EVOLVING LEARNING PARADIGMS: AFFORDANCES AND CONSTRAINTS

Abstract

Abstract. A successful teacher is not only a person with specialist knowledge and prominent personal features, but the one with skills and capacities emphasizing particularly his/her managerial qualities. In addition, English for Specific Purposes (ESP) teachers face a specificity dealing with two subject-matter fields – the English language and specific subject-matter knowledge, be it science, humanities, engineering, or anything else. Are general pedagogical practices overemphasized and often at the expense of content knowledge? In our opinion, teachers’ knowledge of student thinking and learning is more related to their emotional intelligence and psychology than pedagogy. Instead of memorizing facts, students are to be taught to search for information, to connect things, and enable the development of integrative knowledge in a multidisciplinary education. In such a learning environment, the responsibility of teachers is not only in their teaching but in facilitating learning by doing. Teachers’ ability to use English in a way that encourages learning in their students, where accuracy, fluency, and intelligibility are implied as necessary, is in our opinion above all theories, especially in times when motivation in students is constantly decreasing and dazzling lights ‘are killing softly’ our society of gadgets and gizmos.