Deleted

[LarryLatham]

Duncan, have you been out bending your elbow just a bit too much tonight? Now I'm really confused. Perhaps I'm just being dense, but I admit that, contrary to your expectation, I did not understand most of your last post. Something about the moon, and space...what has come over you?

"Awareness-raising" to me is only a finger pointing to the moon, it is not the moon itself, and I am just intimating that I want to give students the moon so they will be "over it".

Here you might have a legitimate point. Not that I'm agreeing just yet, but nonetheless your challenge to "awareness raising" deserves consideration.

Maybe we all (well, most of the rest of us, anyway, Duncan, but not you) are assuming that awareness raising is a good thing without examining it. So we have you to thank for the impetus to have a look.

I've always assumed that students learn most when they are required to think about what they're trying to learn. (Conversely, I believe they learn least when they are required to mindlessly repeat or memorize words, meanings, pronunciation, rules, particular constructions, and the like.) So, by extension, it seems reasonable that if I'm asking them to think about something, they have to know what I want them to think about. Isn't "awareness raising" just a way to do that? For example, if I ask them to say to their classmates, "The door is open.", and then ask them to pretend they are a bank manager who has just come into the bank for the morning and found the vault door open, and say it again the way they think he might say it...then from the point-of-view of a woman in bed with a bad cold in winter...wouldn't that cause students to think more about how they say things? This is not anything that a teacher would "correct"! What the student thinks about it is what he/she thinks!!! No one in her right mind would imagine that it should be "corrected" to match what the teacher thinks!

I certainly wouldn't advocate that this should be a daily or even weekly activity, but every now and then, don't you think such work could remind students to be "aware" of their prosody, even if you don't call it by that name? I do. And it seems worthwhile to me. And I call that "awareness raising." It's certainly not baying at the moon!!!

Larry Latham

[Duncan Powrie]

Hi Larry, I wasn't out bending my elbow last night, but I perhaps should've been! (I had to look that up and found that is in indeed an Americanism, I was actually thinking it meant something a bit naughtier than drinking, but then, the "out" should've clued me in quicker. In the UK I recall we'd talk about drinking - glass lifting gesture - being the only exercise we got, as opposed to exercising our wrists or fingers...um...er...on a keyboard, of course! What I mean is, I think I've been spending too long on Dave's recently is all ).

I've always assumed that students learn most when they are required to think about what they're trying to learn.

Of course they do...but I've also assumed they learn most when they simply are, well, learning most i.e. have "the most" to learn. (Sorry, I'm being a bit silly here still).

As I keep saying, I do think what revel is saying is worth reading, and I do want to introduce elements from areas such as theatre into my classes (and a few years ago, I guess I was). I therefore find the activities mentioned (regardless of whether or not revel himself actually uses them, and he shouldn't feel he should't because of whatever "reservations" I have expressed ) interesting and worth considering. I am just wary of opening up a can of worms (too strong and negative an image, but what the hell), is all:

For example, if I ask them to say to their classmates, "The door is open.", and then ask them to pretend they are a bank manager who has just come into the bank for the morning and found the vault door open, and say it again the way they think he might say it...then from the point-of-view of a woman in bed with a bad cold in winter...wouldn't that cause students to think more about how they say things? This is not anything that a teacher would "correct"! What the student thinks about it is what he/she thinks!!! No one in her right mind would imagine that it should be "corrected" to match what the teacher thinks!

This activity is connected to and leads into a consideration of the "second" conditional, right? It is also connected to creativity (to allude to a keyword at the end of revel's last post), and imagination. But do you know, when I start using language like that myself and getting imaginative with very competent Japanese speakers of English, they often look at me like I am from Mars. Perhaps I chose the wrong moment, or am too much of a joker with them, I don't know. In my own private conversations I guess these things don't matter...but I think they do in the classroom! I suppose if I appear confident and whip students up, they will do anything, but just from these kind of experiences, I wonder if students really do want this kind of thing (unless they are natural actors, always ready to assume a role assigned to them). I think many students, serious students (or perhaps they are just serious people, at heart?) get to a stage where they know what they can say, and expect me to be teaching them what they can't say. To them, spending time on intonation would maybe seem a retrograde step?

