It's Up to You: Foreword
It's Up To You (U2U) has been written for Korean students, based on the authors’ experience of designing and managing freshman university programs in Korea.

This course recognizes that freshman students have a need for communicative competence in English, that this need has been identified at every level of the education system for some time, and that an interactive task-based approach has been shown to be effective in satisfying that need.

The course also takes account of recent findings made in the fields of cognitive, affective and social learning. Cognitive findings tell us that over-emphasis on one aspect of language (e.g. grammar, communication, fluency, error-correction) adversely affects the way in which student attention is shared between other learning processes. Affective findings point out that factors such as attitude, beliefs/perceptions, motivation, confidence and anxiety are strong determiners of what actually gets learned in the classroom. It has been claimed that these factors are more important than cognition (Stern, 1983), and that students do not learn what the teacher teaches (Allwright, 1984). From the social perspective the classroom is a place in which social skills such as cooperation, collaboration, responsibility, honesty and trust can be developed and learned. These are important life skills, which it is the responsibility of every teacher to foster.

Recent advances in the physical sciences have added further to the complex view of learning which is emerging. According to contemporary theories, the classroom is “a complex adaptive system” (Van Lier, 1996, p. 38) in which “details are all that matters” (Gould, 1993) and in which “it is fruitless to search for causal relations” (Van Lier, 1996, p. 38). The complex and dynamic interactions which occur in the classroom have been seen as the most important events in the learning environment (interaction = learning content), being mutually-influential and symbiotic instances of the “many striking similarities between the new science of chaos/complexity and second language acquisition” (Larsen-Freeman, 1997, p. 141). If we view the classroom as a complex, dynamic, open system, with input occurring all the time (not just linguistic input, but also the Student/Student, Student/Teacher and Teacher/Student interactions in Korean and English), then we can see Second Language Acquisition as a dynamic, complex, non-linear process, that is open, self-organizing, adaptive, unpredictable, and sensitive to initial conditions and feedback:

We can neither claim that learning is caused by environmental stimuli (the behaviorist position) nor that it is genetically determined (the innatist position). Rather, learning is the result of complex (and contingent) interactions between individual and environment. (Van Lier, 1996, p. 170)

Thus, learning is no longer seen as a product of a linear series of events, but as a cyclic process, in which every factor influences and is influenced by all the other factors, with new structures (e.g. awarenesses and achievements) emerging from the mix of interactions. The Dynamic Learning model (below) reflects this view that every factor in the EFL program has an impact on the learning that takes place, and that the interaction of these factors determines what gets learned by whom. Only a small number of the possible interactions are shown on the model, and various factors (e.g. active participation, cultural considerations, parental-pressure, high-stakes examinations) have not been added. However, it can be seen that there is a great deal happening in the language classroom apart from the memorizing of linguistic code.

 A Dynamic Learning Model

Below are some precepts about teaching and learning which have been influential in the evolution of this course. We hope that they will also be inspirational to the reader. Finally, we wish teachers and students well in the implementation of the course.

1. There is a difference between learning and education.
2. Learners learn what is meaningful to them.
3. Learners learn in ways that are meaningful to them.
4. Learners learn better if they feel in control of what they are learning.
5. Learning is closely linked to how people feel about themselves.
6. Learning takes place in a social context through interactions with other people.
7. What teachers do in the classroom will reflect their own beliefs and attitudes.
8. There is a significant role for the teacher as mediator in the language classroom.
9. Learning tasks represent an interface between teachers and learners.
10. Learning is influenced by the situation in which it occurs.
    (Williams & Burden 1997, p. 204)