Teaching-Learning Asymmetry: Why Don’t Learners Learn What Teachers Teach?

Teachers of EFL, as well as teacher trainers, have always complained about mismatch between what they do in the language classes and the outcome of it in the real world.  There has been much debate as to whether the mismatch results from learner variables, teacher inadequacies, program deficiencies, etc. The present paper reviews some existing learning perspectives and tries to come up with some hypotheses concerning the problem. One hypothesis put forward here to test in a comparative form is that the language learning environment and the strategies used by the teachers and learners do not match and therefore the efforts of both groups go down the drain. Implications of the possible confirmation of such hypothesis for language teachers are discussed and some conclusions are drawn on that basis.

Keywords:

First language acquisition , second language acquisition , language testing