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[gaijinalways]

carnac posted

[Guy Courchesne]

Thank you for that Carnac...lovely post.

[carnac]

At the real risk of being a bore, I hesitantly return to the topic of discussing philosophy with the students. Please feel free to flame me if the subject has become tedious.
I have huge respect for these folks/kids/women/men. They are attempting something not easy in any respect, and discussions of abstractions at the pre-Intermediate level are not easy for them. I do this because this type of mental activity creates an environment of seriousness and the students rise to a higher level of thought-processing (as well as language-processing), and an increased level of collegiality. I encourage study groups, where in L1 they discuss the implications of proverbial statements, then give presentations to the class of why they find the statement to be valid or invalid. I never dispute their decisions, but reserve the right to question them as to their thinking. (I am known to them as the guy who always asks "why?".
The important point is that, L1 prior thinking aside, the presentations are, by fiat (mine) always in English. This means that they must delve into the L1 to find ways to express their thinking in L2, difficult at any time, since philosophical discussions are so often culturally based.
One group chose a proverb that stated "An army of sheep led by a lion is better than an army of lions led by a sheep." Whoa! Politically loaded, but their discussion, after all. Another chose "A basket with two handles can be carried by two people."
Two points here:
- The proverb must be able to be understood generally. And, if they don't understand it, they just don't choose it.
-They have to be able to stand up in front of everyone, and in a way understandable to everyone, say what they think the expression means, and why they accept or reject it.
Is this philosophy? I think so. We are talking here about sayings that are regarded as truths by various cultures.
Am I, as a teacher, espousing a particular view? Nope. I'm facilitating the use of English in a special and real way, what I call real English, for the students to take what is in their heads and somehow transform the thinking into spoken English.
But, this is only once a week. Meanwhile, we work on Present Perfects and irregular verbs and prescriptive hummahumma.
Then we, in the last 10 minutes, as adults, sometimes play hangman.
They walk out smiling.
Oh, I almost forgot: I always ask, at the end of each class: "What did you learn today?" This serves two purposes: A self-test of myself as a teacher, and a self-reflection by the students of their recently-concluded activities. Sometimes the students seem surprised at what they had actually accomplished in the class. They have a sense of accomplishment. "Today, I was really thinking hard!"
Philosophy. Beats the hell out of memorizing irregular verbs when it comes to actually using the language.
Politics and religion: I run like hell. No way. But philosophy? Again, as previously said, if used in an appropriate way, can be a constructive and meaningful medium for facilitating the effort to make innovative and constructive use of the language.
I do try to avoid the topic of quantum cosmology.

[Glenski]

carnac,
Your classes must either be geniuses, or you and the local staff must have ingrained lots of confidence in them from day one.

You have kids working on those proverbs? How old? How many years of English have they studied? I think the activity is good, but here in Japan, you are not going to find more than a handful of high school students who could manage any semblance of a conversation/presentation on such a topic, even in groups.

HS kids here barely get basic grammar under their belts. I've tried having seniors make English presentations after weeks of preparation, only to hear such poor English that I can't understand a word sometimes. That's after 6 years of study!

[gaijinalways]

Hmm, I have to admit, with most university classes I have, it would be difficult. I have worked on proverbs in smaller classes, but these students are also higher level, pre intermediate to high intermediate. I agree with Glenski, how you would structure the time and keep students on target in the L1 are pertinent questions.

Also, as you mention, you do this once a week, sounds like you have these students more than once a week, if so, how often and how many classes a week? This would help for these kinds of things, as the percentage of total class time you spend on this activity would be less.

