Málfríður - 15.09.2002, Page 6

In order to
survive I felt I
had to change
my usual
teacher role. I
tried to involve
the pupils —
or rather I
forced them to
be involved —
in the decisions
concerning, for
example, the
choice of class-
room activities
and learning
materials.
6
(Dam 1995). From the beginning reílec-
tive activities should be carried out in the
target language, for two reasons. First, in
this way they are occasions of language
use and thus promote language learning;
and secondly, unless learners begin to
think in their target language, their profi-
ciency will remain essentially external to
them.
Writing plays a crucial role in devel-
oping learners’ reflective capacity; for by
writing things down we provide ourselves
with something to reflect on, making it
easier to step back from what we say and
think.Writing things down also stimulates
the development of new thoughts and
insights. Andy Clark (1998, p.176) uses
the metaphor of the mangrove to argue
that although we tend to think that we
first have thoughts and then write them
down, in fact writing things down often
helps to generate new thoughts:
“The mangrove grows from a floating
seed which estabHshes itself in the water,
rooting in shallow mud flats.The seedling
sends complex vertical roots through the
surface of the water, culminating in what
looks to all intents and purposes like a
small tree posing on stilts. The complex
system of aerial roots, however, soon traps
floating soil, weed and debris. After a
time, the accumulation of trapped matter
forms a small island. As more time passes,
the island grows larger and larger. A grow-
ing mass of such islands can eventuafly
merge, effectively extending the shorehne
out to the trees! Throughout this process,
and despite our prior intuitions, it is the
land which is progressively built by the
trees.”
Clark’s “mangrove effect” is no less rele-
vant to language learning than it is to dis-
cursive thinking; and the ELP is one way
of harnessing the “mangrove effect” to
support language learning.
The ELP and learner motivation
When learners are involved in planning
their learning, are drawn into the target
language through appropriate target lan-
guage use, and engage reflectively with
learning process and linguistic form, they
become at once autonomous language
learners and autonomous language users.
And when that happens, the problem of
motivation — often identified by teachers
as the greatest barrier to successful learn-
ing — has been solved. It is worth recafl-
ing that Leni Dam set out to make her
teenage learners of Engflsh autonomous
not because she was dissatisfied with her
performance as a teacher but because she
was determined to combat their bored
lack of motivation:
“In the mid 1970s I started for the first
time to work with pupils of 14—16 years
in unstreamed language classes. I was up
against the tired-of-school attitude that
this age group often displays, as well as a
general lack of interest in Engflsh as a
school subject. In order to survive I felt I
had to change my usual teacher role. I
tried to involve the pupils — or rather I
forced them to be involved — in the
decisions concerning, for example, the
choice of classroom activities and learning
materials.” (Dam 1995, p.2)
By no means the least important effect
of the ELP is that by giving ownership of
the learning process to the individual lan-
guage learner it exploits and reinforces
intrinsic motivation (see, e.g., Ushioda
and Ridley 2002).
Conclusion
This short article has explained what the
ELP is and outlined how it can be used to
involve language learners in the planning,
implementation and evaluation of their
learning, develop their capacity for reflec-
tion and self-assessment, and thus make
them more autonomous. If these are your
goals as a language teacher, perhaps you
should try introducing your learners to
the ELP. The Council of Europe has pub-
flshed a guide for teachers and teacher
trainers that develops the arguments of
this article at much greater length and
supports it with a large number of practi-
cal examples (Little and Perclová 2001).
The guide is available in printed form
from the Council of Europe and can also
be downloaded from the Council of
Europe’s ELP web site (<culture.coe.int/
portfolio>).