It kind of reminds me of the time that is spent teaching reading "strategies" in random texts, when the problem for the students in reading is not so much recognizing that this is, indeed, a newspaper article with a headline, but in understanding some if not many of the words within it. I am also reminded of things I said at the very end of the very last post on the "Cognitive and contrastive linguistics thread" (in connection to you and revel saying that students need to get away from constructing meaning word-by-word), despite - no, perhaps indeed BECAUSE OF - my passing mention of intonation there :
http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/teacher/v ... 8&start=15

Believe me, I actually love roleplay, theatre, imagination, you name it, but I am not letting it distract me (at the moment) from seriously considering the students' wider linguistic or general needs, and non-linguistic expectations (about learning styles etc); I will be more than willing and happy to find find a synthesis eventually. It's just that, I feel that most syllabuses aren't comprehensive enough, and use "language awareness" activities to try to compensate for their shortcomings (kind of like giving a student a desert survival kit and hopng it will not let them down in any other environment). Maybe prosody is more generalizable...but still...I want them to learn the appropriate prosodies of actually what needs to be a much wider range of phrases.

I'm trying to make sense here, but am going round in circles again, aren't I? Maybe I need not just you, Larry, and revel, but also a woodcutter to fell some trees and clear away the foliage I'm tangled up in here...

P.S. Edited SIX times?! Jeez...

[Duncan Powrie]

BTW, just in case you'd somehow missed it, there's a good joke on the "...one of" thread right about now.

Where do you holiday, Larry?

Do you ever need to take a holiday where you're at, revel?

[LarryLatham]

Where do you holiday, Larry?

Odd that you should ask just now, Duncan. In fact, my wife and I leave in two weeks for a few days in Taipei visiting some friends and former students of mine. Then it's off to Hong Kong for a week or so, after which we intend to get into the mainland somewhere around Guangzhou for a couple of weeks. Our exact itinerary is not fixed, so that we can indulge our immediate whims. (If the teahouse in this hamlet is not to our liking, we'll move on.)

We're both looking forward to a month or so of just puttering around with nothing important to do except select from the menu.

Larry Latham

Hey, just read the other thread. Maybe we should change our plans and head for Morocco!

[LarryLatham]

Duncan, despite the fact that you do run on sometimes, and give me headaches trying to follow your inventive mind, I am always aware that it is your mind which makes it worthwhile to read your stuff.

I've no doubt that you are much more the brilliant analyst than I am. My style is rather plodding and steadfast. Sometimes I get there (wherever that may be), and sometimes I just find myself at a dead-end. I guess that's probably true for you too, but you do it at a pace much faster than mine. If we ever happened to meet in person, I've a feeling that you'd be talking a mile a minute, buzzing around the room, while I was still grappling with, "How do you do?"

You often come up with excellent ideas and it is clear that, though you modestly allowed to wjserson in the other thread that you didn't think of yourself as a REAL linguist, you are nontheless extremely well read and have prepared yourself admirably in this field. I couldn't quote from half the books you regularly allude to, and seem to know well.

Of course, you know as well as I do that sometimes you just sit up at the bar here at Dave's, and ramble on to the rest of us barflies about random stray thoughts that pass through your mind on their way to oblivion! (Not that I ever do anything like that!! )

I know what you mean when you say you spend too much time at Dave's ESL Cafe, Duncan. Perhaps we both are too frequent customers here. It seems you stop in every night after work, and I just hang around here looking for somebody whose ear I can bend. It's sometimes exciting, but often pretty dull. I mean, what kind of people get terribly wrapped up in sorting out the minute differences between the nuances of "at" versus "in"? We need to get a life, as they say.

Larry Latham

[Duncan Powrie]

Sounds like a great itinerary you've got there, Larry! Enjoy your holiday, and don't you dare go anywhere near a computer to check on us!

Now that you mention it, yeah, you can be a bit of a plodder, but as they say, slow and steady wins the race! What you say is always well-reasoned, and everyone can understand how you reach your conclusions and thus respect them (even if they may choose to disagree).

My writing, on the other hand, often loses the thread or seems to have no point - a sure sign that I have become unreasonable, fixated on something silly, that I am mistaken or being unnecessarily contrary or even contradictory in what I say.