[carnac]

I teach in very special circumstances: the students are usually young adults and usually military. Usually all male, but sometimes females also. Also I sometimes teach in private schools as evening work.
I don't attempt the discussion of proverbs work in a focussed way until pre-intermediate, but begin giving the idea at the elementary level, so that when we come to it, they are mentally prepared for the idea of the activity. Way-ahead pre-teaching.
The classes are very, very intensive, six 40-minute periods a day, 5 days a week.
With this amount of time, there is the freedom to work outside the book for small periods at a time.
Class size is from 12 to 18 students, the administration of the school having understood that larger numbers simply will not have adequate individual attention from the teacher and learning will suffer with larger numbers. In this regard, I am very lucky.
Sometimes, in English, we discuss how learning English has affected their speech in Arabic. This is at the pre-intermediate level. We discuss (and I mean, really discuss) philosophy, history, science. This is not to say that students don't struggle with turning their L1 thoughts into L2 utterances. They do. This is good, I believe. Like struggling to lift heavier weights in order to build muscles. So I push them, constantly. I have never used the term "metacognition" to them, but this is what they are steered into doing.
I ask them about their dreams and the color of the dreams. About their favorite toy when they were children. About their favorite chicken recipe. They have to work hard to communicate.
I learned, when observing seasoned teachers during my degree work, that great teachers smile encouragingly when eliciting, and that students learn not to be afraid to make mistakes. Even the poorest students have big smiles when they come to the board and perform. The biggest step, I believe, is to remove the fear.
And, working as a team.
I spent many years as an airline boss before devoting my life exclusively to EFL. I learned from bad bosses and good bosses. And remembered good teachers and bad teachers and why I thought of them that way.
A good teacher/boss is part of a team: call him/her the "team leader". You all work together toward a common goal - in this instance, being able to use English, however imperfectly, to communicate.
Sometimes I am very tough. I force them to jump through hoops. But the forced jumping is always done with mutual respect, because I explain why they must jump through these hoops. They are always ok with it, once it is explained.
No, not kids, young adults. I refuse to teach kids, and have no experience at it, and have no idea if any of this would apply to kids. But I believe, from my own personal experiences with children, that honesty and straight-forwardness and love and smiles work just as well with kids as adults. They end up loving you back and learning. Learning. That's the bottom line.
Oh, hell, sorry for pontificating, I just feel so strongly about all this.

[carnac]

I now realise that I neglected to answer specific questions/comments, and apologise, not that this is a big deal.
Glenski:
I have small classes, and would be really stressed to handle 40-50 students in a class. The smaller numbers are a great advantage.
Maybe because of the smaller classes, they progress rapidly. I was so very happy the other day when a student offered to get food for me from the canteen, asking "Have you eaten yet?". Pre-Intermediate; use of Present Perfect; use of "yet".
Lesson planning: Usually 2 minutes in the shower in the morning. (Zen mode) "Here's what we're gonna do; here's why we're doing it; let's do it." I explain to them that I want them to use their brains, and they rise to the challenge of leaving the robot student model behind.
Staying with English: During the pre-presentation/discussion stage, L1 is freely permitted. This does two things: avoids the perception of L1 as somehow being perceived as not being acceptable and inferior, and allows cognitive assimilation of the subject concept which then can be filtered into L2.
In a class with 40-50 students,if I were confronted with this to me horrific situation, I'd probably break them up into groups of 5 or so and challenge them to give their presentations over a period of several days, with the rest of the class given score cards to rate the presentations. I really, honestly have zero experience with this situation, but I would continue with my theory of learning and adapt the huge class to what I was trying to do for/with them. Somehow. I understand fully how unique and fortunate my working conditions are. The important thing is to assist the students as they struggle to express themselves. Nobody embarassed; nobody shamed; all equal; all together.
Gaijin:
Yup, we all as a class ensure that even the lowest level students understand. The higher level students drag the lower level students up, and no one is left in the mud. We are all together. L1 is always permitted except during actual discussions and presentations. Prohibiting L1 restricts learning. In my "study groups", which I forcibly create on a weekly basis, they sit together in small groups and explain/discuss/debate the most recent topics in English learning, and help each other in ways I can't do as a non-Arabic speaker. When they come to a sticky point, they call me and I come to the group and discuss/explain. It works. They have begun doing study groups outside of class, and the quiz/exam scores have improved. Mutual reinforcement.
They don't know how to study. I teach them how to study. Ya gotta start somewhere. "Teacher, how can I learn spelling?" I ask you, how do you answer this question?
So I sit with this group and we discuss spelling, with me in Aristotelian fashion asking them for their own ideas.
Did I leave anything out?
Hell, I am no guru of education, nor do I think I know everything. I just try to do my best to give these folks the tools they need in using English for their survival in an English-dominated world.

