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Introduction
Language teaching approaches and methods are so many. Each of which has a specific
view on how languages are learnt. When talking about language teaching, four main criteria
should be taken into account: the theoretical linguist, applied linguist, the teacher and the
learner. The theoretical linguist is the person who comes up with approaches and hypotheses
about language. The applied linguist, the middle man who bridges the gap between the
theoretical linguist and the classroom teacher, takes these approaches and tries to facilitate
them and to make them easy for the teacher so as to implement them in the classroom. The
teacher, in turn, uses his own techniques so as to implement these methods of the appliedlinguist to explain the lesson to the students. According to Anthony (1963), these terms are in
a hierarchical order in which an approach precedes a method and the latter precedes a
technique. This research paper, therefore, examines, in detailed, some traditional methods vs.
modern ones so as to see the main similarities and differences between the two.
Although different agents contribute in the learning process, including the theoretical
linguist, the applied linguist and the teacher, besides other factor, there are lots of reasons that
influence language learning both positively and negatively. Chief among these is the learning
style of the learners. The performance of students varies considerably from one learner to
another, although this does not mean that each student has a stagnant fixed learning style. In
this circumstance of different learning styles, thus, the teacher is required to recognise the
students‟ learning styles and apply different techniques of teaching that go with the learning
styles of the learners so as to engage them actively in the learning process. Besides,
personalities of learners differ tremendously; there are some introvert learners who are shy to
get in contact with other people, participate in the activities of classroom, and incapable toshare their ideas and feeling with their classmates and teachers. However, it is widely
acknowledged that extrovert students overcome shyness and participate actively and
cooperatively in the learning process. Motivation is also another important factor that affects
learning either positively or negatively. We can distinguish between internal and external
motivation: the first is basically influenced by age, gender and attitude towards learning. The
second may be unconstructive criticism and negative feedback by the teacher, rewards,
confidence the teacher creates. Punishing a student, for instance, for not answering would
minimise his motivation. Thus, group based instruction and individualised instruction are the
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best ways to stimulate learners to do well and motivate them through planning activities and
applying teaching methods which take into account all the learning styles and all backgrounds
of learners.
We chose to write about this topic for two main reasons. First, we are interested muchmore to know about the field of applied linguistics, for it is interested in pedagogy. Since the
majority of us expect themselves to become future teachers, the only way, we thought, to have
an idea about applied linguistics is to search and read as much as possible about this special
field. In addition, developing a monograph about such topic would undoubtedly enrich our
memory. This monograph introduces the main factors of teaching: the teacher, the learner,
and the classroom situation. Knowing, therefore, the role of each one is of great importance
for any graduate student interested in the teaching career. Second, since our prospect is to
carry out our studies, applied linguistics may be one of those branches for which we will opt
for. As a result, having developed a well-detailed research about teaching would be a starting
point for a successful career in master studies. These two main important reasons have indeed
encouraged us to develop a research paper entitled “Combating Individual differences using
Mastery Learning Methodology” under the supervision of Mrs. Fatima Amahzoune.
In the point of departure of this research paper, we observed that differences in
achievement and performance seem to prevail mainly among undergraduate students and we presume that this problem can be attributed to many reasons: individuals‟ different
background and low motivation stand as an obstacle that impedes the achievements of the
learners during high school. The path through which students pass to university is not
designed to allow all students to equally achieve mastery on what they have learned. As these
individual differences in the preceding levels before university prevail, the inevitable result is
poor competence. Traditional methods established a sort of competition among students who
try to get good grades, only few students could attain good grades in comparison to their
classmates, and students usually learn a particular subject on the basis of their natural inherent
features, such as aptitude and intelligence.
Striving to look for a suitable solution to these problems, exemplified in students‟
difficulty to become proficient , which is probably due to their different backgrounds, aptitude
and motivation, we have gone over Mastery Learning theory, and we assume that this theory
can provide teachers with strategies that would probably melt down the individual different
backgrounds that prevail in the Moroccan public schools and motivate students to learn
cooperatively, and we will also attempt to inquire about the strategies teachers use to
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overcome the issue of individual differences, proposing that Mastery Learning can assist in
minimizing such problems in Moroccan public schools.
This research paper is divided into two major parts. The first part is principally
theoretical. Chapter one introduces some of the prominent theories of second language
acquisition, and it specifically defines two schools which include behaviourism and
Mentalism. It also makes a short summary of Stephen‟ Krashen‟s theory of second language
acquisition, tracing, at the end of this chapter, the fundamental differences between
acquisition and learning. Whereas chapter two gives an overview about some traditional
methods exemplified in Grammar Translation Method, Direct Method, Audio-Lingual
Method, and Communicative Language Teaching, chapter three ,by contrast, talks about
Mastery Learning Theory and Constructivist Theory as examples of modern methods.
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I. Second Language Acquisition theories1. Behaviourism
The Behaviorist Theory is set on the findings of the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov
who accidently discovered the phenomenon of classical conditioning. This took place whenPavlov was working with dogs in his laboratories and his attention was caught by the way the
dogs salivate when they were tasting food. What was more interesting is that dogs drool even
when they were not presented with food, but when the assistant of the laboratory, the person
who provides food, appears. Pavlov pursued this observation systematically by, for instance
ringing the bell prior to the arrival of the dogs‟ food. After a series of trials, the dogs would
begin to salivate when they hear the bell ring even though the food is not presented to them.
Another experiment was conducted by Watson and Rayner (1920) on an orphan called Little
Albert. They presented the child with little white rat; if the child went to touch or to strike the
rat, a very loud noise would be made behind his head. It appeared finally that Little Albert
became afraid of the sights of this rat. Afterward, B. F Skinner introduced what is called
operant conditioning, which is different from classical conditioning. Operant conditioning is
based on negative and positive reinforcement; it is associated with reaction to improve or to
degrade the response. For instance, if the student does well in class, the teacher praises him
saying “good, well done”. This is called positive reinforcement. However, if the student
makes mistakes or does not do his homework, the teacher gives him extra-homework as a
positive punishment.
In short, behaviorists suggest that all our behaviors are based on conditioning, our
surroundings are the determinants of our behavior, the external is emphasized and the mind is
excluded, and that people are born with a „tabula rasa‟; that is, our mind is a blank slate ready
to absorb from the environment that surrounds us.
Types of Reinforcement and Punishment:
Reinforcement is a result that improves the likelihood that a behavior will occur; in
fact, it strengthens a behavior. As for punishment, it is a result of a consequence that degrades
the likelihood a behavior will occur; it weakens a behavior. According to the following
figures, there are two forms of reinforcement and punishment:
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Figure: 1
Figure: 2
Simply put, when something is added or presented, the learning process is called
positive, and when something is removed or taken away, the learning process is called
negative.
2. Mentalism
The inadequacies of behaviourism led other researchers, chiefly Chomsky, to look for
an alternative theory which takes into account the human specificity and nature. Thus,
Chomsky deserted „nurture‟; that is, he challenged the idea that the environmental factors are
the determiner of our behaviours, including language. He, however, advocated the important
Reinforcement
Positive
ReinforcementBoth types of reinforcements are
used to increase the liklihood that
a preceding behaviour will be
repeated.
Negative
Reinforcement
Punishment
Positive
Punishment
Both types of punishement are
used to decrease the liklihood
that a preceding behaviour will
be repeated.
Negative
Punishment
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role of „nature‟. Human mind is naturally equipped with innate properties. In his book , titled
Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, Chomsky argues that children acquire their first language
quickly despite the abstract nature of the rules that govern language as a result of an inborn
capacity of language. This is what Chomsky labelled as Language Acquisition Device, which
is an inherent feature of any human being born to particular society. The human mind,
therefore, is not a „tabula rasa‟ in which to write and instil a set of behaviours. What counts
for the first language acquisition is the LAD.
Behaviourism as a theory of language acquisition, which is founded upon the
structuralist theory of language, has been criticized heavily. One of its major critics is Noam
Chomsky; he started to shift his interest towards the function of the human mind instead of
focusing on the external factors that influence the process of acquiring a language. At that
time, there was a shift from structural linguistics which was basically contingent upon the
description of the external structure of language towards generative linguistics pioneered by
Noam Chomsky. Chomsky advocates that human language‟s main feature is creativity; he
emphasises that language is a rule-governed system and that out of a limited number of
sentences, we can formulate an infinite number of sentences. In other words, when children
acquire their first language, they do not produce a body of sentences as a result of storing a set
of habits; instead, they create new sentences which they have never learned or heard before.
Children do not acquire language by imitation, simply, as Chomsky argues, because they are
able to produce sentences such as John goed and she speaked . That is, children are not only
imitating what they receive from their surroundings, but they apply the rules to new
situations. This, in fact, means that there is something functioning in their brain.
Mentalism came as a reaction to behaviourism; it advocated the following:
Language is mostly of an innate nature, and therefore is not a habit structure.
Language learning and language development are biological processes which are not a
result of social learning.
Language acquisition is not achieved through the process of responses to stimuli, and
it is not a matter of habit formation.
Stimulus response is a weak theory and has nothing to do with language acquisition
since children use their cognitive capacity to discover the structure of the language
spoken around him.
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Behaviourism is mainly concerned with analysing animal behaviour in laboratories;
however, human behaviour is more complex than animal behaviour.
According to Chomsky, the LAD is human-specific because only human being use
language, while other animals do not. Since all human beings learn language
successfully, they have to possess an internal property for language learning which
other animals do not have.
Children make generalisations. They apply rules by analogising because linguistic
behaviour involves innovation and creativity. Children formulate new sentences and
patterns on the basis of abstract and intricate rules. (Dr. Demirsen, Hacette, 1989)
In summary, it seems that Behaviourism and Mentalism are mutually exclusive, and
the debate between the two concerning whether language acquisition is a matter of an innate
capacity or a learned behaviour has basically focused on vilification of each other‟s
assumptions. However, researchers in the field of applied linguistics and language teaching
advocated a different view. They argued that both theories, although they seemingly exclude
each other, complement each other and each theory admits what the other proposes
unintentionally. Mohamed Q. Al-Shormani (2009) quoted Chomsky (1995, p: 13), the pioneer
of Mentalism, stating that „every theory of learning that is worth considering incorporates an
innateness hypothesis‟. He also quoted Cook (1983) who believes that even the Behaviourismattributes to the child an ability to form associations of stimulus and response.
3. Krashen’s Theory of Second Langauge Acquisition
Second language acquisition researchers have always been concerned with the order in
which the second language is acquired (learned). In first language acquisition, the child, the
behaviourists assumed, is born as a blank slate which is ready to absorb the input introduced
by the environment; generative theory, led by Chomsky, maintains that the child is equipped
with Language Acquisition Device. Second language learners have already internalised a
system of language, and hence theories of second language acquisition are basically
concerned with finding an appropriate theory to produce a native-like proficiency in second or
foreign languages, adopting the same procedures of first language acquisition. In this section,
the focus will be laid on an innatist model pioneered by Stephen Krashen. The latter‟s theory
of second language acquisition is made up of a set of interrelated hypotheses which are briefly
summed up as follows:
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The Acquisition Learning Hypothesis
Stephen Krashen argues that there two ways by which adults acquire the second
language: the acquisition system and the acquired system. The former is a result of a
subconscious pr ocess quite similar to that of child‟s first language acquisition. This type
requires that the learner involve in a natural interaction in the target language and focus on the
communicative act rather than the form of his utterance. The latter is a result of formal
instruction; that is, it takes place in a formal setting such as class, it comprises a conscious
procedure and it always results in conscious knowledge about the target language.
