The first portion of the readings that I want to link to the article I found was in the textbook: How Languages are Learned. On page 46 there's something called Processability Theory. This is similar to the article that I found in that it focuses on a person's ability to process information. In the article that I found the processing of language comes into play when a student is engaged with the class. According to the article a student can stay engaged simply because they have a larger storage space for short-term memory or it may be due to how the teacher engages their students. And in the textbook the theory on page 46 discusses how "easy" some parts of language are to process as compared to others. So I think an interesting experiment might be to use some of these easily processed language features in conjunction with an engaging activity in order to see whether or not it significantly affects the student's comprehension of the subject being learned.
Of course if a student learns something in an engaging environment they will probably learn it better, but the extent to which they learn it is what interests me. On page 22 of the same textbook is an interesting example. It talks about a child named Jim who had deaf parents who couldn't interact with Jim through oral language and didn't use sign language with him either. Jim did watch TV and listen to the radio though, but it was not enough input to develop his language skills correctly. This caused Jim to fall behind in his use of language until he had one-on-one conversations with an adult tutor. In this example it seems that Jim learned the language much quicker simply because he was engaged in speech with another person. This way he got corrected whenever he used his speech incorrectly. I think it is interesting that since someone showed an interest in teaching Jim it caused him to engage in the subject completely. So maybe when we go out of this classroom to teach we don't have to have the most elaborate lesson plans ever created. Maybe all it takes to effectively engage a student in learning is the ability to show the student(s) that you sincerely want them (and each of them in a large class) to be able to learn something from you? I think that as teachers, if this is our goal, then our own enthusiasm for teaching will transfer into the students' enthusiasm for learning.
2 comments:
You're right. Rapport and concern for students are VERY important. Students need to know that you care.
I think that enthusiasm can help motivate students in some instances and in general. But, from helping students last semester and at the beginning of this year... Not all students are going to be willing to learn.
Even good students that are driven are going to have off days where they just don't want to do anything. They have so much going on in their lives that on occasion they are just going to get burnt out.
I am seeing this right now in the students at east that participate in the fasting for Ramandan... They just get burnt out by the time study hall rolls around (8th hour) and they can't/don't want to focus on homework.
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