When this happens, it is good that guys like you come along and pick at and try to unravel my "argument", slow me down (not that I ever go that fast myself!) and let me down gently. I should thank you for "letting me off my own hook", so that I can go try to play with the big fishes in the big pond again!

Actually, I may allude to a few books, but I don't feel well-read (that I could understand even half of what I read!); I am coming to the conclusion that Corpus Linguistics, whilst a great starting place and vantage point, makes you feel rather like a Father Christmas who's sitting on top of some fancy toys but who doesn't have any batteries to put in them to make them run. I need to consider pedagogy a lot more, and also theory a lot more, rather than remaining "stuck in the middle". I'm still not sure how or from where the pedagogy will take shape, but as far as theory goes, I desperately need to tackle grammar and especially syntax.

Anyway, hope you can stop by Dave's for another round before you go, but if not, your stool will be waiting for you when you come back.

[revel]

Hey everyone.

I ought to be in bed with the last Jane Auel novel (which my library had in English, which makes her soft-pornography more suitable than the Spanish translation might have) but wanted to respond to the holiday question.

Naturally, being American, I have vacation, holidays are movable and non-movable feasts in my working life. And this year I took a nice long one, though I did do my boss a favor (thus making myself unimportant and insignificant) by taking a couple of hours of class in July. I spent a week in the foothills pulling weeds out of a friends front lawn (the concept of "lawn-mower" is not widespread in Spain) but that left me with hundreds of insect bites that I have been steadily itching to small wounds ever since, so though I had thought of spending another week there, I decided against it. Have been to the river several times to bathe, have wandered about on mountain paths on weekends, have spent time trying to organize a personal project and more than anything else, have been enjoying being at home in the afternoons and evenings, hours that I am usually needed in the classroom.

Now I'm greatfully back to work, a bit of outside agenda does wonders for organizing a life, so feel that mine is getting back on track after the last three months of vacation time. You all might not see me around here very often, unless the debate is really exciting, as it sometimes is. Maybe I'll start a new thread, this one has really stimulated some meaty comments, though I must admit that I had hoped for more people sharing thier efforts in teaching "Interpretative ESL", I would be wrong in saying I seem to be the only one who does so, but few others have spoken up with their own experiences. And I might need to start a new thread on another subject just to let the silent partners know that there are other things that concern me in the ESL classroom, like grammar, structure, vocabulary, exams, etc...

peace,
revel.

[coffeedecafe]

first to answer a comment by lorikeet way back on page two of this thread. my posting was too terse to fully describe the concept i was working on. i was starting from the notion that a study of how infants learn language should be a part of the recipe for teaching adults a new language, even though the process has to be taught faster than the number of repetitions children receive.
from that point i moved to the idea that dialogue, as the hardest part of language, must begin when learned vocabulary is extremely small.

i think one of the advantages of an acted out sentence in its various contexts -the example being, the door is open- not only shows students that words can mean different things, and will be said with various stresses and emotions, but has the advantage of supplying mental pictures to the students who wish to make their vocabulary memory supply more permanent. how you learn something is important as i found out by learning basic sign language from a book. as i learned various signs, i would practice them as i would if signing to another person. this went well for talking, but when they replied , i realized i was familiar with the signs from the back of my hand side, and could not quickly recognize them when they were faced toward me. i had to relearn in front of a mirror.

another item i noticed in previous pages was someones comment of accessing a students subconscious mind in teaching. i am sorry i forgot who said that. was that statement speaking of using illustration and visualization only, or are there further techniques being spoken of that i am unaware of?

one advantage of illustrative esl would be if it was pared with a short period of intense vocabulary building. the sections of the brain are so different for the two exercises that it would almost be like taking a break, don't you think?

[LarryLatham]

one advantage of illustrative esl would be if it was pared with a short period of intense vocabulary building. the sections of the brain are so different for the two exercises that it would almost be like taking a break, don't you think?

This sounds interesting, perhaps. Can you enlighten us (well, me anyway) about which different sections of the brain are required for these two activities? I assume there is some reliable evidence of that.

