3027. Are Our Students Free to Learn?


 
Without our students’ responsibility we cannot educate.
Responsibility is when the student can response about his behavior – “responsibility” and “response” have the same Latin root, as you can observe. He’s free, and subsequently responsible of his conducting, behavior and learning. “Subsequently” not in time but at the same time he’s free.
And he can learn only because he wishes, because he wants to! Otherwise he won’t learn at all.
We teachers can teach but the student can only learn if he wishes. Learning English is a free situation and process. The supreme and an everyday moment also is responding an exam or test. The teacher asks him for his responsibility: he can show what he knows and about his communicative competence – tests and exams should be communicative: we’re teaching how to speak in English (and how to write, to read, to listen), and not mere language facts or theories!
Let’s be careful: we cannot confine our teaching to just facts, but we should help the student reach a communicative competence in English. Teaching and learning are practical, essentially.
I was writing about responsibility: it’s the other side of the coin – the first side is freedom. At tests and exams we appeal at the student’s responsibility. In few words: we can only help our dear students if they choose to learn and apply their force and effort to learning English, to acquiring a nice communicative competence. / Photo from: Tom and Jerry old school cartoons Andrew cmu edu. The picture is just an expressive illustration about our childhood: we enjoyed funny cartoons, didn't we?

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