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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 December 2008
In any language-teaching institution the teaching staff can legitimately be seen as consumers of the various teaching aids which are commercially available, ranging from the staple diet of books, set texts, secondary reading, to video material, slides, computer software, etc. Another way of interpreting the principle of consumership is that the students are the ultimate beneficiaries of the materials we use in our teaching. The extent to which our students benefit from our teaching is largely dependent on the materials that we have at our disposal. ‘Bad materials = bad teaching’ is a rather simplistic way of looking at this issue, but one which has a lot to commend itself in my view. Would we change our teaching methods if our students made constructive criticism? In a recent temporary teaching post I held as Visiting Associate Professor at the University of Kentucky, I was struck by the importance given across the board in the USA to official student surveys carried out by the college administration based on the professors' performance, the results of which can be crucial in the securement of tenure. The attitude in the UK (at least in the universities) is totally at odds with this particular sense of consumership, and one can imagine the degree of resistance that a plan to introduce a similar system of student assessment of lecturers might meet in this country, most obviously because students are not consumers in this country in quite the same sense that they are in the USA. Although the student assessment system itself clearly has its pitfalls there are some positive things to be gained from surveys of this kind, in that they can be very informative about student response to courses, teaching methods, etc., and can lead the way to improved teacher-student relations.
1. See my articles ‘What University Students Think of CALL’, Journal of the Modern Language Association, 69, 3 (09 1988), 174–78 (p. 175)Google Scholar, and ‘To call or not to call, that is the question…’, Vida Hispdnica, Vol 38 (Spring 1989), 13–17.
2. Sabbione, A.M., ‘To call or not call - small talk about computer assisted language learning’, Bulletin of the Society for Italian Studies, 18 (1985), 27–31Google Scholar; see also Rendell, Heather, ‘Life without the computer’, Callboard: News from the World of Computer Assisted Language Learning, 10 1988), 13–18.Google Scholar
3. For an illuminating discussion of different ways of integrating CALL into the staple modern language teaching diet, see Cameron, K.C., Dodd, W.S., Rahtz, S. P. Q. (eds), Computers and Modern Language Studies, Chichester, Ellis Horwood, 1986.Google Scholar See also G. Chesters and N. Gardner (eds), The Use of Computers in the Teaching of Language and Languages, Bath, University of Bath, 1987; C. Jones and S.D. Fortescue, Using Computers in the Lan- guage Classroom, London, Longman, 1987; and A. Zettersten, New Technologies in Language Learning Oxford, Pergamon, 1986.
4. Rex Last makes the sensible point that it is not a good idea to keep students in front of the monitors for too long; short frequent bursts seems to be the best approach; Language Teaching and the Microcomputer (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984).
5. French CALL software, however, seems to have had more of an impact on secondary school teaching: see Sparkman, Roger, ‘Using Computers in Foreign Language Teaching’, Journal of the Modern Language Association, 67 (1986), 135–36.Google Scholar
6. The importance of emphasizing oral commu- nication skills was a point raised by many secondary school teachers at a one-day conference on the subject of new language-teaching methods and the new syllabus held at the Hampstead campus of QMW in May 1989.