[Glenski]

carnac,
I will agree that your situation is very unique and advantageous to what you are teaching.

[gaijinalways]

[carnac]

Gaijin -
I think a valid argument could be made that the snakebite game is a form of philosophical discussion, since there are moral as well as practical choices to be made and defended. And I will steal the idea for my own classroom, thanks very much.
But, when I think of philosophy in the classroom, I tend to think more in terms of abstract thinking rather than practicalities, it being my belief that the struggle to express L1 abstract conceptualization in an L2 promotes the enlargement of the L1/L2 interface. I imagine it as a Venn diagram, where the overlap of the disparate cultures/languages is eventually forcibly enlarged by usage and increased familiarity.
To return to my earlier example, the story about lions and sheep: They have to understand the idea of analogy (without knowing the term) and use still-limited vocabulary to talk about their understanding of the story. In this attempt, they struggle to find the words to tell the class and me why they believe their viewpoint to be reasonable.
In this effort, we make every attempt to ensure that the environment is nurturing, protective, safe. Yes, sometimes we all laugh at a major language goof, but the laughter includes that of the speaker. We all know that we are in the same boat, that we are all learning, that mistakes are ok, that the idea is to speak English about important and weighty things.
By taking thoughts about life and existence from around the world and throughout time, the cultural bias of the teacher is avoided.
And we hence discuss (to whatever is their ability) the questions we all have as humans.
I said this morning: "I think there is one single question that all of us ask ourselves every day. What do you think is the question?"
You could see the introspection, the thinking!
Answers came from around the class. Questions were asked about WHY the person thought that way.
I said that I thought the most basic question was everyone asking themselves, from the moment they woke up until they went to sleep "Who am I?"
I defended my position by asking them about looking in mirrors, choosing clothing, deciding on lunch, brushing teeth - things we all do, each in our own way - and was this not making decisions about who we are and what we believe?
This began a long and serious discussion, all in English (this pre-Intermediate class) and we were very concentrated.
What this did, I believe, was to assist in combining the interface of the L1 with the L2 because of the need for self-expression about something very personal to the speaker. In a sense, survival English in an EFL environment.
By using philosophy, abstract thinking, forced survival tactics to not be left out in expressing one's strong personal beliefs.
When a student comes up against me in strong rebuttal, I am so very happy. They are thinking and using the language they are struggling to learn.
Does any of this make sense?

[Glenski]

gaijinalways wrote:

[gaijinalways]

I'll keep that in mind, I do that sometimes, but I could probably make that policy more strict (in other words, every time). Though, they often do homework just prior to class ( it often shows), or better yet, sometimes they are doing homework for another class ?!

[gaijinalways]

[sallycat]

[rusmeister]

That kind of makes my point for me, Sally - the assumption that 'gender-inclusive language' is necessary, or that anyone would deliberately choose to understand that as intended to exclude women. That is a conscious choice, influenced by conscious or sub-conscious awareness of one's driving ideology, which strives to ignore the speaker's intended meaning while promoting the respondent's ideology. (This is precisely what I mean by one's beliefs driving their responses.)

Guy made some correct observations about my thoughts and intent - others of you have, at least obliquely, touched on the 2nd aspect of the topic - the practical application of one's philosophy on their teaching. However, my intent never included the teaching of philosophy as such, particularly in an ESL class. That does indeed move away from our particular field.

Unfortunately, the first part - the beliefs or ideology a teacher brings into the classroom, are of prime interest and this is what it seems naturally gets ignored - perhaps it is an uncomfortable, although extremely relevant topic. Of particular importance is the (false) belief of many teachers that they do not bring their beliefs into the classroom.

As to why I don't respond further - I launched this thread with the purpose of raising a valid question about teaching. If I cannot speak freely within reason on the topic, I'm not going to play ball, with respect to all of you. Some have made intelligent and thoughtful responses, and I do appreciate them!