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Widdowson's Beliefs about Language Learning
- Was inspired by his teachers at Cambridge and their "lectures of remarkable, and apparently effortless, erudition,"
- His college experience made Widdowson want to emulate his teachers, and he "got hooked on education"
- Believed that, "English teachers need to know about the English language and how it is variously developing in encoded form and communicative function as an international language"
- Also asserted that, "teachers need to theorize about their practice and be clear what a particular theory or set of received ideas are and establish their pedagogic relevance"
- Discussed about native and non-native speakers in TESOL in his book “Defining Issues in English Language Teaching”
- Pointed out that, “There is a firmly held conviction in our profession [ELT] that knowing the language as a native speaker bestows upon you an authority to pronounce on how it should be taught” and continued that, “native English speakers of TESOL will frequently appoint themselves experts as advisers, teacher trainers and even teacher trainer trainers”
- Argued that non-native English speakers in TESOL, on the other hand, have the experience of learning English, and it is this experience that they have in common with their students”
- Concluded that, “in this respect, they [NNEST] have a natural advantage over NEST teachers since their background serves as a particularly relevant pedagogic resource
(Interview with Widdowson by Ana Wu, 2009)
- Have contended that the practitioners in TESOL have the responsibility to think critically about what they do, suggesting that they need to be educated about theoretical ideas and research findings to subject these ideas to careful appraisal so as to decide how far they are relevant to their own circumstances.
- " In language pedagogy the primary consideration has to be how to make the language real for learners in the context of their classroom so that they can engage with it, appropriate it , learn from it. The essential point is that the English that is taught as a subject is not at all the same as the English that occurs in native speaker context. It is a foreign language, and it is this foreignness that is the reality that learners have to be guided to cope with. And English is foreign in different local wasys in different countries and different classrooms"
- In response to the question of multiple intelligence (social intelligence, spatial intelligence, etc.), Widdowson cautioned educators with the fact that "certain kinds of intelligence tend to be privileged over others in particular cultures and in particular traditions of education, and people who cannot demonstrate this approved way of thinking are then written off as failures, no matter how intelligent they might be in other ways"
- Widdowson has confirmed that the solution can be a matter of local decision once a possible problem of the very general issue of individual and cultural differences among learners and how far these can be, or should be, accommodated in teaching
- Presented the concept of "the interplay between verbal and nonverbal material, such as graphs, tables and so on with information transfer activities that are appropriate for task-based teaching" in the book "Teaching Language as Communication"
- Widdowson's quote on Humor - "Teaching is an interactive process which naturally depends very much on establishing rapport with learners, and humour can be a very effective way of doing this. Humour can also be effective in making ideas more accessible and more readily retained. Amusement does not preclude serious thought. On the contrary, it can stimulate it, as satirical comedy makes clear. People are more likely to take note of things if they find them amusing, and I think that a lot of theoretical work in our field would have more impact on teachers if it were more entertaining. You do not have to be solemn to be serious"