Larry Latham

[coffeedecafe]

hi larry, i can not personally tell you which parts of the brain light up under which types of educational stimulation, but i can tell you that researchers have increasingly mapped the brain connections using transcranial magnetic stimulation. if you use those three words in a search engine you will find some interesting sites. one site which is trying to get fda approval for a small handheld unit to stop migraine headache electrical 'storms' is called neuralieve. in another site tms is used against epilepsy, parkinsons, and even increases shortterm concentration for solving puzzles or taking tests. all of this has been studied for over 15 years and research is ongoing. however it is still mostly at the research level.
i can state that straight forward memorization is a high intensity small zone focus on letters forming words, where the somewhat acted out inflection and illustration approach has a wider focus and tends to sort the memory storage in a picture package instead of word lists.
personal learning attempts have proved to my own satisfaction that to train too long in one area can cause 'brain drain'.
i am still curious about that statement about accessing the subconscious in learning.

[coffeedecafe]

I've said it in various ways and guises, but I'll say it again: what would probably really improve matters would be massive doses of top-notch, well-ordered input (you know, that thing called ENGLISH ...

The subconscious works in wonderful ways, and to involve the conscious mind in identifying "choices" can start to play havoc with meaning (just take a look at what happened on the "be committed to" thread ).

aha! i found that quote about the subconscious in learning way back on page 2 of this thread by duncan. anyone care to explound on that statement, or am i taking it more seriously than was intended?

[Duncan Powrie]

I just want to assure everyone that "coffeedecafe" is not an alias of mine!!! It's kind of strange to be the person/"reference" that coffeedecafe was looking for!

BTW coffeedecafe, I noticed that you wrote:

another item i noticed in previous pages was someones comment of accessing a students subconscious mind in teaching. i am sorry i forgot who said that. was that statement speaking of using illustration and visualization only, or are there further techniques being spoken of that i am unaware of?

and then:

i am still curious about that statement about accessing the subconscious in learning.

both in relation to the quote you then finally found and took from my earlier post.

I just want to make clear that I wasn't talking about accessing a student's subconscious mind in teaching and/or learning, but about "accessing" the subconscious native-speaker mind by examining natural (spontaneous, unelicited, and therefore also subconscious) data.

(Non-native/learner data is also valuable, but it would probably be too full of variables - due to learner and learning, and input, variables - to be as conclusive as native data, and as far as I am aware, learner corpora are used mainly to unearth differences from native norms and/or mistakes than actual similarities; perhaps finding similarities would just be too hard (as I am here implying). It therefore seems to me that the best compromize between idealized and non-existent competence and potentially way-too-variable non-native performance would be native performance; I would argue that this, stripped of any redundant/reducible idioms, is what would best help learners make sense of the world through, and IN/USING, the new language).

[coffeedecafe]

first, i verify that i am myself. i am the one known as coffeedecafe himself, who is no alias of another.
second, on the matter of the subconscious- okay and phooey. i would love a way to both learn and teach by direct access to the subconscious. i know one person who was assured by their tutor, that when an individual began to dream in their new language that permanent learning had begun.
however the concept of mining the vocabulary of the native speaker to help the new learners find a natural style is also practical.
one exeption however. i heard a story of a member of new tribes mission who was trying to learn and reduce to writing the language of an obscure rural tribe. he found a native willing to teach him and studied hard. when he had gained some confidence, he visited the tribe itself and attempted conversation. all of the villagers laughed at him. that is when he discovered that some of those difficult dipthongs and other sounds were not all part of the language, but were caused by his faithful learning of his tutors severe lisp. a good tutor,then, must know how to clearly toot?

[revel]

Good afternoon all!

Just have time for this one before turning the tortilla de patatas:

If to hoot and to toot, a Hottentot tot, was taught by a Hottentot tutor,
Should the tutor get hot if the Hottentot tot hoots and toots at the Hottentot tutor?

That one fits in quite well in my Interpretative ESL classes, right before getting down to pair-work.

It's also homework, write it on a post-it note, post it on the fridge, every time you go to get some milk or look for a fgb, stop and say it five times.

peace,
revel.

[Stephen Jones]

Dear cofeedecafe

May I recommend anti-histamines as a cure for your allergy to capital letters.