A class-centred approach to language teaching

This article provides a framework for understanding the principles that underlie the classroom decision-making of experienced language teachers. It is based on a study that examined social processes in classes of adult English language learners. The study revealed that teachers are sensitive to the social needs of their class groups, and that their pedagogically and socially-oriented behaviours are closely intertwined. The way that experienced teachers set up learning tasks is governed by a tacit understanding of the principles of group dynamics. Many language teachers, it seems, have intuitively adopted a classcentred approach to their teaching.