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ES 28 (2007-8): 189-196 
A LEARNER-CENTRED 
APPROACH TO THE 
TEACHING OF ENGLISH 
AS AN L2 
 
 
Arsenio Sánchez Calvo 
Universidad de Valladolid 
Though there are different ways of teaching English as a second language, 
they can be divided into two broad categories: the teacher-centred way and 
the learner-centred one. For centuries, the former has been the norm in L2 
classrooms, but things seem to have gradually changed in the last two or 
three decades. This paper tries to trace the development of learner-centred 
teaching since its birth in the 1980s, and to examine how it has been used and 
how teachers and researchers have reacted to its implementation in second 
language formal or academic teaching. It also aims at pointing out the main 
roots and ideas of this approach to second language teaching as well as the 
consequences it may have both on teachers and learners in terms of behaviour
and skills needed.
I
NTRODUCTION
Things changed dramatically in second language teaching when Noam 
Chomsky (1959) argued that language acquisition could not take place through 
habit formation but through some innate capacity that humans possess. From that 
moment on, learners have been seen as active agents involved in the learning 
process rather than as passive imitators of controlled language input, and L2 
learning has been seen as a natural cognitive process in which learners are 
ultimately responsible for their own learning. 
This active role of the learner has also brought a lot of changes into the 
teaching of English as a second language. This is what Rebecca Oxford (1990:VII) 
said seventeen years ago, “In recent years there has been a shift in focus from the 
teacher to the learner -from exclusive focus on the improvement of teaching to an 

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increased concern for how learners go about their learning task in a second or 
foreign language”. 
Though in 1977 Peter Strevens (1977:5) had said that learner-centred 
educational outlook was “sweeping through much of the world,” by and large we 
can say that until the 1980s, the main focus of L2 teaching was on method, and 
nobody ever questioned the role of the teacher as the centre of L2 teaching and 
subsequent learning. But in the last two decades of the 20th century people became 
increasingly interested in involving the learner in the teaching-learning process and 
this gave rise to the term learner-centred teaching. 
In 1980, Alan McLean (1980:16) published a seminal article with a very 
defying title: “Destroying the Teacher: the Need for Learner-Centred Teaching”. 
And, seven years later, D. Larsen-Freeman (1987:8) wrote: “The general pattern in 
modern-day methodology is for the teaching to be learner-centred. By this, I mean 
that it is the teacher who serves as a guide in the learning process, but it is the 
learners who assume some responsibility for the direction of the learning and who 
bear ultimate responsibility for how much learning takes place”. 
Eleven years ago, Corony Edwards claimed that language teaching was 
moving towards a learner-centred methodology (Willis & Willis 1996:99). This 
trend was confirmed two years later by Alan Waters’ words (1998:11): “In recent 
years, the importance of adopting a learner-centred approach to ELT classroom 
management has become axiomatic”. And five years ago, J. Taylor (2002:10) 
painted the following picture: “The traditional perceptions of teacher as expert, 
instigator, administrator, and the student as passive recipient, are being remodelled, 
and sometimes violently shaken, to make way to other behaviours”.
This new kind of teaching, which tries to see the L2 teaching-learning process 
from the point of view of the learner and to pay special attention to the needs, aims 
at the characteristics of learners, and it seems to be still gaining ground in second 
language teaching. It seems as if it wants to put into practice the principle that 
“teaching should be subordinated to learning,” which was precisely one of the 
basic tenets of the Silent Way back in 1972 (Larsen-Freeman 1986:51).
In the next few pages, we would like to have a close look at how it all started, 
what its main roots and characteristics may have been, and what are the 
consequences or changes the implementation of learner-centred teaching may have 
on teachers and learners of English as a second language. 

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S
OURCES OR 
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OOTS OF 
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EACHING
It is difficult to discuss about anything without reference to its history. 
Therefore, it seems to be very convenient to have a quick look at the origins of 
learner-centred teaching. 
According to David Nunan (1990:179), general learner-centred philosophy 
“emerged as an offspring of communicative language learning”. The shift from the 
structural to the communicative approach implied in some way a shift form 
teacher-centred to learner-centred teaching. In 1985 R. B. Kaplan (1985:3) wrote: 
“various approaches have fostered the notion of student-centred classroom”. And 
obviously, Kaplan was referring precisely to the Total Physical Response Method, 
Suggestopedia, Community Language Learning, the Silent Way, the various 
communicative approaches and the Natural Approach in particular, all of which 
are mainly based on the notion of how learning takes place and try to facilitate 
learners' learning process. In the end, the aim of all of them is the learners' 
communicative competence and the focus is always on the learner rather than on 
the teacher. 
Another undeniable root of learner-centred teaching seems to be the 
humanistic approach to teaching, which, based mainly on the work of Maslow and 
Rogers, emphasises the importance of the learners' affective factors -motivation, 
enjoyment, etc- in the L2 learning process. Carl Rogers' humanistic psychology 
seems to have had a direct influence on the learner-centred approach. According to 
A. Underhill (1989:251), Rogers “proposed a shift of focus in education from 
teaching to learning, and from teacher to facilitator. He saw teachers as facilitators 
of learning not just ‘from the neck up’, but of learning that involves the whole 
person”. As everybody knows, Community Language Learning is directly 
dependent on Charles A. Curran and Rogers' views, and it is crystal clear that this 
approach and learner-centred teaching have a lot of things in common. 
Some other relevant sources may be cognitive psychology on human 
processes and learning strategies as well as research in sociology and general 
education with its tradition of self-fulfillment, growth, co-operation and 
meaningful activity. 