According to Krashen, the best way to learn a second language is through natural
interaction. Thus, the teacher should create situations where the target language is used to
help students achieve fluency and acquire language instead of learning about language. In this
regard, H. Douglas Brown quoted Krashen; he maintains that “fluency in second language
performance is due to what we have acquired, not what we have learned. (H. Douglass
Brown, p: 278)
The monitor Hypothesis
The monitor hypothesis explains the relationship between acquisition and learning and
traces the influence of the latter on the former. Monitoring takes place in learning, not in
acquisition. Acquisition initiates the utterance and encourages the learners to speak
spontaneously, without correction mistakes, unlike the learning system in which the learner
monitors his utterance, corrects his mistakes, plans and the final result is conscious
knowledge. Krashen maintains that the role of the monitor should be minor. He also
distinguishes those who overuse monitor, those who preferred not to use their knowledge
(under-users) and those who use it appropriately, optimal users.
The Natural Order Hypothesis
Krashen main argument regarding this hypothesis is that we acquire language in a
predictable order; that is, we learn language gradually, starting from simple structures to more
complex ones. He asserts that certain grammatical structures are easier than other and that the
teacher can never control the sequence of acquiring these grammatical structures.
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The Input Hypothesis
The Input hypothesis is devised by Stephen Krashen to explain the way in which
second language acquisition takes places; it is, thus, concerned with second language
„acquisition‟ rather than language „learning‟. This theory proposes that the input that the
teacher introduces to the learner be in „natural order‟. That is, the learner receives a
comprehensible input, the material he can understand, and later receives an input which is one
step beyond his current linguistic competence and knowledge so that he can improve and
progress his competences and learn new linguist input. “If an acquirer is at stage or level i, the
input he or she understands should contain i+ 1” (Krashen1981). Briefly put, the input should
create some kind of challenge to the learner so that he can make efforts to learn new material
that should not go too far beyond his current knowledge in the subject.
Affective Filter Hypothesis
The Affective Filter Hypothesis represents Krashen concept that different variables
interfere to facilitate the process of second language acquisition. These include: anxiety, self-
confidence and motivation. Krashen main argument is that “the best acquisition will occur in
environments where anxiety is low and defensiveness is absent, or, in Krashen terms, where
„the affective filter‟ is low.”(Douglass Brown, p: 281) In other words, self -confident and
motivated students will progress well in acquiring a second language while anxious,
unmotivated and unconfident students will encounter difficulties in acquiring a second
language, since their characteristics, especially mental, create a mental block that does not
allow the Comprehensible Input to function properly fro acquisition.
In brief, Stephen Krashen‟s theory of acquisition is established around the idea that
second language acquisition can trace the same steps of mother tongue acquisition. In this
sense, krashen, in his first two hypotheses, argues that distinction be made between the
learning system and the acquisition system, advocating the latter as an appropriate system in
which the teacher creates situations where the target language is used freely without
correction of mistakes and without monitoring of the learners utterances, and which results in
fluency. Further, Krashen recommends that the input follow a natural order and that the
material provided the learner fit his current level and competence, without dismissing and
essential part in the process of acquisition, the Affective filter. Motivation, self-esteem and
anxiety, Krashen argues, play a facilitative role in acquisition.
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II. Traditional Methods1) Grammar Translation Method
Background
Grammar Translation Method (GTM) refers to an approach to language teaching,
appeared in Germany and dominated European and foreign language teaching from 1840s to
the 1940s; it was, in fact, known as the Prussian or the Classical Method since it was first
used in the teaching of the classical languages, Latin and Greek. Yet, before going over the
most important characteristics of this method, let us first of all define its key words: grammar
and translation.
Penny (2000) defines the word grammar as “a set of rules that define how words (or
parts of words) are combined or changed to form acceptable units of meaning with a
language”. Therefore, guaranteeing the accuracy of the sentences mainly depends on the
learner‟s mastery of grammar, and it is an essential and important part of language. The
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English defines grammar as “the study of use of the
rules by which words change their forms and are combined into sentences.” In fact, it has
multi-meanings. Batstone (1994) says, “Grammar is multi-dimensional”. Without grammar,
however, we cannot produce correct speech. For example, one may have thousands of words
but if he cannot know how to put them together, then he cannot produce good English
(Brumfit, 2000).
As for translation, it is often the communication of the meaning of a source- language
text by means of an equivalent target language text. Likewise, in his book, entitled
Translation: General and Lexical Problems, V.S. Vinogrador defines translation as “a process
(and its result) caused by social necessity of information (content) transmitting, expressed in a
written or oral text in one language by the means of an “equivalent (adequate) text in another
language.” In the same context, A.Lilova defines translation as “a specific oral or written
activity aimed at the recreation of an oral or written text (utterance) existing in one language
into a text in another language, accompanied by keeping the invariance of content, qualities of
the original and author‟s authenticity”.
Going back to the principles of grammar-translation method, one can say that GTM
was used with a view to help students read and appreciate foreign language literature. Thanks
to the study of grammar of the target language, it is argued, students would become morefamiliar with the grammar of their mother tongue; this familiarity, therefore, would help them
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speak and write their native language better. As its name indicates and suggests, GTM focuses
much more on translation from the mother tongue into the target language or vice-versa;
hence, being able to translate each language into the other is the fundamental goal for
students. This automatically means that the ability to communicate in the target language is
not a goal of foreign language instruction since the primary skills to be developed are reading
and writing.
Before going over the most important and major roles that a student assumes in the
learning process, we should first define the term role.
What is a role?
According to Oxford Advanced Learner Dictionary (1955:1018), the word role isdefined as “an actor‟s part in a play” or a function that a person or a thing typically has or is
expected to have”.
M. Banton (1965:29) defines the word role as a set of norms and expectations applied
to the incumbents of a particular position”. In general, a role can be defined as the part that
someone plays in the performance of a social life activity.
Learner roles
The students receive instructions from their teachers in a passive way in the sense that
students in a classroom, wherein GTM takes place, do as their teacher says so that they can
learn what he knows. In the exam, for instance, students are required to reproduce what they
learnt; it is really a very traditional role. Students within a classroom of GTM should be able
to
Translate one language into the other
Show their comprehension by means of written language
Try to find the native language equivalents for all the words in L2 (word lists)
To memorize vocabulary and tenses of one set of irregular verbs.
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The teacher role
Before highlighting the most important and major roles that a teacher assumes in the
teaching-learning process, we should first shed light on the teacher‟s personality and
characteristics.
The teacher’s personality and characteristics:
The teacher effectiveness is greatly and strongly related to his personality. For
instance, an effective teacher tends to be warm, understanding, friendly, responsible,
systematic, imaginative, enthusiastic…..Most importantly, the successful teacher must be
emotionally mature; which means that the teacher should not be scared by the student‟s
behavior towards him. David Fontana (1988:348) says, “The teachers who show themselvesquite unmoved by even the most Machiavellian strategies mounted against them soon find
these strategies losing their appeal for children, and they are able to deal quickly and
effectively with any subsequent sporadic fresh outbreak”. In this case, a highly level of self-
esteem and self confidence are two factors that help a teacher to tackle calmly and objectively
any kind of problems.
The teacher role
It is well known that GTM is a teacher-centered method in the sense that the teacher is
the authority in the classroom, his authority is exemplified in his decision whether an answer
is right or not. Additionally, he is the source of knowledge. That is, knowledge is highly
transferred from the teacher to the students. In the exam, for instance, the teacher expects his
students to reproduce what he has taught them. Finally, he is the more active and dynamic
while the learning process takes place in the classroom.
2) The Direct Method
In the mid nineteenth century, the bridges of communication among the European
nations became open; the introduction of industrialization and the development of
international trade demanded high proficiency in foreign languages. Language teachers had
already traced the deficiencies of Grammar Translation Method, particularly its inability to
develop communicative competence in the learners and its focus on accuracy rather than
fluency; thus, they felt the need for devising a new method in order to develop orally
proficient learners in foreign languages.
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The Direct Method is a result of different teaching experiences of prominent scholars
in the mid nineteenth century and the turn of the twentieth century; chief among these are
Gouin and Sauveur who both believed in the Natural Method and advocated the idea that first
language learning process could be the best model for teaching foreign languages. They
maintained that “a foreign language could be taught without translation or the use of the
learner‟s native tongue if meaning was conveyed directly through demonstration and action.”
It seems, thus, that the direct method eliminates one of the basic principles of Grammar
Translation Method in favour of a method in which interaction and demonstration through
action and the use of the target language is the basis to convey meaning. (Richard and
Theodore, 1986)
The Direct Method is founded on the assumption that the process of second language
learning should be more similar to that of first language acquisition, a process which involves
natural communication, no translation and no explanation of the grammar rules. It emphasizes
correct pronunciation, listening and speaking and learning basic sentences instead of single
words. The advocates of the direct method aim at setting up a direct association between
words and ideas and between the learners experience and the target language; that is, the
learner gains knowledge of a language within its cultural context through making direct bond
between words and concepts. Unlike Grammar Translation Method in which the teacherintroduces concepts through translating them into the learners‟ mother tongue, the Direct
Method discards the learners‟ mother tongue, allowing the learners to think, to speak and to
write using the target language without recourse to the equivalent terms in their mother
tongue. In this regard, Diane Larsen-Freeman quotes Diller (1978); he states that “the Direct
Method receives its name from the fact that meaning is to be connected directly with the target
language, without going through the process of translating into the students' native
language.”(Diane Larsen-Freeman, 2000)
The principles of the Direct Method were basically established upon the maxims of the
first language acquisition. Practically, supporters of this method highlight the following
principles:
1. Classroom instruction was conducted exclusively in the target language.
2. Only everyday vocabulary and sentences were taught.
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3. Oral communication skills were built up in a carefully graded progression organized
around question answer exchange between teachers and students in small, intensive
classes.
4. Grammar was taught inductively.
5. New teaching points were introduced orally.
6. Concrete vocabulary was taught through demonstration, objects and pictures; abstract
vocabulary was taught by association of ideas.
7. Both speech and listening comprehension were taught.
8. Correct pronunciation and grammar were emphasized.( J. C. Richards and Theodore,
1997 p: 9, 10)
Building on Diane Larsen free-man, in his Techniques and Principles in Language
Teaching, we could reconsider some of the above fundamental principles of the Direct
Method:
Teachers who adopt the Direct Method aim at teaching students how to communicate
in the target language. To do this successfully, students should learn to think in the
target language.
The teacher directs activities in the classroom; students are more active; and there is
interaction between the teacher and his students and between students themselves.
The teacher demonstrates the meaning of the newly introduced vocabulary by using
realia, pictures and pantomime. The syllabus in the Direct Method is based on real life
situations so as to provide students with opportunity to use the target language
extensively. For instance, teachers may choose topics that are related to banking,
chopping, geography, money…
Language is initially spoken not written. Students, thus, study common everyday
speech in the target language. Through learning the target language, students also
become knowledgeable about the culture of the people who speak it.
