The material comes from their Dialogue Journals, where the students are periodically asked to write answers to my questions. According to the skeletal rules of the Student-Teacher Dialogue there is no upper limit to their entries (the minimum is two sentences and they can write on any other topic if my question does not stimulate their involvement). Some of the students have come to like this correspondence so much, their letter have become so lengthy, that I have grasped the opportunity to turn them into something more than our private exchange by publishing in this Newsletter. Being teachers intent on supporting autonomy in our learners we should be first of all interested in listening to them.

To be on the fair side I should enclose comments which favour more traditional ways of learning… the problem is, there weren’t any!

I think that there are some good ways of learning, but I will write about this which is, I think the best.

I think that when we want to learn well, we should think about that what we learn. We shouldn’t be tired and we should be in the need of learning.

I think that the best way of learning English is watching films, reading books and talking with some people in English – from time to time or everyday.

When we watch English films, we can watch for a minute, then think about what we know about this fragment. If we know, we can rewind, turn on Polish dialogue or subtitles and check ourselves.

If we don’t understand, we can watch it once more. Then we can again turn on the Polish version, think about why we don’t understand some parts and may be we will find new words.

Watching a film we learn new words and how to say them, some phrasal verbs and grammar [probably meaning “language structures” – from the teacher]. We have then in our memory and when we will say or write something else, we will remember them. We will remember the correct order of words in a sentence.

When we read a book we learn many new words. I think that we will remember them better if we don’t look them up in a dictionary. First we should try to guess and only then check. And we learn grammar, too. We can try to guess how to build a sentence using some structure and then we can check it in a grammar book.

After watching a film or reading a book we can write a summary or a letter to somebody about them and then we learn, too.

In these two ways of learning we fuse learning and an interesting way of spending time. We learn new things and facts, watch favourite actors, get to know new writers and many others.

When we talk with people, we revise our English and sometimes learn new words. When we talk with someone who doesn’t speak Polish, then if we lack a word, first we have to explain what we want to say and only then this person can say the word which we need and we didn’t know.

We meet not only new people but, the culture of the country from which the person comes, as well. And we can revise our pronunciation.

I guess there are many good ways of learning English, but the most important thing is that we must want to learn, because if we don’t, then even the “best way” will be bad for us!

My opinion isn’t cut and dried. I like lessons without a course book, because then I can relax. I don’t know why, but then English becomes simpler for me. I can talk with somebody else about something interesting. Whem working without a course book I feel that we have more time for ourselves. When working with a book I must concentrate on the task that we are doing. I can’t look through the window and talk on some different topic.

But of course I need a course book! I think that a book is important, because if I forget something… or if I wasn’t at school - then I don’t know what the class did. Then I can look it up in the book. Course books are documents which are useful for me. I can read from them whenever I have time. This is good. I have a good memory, but of course every day there can happen a lot of situations which I would like to remember... but it is impossible.

I think that some lessons could be conducted without a course book – for relaxation and for learning “like a game”. I need a book, but not all the time. Now I am thinking that I need it, but another day I hate it and I don’t need it.

I like working without a book, because it is better. I think that I learn more when I play games. It is funny. When I learn English from a book, I am bored and I don’t really want to learn. I must read and read rules. I don’t like this. When I am working without a book I learn and I think about it all. In my opinion the best way of learning is when I don’t learn by rote. When I speak my own words I learn more and better. It is very easy – I must first understand lots of different texts to speak my own words. I read many books and try to understand and remember new words.

I have had to correct only minimally, for the sake of publishing principle. I have retained the original syntax and choice of words. The corrections were mostly “grammatical” (what does it mean, anyway?) – the use of the articles, verb forms, suffixes and prefixes, occasionally word order in a sentence. In a very few cases I have instituted a more appropriate word.

The saddest thing is, when last month I exposed these three students (and some even more proficient in English) to the rigours of a “regional competition”, they all failed miserably, since the test consisted of 60 multiple choice items, discrete, de-contextualised and de-cotextualised, aiming at checking grammar competence (I hope the readers will understand since I myself have great problems grasping the idea of “grammar competency”…) of the participants. I am personally sorry for subjecting them to this experience. But the inexplicable is, they have made errors in the test which they would rarely make in authentic communication. And I cannot stop thinking: how is it that a person able to produce highly comprehensible text on such difficult and abstract subject as “the ways of learning” can perform so badly in a grammar test?