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K
EY 
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HARACTERISTICS OR 
A
SPECTS OF THIS 
A
PPROACH TO 
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EACHING
“The starting point for all language teaching should be an understanding of 
how people learn,” as Hutchinson and Waters (1990:39) write. And therefore, it is 
only natural that if we -as teachers- want our students to learn an L2 -English in 
our case- efficiently, we should pay attention to how they learn it. It may seem a 
truism but we must remember that learning an L2 is something that the learner, 
and only the learner, can do.
Learner-centred teaching seems especially suited to teaching a second 
language, an activity or process that has to do more with learning how to do things 
than with knowing about things. The learner-centred approach “tends to view 
language acquisition as a process of acquiring skills rather than a body of 
language,” in Nunan's words (1990:21), and it is associated with some specific 
techniques or classroom activities, such as working in pairs or groups, though what 
makes the real difference is that teachers, who follow this approach, try to engage 
learners in meaningful activities whose main aim is genuine communication in the 
target language.
Learner-centred teaching tends to promote inductive learning, and, 
consequently, learners are not taught grammatical or other types of rules directly, 
but are left to discover or induce rules from their experience of using the second 
language. Many methodologists currently claim that the teacher’s job is precisely 
“to create conditions in the classroom that will enable students to learn by 
becoming engaged in activities or working in tasks,” as G. S. Murdoch (1990:15) 
puts it. 
For Penny Ur (2001:6), there are two versions of this approach, the strong 
one, which “would imply things like getting learners to find out information for 
themselves rather than being told, to create their own materials, to decide on their 
own syllabuses, to self-asses” and the weak one, which “would imply things like 
asking for and respecting (but not necessarily obeying) learners' requests, a 
lessening of the teacher-talk and an increase in learner activation”. 
The attitudes of both teachers and learners are two vital and very important 
things in the L2 learner-centred teaching. As K. Jennings and Tom Doyle point 
out, “the learners' learning styles and objective and subjective needs must be 
central to each teacher's planning processes” (Willis & Willis 1996:175), if the 
teacher wants to maximise the potential of the learning situation. 
Along with this new emphasis on the learner instead of the teacher there are 
some facts or ideas that are specifically learner-centred, such as: 

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1. The authenticity of language content and materials in the classrooms. 
According to David Nunan (1990:105), a key aim of a learner-centre 
curriculum is to use authentic materials in order “to generate classroom 
activities which simulate genuine communication in the classroom in the 
hope that this will facilitate transfer of learning” from classroom to outside 
-or real world- second language use. And David Nunan (1990:99) insists 
on the fact that this authenticity “should relate to the text sources as to 
student activities and tasks”.
2. Language content's appropriateness to the learners' needs and interests. 
Though it is true that, as Alan Maley writes, in many of the classrooms 
with which most of us are familiar “it is normal and expected that teachers 
will make most, if not all, of the decisions about the teaching content and 
materials” (Campbell et al. 1992:3), we now know that students learn best 
when they become engaged in activities or tasks in which they have to use 
the target language, so learners’ communicative needs are a priority in the 
learner-centred approach. As Alan McLean (1980:18) puts it, there is “a 
clear need for the content of language-teaching materials to involve the 
learner -to relate to his needs, interests and moral concerns”. According to 
K. Jennings and Tom Doyle, in a learner-centred approach, learners' needs 
(classified in terms of real-life tasks and learning style preferences) form 
the centre of the teacher's planning process” (Willis & Willis 1996:175).
3. Learners' active role in the learning process. The learner becomes the 
active agent in the learning process and he or she takes charge of the 
learning while the teacher becomes a mere facilitator of that learning. As 
A. McLean (1980:17) points out, “Learning is most effective when the 
learner is the initiator of the learning process”. Classes are dynamic and 
learner-centred teachers try to involve learners in the organisation and 
development of different activities, and learners are frequently invited to 
experiment with the L2 by using it in writing and talking as much as 
possible. Recent research into the nature of learning has put special 
emphasis precisely on the active role learners must play in the learning 
process. 
4. Learners' autonomy. One of the main features of this approach is that 
learners' autonomy is promoted, and learners are made responsible for 
their own learning. According to J. Taylor (2002:8), “A certain degree of 
autonomy is always worth encouraging because it raises motivation and 
speeds up progress”. But H. Holec and Alan Waters, among many others, 
go much further. H. Holec (1995:265) is in favour of teaching language 
learners to learn, because, as he puts it, that “is considered the best way of 