The direct method works on four basic skills, including reading and writing and
speaking and listening. It emphasizes vocabulary over grammar; however, it
underlines oral communication as its basic aim.
The students‟ mother tongue is done away with.
The teacher has the students correct their errors through asking tag questions and
providing both the students incorrect sentence and correct alternative, for example. ( J.C. Richards and Theodore, 1997 p: 9)
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Despite its popularity as the first method to take the initiative to develop oral
proficiency in the learners and despite its effectiveness in private schools which employ
native speaking teachers, and in which the paying clients were very motivated to hone their
oral skills, the Direct Method encountered harsh criticism.
First, it required teachers who were native speakers or who had native
like fluency in the foreign language. It was largely dependent on the
teacher's skill, rather than on a text book, and not all teachers were
proficient enough in the foreign language to adhere to the principles of
the method. (J. C. Richards and Theodore, 1997)
It seems, thus, that the Direct Method‟s major disadvantages is that it requires native teachers,
and it also demands paying clients; that is, the Direct Method can be effective only incommercial and private sector instead of public schools.
3) The Audiolingual Method
Like the Direct method, the Audio-lingual Method is an oral-based approach to
language learning; it can be defined as a “technique of foreign-language instruction that
emphasizes audio-lingual skills over reading and writing and is characterized by extensive use
of pattern practice.”(Dictionary.com) t underlines the importance of teaching speaking and
listening skills over reading and writing skills, and it is mainly based on drills, memorization
and dialogue in the teaching of foreign languages. According to this method, the mother
tongue of the learner should not intervene in foreign language learning.
In search for the origins of the Audio-lingual Method, we came across different
historical circumstances that converged to set up the foundations of a new method called
Audio-lingual Method. Chief among these circumstances are stated by Jack C. Richards and
Theodore S. Rodgers in their book, Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching (1986 );the reported that the United States entry into World War II had a significant influence on
language teaching in America and that the U.S needed personnel who were fluent in foreign
languages, the emergence of structural linguistics had contributed much in the shaping of
Audio-lingual Method, and finally behaviorism had also deeply contributed in the
development of the so called Army method.
The political circumstances of the 1940‟s, especially the involvement of the U.S in the
Second World War II, its contact with foreign countries and colonies and its emergence as a
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major power at that time, resulted in a necessity to set up a special training program to
provide a qualified personnel in foreign languages. Thus, the U.S government recommended
that American universities set up a foreign language training program for its military. The
Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP) was found, therefore. This program‟s major
objective was to train students “to attain conversational proficiency in a variety of foreign
languages.”(Richard and Theodore, 1997) Besides, the American linguist Leonard Bloomfield
had found a program as a part of his research to make linguists and anthropologists master
American Indian languages and other foreign languages they were studying.” Since these
languages were spoken, and since they had no textbook, Bloomfield and his friends used a
method called „the informant method‟ which used native speakers of the language to be
taught; these native informants provided vocabulary, phrases and sentences for imitation and
repetition, and the linguist served the role of an observer--he investigates how language is
structured through extracting the rules that govern the system of a given language. This
method, hence, was based on an exchange in which the “students and the linguist take part in
a guided conversation with the informant, and together they gradually learned how to speak
the language, as well as to understand much of its basic grammar.”(Richard and Theodore,
1997, p: 45) Jack C. Richards and Theodore S. Rodgers state that such courses are basically
build on drilling and leaning for long hours, noting that this method had generated astonishing
results, especial because of motivated and excellent students. They affirm that
students in such courses studied ten hours a day, six days a week. There
were generally fifteen hours of drill with native speakers and twenty to
thirty hours of private study spread over two to three six-week sessions.
This was the system adopted by the army, and in small classes of
mature and highly motivated students, excellent results were often
achieved.( Richard and Theodore, 1997,p: 45)
Foreign language methodology was also triggered by the Russian initiative to launch its first
satellite. The United States, therefore, felt the need for more extensive efforts to expand
foreign language teaching so that Americans would not be left behind technologically, mainly
because other countries were making significant steps and advances in the field of technology.
Besides the political factors that led to the surfacing of the Audio-lingual Method,
structural linguistics stands as one of its major underpinnings. Linguists such as Leonard
Bloomfield and Fries during the 1930‟s and 1940‟s are the major representatives of structural
linguistics in the U.S. The work of American linguists, especially Bloomfield and Fries, had
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been influential. At the early decades of the twentieth century, they were mainly interested in
documenting all the endogenous languages spoken in the United States. At Michigan
University, an English Language Institute (ELI) was established to train teachers of English as
a foreign language (EFL) and English as a Second or foreign language. Charles Fries, the
director of the institute (ELI), received training in structural linguistics, and he started to
apply its principles in classes. Structural linguists view language as “a system of structurally
related elements for the expression of meaning. These elements are phonemes, morphemes,
words, structures, and sentence types.”(Richard & Theodore, 1997, p: 48) They underline the
following as the main attributes of language:
Elements in a language are produced in a rule-governed way.
Language samples could be exhaustively described at any structural level ofdescription, including phonetic, phonemic, morphological, syntactic…
Language is structural like a pyramid; that is, linguistic level is systems within
systems.
Language is speech, not writing.
Languages are different.
Teach language not about the language.
Language is a set of habits (Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching)
Language learning, according to the structuralists, entails learning the different elements of a
language and mastering the rules that join these elements, mainly phonetic, phonemic,
phonological morphological and syntactic rules. Since language is primarily spoken rather
than written, and many languages have no written form, structuralists gave much importance
to speech sounds of languages rather than its written form.
Besides the emergence of structural linguistics as an influential academic discipline
which contributed in the shaping of Audiolingualism, a new discipline in the American
universities called behavioral psychology was flourishing. Behaviorism considers human
beings as organisms which are capable to absorb an uncountable number of behaviors,
including language. Behaviorism‟s main aim is to explain how an external stimulus causes
change in individuals‟ behavior without referring to the role of the mind or any concept that is
linked to the mind. Its advocates maintain that the human mind is a “tabula rasa” and that
people are conditioned to learn from their surroundings. Language, thus, is a behavior that is
learned from the environment depending on three basic elements which include:
1. Stimulus: the input that is meant to elicit behavior.2. Response: the stimuli triggers a response
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3. Reinforcement: if the response is appropriate, there is encouragement
(positive reinforcement) so that the behavior occurs again. If the behavior is
inappropriate, it is suppressed.
Basic Principles
The basic principles of the Audio-lingual Method can be enlisted as follows: (adapted
from Richards and Rodgers 1986:51)
Foreign language learning is basically a habit and hence good habits are formed by
giving correct responses.
Memorization and drilling minimize mistakes.
The focus is on form rather than meaning.
Learning language is based on learning structures.
Native speaker-like pronunciation is desired.
No explanation of grammar rules; grammar is taught inductively.
Focus on hearing, speaking and writing is not given much importance.
The learner‟s mother tongue is discouraged.
Analogy provides a better foundation for language learning than analysis.
Analogy involves the processes of generalization and discrimination. Explanations of
rules are therefore not given until students have practiced a pattern in a variety of
contexts and are thought to have acquired a perception of the analogies involved.
Drills can enable learners to form correct analogies. Hence the approach to the
teaching of grammar is essentially inductive rather than deductive. The meanings that the words of a language have for the native speaker can be learned
only in a linguistic and cultural context and not in isolation.
Objectives
In general terms, Audio-lingual method sets as its objective the training of the learners
to develop communicative competence in the target language. Richards and Rodgers
delineated the objective of Audiolingualism; they quoted Brooks (1964: 111) who
“distinguishes between short-range and long-range objectives of an audio-lingual program.
Short-range objectives include training in listening comprehension, accurate pronunciation,
recognition of speech symbols as graphic signs on the printed page, and ability to reproduce
these symbols in writing.”(Richard & Theodore, p: 52) It is implied from this short term
objectives that sound structures come first, familiarization of the students with vocabulary
items comes as a second step and finally meaning can be attained when students master the
sound structures and vocabulary items. Long term objectives, Brooks argues, “must be
language as the native speaker uses it .... There must be some knowledge of a second
language as it is possessed by a true bilingualist" (Brooks1964: 107).
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In a nutshell, Audiolingualism is a result of a multitude of circumstances. The Political
status at that time and the development of new disciplines in the U.S universities, mainly
structural linguistics and behavioral psychology which stood as the groundwork of Audio-
lingual Method, presented a fertile ground for establishing a new foreign language teaching
method. This method gained popularity till the 1960. At the same time, criticisms of this
method came to the surface. It was undermined both in terms of the theory of language and
the theory of learning. Chomsky attacked structuralist theory of language and, hence, he
condemned the behaviourist theory of learning. In the 1966, Chomsky‟s proposed what he
named transformational generative grammar in which he advocated that the main properties
of language stem from inborn qualities of the human mind. He further argued that language
learning is not a matter of habit formation or stimulus response, but rather a matter of innate
capacities which Chomsky called the Language Acquisition Device. That is, every human
being is equipped with this a system of abstract rules in his mind; these rules allow him to
generate novel sentences that are never heard.
4) Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)
Background
Communicative Language Teaching came as a reaction against Situational Language
Teaching. Unlike the latter, which focuses on mastery of structures, British applied linguists
stressed the functional and communicative possible of language, and it seemed to them very
necessary to forget about approaches and methods that stressed on a mere structure and
grammar of a language and gave more emphasis to CLT, which conveys the idea that
communicative proficiency is the desired goal. The British linguist, D.A. Wilkins (1972) was
one of the pioneers of CLT. His contribution was, in fact, an analysis of the communicative
meanings that a language learner needs to figure out and express himself. He provided two
types of meanings: notional categories which are the bearers of some important concepts such
as time, sequence, quantity, location, frequency, etc, and categories of communicative
function which have to do with requests, denials, offers…later on the 1972 Wilkins‟
document was developed into a book entitled “ Notional Syllabuses” (1976). The latter had a
very significant influence on the development of CLT, sometimes known as Notional-
Functional Approach.
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One of the main goals of CLT is the teaching of communicative competence as
opposed to grammatical competence. That is, teaching language to learners to improve their
communicative capacity with a view to know how to use language for a range of different
purposes and functions. This automatically means that in planning language courses within a
communicative approach, grammar was no longer the starting point. For Hymes, a person
who acquires communicative competence acquires both knowing what to say and how to say
it. Littlewood (1981:1) declares, “One of the most characteristic features of communicative
language teaching is that it pays systematic attention to functional as well as structural aspects
of language”. This means that CLT, for him, is an amalgam of grammatica l and functional
teaching. For others, however, it means using tasks where learners work in groups. That is to
say, two groups should at least take part in an interaction or discussion of some kind where
one party has an intention and the other party expands or reacts to the intention.
In the same context, Montaigne talked about his own experience and how he learnt
Latin only through communication; he writes,” Without methods, without a book, without
grammar or rules, without a whip and without tears, I had learned a Latin as proper as that of
my schoolmaster”. It is obviously clear that this view is an anti-structural view; it is the view
which is referred to by Hilgard and Bower (1966) as “learning by doing” or “the experience
approach”, the view which puts the communicative factors as its starting point. The linguistJohn Firth, further, goes hand in hand with this idea when he considered focusing attention on
discourse as the main subject and context for language analysis. What‟s more, he insisted that
language should be studied in terms of sociocultural perspective and the context of its use,
based on the course, on the situation, the participants and their roles, and intentions.
