy to be transferred into Web in my teaching context. It is not simply an issue of language teachers but many other factors will have effect on it.