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ensuring that learning takes place”. It seems to be crystal clear that at the 
end of the day, the ultimate responsibility must always lie within the 
learners themselves, because, as we all know from our own experience 
and Rebecca Oxford (1990:11) points out: “When students take more 
responsibility, more learning occurs, and both teachers and learners feel 
more successful”.
T
EACHERS
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S
PECIFIC 
S
KILLS 
As we have seen above, there has been a clear shift in the world of teaching 
and learning, and I absolutely agree with J. Harmer when he says: “Good teachers 
care more about their students' learning than they do about their own teaching” 
(1998:3), but what can or should teachers do? As David Nunan (1991:235) points 
out, “learner-centredness does not imply that teachers should abandon the 
classroom to the learners”. Diane Larsen-Freeman was absolutely right when she 
said that teachers “just can’t go into the classroom and let students run the show. 
You (the teacher) have to come in with some kind of activities, but activities that 
will remove the focus from you” (Ancker 2001:3). According to the learner-
centred approach, the teacher's function may become less dominant than before, 
but not less important. 
The new approach seems to be much more demanding than the teacher-
centred one, and this has obvious implications for teachers and their classroom 
roles. As Altan and Trombly (2001:29) remind us, “students may become out of 
control in a student-centred classroom, and conflicts about learning may arise 
between teachers and learners,” especially if students believe the teacher's 
methodology is not appropriate. And, as many of us know, it is not always easy to 
accept a change in classroom organization. Consequently, teachers need to be 
trained in some new skills such as: 
1. Needs-analysis skills to establish the content or syllabus to be covered and 
the method to be adopted in the classrooms. As David Nunan (1990:151) 
puts it, “in a learner-centred educational system, it is the teacher, who is 
the principal agent of curriculum development”. Needs-analysis can be 
carried out in the form of a discussion, a checklist or a questionnaire. 
2. Course-planning skills, such as flexibility in the way of approaching 
language learning and adaptability to the learners' needs and context. 
Knowing how to adapt to the context in which the target language is 
taught and learned is a must for teachers according to this approach. As 
everybody knows, all teachers can and should do is provide good 

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conditions within which learning may take place, and therefore the better 
these conditions are the more successful the learning process will be. 
3. Educational skills, like empathy and intuition, to try to overcome the 
possible problems and difficulties as well as to move from explicit to 
implicit instruction and from controlled to free target language production. 
In this approach, the teacher is seen as a facilitator -to use Carl Rogers's 
term- of the learning process more than as anything else. As Adrian 
Underhill (1989:251) claims, “The job of the facilitator is not to decide 
what the students should learn, but to identify and create the crucial 
ingredients of the psychological climate that helps to free learners to learn 
and to grow”.
C
ONCLUSION
According to what we have seen above, the learner-centred approach to 
teaching is gaining ground in second language methodology, and more and more 
teachers are beginning to subordinate teaching to learning. There is no doubt that 
the learner-centred approach provides a practical and viable alternative to the 
traditional teacher-centred approach to activate learners, and to help them induce -
or find out for themselves- the grammar rules. Instead of explaining rules in 
advance, learner-centred teachers try to do their best to help their students learn the 
second language by themselves as much as possible. Learner-centred teachers pay 
special attention to learners’ needs when they are preparing the syllabus, the 
materials or the texts they are going to use in the classroom, because they are sure 
all that effort is going to pay handsome dividends according to the latest research 
on second language acquisition. 
The learner-centred approach to teaching a second language offers a 
stimulating, effective and rewarding -though time-consuming- alternative to those 
teachers who are willing to try something different and promising instead of going 
over the same old familiar ground. 

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R
EFERENCES 
Altan, M. Z. and C. Trombly. “Creating a learner-centred teacher education program”. E. T. Forum 
39:3 (2001): 28-34. 
Ancker, W. “The Joy of Watching Others Learn: An Interview with Diane Larsen-Freeman”. E. T.