As far as Howatt is concerned, there are two versions of CLT: a “strong” and a “weak”
version. He says: “there is, in a sense, a strong version of the communicative approach and a
weak version. The weak version which has become more or less standard practice in the last
ten years stresses the importance of providing learners with opportunities to use their English
for communicative purposes and, characteristically, attempts to integrate such activities into a
wider program of language teaching. The strong version of communicative teaching, on the
other hand, advances the claim that language is acquired through communication, so that it is
not merely a question of activating an existing but inert knowledge of the language, but of
stimulating the development of the language system itself. If the former could be described as
„learning to use English‟, the latter entails „using English to learn it.‟(1984:279).
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Going back to communicative competence, the main goal of CLT, Canale and Swain
(1980) identified four dimensions of communicative competence: first, grammatical
competence; it is the lexical and grammatical capacity; for Chomsky it is the linguistic
competence. Second, sociolinguistic competence which includes the understanding of the
social context and the situation where the participants communicate. Third, discourse
competence which refers to the ability to figure out and interpret messages expressed by
individuals. Finally, strategic competence which has to do with the coping strategies the
communicators employ to initiate, terminate, maintain and redirect communication.
Learner roles
It is apparently clear that the processes of communication are the main essence of
CLT. Therefore, the learner is the center since it is he who is dynamic, active and the center of
classroom situation. In this context, Breen and Candlin describe the learner‟s roles within
CLT in the following terms: “the role of learner as negotiator - between the self, the learning
process, and the object of learning-emerges from and interacts with the role of joint negotiator
within the group and within the classroom procedures and activities which the group
undertakes. The implication for the learner is that he should contribute as much as he gains,
and thereby learn in an interdependent way”. (1980:110). It is clear, thus, that one of the main
roles of the learner within CLT is to negotiate and to get involved in discussions while
performing a course. He is the core and the object of learning in the sense that he must
contribute as much as possible in developing a course. By doing so, further, the learner
becomes independent. In addition, students are expected to be more interactive with each
other rather than with the teacher; hence, errors are seemed to be accepted, since the main
goal is to learn to communicate in the target language. Also this reflects the idea that students
work in a cooperative way and process rather than depending on their individual capacities.
As a result, failed or successful communication is a joint responsibility.
Teacher roles:
There are several and various roles that a teacher assumes while doing the act of
teaching within a CLT course.
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a) Needs Analyst
The teacher is supposed to know the learner‟s needs and interests and to respond to
them whenever he sees it inevitable. To be successful in this role, the teacher should know his
student‟s needs in learning the English language. Also, he should specify his students‟
objectives in general.
The teacher‟s responsibility in determining and responding to learners‟ language needs
may be achieved through two ways:
Informally and personally: this may be done through one to one sessions with the
students according to the students‟ learning styles and goals.
Formally: this might include the student‟s motivation for studying the language.
b) The teacher as a counselor
“Every teacher is a teacher of social skills, every teacher is an educational counselor”,
David Fontana (1981:341). Counseling is one of the most important roles of the teacher; he
helps the students cope with their personal problems and makes decisions about the course
their lives should take.
In general, the teacher-counselor should:
Encourage the students to talk about their personal problems.
Respond non- judgmentally to the student‟s problem once it is identified.
Never press the student to talk if he doesn‟t wish.
c) The teacher as a class manager
One of the most important elements that may contribute that facilitating the teaching-
learning process is classroom management. The teacher needs first of all to think carefully of
his own behavior and then of the various activities he will be using in his class. There are
many ways to manage the class; some of them are
Seating arrangements: this point is of great importance in the sense that it can determine the
students‟ attitudes towards each other and towards their teacher. It can also show us how
students interact with each other, and the kinds of activities they can perform
Giving instructions: the teacher should give clear and simple instructions to make it easy for
students to carry out their studies and tasks.
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Setting up-pair and group work: pair or group work gives some kind of freedom to
students. It allows them to practice language as much as possible without being under the
pressure of the teacher.
Using students’ names: this is of great importance, for it gives the students the feeling that
their teacher really cares about them; more importantly, it makes the students closer to their
teacher.
Kinds of classroom activities that best facilitate learning
Learners within a classroom of CLT had to practice in classroom activities that were
based on cooperative rather than individualistic approach to learning. They have to become
comfortable with listening to their peers in groundwork.
According to Littlewood (1981), there are two major activity types in Communicative
Language Teaching: functional communication activities and social interaction activities. The
former includes examples such as comparing a group of pictures and discussing similarities
and differences between them. The teacher, for instance, divides his students into A-B pairs.
He has often copied two sets of pictures. One set (for A students) contains a picture of a group
of people. The other set (for B students) contains a similar picture, but it contains a number of
slight differences from A-picture. Students then are asked to strive to discover what is
there and what is not there; what is mentioned and not mentioned. As for social interaction
activities, they include conversation and discussion sessions such as dialogues, role plays,
skits, improvisations, and debates.
More importantly, the main activity types that were one of the outcomes of CLT are
those of accuracy versus fluency. Fluency is spontaneous and natural language use occurring
when a speaker engages in meaningful interaction; one of the goals of CLT is to develop
fluency in language use. As to accuracy, it focuses on creating correct examples of language
use. The main differences between the two activities are well-situated in the following table:
Activities Focusing on Fluency Activities Focusing on Accuracy
Reflect natural use of language.
Focus on achieving communication
meaningful use of language
Seek to link language use to context.
Reflect classroom use of language.
Focus on the formation of correct
examples of language.
Practice language out of context.
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Example: students, for example, are
divided into drivers, witnesses, and the
police at a collision between two cars. Each
group has to adopt specified roles and
personalities. The language used is
completely improvised by the students as
much as they can.
-do not require meaningful
communication.
Example: the teacher divides his students
into 3 to 4 groups and asks them to
complete an exercise on grammatical item,
such as choosing between the present
perfect and the present tense. Students, in
turn, work together to decide which
grammatical form is correct; groups take
turns reading out their answers.
NOTE: both activities give great emphasis on pair and group work.
It is argued that through these kind of activities learners will obtain several advantages:
Students will have the opportunity to learn from each other through listening to
the language spoken by the other group.
These activities offer them the opportunity to produce as much language as
possible.
Their motivational level is likely to increase.
They will have the chance to develop fluency.
III. Modern MethodsA. Constructivism
Constructivism is one of the oldest approaches in education in the sense that it is
rooted from philosophy just like other disciplines such as sociology, ethnography and
cognitive psychology. Constructivism, furthermore, is a part of cognitive revolution, an
intellectual movement in the 1950s that began with what is known collectively as the
cognitive sciences, which is in turn began to be used to take advantage of an analysis of
scientific revolution. According to Resnik (1989), “constructivism is a theory of learning or
meaning making”. That is to say, learners individually create their own new understandings
with the purpose of building an interaction between what they already know and believe and
ideas and knowledge with which they come into contact. This view, in fact, was supported by
Henson who once said, “Constructivism is a theory of how learning occurs”. It is apparently
clear that the term „learning‟ is a key element of constructivism; and since it is so, learners
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will be more or less very interested enough to seek their own understandings and insights. The
meaning, additionally, will be sought through the questioning of the learners‟ own knowledge
and new discoveries. In this context, Bransford et al. says, “wisdom cannot be told”.
Likewise, Borich and Tombari (1997) define constructivism as “an approach to learning in
which learners are provided the opportunity to construct their own sense of what is being
learned by building internal connection or relationship among the ideas and facts being
taught.” As it is illustrated in the quote, Borich and Tombary, following Resnick direction,
assert that learning occurs when learners actively engage their cognitive structures in schema
building experiences. From another perspective, learners strive to make sense of the world
around them by relying and focusing on their pre-existing schemas. This idea is well
supported by Eggan and Kauchak in their following definition given to constructivism:” ….a
view of learning that says learners use their experiences to actively construct understandings
that make sense to them, rather than have understanding delivered to them in already
organised form”.
On the other hand, Thompson (2000) demonstrates that constructivism is not a theory
of learning but a model of knowing, and constructivism may be used to build a theory of
learning. In this respect, Giambatista Vico once said, “One only knows something if one can
explain it” (Yager, 1999). From the same perspective, Emmanuel Kant supported G. Vico andasserted,” humans are not passive information receivers. Humans are active information
receivers, they build network of information with their previous information and they
assimilate or accommodate new knowledge with the old information in order to build their
own understanding of the new information”. (Check, 1992).
More importantly, constructivism can be divided into two: social constructivism and
cognitive constructivism.
1) social constructivism
Social constructivism is a theory that is rooted from Vygotsky‟s psychosocial theory,
which holds within its folds that knowledge, or disciplines that have been built up are socially
human constructs. In other words, knowledge that has been built by the learners is not
transferred from teacher to student but rather constructed in student‟s mind. According to
Philips (2000, p.6), there are some factors such as politics¸ ideologies, Values, religious
beliefs, and economic self-interest, etc. that determine the form of this constructed
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knowledge. These factors, therefore, affect the ways whereby learners shape and form their
own comprehension about their surrounding world.
As its name indicates, social constructivism focuses on knowledge at the level of
community; knowledge is socially constructed, and it is more or less the collaborative
achievement of persons engaged in the practices of a community. For social constructivists, to
learn is to participate within a community. They, in fact, argue that learning would be
impossible as long as they do not access to the practices, resources and members of the
community. Lave and Wenger support this argument and said, “Engaging in practice, rather
than being its object, may well be a condition for the effectiveness of learning”. (Lave and
Wenger, 1991. p.93). Their quote conveys obviously the idea that the process of taking part in
the ongoing activities of a specific community is a key and essential element to the learning
process. Their argument is akin to Vygotsk y‟s, which postulates that students should not be
separated from their own sociocultural context.
2) Cognitive constructivism.
As opposed to the social constructivist perspective that describes the mind as a
distributed entity that goes beyond the bounds of the body into the social environment,
cognitive constructivists present the mind in terms of the individual. Cognitive constructivism based on the work of Swiss developmental psychologist J. Piaget, approaches learning and
knowing from the perspective of the individual. Bruner (1956) in Woolfolk (2004) introduces
two terms with a view to communicate the most fundamental principles of cognitive
constructivism in teaching and learning in the classroom. These two terms are “discovery
learning” and “subject structure”. The goal, indeed, was to encourage and emphasize the
concept of learning and development of thinking. According to him, understanding the
structure of a subject being studied (subject structure), learning will be memorable, useful and
more meaningful. Besides, discovery learning helps students improve their own thinking in
the sense that the teacher dispenses examples and the students make intuitive guesses about
those examples until they find out the connections between the subject‟s structures . The
concept “discovery learning” is sometimes referred to as “inductive reasoning”. That is, by
using specific examples, students strive to formulate a general principle. Von Glasersfeld
supports this idea when he said, “the way we segment the flow of our experience, and the way
we relate the pieces we have isolated, is and necessarily remains an essentially subjective
matter. Hence, when we intend to stimulate and enhance a student‟s learning, we cannot
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afford to forget that knowledge does not exist outside a person‟s mind”. (Von Glasersfeld,
1996, p: 5).
