Taking Our Learners Seriously

Taking Our Learners Seriously Herbert Puchta facebook.com/herbertpuchta.elt @herbertpuchta www.herbertpuchta.com Success depends less on materials, techniques and linguistic analysis, and more on what goes on inside and between the people in the classrooms. (Earl Stevick) Let us take our children seriously! Everything else follows from this only the best is good enough for a child. (Zoltán Kodály, 1941) Allwright and Hanks, The Developing Language Learner: An Introduction to Exploratory Practice (2008) 1

Taking learners seriously and not mistrusting them and not thinking the worst of them is one of the key variables in creating the conditions for good language learning. (Mark Andrews, 2014) Meaningful Action: Earl Stevick s Influence on Language Teaching (ed. by Arnold and Murphey, 2013) Chapter by Scott Thornbury: The Learning Body First, cognition depends not just on the brain, but also on the body (the embodiment thesis). Second, cognitive activity routinely exploits structure in the natural and social environment (the embedding thesis). Third, the boundaries of cognition extend beyond the boundaries of individual organisms (the extension thesis). (Robbins and Aydede, 2009:3) <Foto as illustration> Thornbury: The Learning Body Embodied interaction Embedded in social context Language learning as an extended process the idea of socially shared cognition is very different from the idea of cognition commonly accepted in Western psychology. Western tradition has viewed cognition as a set of internal mental processes accessible only to the individual. However, as researchers have studied the Vygotskyan frame, a growing number have begun to examine the idea of cognition as a shared process and to recognise the importance of social context in the acquisition of these mental processes. (Bodrova and Leong, 2007) 2

Research available into aspects of multi-modality in SLA Main focus on repair strategies Little research available on the collaborate nature of the multi-modal solutions LANGUAGE & STRATEGIES Research available into aspects of multi-modality in SLA Main focus on repair strategies Little research available on the collaborate nature of the multi-modal solutions Not enough research into what happens collaboratively through the joint multimodality of language, silence, gesture, gaze, and movement in the learning space (Gullberg 2011) T: Look at the girl here. Is she happy or sad? Ss: Happy! T: She s so happy! Do you think she likes apples? Ss: Yes. T: Yes, yes, yes! Do you think she likes cake? Ss: Yes, yes, yes! T: Look at the girl here. (points at picture) Is she happy or sad? Ss: Happy! T: She s so happy! Do you think she likes apples? Ss: Yes. T: Yes, yes, yes! (speaking rhythmically, using her hands to support the rhythm in a circular movement of her right hand). Do you think she likes cake? Ss: (while the teacher is still doing the same hand movements, to elicit the students repetition of her phrase, and a few of the students are mirroring the gesture). Yes, yes, yes! T: OK, let s listen to the song first. (While the teacher is about to start the CD, one of the girls stands up and tries to go past the teacher towards the free space in front of the board.) T: All right, Linda, can you sit down again, please? S: No! 3

S: No! T: (laughing) No? (Linda laughs too, and carries on moving towards the space, swaying her body slightly). T: Ah, you want to dance. (miming a dance) Do you want to dance? L: Yes! Dance! T: Dance. Good girl. You want to dance. Sequences are initiated by trials in both speech and gesture, followed by otherrepetition often leading to overlapping, synchronized speech and gesture, followed by new repetitions by learners during integration, occasionally followed by further repetition of the original sequence. Typically interlocutors repeat both gestures and speech until both parties are satisfied that a common understanding has been reached. (Gullberg, 2011) Just like native speakers, learners are keen to keep the floor, to save face, and so on. And just like native speakers, they prefer to find solutions to the problems without interrupting fluency, if possible, and without overtly appealing for help. However, selfrepair will often be impossible for learners even when they do manage to find a circumlocution or approximation and learners therefore often must resort to interactive multimodal solutions. (Gullberg, 2011) T: (S1), ask (S2) if she came by car tonight. S1: Did you come by car tonight? T: Did you come good. Ask her if she has a brother. S2: Yes, I did. (S2 is answering S1 s question) S3: Do you have a brother? T: Yes. Do you have or have you got. Very good. Ask her if she is a teacher. S4: Do you a teacher? T: No. Are you... S4: Are you a teacher? T: Are you a teacher? Yes. S5: Yes, I am. T: Yes, I am is the answer. OK you can also do it with answers. Doesn t matter. Ask S6 if she works in an office. S4: Do you S7: work work S4: Do you work in an office? S6: No, work at home. T: That s not correct, but it doesn t matter. Ask S8 if he Such discussions are carried out in order to give the teacher and the students a chance to discover how they experienced a certain exercise or teaching phase, what problems they encountered, and what could be improved. They help learners become aware of how different individuals react to the same task. This helps to develop empathy; that is, it fosters their ability to put themselves into other people s shoes, a vital social skill. Metadiscussions also play a role in raising awareness of learning processes ( ). Growth in awareness of ways and stages in learning is essential if students are to come to feel responsible for their own learning. (Puchta and Schatz, 1993,) 4

