What makes an EFL/ESL program learner-centred?
Edizon ‘Ed’ Angeles Fermin
Miriam College High School
Quezon City, Philippines
efermin@mc.edu.ph
SHIFTING PARADIGMS
PRACTICE
PRINCIPLES
THEORY
ESL/EFL PROGRAMS
SHIFTING PARADIGMS
PRACTICE
PATTERNS
PRINCIPLED THEORIES
ESL/EFL PROGRAMS
WORKING BACKWARDS TOGETHER
Episode 1: The Image of Outer Space
Episode 2: The Space Teams
Episode 3: The Magic Space Carpet Ride
Episode 4: The Space Journey
The Image of Outer Space
In pairs: What is your idea of outer space? How does it look like? (2 minutes)
Listen very carefully twice.
What words or phrases were used to describe outer space?
Can you imagine how it is like to travel in outer space?
Beyond the earth’s surface is a vast region where stars of various shapes and sizes create dazzling and shimmering streaks of light. This is where millions and millions of heavenly bodies rotate in distinct orderliness. This is where galaxies are formed like huge nests made of colorful layers of gas and other substances. Its infiniteness makes you feel cold, alone, and even scared, especially when you witness explosions and collisions that bring about thick clouds of dust and unimaginable chaos. You feel uncertain if you could survive in such incalculable space where both peace and confusion seem to happily coexist.
The Space Teams
Form 6 teams with five members each.
Captain:
leads the team in navigating through the activity
Co-Captain:
takes care of the materials
Space Scribe:
records team’s responses
Timekeeper:
alarms team regarding use of time
Space Marshall:
observes team behavior
The Magic Space Carpet Ride
Open the mission envelope.
Each must have a yellow and blue sheet.
You have 10 minutes for the task given in the yellow sheet.
Each team will be given a minute to demonstrate the output for the yellow sheet.

How would you like your performance to be assessed?
The Space Journey
Complete the blue form in 5 minutes.
Discuss and write about your team’s insights in 10 minutes.
Present the written output to the class.

What do the episodes tell us?
Describe the teacher-student relationship.
What can be said about the lesson content and the tasks that articulated it?
Were learning responsibilities shared and owned healthily?
What forms of assessment were used?
What aspects of learning were assessed?
The 5 M’s of ELT (Fermin, 2004)
Learner-centredness in ELT today
Reconceptualising ELT
Nature of knowledge and relations
Reconceptualising ELT
Language, communication, and content
Reconceptualising ELT
Learning and teaching processes
Reconceptualising ELT
Responsibility and assessment
Reconceptualising ELT
Learning outcomes
ESL/EFL PROGRAMS BEFORE
TEACHER
PROGRAMS
LEARNER
ESL/EFL PROGRAMS BEFORE
PROGRAMS
TEACHER
LEARNER
LEARNER
PROGRAMS
TEACHER
ESL/EFL PROGRAMS TODAY
THE
EDUCATOR`S
PLEDGE
I accept not only the responsibility to instruct my students, but also the responsibility
to take advantage of the opportunity to stimulate and excite young people educationally.
I accept the responsibility to encourage my students to believe in themselves, and I will do this by helping them to develop specific awareness of the power that each one of them possesses to determine their own destiny.
I will challenge my students
to reach just beyond that point
where they are comfortable,
so they will discover
that their own perceptions
of their potential
are not their true limits.

I will take advantage
of the opportunity
to guide my students to a concrete understanding of their own abilities:
to question, rather than to just accept
what they are told,

to seek answers,
when there are no simple solutions,

to seek to understand,
when true understanding requires
grappling and wrestling
with difficult concepts and ideas,

to reason, using their own minds
as sources of original thought,
and to become contributors to,
rather than just partakers of,
the well being
of the world in which they live.

My educational goal is the empowerment of my students.
Thank you for your
active participation!
What makes an EFL/ESL program learner-centred?
Edizon ‘Ed’ Angeles Fermin
Miriam College High School
Quezon City, Philippines
efermin@mc.edu.ph