This quote, in fact, reminds us of the epistemological theory which gives rise to a
theory of learning which suggests that knowledge cannot only be transferred from teacher to
student, but rather it must be (re-)built up by the individual. According to J. Piaget, learning
as a knowledge construction process forms two main key assumptions of the cognitive
constructivist perspective.
1.2 Learners actively construct their own knowledge.
This key assumption is an epistemological one in the sense that knowledge is an
individual creation; that is, in the process of knowledge construction, learners try actively to
build up, via critical thinking, new understandings by fitting their experiences in the world
into their existing understandings. “… and assist the individual in the processes of interpreting
the new material, based on what he or she knows already”, Alba and Hasher stated (Cf.
BHenjafield, 1992).
No notion of absolute knowledge. For that purpose, Scarf- Seatter (1997) provides the
following quote:”…. Constructivism has taught me (that) I do not need to know any science
in order to teach it. I will simply allow my students to figure things out for themselves, for I
know there is no right answer.” (Mackninnon and Scarff-Seatter 1997, p: 53).
2.2 Stages of intellectual development: Concrete to abstract
This assumption is the result of Piaget‟s theory of childhood development (see,e.g,
Gruber and Voneche, 1997) which posits that children‟s intellectual development go through
different stages, namely concrete thinking and formal/ abstract thinking.
These stages are not formally taught in schools, indeed. They are genetically inborn,
however. The former starts at around age 6, when the conceptual structures of the learners are
strongly grounded on the physical world. At around age 12, their conceptual structures
become no longer concrete but more abstract, helping them, therefore, to build up knowledge
through more abstract ways of thinking. For instance, they may use Meta knowledge
(knowledge about knowledge) or what is referred to as „metacognition‟; it is about self -
questioning, self-regulating, self-reviewing, and self- monitoring. According to Winn and
Snyder, “ metacognition consists of two basic processes occurring simultaneously which are
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monitoring your progress as you learn, and making changes and adapting your strategies if
you perceive you are not doing so well “.(Winn, W and Snyder, D., 1998).
To conclude, both approaches hold within their folds the same assumption:
knowledge is actively constructed in the human mind. They, however, differ from each other
in terms of focus; whereas social constructivism focuses on how that knowledge has been
built up within the political, social and economic contexts, the cognitive approach focuses on
the manner whereby knowledge is created within the individual mind.
B. Mastery Learning
a) Definition of Mastery Learning
Mastery Learning can be defined as “an individualized and diagnostic approach to
teaching in which students proceed with studying and testing at their own rate to achieve a
prescribed level of instruction.”(Jack C. Richard and Richard Schmidt, 2002, p: 321) Mastery
Learning advocates argue that all students can master the material provided by the school if
they are given the time and help they need. This theory is founded on two basic components:
strong educational philosophy which provides a set of assumptions about the process of
learning and teaching and a method of instruction which involves a logical procedure in
selecting contents, teaching, determining students‟ progress, diagnosing students‟ learning
problems and finally producing competent students.
The theoretical foundations on which Mastery Learning is established are noticeably
different from what teachers once believed about the learners and learning in the earlier
decades before 1960. Benjamin Bloom, the main figure and the developer of this theory and
practice, has started his career as an educator when the notion that “there are good learners
and there are poor learners” was a predominant characteristic of individuals. To discriminate
between good learners and poor learners and to sort them out, students take a test of
intelligence, aptitude and achievement. This notion suggests that only good learners will
always be good learners, and they can cover more material, learn more complex courses, get
good results and improve better than poor learners. It is implied, thus, from this construct that
the traditional educational system attempts to classify learners into different groups, each
group learns the material that corresponds with its intelligence and aptitude. In such an
educational system, the gap in achievement between the poor learners and the good learners
grows larger every year.
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In the second phase of Benjamin Bloom‟s experience as an educator, he focused on the
fact that all students can learn and understand complex and abstract input equally, yet some of
them will learn it faster than the others. Thus, Benjamin Bloom, in the preface of his book,
Human Characteristics and School Learning (1976), argues that he was mainly concerned
with finding “ways by which the slower learners could be given the extra time and help they
needed to attain some criterion of achievement.” That is, the slower learners would become
very similar to the faster learners in mastering the prescribed subjects although the slower
learners need to spend more time and to gain more help than the faster learners.
The early approaches of Mastery Learning were basically built upon the above belief.
Nevertheless, Benjamin Bloom, while he was working with his students, concluded, in the
preface of his book, Human Characteristics and School Learning , that “most students become
very similar with regard to learning ability, rate of learning, and motivation for further
learning —when provided with favourable learning conditions.” That is, if students are
provided with suitable learning condition, the differences in their rate of learning would
vanish. In other words, nearly all students have the capacity to learn the same amount of
material, regardless of how difficult this material is, at the same rate and with the same
motivation towards learning. This process becomes successful also only when schools do their
job well and are aware that the set up objective should be mastered.
b) Mastery Learning’ Basic assumptions
Mastery Learning is founded on the following set of beliefs:
Under appropriate instructional conditions virtually all students can and will learn
most of what they are taught.( James H. Block and Lorin W. Anderson, 1975.p:1)
The primary role of schools is to define the objective to be learned and to help all
students attain a level of mastery in these objectives.
c) The Notion of Time in Mastery Learning
John B. Carroll‟ model of learning assumes that school learning is determined by „ the
time needed and the time spent ’ . The time needed refers to the amount of time students need
to master a particular course, and it varies from one student to another since there are
differences among students. There are some students who have background knowledge about
the task to be taught and those who have weak background knowledge. Time spent is the time
the learner spends learning a certain task. It is a result of opportunity to learn and
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perseverance. The specific measure of opportunity to learn is the time allotted; that is, the
time the teacher gives to his students to learn a particular task. Perseverance is also essential
to Mastery Learning theory; it is the amount of time the student could spend actively working
on a task. For instance, there are students who would spend an hour actively; others may
spend less than this amount of time.
Carroll proposed that time needed by students to learn the contents of the course
should be based on the following:
Aptitude: aptitude was traditionally defined as the natural ability of the student to learn a
particular task, and it usually employs intelligence tests to measure students‟ mental and
natural inclinations towards learning. Aptitude in Mastery Learning is defined as “the amount
of time the student would require to learn a given level under ideal instructional conditions.”
That is, students who are allowed the time they need, the time which corresponds with their
background, to learn and who spend adequate time in a particular task succeed in attaining the
goals set up for mastery. It also suggests that “students with high aptitude would learn quickly
while those with low aptitude would take more time to learn”. That is, aptitude in it traditional
sense is not to be taken into account since it does not take into account differences in the
students‟ background. Aptitude, thus, is the amount of time each student spends learning a
task. (Block and Lorin W. Anderson, 1975)
Ability to understand the instruction: Time needed is also determined by the student‟s
ability to understand the instruction presented by the teacher.
In summary, the time the learner needs is determined on the basis of three standards:
student‟s aptitude for the subject, the quality of instruction and his ability to understand this
instruction. In case the quality of instruction is high, the learner finds it easy to learn and
understand the subject; contrariwise, if the quality of instruction is low, the learner would
require more time. Thu, James H. Block and Lorin W. Anderson state that
“the degree of school learning of a given subject depends on the
student‟s perseverance, or his opportunity to learn, relative to his
attitude for the subject, the quality of instruction, and his ability to
understand the instruction.”(Thomas R. Guskey. 1985 , p: 11)
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d) Criterion Evaluation vs. Normative Evaluation
Mastery Learning represents a shift from the traditional normative evaluation, setting
up a criterion-referenced evaluation. The former judges the students‟ performance in the
classroom on the basis of how well his classmates performed in the test; that is, the teacher
who uses normative evaluation makes a comparison between students, creating a kind of
competition between them, and thus, every student tries to get the best grade. Besides,
normative evaluation tells us nothing about how much progress has been made by students.
This type of evaluation keeps students very secretive as regards their knowledge which
would, if shared, help the other students to enhance their performance. This model of
examination discourages cooperation and sharing among students.
By contrast, criterion-referenced evaluation is based on sharing and cooperation
between students. It is named criterion since it is based on students‟ achievement of the stated
objectives, it is defined from the very beginning that students should master the goals set up
by the teacher, and students are provided with multiple opportunities to master the stated
objectives. Besides, in criterion evaluation, possibly ninety percent of students attain an A
grade. This type of evaluation is a basic principle of Mastery Learning since it establishes
cooperation in the class instead of classifying students on the basis of a curve in which only a
couple of students get good marks and a great proportion of them get an average or below
average.
e) Basic Stages in Implementing Mastery Learning
It is of a paramount importance to summarize the elements of Mastery Learning
instruction which follow a logical chronological order, in an attempt to link them to the
philosophical assumptions of the theory. In practice, Mastery Learning is based on the
following elements:
Defining what is to be Learnt
The initial stage in implementing Mastery Learning involves the delineation of the
objectives students should learn. Thomas R. Guskey notes that the first step in implementing
Mastery Learning “is for teachers to review their instructional materials or curriculum to
decide what content should be learned by all students and to what level .”(Thomas R.
Guskey.1985, p: 11) In other words, the learning objectives are defined by the teacherdepending on whatever curricula or textbooks are available. The teacher decides what
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concepts and information are of relevance for students to learn, decides if these objectives are
only meant to be remembered by students, or he decides that the objectives should be, for
instance, applicable to other different situations and contexts. These objectives are usually
presented in a „table of specification’ , which is set up to outline the objectives for a unit, and
for the teacher to have a precise view of what is to be taught. The most important thing in this
first step is that both the teacher and the students focus and understand the objectives of the
course.
Teaching the Material
After the teacher has delineated the material of the unit he is to teach, and after he has
defined the amount of time he would spend in the unit, (a unit may take one class, a week, or
two weeks; it highly depends on the objectives the teacher set for it) he starts the process of
teaching by presenting his material through different techniques, including lectures,
demonstrations, discussions and all that he sees appropriate to get across the course. In this
stage, it is important that the teacher clearly state the goals for the unit and inform his students
that they are all expected to master the objectives of the unit.
First Formative Test
The material presented by the teacher will be mastered easily by a specific number of
students whose learning style, aptitude and perseverance correspond with either the
instructional material, or with the way the teacher explains. Contrariwise, other student will
encounter some difficulties to master the objectives of the unit, simply because of their
learning style and entry characteristics. The first formative test, which usually takes five to ten
minutes, is a tool used to check the progress of learning, and it is administered primarily to
identify the students who have mastered the set objectives and those who have not yet learned
them. This test is not meant to grade students; instead, it is used to inform both the teacher
and the student about the gaps in achievement and where more work is needed. It generates
feedback that is essential to identify the errors made in the process of teaching of a particular
unit, to remedy the learning difficulties students face and to correct the errors made in the
course of the initial instruction. In this concern, Thomas R. Guskey maintains that
“This type of testing is used during instruction to provide immediate
feedback to students and to teachers. The main purpose of this kind of
testing is not to place or evaluate students but rather to provide very
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specific information on students‟ learning progress. This type of testing
is referred to as formative testing.”(Thomas R. Guskey. 1985, p: 34)
Generating a feedback is, therefore, useful for both the teacher and the students. As for
students, feedback „“helps them identify what they have learned well or mastered and what
they need to spend more time learning”. It also helps them to “tell if their focus in studying is
what their teacher wants.”‟ (Thomas R. Guskey. 1985, p: 6O) As for the teacher, formative
testing introduces two important clues. First, he knows which student is doing well and
which one is still in need for more help, and he also knows exactly the problems students
encounter. Second, the formative test helps the teacher identify whether the quality of
instruction is effective or not.