T: Could you try to think back to when I asked one in each pair to read the five sentences, to the other one who was listening with their eyes closed. What was that like for you? S1: It was fun. But also strange. I m working with John, and I don t know him so, so T: Well? S1: Yes. Not so well, so I erm was I wanted to know I was erm T: You wanted to know were you curious? S1: Yes, curious. Curious what John think of me. S2: But we didn t have time. Erm not enough time. T: OK, you couldn t finish reading? S2: No, no that was OK erm we started to speak after we read and then you said now swap roles or so T: Ah, OK, that was too fast for you. I see. Action Science William Torbert (1981) In contrast to the uni-lateral control model, which offers only fundamentally anti-educational reflective science about action, a new model is needed on how to conduct an action science. Such a science would consider the researcher to be an interactive participant, rather than a detached observer, in the situation under consideration and would welcome the possibility of change through dialogue between the actor-researcher and others. Research, according to this new model of collaborative enquiry in the social sciences, would be regarded as an experiment in practice, an opportunity for studying the self as well as others. (Torbert, 1981) The learning community a holistic framework of investigation Offers pedagogical accessibility to past learning experiences Enables the teacher to adjust to students needs Enables teach to promote better learning (Murphey, in: Mercer et al 2012) Examples of possible questions you can ask: How often did I notice para-linguistic signals in my lesson (silence, gestures, gaze, movement)? How often and how did I react to them? How often did I help my students by scaffolding so that they could say something beyond their current ability? 5

Summary of key points Creation of classroom culture that allows for multi-modality of interaction Problems regarding discipline and attention span are often the outcomes of a narrow focus on language (limitations) only; instead, a focus on learner capabiliites would be much more productive. Social embedding to extend learning beyond individual boundaries; students become co-creators of new language all mental processes exist first in a shared space, and then move to an individual plane. The social context is actually part of the developmental and learning process. Shared activity is the means that facilitates a child s internalization of mental processes. (Bodrova and Leong, 2007) These, then, are two dimensions within which you will be of greater or less help to your students: developing their communicative competence ( ) and perfecting their linguistic competence ( ). There is, however, a third dimension without which these first two can lead at best to an academic, flat, sterile achievement. The question is whether as teacher or how much, as teacher you can hope to help your students in this third dimension. I m not sure, but let me set before you, briefly, what I see here. The third competence is personal. (Stevick, 1982) Thank you for listening Herbert Puchta facebook.com/herbertpuchta.elt @herbertpuchta www.herbertpuchta.com References: Andrews, M. Classrooms on the Danube: An exploration of the quality of classroom life. Retrieved from: http://markandrews.edublogs.org Arnold, J. and Murphey, T. (2013) Meaningful Action: Earl Stevick s Influence on Language Teaching. Cambridge University Press. Bodrova, E. and Leong, D. J. (2007) Tools of the Mind. The Vygotskian Approach to Early Childhood Education. 2 nd ed. Pearson Education. Gullberg, M. Multilingual Multimodality: Communicative Difficulties and Their Solutions in Second Language Use, in: Streek, J., Goodwin C. and LeBaron, C. (2011). Embodied Interction. Language and Body in the Material World. Learning in Doing: Social, Cognitive, & Computational Perspectives, pp. 137 152. Cambridge University Press. Mercer, S., Ryan, S. and Williams, M., (2012) Psychology for Language Learning. Insights from Research, Theory and Practice. Palgrave MacMillan. Murphey, T., Falout, J. Fukada, Y. and Fukada, T. Group dynamics: Collaborative Agency in Present Communities of Imagination, in: Mercer, S., Ryan, S. and Williams, M., (2012) Psychology for Language Learning. Insights from Research, Theory and Practice. Palgrave MacMillan. References: Puchta, H and Schratz, M. (1993), Teaching Teenagers. Model Activity Sequences for Humanistic Language Learning. Longman. Robbins, P and Aydede, M. (2009). A Short Primer on Situated Cognition, in: Robbins, P and Aydede, M. The Cambridge Handbook of Situated Cognition: Cambridge University Press, pp. 3 10. Stevick, E. (1996) Memory, Meaning and Method: a View of Language Teaching, Second edition, Newbury House Teacher Development series. Heinle & Heinle. Stevick, E. (1982) Teaching and Learning Languages. Cambridge University Press. Streek, J., Goodwin C. and LeBaron, C. (2011). Embodied Interction. Language and Body in the Material World. Learning in Doing: Social, Cognitive, & Computational Perspectives. Cambridge University Press. Thornbury, S. The Learning Body, in: Arnold, J. and Murphy, T. (2013) Meaningful Action: Earl Stevick s Influence on Language Teaching, pp. 62-78. Cambridge University Press. Thornbury, S. Initiating Change: One Step at a Time, talk given at KOTESL Conference, Seoul, September 2014. Torbert, W. Why Educational Research Has Been So Uneducational: The Case for a New Model of Social Science Based on Collaborative Inquiry, in: Reason, P., Ed. and J. Rowan, Ed. (1981) Human Inquiry. John Wiley and Sons, Ltd., Chapter 11. 6