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Ask any language student where they feel the majority of classroom time should be spent and you will get a variety of answers. Students who have grown up in a more traditional educational system may believe that teachers should be at the front of the classroom running exercises based on grammar and lexical structures. Others advocate for more language usage such as conversational groups or essay writing. Whatever their reason, what students feel is important and what is actually going to help them is often disconnected. There are a those who are going to argue that students need to be in control of their language learning of which I would whole-heartedly agree. Anyone who has spent time in my TESL training classes would hear me push for a more learner-centred classroom based on each student’s needs. What that means is that we need to be helping guide them through the process of finding what they do need, not what they have trained to believe they need. Often times, the reasons they choose one system or method of learning over another is simply related to something cultural or familiar. Even the way we approach teaching is strongly influenced by what has happened in our past.

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