Providing the Learning Alternatives (Correctives and Enrichment)
Mastery Learning advocates take it for granted that almost in all cases, there will
always be some students who have difficulties in mastering a particular course after the
primary instruction has been introduced. It is recommended, thus, that students who have not
succeeded in the first instruction have an immediate chance to remedy their mistakes. Thus,
the teacher provides enrichment activities to the students who have mastered the material.
Those who have not attained mastery do correctives and second formative test. Correctives
serve the role of remediation; their basic characteristic is “that it teaches the same material in
a way that is different from the way it was originally taught.” (Thomas R. Guskey, 1985, p:
63) That is, repeating the same method that was adapted in the original instruction and that
has already been proved failure should be put aside, searching for a new way that is
compatible with the learning styles and entry characteristics of the learners who have not yet
mastered the material. For the correctives to serve a functional role and to draw a new strategy
for learning, it has to “ present the material differently from the way it was originally
presented.‟ Correctives „must make students participate in the learning process in a way that is
different from the way they were taught” (Thomas R. Guskey, 1985, p: 63, 64)
Second Formative Test
After the teacher has provided the learning alternatives, enrichment and correctives, to
the students who have mastered and the ones who have not yet mastered the set objectives of
the unit, he conducts a second test on the same material he has taught in the initial instruction.
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Assuring that 90% of students or more have achieved mastery rate of learning, the group is,
thus, ready to carry on the process of studying through moving on to a new material.
Summative Test
The teacher administers summative tests which usually take more time than formative
tests after covering several units. For instance, summative tests would probably take an hour,
an hour and a half or two hours depending on the units the teacher has taught, unlike
formative tests which would probably last for five to ten minutes. The purpose of such
evaluation is to make sure that all the material is mastered. Unlike formative tests which cover
small portion of the course, one unit for instance, summative tests might cover two, three, four
or even more units. Summative tests are equally important since each student has to have a
grade at the end, and these grades are usually sent to parents and administration. Besides,
summative tests help to determine the extent to which students have mastered a particular
skill or task. In this regard, Thomas R. Guskey (1985) argues that „the main purpose of a
summative examination is to gather cumulative information on students‟ learning so grades
can be assigned or competence in a particular skill or task can be determined.‟ (Thomas R.
Guskey, 1985, p: 79, 80)
f) The Role of the Teacher in Mastery Learning
Mastery Learning is marked by flexibility in application, and we may probably find
two or more teachers implementing Mastery Learning differently but effectively, although
they implement it in a different grade level, different subject and probably different school.
They, teachers, follow the same procedures of instruction, which are the core of Mastery
Learning strategies, including formative tests, correctives, enrichment activities and
summative tests to empower the students skills. However, the way these activities are
conducted may differ from one teacher to another.
Besides this flexibility in implementing Mastery Learning, the teacher‟ role is to
facilitate the learning process. Unlike the traditional instruction in which the teacher serves as
a “rule maker and director of the competition‟ between students who try to win grades the
teacher provides, and in which „comparing each student‟s progress to that of her or his
classmates tend to intensify a sense of competition among students. And it makes them
recognize that helping a classmate might jeopardize their own chances of “success.”( (Thomas
R. Guskey. 1985, p: 14)Mastery Learning teacher creates a sense of cooperation among
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students, students are graded according to what they have mastered and they spontaneously
help each other instead of competing each other. Thus, as Guskey (1985) argues, “the teacher
becomes more of an instructional leader and learning facilitator and less of a competing
manager.”
In a nutshell, Mastery Learning theory sounds very practical in the sense that it
provides the opportunity of success and achievement to every individual student; it, in fact,
seeks justice and equality of education to all the learners through using a powerful method of
instruction which is based on formative testing, diagnosing students problems, providing the
time needed for those who have not yet mastered the material and finally producing powerful
competent students who would contribute to the empowerment of society either economically,
socially and culturally. In addition, Mastery Learning forsakes the traditional approach of
learning, which was basically built upon competition and classification of students so as to
give grades, and adopts a new method of teaching which allow the chance for success for
every learner, and which is basically cooperative rather than competitive. Besides, Mastery
Learning saves time, a fact which would allow the teacher to allocate more assignments to his
students.
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Assumption
The theoretical part provided us with different ideas about the methods of teaching
English as a foreign language. Traditional teaching methods emphasize the teacher as the
authority or as the model in the classroom. Then, we discovered that through applying these
traditional methods, students could not, in fact, reach a high level of competence in English
proficiency, a fact which seems to prevail mainly among undergraduate students at university,
is due to the following factors: individual‟s different background and low motivation stand as
an obstacle that impedes the achievements of the learners during high school. Traditional
methods established a sort of competition among students who try to get good grades, only
few students could attain good grades in comparison to their classmates, and students usually
learn a particular subject on the basis of their natural inherent features, such as aptitude andintelligence.
Striving to look for a suitable solution to these problems, exemplified in students‟
difficulty to become proficient is due to their different backgrounds, aptitude and motivation,
we have gone over Mastery Learning theory, and we assume that this theory can provide
teachers with strategies that would probably melt down the individual different backgrounds
that prevail in the Moroccan public schools and motivate students to learn cooperatively, and
we will also attempt to inquire about the validity of Mastery Learning and the extent to which
it can solve such problems in the Moroccan context.
I. Methodology
1. Data Collection
This research paper adopts a survey method so as the enable us to establish the main
techniques English language teachers in Moroccan high schools apply to overcome the
problem of individual differences among students, mainly the way they teach students, the
way they manage the teaching material, tests and evaluation and chiefly the way they manage
their time to teach the scheduled objectives. Quantitative data are used in this study as a main
source of information, basically questionnaires distributed to 18 teachers of English.
2. Informants
While collecting the data for this research project, we targeted male and female teachers
in Moroccan high schools in the region of Tadla Azilal. All these teachers were trained in the
Regional Pedagogical Centers and their minimum qualifications were a diplomat in teaching
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English, BA degree and some of them are now preparing their master‟s degree in English
Literature. All these teachers are currently teaching English as a foreign language, and their
teaching experience varies. Some of them have started their career long ago and others are
new to the field of TEF. They have been teaching English in the Moroccan high between 1-33
years. For the purpose of extracting reliable data for our research paper, we should note that
we have handed out 18 questionnaires, and attended a course of English in Hassan II high
school. The results of the data we have collected will be presented as follows: Questionnaire
analysis, discussion of the data we have collected and finally some suggestion to overcome
the problem of individual differences among the learners of EFL.
3. Data Analysis
Question 2
What approach(s) or method(s) do you use in teaching EFL?
Figure: 1
Figure 1 demonstrates that 56% of teachers use Communicative Language Teaching,
11% of teachers use TBA and DM, 5% admitted that they use GTM, while 17% reported that
they use an eclectic method. It seems thus that CLT is the most prevailing method used by the
teachers, and it is one of the theories which is compatible with Mastery Learning principles of
instruction.
GTM
5%DM
11%
CLT
56%
TBA11%
CLIL
17%
Approaches and Methods used in teaching EFL in Moroccan
hight schools
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Question 3
How many students do you usually have in classroom?
Figure: 2
As figure 2 shows, 6% of teachers reported that they usually have between twenty and
thirty students in the classroom, 5% admitted that they have more than forty students in a
class, 28% said they have forty students while the majority, 61%, demonstrated that the
number of students is between thirty and forty. The latter rate is by no means a hindrance to
the application of Mastery Learning in Moroccan Public schools.
Question 4
Which types of teaching do you favour?
Figure: 3
The figure above shows that 41% of the teachers admitted that they prefer whole class
instruction while others maintained that group based instruction (23%) is the norm. Other
informants reported that they favor individualized instruction (18%), while (18 %) advocated
both group-based and individualized instruction. It is implied from the above results that
0% 5% 6%
28%
61%
0%
The number of students in a classroomTwenty
Thirty
Between twenty and
thirty
Forty
Between thirty and
Forty
41%
23%
18%
18% 0%
Types of teaching favouredWhole Class instruction
Group-based instruction
Individualised instruction
whole class and group based
instruction
All types of instruction
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most teachers prefer whole class instruction, a fact which is not helping in combating
individual differences among students. Individualizing instruction is probably the best way to
reduce the gap between students.
Question 5
Do you specify the objectives before you begin a new instructional material?
Number of informants Percentage
Yes 17 94 %
No 1 6%
Total 18 100%
Figure: 4
a) What is meant by learning objectives?
Figure: 5
Learning objectives means the goals the teacher sets to teach his students for a given
period of time. Usually, the table of specification is utilized to guide the teacher and his
students to achieve the objectives set for a particular unit or units. These objectives can be
divided into short term objectives, intermediate objectives and long term objectives. In the
table above, figure 3, we notice that 94% of the teachers specify the learning objectives, while
only 5% admitted that they don‟t specify the learning objectives. This demonstrates that
specifying the learning objectives is a basic step the teacher employs to manage the course on
the basis of stated objectives.
Concerning figure 4 which addresses the question of what do teachers mean by learning
objectives, we notice that while nearly all teachers acknowledged that they specify the
Number of
informants
Percentage
What students are required to learn 7 39%
The objectives provided by a textbook 5 27%
The content of the course 1 6%
What the students are required to learn,
and what is provided by a text book.
1 5%
The objectives of the textbook and the
content of the course
1 10%
All of these 1 6%
What the students are required to learn and
the content of the course
1 5%
Total 18 100%
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learning objectives, their views as regards the meaning of the learning objectives vary from
one to another. Whereas (39%) of teachers stated that the learning objectives are what the
students are required to learn, (27%) maintain that the learning objectives are what the
textbook provides. We also notice that a small number of teachers either make a combination
and define the learning objectives as what the students are required to learn and what is
provided by a text book (6%), the objectives of the textbook and the content of the course
(10%), what the students are required to learn and the content of the course, or consider all
these elements as objectives (6%).
The variation in teachers‟ opinions demonstrates that they don‟t really have a clear
vision about what is meant by objectives in its modern sense in language teaching. 39% and
27% of teachers conceive objective as what the students are required to learn and what is
dictated by a textbook respectively. This traditional style that depends on a heavy textbook
that obliges the teacher to end the schedule of the textbook affects badly the performance of
students who have different backgrounds.
Question 6
Do you divide the material into smaller units?
The number of informants Percentage
Yes 16 89 %
No 12 11%
Total 18 100%
Figure: 6
1. Time the teacher spends in a unit:
Figure: 7
5%
33%
56%
6%
Time spent in a unit
An Hour Two days One to two weeks Others
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Figure 6 and figure 7 deal with the question whether teachers divide the material into
small units or not and how much time they spend in a unit. From figure 5, we can deduce
that the majority of the informants (89%) divide the material into small units and only 11%
of them reported they do not divide the material into small units. This percentage
demonstrates that Teachers are aware of the importance of dividing the material to be
taught into smaller units so that students can keep the pace of learning. To see whether this
division really works and coheres with the other elements of learning for master, we should
first look into the time teachers spend in a particular unit.
