Should we call students "students"? · Teacher Support Network (Free)

Andrew Woodbury

Feb 13 in General discussion

Should we call students "students"?

I posted this on LinkedIn the other day and go two types of responses:

People who completely agree with the idea
People who don't

No surprise, I guess 🤣

What's your take?

Should we call students "students" or "learners." Does it matter?

Should we reflect on our role in the learning process, and that we don't necessarily "teach" a language like other subjects?

These are takeaways from our interview with the legendary researcher Bill VanPatten.

Here's the post below:

We shouldn't call them students.

Call them learners.

What they learn is beyond our control.

These are some of the takeaways from our chat with the great Bill VanPatten this week. We'll have more posts and snippets coming out shortly, but this one caught my attention.

He calls this the "Atlas complex." Where teachers feel they must do everything and anything to help students.

And this is wrong.

After all, in a language classroom - or via your own courses if you're selling them - the students' brains are equipped to acquire knowledge beyond our control. Hence the switch from "student" to "learner."

They learn with or without us. Which also means we aren't the "teacher," but rather an "interlocutor."

Which reminds me of what Paul Nation said when we interviewed him: "As a teacher, you've gotta believe that by NOT teaching, people can learn."

And this really is it, isn't it?

TL;DR:

1. Don't call them students; call them learners

2. Don't call ourselves teachers; refer to ourselves as interlocutors

3. We have very little control over what learners acquire

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