Another Writer's Visit

We have been lucky enough to be visited by writers of our frequently-used textbooks and course books. Professor David Nunan's presentation was one of the unexpected surprises for us, trainers. He seems so young for a professor who, I bet, must be over fifty years old. He shared with the audience that he started teaching in 1973!!! Thirty three years.... How come someone could teach that long? Out of love for his profession, perhaps. It makes me wonder whether I could be so in love with a profession... Hmmmm....



Anyway, his presentation was about task-based teaching which he believes must integrate all skills and focus on grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary. Many English learners need to have the sense of accomplishment after they learn and this could only be achieved if they are given a chance to be presented with classroom real tasks. For him, the success of learning a language does not lie on how many number of correct a student gets during a test. It is more on getting the message across and get others do things for us, that is if the language is on asking for help.

It was heavy stuff, I know. That's why the director felt that we needed to be 'brainstormed' before his session with us. Yet, not many questions were asked. May be because we needed more time to internalize. Hopefully, we could be more participative in his next visit. Kalo ada lho... :-)