Figure 6 shows the time teachers spent in a unit. The majority argued that they spend
one to two weeks (56%). Others stated that they spend two days in a unit (33%), only 5%
have chosen an hour, and 6% chose other options. The latter claimed that time spent in a
unit depends on the objectives set for learning and on the students‟ performance during the
process of learning.
Question 7
Do you divide the material into short term objective, medial objectives or long
term objectives?
Figure 8
The results tabled above indicate that teachers of English in Moroccan high school
chose different approaches in dividing the material into either short term objective, medial
objective or long term objectives. 34% announced that they use all these types of objectives,
27%assert that they use short term and long term objectives, some stated that they use long
term objectives (11%) and few others pronounced that they use medial objectives.
Short term
Objectives
22%
Medial Objectives
6%
Long term
objectives
11%All of these
34%
short term and
long term
objectives
27%
Learning Objectives
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This table does give an unclear vision regarding the specification of learning objective.
The normal practical choice, all the objectives-short term, medial and long term- has not
reached a comfortable percentage, and hence dividing the objectives is an obstacle that
impedes the learning and the performance of students, and it is not in favor of reducing the
differences in the students‟ background.
Question 8
Do you conduct the first formative test after you have finished teaching a unit?
Figure: 9
A. How much does a formative test take?
Figure: 10
The first formative test serves a significant role in the process of learning for one simple
reason: it informs the teacher about the overall knowledge of the students on what is being
learned. It, in other words, assists the teacher identify the students who have mastered the unit
and those who have not so as to schedule remedial activities for those who have not mastered
and enrich those who have learned well.
Figure 9 classifies the teachers who carry out the first formative test after finishing a
unit to diagnosis the class and those who do not: 72% of the teachers reported that they
72%
22%
6%
First Formative Test
Yes
No
Sometimes
25%
44%6%
25%
Time spent in the first formative TestFive to ten
minutes
One hour
two hours
others
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administer the first formative test, 22% announced that they do not hold it and 6% reported
they do administer it only sometimes.
We conclude that the first formative test is not applied by all teachers, and thus tutors
will not be able to identify the students who have not mastered the unit. As a result,
individuals‟ different backgrounds would remain inherent in the process of learning, and the
gap between them widens after covering several units, resulting in some few good students
and a small proportion of average students. Neglecting the first formative test after a unit has
been covered is therefore a real challenge that contributes in the maintenance of the gap
between good learners and poor learners.
As for figure 10 which concerns the time spent in the first formative test, it is
demonstrated that 44% of teachers acknowledge that they allocate an hour for the first
formative test; only 25% of the teacher reported they spend five to ten minutes in the first
formative test. Besides, 6% of respondents say they devote two hours for the test, and some
other assumed that the time allocated for the first formative test, or a short quiz as they
reported, depend highly on the material taught in the unit.
Looking into the above figures 9 and 10, we notice that the majority of teachers use the
first formative test after they have finished the first unit (72%); however, the time dedicated to
this activity goes beyond the limits of the usual formative tests which take, usually, five to ten
minutes in Mastery Learning. There is, as a result, a contradiction in the methods that teachers
use. This lack of time management stands as another impediment that is not helping in
overcoming individual‟s different background. It only widens the gap between students and
maintains the differences among them.
Question 9
Do you provide students with corrective activities?
Figure: 11
100%
0%Corrective Activities
Yes No
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Figure: 12
Figure: 13
Corrective activities are introduced after the teacher has conducted the first formative
test. These activities target the students who have not achieved mastery in the initial
instruction. It is a process of re-teaching that enables these students to become proficient as
their pairs in a particular task. We notice in figure 11 that all teachers (100%) provide
correctives to their students. However, figure 12 reveals that correctives are not provided only
to those who have not mastered the unit, but rather to the whole class. Nearly, all teachers,
89%, affirmed that they dedicate correctives to the whole group while only 11% admitted that
they provide correctives for those who have not achieved mastery.
Again, the time allocated to corrective activities varies: only 28% of teachers declaredthey spend two to four minutes in correctives, 33% of them admitted they allocate 30min and
39% announced they spend an hour in correctives.
As the above figures, 11, 12, 13, demonstrate, the issue of time management in
traditional methods of teaching handicaps individuals‟ performance and their overall
competence, and it contributes negatively in establishing a perpetual gap during the process of
learning and results in a kind of inequality among students who have probably the same
potential for success in a particular task if their backgrounds are taken into account.
0% 11%
89%
Students who are Provided with Correctives
those who have mastered
the unit
Those who have not
mastered the unit
Whole Class
28%
39%
33%
Time Spent in Correctives
Two to Four minutes
30 min
An Hour
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Question 10
Do you provide enrichment activities?
Figure: 14
Figure: 15
To whom these activities are provided?
Figure: 16
88%
6% 6%
Enrichment ActivitiesYes No If needed
6%
76%
6%6% 6%
Time Spent in Enrichment Activities
5 minutes An Hour 30 min 45min It depends on the material
5% 6%
89%
Students who are Provided with EnrichmmentThose who have mastered the unit
Those who have not mastered the unit
Whole class
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For students who achieve mastery and learn quickly, they will spend more time doing
enrichment activities, as well as helping other students who have not mastered the contents of
the unit. These enrichment activities are an expansion of the concepts the whole class is
working on, and allow the students to reinforce the concepts they have learned and to apply
them in new different ways.
The above figures introduce the responses of our informants regarding enrichment
activities. Figure 14 shows the percentage of teachers who give enrichment activities to their
students, figure 15 displays the time teachers spend in these activities and finally figure 16
presents students who are provided with enrichment. The first figure shows that 88% of the
teachers provide enrichment activities, while only 6% of the teachers do not give enrichment,
and only 6% provide them solely if needed. However, the time they spent in enrichment
activities seems incompatible with the strategies of Mastery Learning since the majority of
teachers (76%), as demonstrated in the figure 15, dedicate an hour to enrich students instead
of five to ten minutes. Other teachers use time variably to enrich students: some say they
define the time of the enrichment on the basis of the material they teach (6%), some others
stated that they dedicate 45 min (6%) while others asserted that they commit 30 min (6%) and
few dedicate 5 min (6%).
As regards the students who are provided with enrichment activities, nearly all teachers
admitted that they provide it to the whole class (89%), and only 6% of them announced they
provide enrichment for those who have mastered the unit. It seem, thus, that, though the
majority of teachers reported that they provide enrichment activities, the time spent in this
activities does not match the procedures of Mastery Learning. Hence, the methods that are
employed by teachers lack consistency and coherence.
Question 11
Do you use the same techniques of instruction you already used in the initial instruction
after to teach those who have not mastered the unit?
The number of informants Percentage
Yes 3 17%
No 15 83%
Total 18 100%
Figure: 17
We deduce from the figure 17 that the majority of informants (83%) stated that
they do use different techniques of instruction to teach those who have not mastered the unit,
while 17% inform us that they do not change the techniques of instruction. Variation in the
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techniques of instruction allows the learners who have different styles of learning understand
when the teacher uses other techniques. Actually, there are different styles of learning and
different types of intelligence (Gardner‟s theory of multiple intelligence); some students grasp
the course visually through pictures, simulations and gestures, while others learn only through
listening. Hence, the informants seem to be aware of the importance of variation in the
techniques of learning so that the learners with different learning styles have a chance to learn
well when they are given another opportunity.
Question 12
How many students have achieved mastery after you have finished teaching a
unit?
The number of
informants
Percentage
60% 12 67%
85% to 95 % 5 27%
100% 1 6%
Total 18 100%
Figure: 18
Considering Figure 18, it is noticeable that the majority of teachers (67%) claim that
the level of mastery of the contents after they have finished the units reaches 60%; others
(16%) maintain that 85% to 95% achieve mastery, but only 6% of the teachers stated that all
students achieve mastery.
Careful reading of these results makes it clear that students do not master the specified
objective of the units scheduled by the teacher. As a result, individual‟s background play a
central role in determining the final results of the students after finishing a unit or several
united. Keeping up the pace of learning of students with poor background in a particular task,
thus, seems to be difficult as long as they are not involved in a consistent procedure that
guarantees mastery. Mastery Learning seems to handle this issue depending on a regular plan
that takes into account all the influences that impede students‟ achievements.
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Question 13
Do you organize a second formative test?
The number of
informants
Percentage
Immediately after correctives
and enrichment
0 0%
After a day 4 22%
After a week 8 45%
After a month 6 33%
Total 18 100%
Figure: 19
The second formative test, retesting, takes place after the learning alternatives,
correctives and enrichment have been completed. The teacher tests the students who have not
succeeded in the first test in the same material but in a different way. The table above shows
the percentage of informants who hold the second formative test.
It is quite surprising that none of the respondents provide the second formative test
immediately after correctives and enrichment activities. All of them administer a formative
test only after a day (22%), after a week (45%) or after a month (33%). These results imply
that Moroccan teachers of EFL are not aware of the effectiveness and practicability of
evaluation and reevaluation to assure that all students progress with the same pace of learning.
Question 14
Do you provide the prerequisites for the second unit?
The number of
informants
Percentage
Yes 14 77%
No 4 23%Total 18 100%
Figure: 20
The teacher decides, before teaching the material, that there are prerequisites, facts and
skills that the students have to have prior to starting a new unit. When the teacher makes sure
that all students have most of the skills and prerequisites, he is then ready to proceed with the
class units consistently. Figure 20 shows that the majority of teachers (77%) provide
prerequisites before starting a unit to make sure that each student is ready to move on to the
next unit, while only 23% announced they do not give prerequisites.
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a. How much time do prerequisites take?
The number of informants Percentage
Two to four minutes 1 7%
Ten minutes 12 86%
Two hours 1 7%Total 14 100%
Figure: 21
As regards the time spent in enrichment activities, we notice in figure 21 that 86% of
the informants have chosen ten minutes for prerequisites which is not compatible with time
spent in prerequisites in Mastery Learning strategy. 7% of the informants stated that they
spent two hours doing prerequisites while another 7% maintained that two to four minutes
suffice to provide prerequisites.
b. What kind of material do you explain in the prerequisites?
The number of
informants
Percentage
The material you have
taught in the previous unit
1 6%
The material you intend to
teach in the second unit
9 66%
Both of them 4 28%Total 14 100%
Figure: 22
Inquired about the material they teach in prerequisites, our informants stated the
following: 66% admitted that they explain the material they intend to teach in the second unit
to make sure that students have the same background information about the subject of the
second unit. Only 6% maintain that they explain what has been taught in the initial
instruction, and 28% stated that they explain both what has been taught in the first unit and
what is going to be taught in the second unit.
The three figures which deal with prerequisites show that the informants are possibly
aware of the significance of prerequisites. However, prerequisites seem to consume much
time. The latter obstructs the learning process.
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Question 15
Do you administer a summative test?
The number of informants Percentage
Yes 15 86%No 3 14%
Total 18 100%
Figure: 23
Summative evaluation is usually held after covering several units, and it usually
takes, in Mastery Learning strategy, an hour, and hour and half or two hours sometimes. In
figure 23, it is apparent that the majority of teachers (86%) adopt this strategy to test their
students while 14% of the informants do not hold summative tests. How many units does this
summative test cover and how long does it last?
