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Thursday, December 19, 2013

What is really important in Education



What is really important in Education

The objective of education is learning, not teaching. Therefore I am going to talk about active teaching.
For me - teaching online is using technology in the classroom; as an additional method of traditional teaching.
I am for blended learning which means - taking advantage of both, traditional f2f techniques and possibilities given by new technologies.
Some say that: participants in online classes seem to be more involved and engaged in lesson activities than students in traditional classes.
In my opinion, we are able to activate our learners equally in both situations.
Getting decent communication in different educational settings requires altered teaching approaches.
This enables us to change them from passive learners to active students.
But how to help them learn actively and meaningfully, it is a separate issue.
Active learning involves providing opportunities for students to talk and listen meaningfully, write, read, and reflect on the content, ideas, issues, and concerns of an academic subject.
(Meyers & Jones, 1993, p. 6)
Confucius’s aphorism:
I hear, and I forget. I see, and I remember. I do, and I understand.
(Page 75 Instruction at FSU Handbook 2011)
Should not be forgotten. By doing and practicing, we build our long term memory library.
Short term recollection is formed mostly by memorizing, which is, unfortunately, assessed in the majority of schools.
My experience tells that I ought to practice active learning principles to progress activities for my students that best mirror my particular communication style and the topics, forms of thinking, and strategies to the problems which are needed to understand and relate to the topics.
This is how I work on creating my “active learners”.
Looking for answers to the most common questions: what, when, where, who, why, why don't, how etc. is always the starting point.
As a result of our discussion - we are able to put together part of incompetent content knowledgeable student with fully involved learner and self-motivated thinker.
Traditional education focuses on teaching, not learning. In most schools, memorization is mistaken for learning. Taking part in free study lessons and online Speaking Groups, will help a lot. This would also increase our confidence in speaking, as well as improve vocabulary and pronunciation. Additional excellent setting to practice is   Virtual Classroom such as WizIQ, where teachers would encourage us to work on all language skills.
Standards for Foreign Language Learning
Communication
Communicate in Languages Other Than English
Standard 1.1: Students engage in conversations, provide and obtain information,
express feelings and emotions, and exchange opinions.
Standard 1.2: Students understand and interpret written and spoken language on a
variety of topics.
Standard 1.3: Students present information, concepts, and ideas to an audience of
listeners or readers on a variety of topics.

In my view, the most important skill to master is speaking the language. This is difficult assignment especially if you don’t live or work in a native speaking count. We can look for reliable supports to talk to via Skype. It is essential to find someone whom we’re comfortable speaking with.
The process of natural assimilation, involving intuition and subconscious learning. It is the product of real interactions between people in environments of the target language and culture, where the learner is an active player. It is similar to the way children learn their native tongue, a process that produces functional skill in the spoken language without theoretical knowledge. It develops familiarity with the phonetic characteristics of the language as well as its structure and vocabulary, and is responsible for oral understanding, the capability for creative communication and the identification of cultural values.
A classic example of second language acquisition is the adolescents and young adults that live abroad for a year in an exchange program, often attaining near native fluency, while knowing little about the language. They have a good pronunciation without a notion of phonology, don't know what the perfect tense is, modal or phrasal verbs are, but they intuitively recognize and know how to use all the structures.
The traditional approach to the study of languages and today is still generally practiced in high schools worldwide. Attention is focused on the language in its written form, and the objective is for the student to understand the structure and rules of the language, whose parts are dissected and analyzed. The task requires intellectual effort and deductive reasoning. The body is of greater importance than communication. Teaching and learning are technical and based on the syllabus. One studies the theory in the absence of the practice. One values the correct and represses the incorrect. Error correction is constant leaving little room for spontaneity. The teacher is an authority figure and the participation of the student is predominantly passive. Schools will teach how to form interrogative and negative sentences, force to memorize irregular verbs, study modal verbs, etc., Therefore, students hardly ever masters the use of these structures in conversation.
The efficient teaching of languages isn't that tied to a packaged course of structured lessons based on grammatical sequencing, translation or oral drilling, nor is the one that relies on technological resources. Well-organized teaching is personalized, takes place in a bicultural environment and is based on the personal skills of the facilitator in building relationships and creating situations of real communication with comprehensible input focusing on the learner's interests.
Krashen, Stephen D.  Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition.  Prentice-Hall International, 1987.
Krashen, Stephen D.  Second Language Acquisition and Second Language Learning.  Prentice-Hall International, 1988.


My Teaching




When I teach Polish, my foreigners and I have to speak only Polish, and my English classes are run only in English.
This means they are required to forget about native language and start speaking as well as thinking in a foreign language.
Telling the truth, my method is extraordinarily revitalizing, challenging and exhausting for all of us. There is a lot of non-verbal communication, singing, acting, drawing, even dancing sometimes.
There is no space and time for analyzing grammar rules or memorizing isolated vocabulary. Nobody thinks about why we communicate the way we express our thoughts.
When a student does ask why? , my only response is because they (natives) say so, or they just talk like this.
My students learn the language in different contexts, mostly singing phrases, expressions, collocation, idioms, and phrasal verbs also telling stories. Moreover, I encourage them to talk to everybody even to themselves in a foreign language. As a result of this, they are able to identify a collection of compelling stories.
I correct only limited mistakes.  I do not want them to stop talking. I also encourage my students to listen to songs, watch movies with subtitles in a language they learn, read a lot and so forth.
Moreover, I use a lot of You Tube videos to improve student’s pronunciation, as well as, movies with English subtitles and of course songs.
I work in a huge Department of Foreign Languages and my colleagues know who is running a class because we make a lot of noise and we are happy together, enjoying our learning.


My ideas about learning/ teaching languages.



This is why I am for teaching/learning speaking skills.