It sometimes puzzles me why some of my students seemingly understand and accept the teaching principles presented on a methodology course and can also apply these principles in practice, but later, when they have compl! eted the course, it seems as if the course had had no influence on them at all.

In order to find out to what extent learners' opinions change during a course, an experiment was carried out involving 40 student teachers enrolled in the degree programme for class teachers at the Department of Teacher Education at Abo Akademi University in Vasa, Finland. When the experiment started, the students had finished their first year of studies and had just begun their second academic year. They had thus completed their first-year syllabus consisting mainly of introductory c! ourses in education and some general language courses and were looking forward to their second year comprising methodological and subject studies in all school subjects.

At the beginning of a four-month, two-credit course in foreign-language methodology, each student was given a slip of paper listing eight statements (the statements originated from a list of similar statements presented by Penny Ur at CUL! I's Third International Conference in November 1995 in Bangkok, Thailand, in a paper entitled "Making Use of Your Time"). The students were asked individually to rank the statements in order of importance in relation to the question "What is good language t! eaching ?" They were also asked to give their main reason for ranking #1 and #8 respectively, and then to hand in their slips of paper.

The eight statements were ranked as follows, the figures after each statement referring to the number of students ranking the statement as the most important, the second most important and the third most important factor constituting good! language teaching, respectively:

The class activities are interesting (12, 10, 11).
The pupils are enjoying themselves (12, 7, 7).
The pupils communicate a lot (8, 13, 6).
The class activities are goal-related (6, 8, 8).
The teacher uses a variety of teaching aids (2, 2, 7).
The pupils spend much time doing exercises (0, 0, 1).
The teacher asks a lot of questions (0, 0, 0).
The teacher gets things done quickly (0, 0, 0).

Throughout the course, whenever appropriate, the teacher paid special attention to two factors. Firstly, the students were taught that in order to be purposeful, foreign-language teaching should be goal-related. Secondly, they were taught! that the most important objective of foreign-language teaching is to enable pupils to communicate in the foreign language in real-life situations. The students were also required to put the teaching principles and techniques presented by the teacher into p! ractice. More specifically, each student was asked to develop communicative goals which related to everyday, real-life situations, to make lesson plans and to conduct peer teaching sessions in class. During these sessions the language and/or grammar points ! needed to fulfil the teaching goals were to be practised in as realistic, communicative situations as possible.

At the end of the course, about four months later, the students were again asked to rank the same eight statements in order of importance. This time the statements were ranked as follows (again, the figures after each statement refer to t! he number of students ranking the statement as the most important, the second most important and the third most important factor constituting good language teaching):

The pupils communicate a lot (12, 15, 5).
The class activities are goal-related (10, 7, 8).
The class activities are interesting (9, 10, 10).
The pupils are enjoying themselves (9, 2, 7).
The teacher uses a variety of teaching aids (0, 5, 8).
The teacher asks a lot of questions (0, 1, 1).
The pupils spend much time doing exercises (0, 0, 1).
The teacher gets things done quickly (0, 0, 0).

On the surface, there was every reason for the teacher to be happy. The two factors which had been emphasised the most during the course, now ranked 1 and 2 (as opposed to 3 and 4 four months earlier). The number of students ranking "The ! pupils communicate a lot" as #1 had increased from eight to twelve, whereas that for "The class activities are goal-related" had increased from six to ten.

Looking at individual students, however, the results were somewhat confusing. For 18 students there had been no change of preference during the course. Thus, the following statements ranked #1 at both times (the figure after each statemen! t refers to the number of students concerned):

The pupils are enjoying themselves (7).
The pupils communicate a lot (5).
The class activities are interesting (4).
The class activities are goal-related (2).

The remaining 22 students had changed their #1 preference as follows (the figures refer to the number of students changing their preferences):

New preference: "The pupils communicate a lot" (7). Previous preferences: "The class activities are interesting" (3); "The class activities are goal-related" (2); "The pupils are enjoying themselves" (1); "The teacher uses a variety of te! aching aids" (1).

New preference: "The class activities are goal-related" (8). Previous preferences: "The class activities are interesting" (5); "The pupils are enjoying themselves" (2); "The teacher uses a variety of teaching aids" (1).

New preference: "The class activities are interesting" (5). Previous preferences: "The pupils communicate a lot" (2); "The pupils are enjoying themselves" (2); "The class activities are goal-related" (1).

New preference: "The pupils are enjoying themselves" (2). Previous preferences: ""The pupils communicate a lot" (1); "The class activities are interesting" (1).

The results can be summarised in the following way. After the course, the number of students ranking either of the two relevant statements, i.e. "The pupils communicate a lot" and "The class activities are goal-related", as #1, had increa! sed from 14 to 22. Of these, seven students had not changed their first preference during the course, whereas two students had changed their preference from "The pupils communicate a lot" to "The class activities are goal-related". There were thus 13 studen! ts who had changed their #1 preference in the wanted direction, i.e. to either of the two target statements from one of the remaining statements, but there were also four students who had changed their preferences in the opposite direction. So, who has actu! ally got more influence on students' opinions, the teacher or the students? Or is teacher influence basically random?

Rolf Palmberg teaches EFL methodology at the Department of Teacher Education at Abo Akademi University in Vasa, Finland.