An Integrated Framework by Hubbard- Teacher's Fit

In this article I will try to focus on the teacher's fit part as Hubbard (1987) language teaching approach was not fully explored and highlighted through evaluation. There is a framework and the way we consider the notion of approach in relation to the teacher's fit.



Evaluation can start with finding out the evaluator's beliefs and values in relation to the language (function & structure). There are other considerations like factors related to grammar including; patterns and rules' roles coupled with linguistic form- function relationship. We have to bear in mind the evaluator's needs think about his / her learning and language learning assumptions.



There are 2 kinds of language learning assumptions; 1. It is related to 2nd language learning processes to the learner (intrinsically) including; age impact, motivation and L1. 2. It's related extrinsic factors surrounding the language learning environment including; teachers, classrooms, students, and texts, leading to trustable kind of generalisations.

Hubbard's idea pointed us to the language teaching approach which refers to a combination of linguistic and learning assumptions., and reminded us that the evaluator 's views should be pretty independent, and quality of his/ her teaching should not be compromised.

His suggestion to replace the traditional approach a new revised one like consideration should be given to three common approaches'; behaviouristic, explicit learning , and communicative, added with their characteristics. He highlighted that the three differ in the way the bad habits being treated. Explicit learning approach errors interpreted as violation of certain rules, while in the acquisition approach errors look at as part of natural development as long as there was no interruption in the communication.

Language teaching approach operationalisation will rely on its connection with courseware evaluation. In this case we to think about computer qualities as delivery system for language input. A s we know computer are pretty good at number of activities like text alterations, and record keeping can prove to be useful for practical reasons, but not for others.

We need to figure out a combination of limitations and abilities side by side with language teaching generalisations to create a set of approach based evaluation criteria. Hubbard went on to highlight a partial list of the evaluation criteria required for explicit learning approaches: provides meaningful practices, gives prompts of various types, tolerates different correct answers, provides rooms for explanation on why correct answers are correct, and predicts wrong answers and provides reasons' interpretation.

Besides the above there are other issues like explanation roles, learner's differences treatment, the nature of learner to learner interaction and teacher - learner interaction, the nature of linguistic competence, culture role, memory nature, learner's feelings and motivation role can be considered the foundation of the evaluator's approach based evaluation criteria.

Well it may be sound theoretical to most teachers, but we need to assess those assumptions mentioned to see how they can fit well in our teaching. There is no doubt that the teacher's belief is bound to influence the nature of the language structure and function, but this will vary from one teacher to another. I wonder if all those assumptions mentioned can fit well the goals of language learning? or students' requirements and aspirations. Are we posing the question of teacher's fit from the evaluation perspectives only or there are perspectives we should look at and use to come up with a far more comprehensive evaluation.

John
https://eportal.cityu.edu.hk/bbcswebdav/courses/02EN6482/Readings/Hubbard1988.pdf
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