Writing for the Wall Street Journal in 2011, Salman Khan, founder of the Khan Academy, described how his online videos were helping to change classroom practice: “… our tools have given students and teachers the power to ‘flip’ the traditional classroom: Students can hear lectures at home and spend their time at school doing ‘homework’ – that is, working on problems.”
The Khan Academy is now a global phenomenon, but is this really such a new way of learning? The ability to deliver content online is of course (relatively) new, though as Nathan Hall and Laurie Harrison remind us, we shouldn’t assume that the whole world has easy access to an internet connection with sufficient bandwidth to watch videos.
Let’s put technology aside for a moment, and think in the most basic of terms: is a flipped classroom in ELT anything more than providing input before class, so that the teacher can focus on tasks and activities during class? And is this not what ELT professionals like Raymond Murphy have been advocating since the 1970s?
Raymond has stated that the original aim of English Grammar in Use, his best-selling reference and practice book, was to take grammar instruction out of the classroom: “…I wanted to write some material to give to students, to answer their queries without having to do grammar with the whole class. So I wrote a series of worksheets and each of these dealt with a particular point of grammar … an explanation section, examples and exercises … just for the student, the learner, to clarify in his or her mind, the information.”
Admittedly, learners may just as likely have been directed to Raymond’s worksheets after the class, as before. However, the pedagogical principle is almost identical: self-access instruction (and practice) at home, practical application and working on problems in class.
Almost thirty years on from the first publication of English Grammar in Use, technology now gives us far greater flexibility for delivering content. In the case of mobile devices, we are only just starting to explore the possibilities for language learning and teaching. For example, English Grammar in Use is now available in print, online and – from this week – as a downloadable mobile app, meaning learners have much more choice in how they access content. It allows for valuable additions such as integrated audio and automatic marking, making the content even more accessible to independent learners who do not have the luxury of time with a teacher. But in the context of the ELT classroom, the basics of the flipped approach remain the same, regardless of how the content is delivered.
It’s also worth remembering that with a pedagogy-first approach, technology plays a supporting role, as Graham Stanley recently wrote: “What is needed is an approach to using technology that has learning at its heart, where teachers question how and when to integrate technology into the classroom.”
So whether teachers are flipping, blending and/or digitalising the language classroom, the emphasis should be on making the technology work for the learner and the learning process, or in the words of Raymond Murphy, ensuring that we always have ‘the learner in mind’.