A. The number of units the summative test covers:
The number of informants Percentage
One unit 0 0%
Two units 4 22%
All the units the teacher
covers
14 78%
Total 18 100%
Figure: 24
Concerning the number of units the summative test covers, figure 24 reveals that the
majority of respondents (78%) cover all the units in the summative evaluation and 22% noted
that the only cover two units. It is implied from this table that nearly all teachers use
summative tests and cover all the units that they cover in class. What stands as impediment to
the overall proficiency in English is the fact that the final summative test is not founded on a
strong basis since the steps that preceded it are not well dealt with by most of the informants.
For instance, the first and the second formative tests do not take place on the basis of aconsistent strategy that respects the time devoted to the test which usually consumes much
energy fruitlessly.
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Question 16
What is the purpose of the summative test?
The number of informants Percentage
Grade students 2 12%To end a term 0 0%
To begin a new term 1 5%
To examine students
overall competence in the
material you have taught
7 38%
To grade students and test
their competence
8 45%
Total 18 100%
Figure: 25
The summative test is usually held by teachers to check on the overall achievement of
the students on a particular task. It tells the teacher how much students have accomplished.
Figure 25 denotes that 45% of the informants hold summative tests to grade students as well
as to examine the student‟s overall competence, 38% asserted that summative evaluation is
meant to examine students overall competence in the material that has been taught, few
informants (12%) have noted that summative tests are meant for grading the students only and
5% believed this test is done to begin a new term.
Question 17
How much time does a summative test take?
The number of informants Percentage
30min 0 0%
60min 9 50%
90min 4 22%
120min 5 28%
Total 18 100%
Figure: 26
As for the time spent in a summative test, it becomes evident that the informants devote
acceptable space of time although the whole process of Mastery Learning is not adopted.
Some of its basic elements are missing. Figure 26 shows that 50% of respondents commit 60
min for the exam, 28% devote 120 min and 22% allocate 90 min for summative tests.
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Question 18
How do you grade students?
The number of informants Percentage
Comparing their sheets 0 0%Grading them on the basis
of what they have mastered
18 100%
Total 18 100%
Figure: 27
As noted earlier in the theoretical part, traditional teachers grade students on the basis of
comparing their sheets, their aptitude, which is usually defined as the inherent capacity to
learn, such as intelligence. Teachers in this traditional sense discriminate and make
comparison between students while grading them. Although figure 27 shows that all teachers
grade students on the basis of what they have mastered, it seems contradictory when we look
at the number of students who succeed to master the unit.
Question 19
After the summative test has been done, how do you rate the performance of the
students?
The number of informants Percentage
All students achieved mastery 1 5%Few students achieved mastery 3 17%
50% achieved mastery 11 61%
85% to 95% achieved mastery 3 17%
Total 18 100%
Figure: 28
The table above shows the performance of the students according to the informant;
60% of the informants said that 50% achieved mastery, 17% of the respondents said that few
number of students achieved mastery, others maintained that 85% to 95% gained mastery and
only 5% said that all students mastered the material set up for the units.
The informants in the previous figure informed us that they give grades on the basis
of what the students have mastered. However, figure 28 demonstrates that the majority of
teachers noted that only 50 percent of the students achieved master, a fact which is totally
divorced from what is stated in the earlier figure that students are graded on the basis of what
they have master. Figure 28 makes it plain that there is a sort of inconsistency and
incoherence in the strategies of learning which do not help in overcoming individualdifferences.
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Question 20
Do you think that individual differences hinder the process of learning and
students overall competence in English proficiency
The number of informants PercentageYes 13 73%
No 5 27%
Total 18 100%
Figure: 29
Asked about whether individual differences hinder the process of learning and
students‟ overall competence in English proficiency, the majority of the informants stated that
individual differences really impede the process of learning and students competence. It is
deduced, thus, that nearly all teachers are aware of the influence of individual differences;however, most of them do not adopt a procedure that assist in melting down these individual
differences. Learning for mastery or Mastery Learning is a strategy that would probably solve
the problems of individual differences if teachers abide strictly by its consistent procedures
and that would probably minimize the achievement gap between students.
4. Overall Discussion
It is evident from the information shown in the tables above that the majority of
teachers of EFL admit that individual differences obstruct the process of learning and the
students‟ performance in class. However, although teachers are fully aware of these
differences, they still partially manage their classes on the basis of traditional methods which
are centered upon the objectives of the textbook to be fulfilled at the end of the term or at the
end of the year, widening the achievement gap between students who have different
backgrounds. Although traditional teaching methods may be effective in teaching EFL, its
strategies seem ineffective, especially when individual difference prevail among students. The
importance of Mastery Learning is that its procedure can be used while applying whatever
method or approach of teaching.
The questionnaires provided us with an insight about the procedures and steps
teachers adopt while they are teaching. We noticed first that most teachers prefer
Communicative Language Teaching (56%). The latter is recommended by the Ministry of
Education, and it sets qualifying students to achieve communicative competence and to be
able to interact in situations where English is used as its major goal. It is close in its principalsto Mastery Learning. However both Mastery Learning and Communicative Language
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Teaching close in terms of principles and procedures, we traced some divergences which may
stand as an obstacle for both teachers and students to attain the objectives set up for learning.
The first problem that arises in applying traditional methods is that of time. We
noticed that nearly all teachers divide the material into small units (89%), specify the
objectives (94%), conduct the first formative test (72%), give enrichment activities (88%) and
correctives (100%), and nearly all of them organize a summative evaluation. What is
noticeable in these tables, however, is that almost all teachers consume much time doing
enrichment, correctives, or tests. The fact that teachers spend an hour doing correctives and
enrichment or any other activity hinders the whole process of achieving mastery in a
particular subject. Besides, the informants admitted that their divergent activities are devoted
to all students: those who have mastered the material in the initial instruction and to those
who have not mastered the material in the initial instruction. Thought our informants seem to
use some principles of Mastery Learning, potentially, their unawareness of the procedures of
Mastery Learning or perhaps their conservatism, inclination to use traditional methods,
betrays them. Mastery Learning strategy is basically founded upon the notion of time and the
link it makes between all its components; one element is closely related to the other and if one
is missing, the process of learning will not proceed naturally and will not result in proficient
learners.
It is manifest, therefore, that in the light of traditional methods which usually focus
on whole class instruction instead of individualized instruction, a fact demonstrated in figure
12 and figure 16 respectively and which show that correctives (89%) and enrichments (89%)
are provided to the whole class. Teachers focus on the whole class instruction can have
negative effects on the students who have poor backgrounds in a particular topic or subject.
Though the majority of respondents argued that they prefer all types of instruction, group-
based, individualized instruction and whole class instruction (Figure 3), figures 12 and 16
show some contradiction since nearly all teachers admitted that they provide the learning
alternatives to the whole class instead of focusing empowering those who have not learnt well
in the initial instruction and enrich those who have mastered the unit.
Despite the fact that the Ministry in charge of education implemented successive
reforms to improve the performance of students‟ languages, especially EFL, much work is
still needed in this respect since all the initiatives made by different actors(teacher, family,
local associations) seem to be insufficient due to many reasons: large classes, the absence of
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didactic materials, especially technological devices which are universally recognized as
effective means of teaching foreign languages, especially EFL, reconsideration of the text
book which seem unattractive at the level iconography, aesthetic, and content, especially in an
age where Information and Communication Technology offers an appropriate images which
create and contribute in intrinsic motivation.
In short, our survey questionnaire demonstrates that nearly all teachers acknowledge
that individual differences hinder the process of learning. Although teachers are aware that
this factor does not assist students to learn equally, it seems that the procedures and learning
methods employed in Moroccan high school are partly traditional and do not account for the
problem of individual differences.
5. Suggestions
The study has established that the teachers of EFL in the Moroccan high schools are
partially adopting traditional methods which hinder the process of learning and which
maintain individual differences. In this regard, we suggest, in brief, the following:
Mastery Learning is a modern method that is proved to eliminate individuals‟ different
backgrounds. Applying it would help teachers overcome the issue of individual
differences.
Being aware, first, of these differences.
Minimizing the number of students in class.
Technology Assisted Teaching
Intrinsic motivation
The requirement of the theory of multiple intelligence in order that each individual
completes the other.( Learning in Pairs)
Variation in activities so that students with different styles of learning have a chance
to learn on the basis of their own aptitude.
Keeping the same pace of these students
The training of teachers to master the techniques of Mastery Learning is an urgent
necessity to deal with individual differences efficiently.
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Conclusion
In the preceding chapters of this research paper, we have examined the main
characteristics of some traditional methods, namely Grammar Translation Method, Audio-
Lingual Method, the Direct Method and Communicative Language Teaching, versus
Constructivism and Mastery Learning Theories as modern methods. We have discovered that
the roles of both teachers and students in traditional approaches are totally different as
opposed to their roles in modern methods. That is, traditional methods are teacher-cantered
methods in the sense that the teacher dominates the situation; he is the authority and the
model in terms of knowledge. As regard individual differences, we noticed that these
methods did not give much consideration to this crucial component that impedes the process
of learning. Students are intended to be passive information receivers; that is to say, they are
obliged to learn information delivered to them with a view to reproduce in the exam, for
instance, what they have learnt. This type of instruction which usually targets whole class and
in which the instructor spends much time explaining to those who mastered the material and
those who have not simultaneously.
Modern methods, by contrast, are totally different from the foregoing ones. For
example, the teacher in a classroom where Constructivism and Mastery Learning are applied
is no longer the authority or the source of knowledge, but rather he or she is a facilitator.
Knowledge, therefore, is no longer transferred from the teacher to students, but it is
constructed and built up by the learners; this automatically means that students are active
information producers in the sense it is they who are active and dynamic. Modern methods,
thus, consider individual‟s entry characteristics and background through adopting strategies
that make teaching more individualised rather than collective. The first stance considers the
rhythm of each individual and treats learners on equal footing in terms of achievements. All
students, in spite of their different background, have the same potentials to master the material
the teacher assigns.
The observation upon which the subject matter of this research paper in founded is that
undergraduate students‟ poor and different performances can be probably attributed to what
they have inherited from the preceding stages through which they come to university, high
school. These preceding stages, we assume, do not consider differences in the learners‟
backgrounds or adopt a professional method that could bridge the gap between those who
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have poor backgrounds and their counterparts who have strong background in a particular
subject.
This study adopted a questionnaire survey directed to English language teachers in
Moroccan high schools in the region of Tadla Azilal, and it addressed the issue of the
teachers‟ treatment of individual differences among students, inquiring what techniques and
strategies they use to overcome this issue and proposing that Mastery Learning techniques
would be helpful in this mission towards equality in achievement and success.
This study, thus, indicates that most teachers do not implement Mastery learning
strategies, though the majority acknowledged that they organize diagnostic tests, formative
evaluation, provide enrichment and correctives, conduct summative evaluation and most of all
they all agree that individual differences exist and influence the performance of the students.
However, despite their awareness of these differences, the teachers seem to stick to the old
traditional methods of instruction which do not contribute effectively in bringing those
learners with poor backgrounds and those with strong backgrounds together at the level of
achievement and proficiency in a particular subject.
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