Advance organizers in teaching?Help!

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Olga
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Location: Poland

Advance organizers in teaching?Help!

Post by Olga » Thu Mar 11, 2004 1:51 pm

Hello there! I am currently doing some research on the application of advance organizers in teaching English to Polish students. I have collected lots of internet materials on advance organizers and David Ausubel (who introduced them to teaching). In these materials a lot is written about how to use them in teaching science subjects, none of them, unfortuately, mentions what's of interest to me, that is: examples of advance organizers used in foreign language teaching. Of course that means that my work can be pioneering in a way. However, I'd love to get to know if there exist any useful articles on this issue. Perhaps you could help me somehow? I'll be looking forward to your reply. :roll: (send me an e-mail: [email protected])

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Lorikeet
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Post by Lorikeet » Thu Mar 11, 2004 3:44 pm

I have no idea what advance organizers are. Care to elaborate? (Clearly I don't use one :twisted: )

Olga
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Joined: Thu Mar 11, 2004 1:30 pm
Location: Poland

explanation ...

Post by Olga » Thu Mar 11, 2004 6:06 pm

Dear Lorikeet! You will be surprised to learn that advance organizers -though their name sounds unfamiliar- are in fact very often used in lessons!
These are simply introductions to the presented material. For instance, if you want to teach your students about the WW2, you should use an advance organizer (= an explanation, story, etc.) to help students understand the historical background. The basic use of an advance organizer by a teacher is to help students organize cognitively large amounts of information and/or very unfamiliar information as meaningfully and efficiently as possible. So, if a given issue is unknown to the student, it should be explained with the use of AO.

Now, coming back to my research problem, I'm still unsure how to tackle this issue of using AO in teaching English. I understand that if some grammatical or lexical or cultural points do not exist in the student's native lg, then, the teacher's role is to explain it in detail using some form of AO: verbal or visual. Please, if you have some other ideas and thoughts about this issue, write to me. I'll be glad to know what you think about the topic. I'm sure each forum participant could help me by simply airing their views on it. Thanks in advance, greetings to you :wink:

Stephen Jones
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Post by Stephen Jones » Thu Mar 11, 2004 11:45 pm

Dear Olga,
English is not Science or History. Why bother?

Did your driving instructor use them when he taught you to drive? Did you learn to swim any quicker because your swimming instructor used them?

Tessa Olive
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Joined: Tue Oct 21, 2003 8:05 am
Location: Sydney

Post by Tessa Olive » Fri Mar 12, 2004 3:14 am

What you call advanced organisation, I call building the field - the field refers to what is to be talked about or written about. I teach adult migrants (post-beginners) and I always build the field at the beginning of a topic. If I were doing a lesson on using public transport, I'd write 'Transport ???' on the board and elicit from students whatever they know about transport. Students throw out what they know - car, taxi, petrol, too much traffic, I'm buying a car, camel etc. Weaker language students get a chance to contribute even though they aren't very confident. Slowly I direct the talk towards public transport and then start the lesson in full. This would take 5 minutes.

Tessa

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