Why Do Students Consider Integrated Skills Lesson as a Grammar and Vocabulary Lesson?

Abstract

This chapter focuses on student conceptions of a lesson in an Intensive English Programme (IEP) at a Turkish university. We realized that our students assume that the Integrated Skills (IS) strand is a grammar and vocabulary lesson, without noticing that it is a lesson where all skills are practised in an integrated way. In order to understand our puzzle ‘Why do the students consider Integrated Skills lessons as a grammar and vocabulary lesson?’, a small-scale phenomenological study was conducted with four teachers from the same institution through the use of normal pedagogic activities. We adopted an Exploratory Practice approach to gather data. The data suggest that students’ previous learning habits, difficulty in synthesizing different skills, their goals, and motivation affected their perceptions of the IS lessons. We conclude that all these factors are so interwoven that they affect learning English as a foreign language in this context.

Appendix: Paragraphs of Participant Teachers

Teacher 1

Students only focus on grammar and vocabulary parts in IS lessons because they aren’t aware of the importance of other skills. Their background knowledge places an important role. The education system in Turkey is based on learning by heart. Students do not have chance to practise what they learn so they don’t like speaking, reading, or writing. They don’t believe English is going to be useful for them, so they don’t have motivation. They believe English is only a lesson which they need to pass the prep class. As a result of this, they choose the easiest way. They only want to learn grammar parts and reject to see English as a whole.

Teacher 2

Through this session, I have experienced being in students’ shoes. What I realized was that all throughout our education life we have been learning through the same system. We have got used to teacher-centred learning methods so much that when we experience learning with a new teacher who tries to implement different methods puzzled us and surprised us. We didn’t know what we were doing. Considering these, I see a need in explaining our aims, why, what and how we do it while teaching English to our students who come from high schools with traditional learning methods. I strongly believe in us being role models on guiding them on how to learn. If they know how to cope with the learning process alone, they will have more chances of being successful in the preparatory class.

Teacher 3

To my view, our students have not experienced synthesizing the different things that they have learnt before. So, they find it difficult to transfer among lessons. I think they need some orientation on how language is learned and what strategies can be used to help them. We try to do this at the beginning of the academic year, but I believe that it’s not enough. Unfortunately, they do not understand the link between the learning strategies and life-long learning just like they don’t know how to transfer one skill to another lesson.

Teacher 4

Our students mostly tend to learn with old methods. They do not feel like they can learn different things in each skill. If we could help them understand the fact that they can practise any skill in any kind of activity, we would contribute to their learning a lot. They need to know that in a listening activity, for example, it’s always possible to learn or practise new grammar and vocabulary. They should understand that while role-playing, they practise grammar, listening, and speaking skills all together. Their perception about learning a language should be put in an integrated frame in their minds. Acquiring a language does not mean just listening, speaking, writing, or reading. If you literally can speak a language, that means you are able to use it in any function. Knowing the fact might help our students to be more attentive in the activities that seem far from the traditional scale. Maybe we need to remind them this idea at the very beginning.