Blog #5- Kumar and Brown

Lauren Watters

English 345

September 24, 2012

Brown Chapter 4

Brown Chapter 16

Kumar Chapter 3

            Kumar tells us that teaching cannot automatically lead to learning because the learning is controlled by the learner. All I can think about when I read this is my junior year chemistry teacher in high school who expected all of the students to understand the material as soon as she presented it on the overhead. I was not interested in chemistry in the slightest. So I didn’t want to learn the material in the first place, but even when I tried to, it didn’t work. My teacher expected the students to learn the material instantly and that there should be no questions. She did not want to change her agenda to help out students who needed it. This specific teacher did not realize that learning opportunities are not bound by the teachers’ agenda, teaching materials and/or the syllabus. The “road conditions” may have been rough for this teacher, but she didn’t want to stop attend to her students needs, which is the exact opposite kind of teacher that I want to be. Most teachers use the textbook provided, create worksheets or word problems and have the expectation that every student can learn successfully this way. The textbook can be a springboard to launch the interactive process in the classroom. The idea of a teaching syllabus seems to be a rough draft of what teachers want to do in the classroom, but the learning syllabus is what students and teachers agree on doing within the classroom. Once the teaching syllabus is converted to a learning syllabus, students will find more opportunities to learn. When language learners speak with their target language, they are organizing and creating a sense of who they are in the world. When they pose questions, they are creating learning opportunities. The language learners need to know that their voice has a purpose in the classroom. Questions are very important such as yes/no questions, factual questions, opinion questions, and reasoning questions. However for L2 development, referential questions are more important than display questions. Open ended questions (referential) provide longer and more complex answers from the students. Why would teachers then continue to ask language learners display questions? How can we eliminate the majority of these all together?

            Brown begins chapter 4 by saying that it is still a mystery how learners successfully acquire second languages. Second language acquisition is not an easy task. After taking just over seven years of Spanish, I am still not fluent. I am still embarrassed by my speaking ability or lack thereof. It is a mystery to me how anyone masters another language if they are not learning it while learning their first language growing up. Twelve principles are cognitive because they relate to the intellectual functions. They are automaticity, meaningful learning, the anticipation of reward, strategic investment, autonomy, language ego, willingness to communicate, the language-culture connection, the native language effect, interlanguage and communicative competence. Language learning involves a timely movement of processing the language form. I agree with this because if I didn’t take a year or two off of learning Spanish, I might have the ability to be somewhat fluent. Or if I actually traveled to Spain like I had wanted to, I would be able to speak the language better. My timing for learning the language was not efficient which is why I feel uncomfortable speaking Spanish to another speaker, especially if Spanish is their native language. Then again, learning the language wasn’t necessarily meaningful to me because it’s not like I was immersed in the culture and needed to speak it every day. If it was more meaningful, I would have retained the information long term. Principle 8 talks about the willingness to communicate. If my students have anxiety about speaking their second language, like I do with Spanish, they will not have self-confidence and they might think what they are doing is not correct. This leads to students not wanting to participate at all because they are embarrassed. How can we as teachers show them that it is okay to make mistakes while they are learning a new language?

            Brown talks about strategy-based instruction in chapter 16. The more learners put in, the more they will get out of it. If they actually invest time and effort into their learning, they will develop better skills. Good language learners take charge of their learning, organize information about a language, are creative, etc. In order to learn, you need to take care of your own learning. If you don’t read the class material, you obviously won’t do well on the exam. Each learner needs to realize that they have to work hard to succeed and the teacher cannot force them to want to do well in class. The students need to be self driven, independent learners inside and outside of the classroom. The more students participate in the classroom and the more work they complete outside of the school, this will help lead to a successful language acquisition. Awareness styles include their beliefs, intelligence, self-efficacy, etc. Action strategies are used to help active these awareness styles. A learning styles checklist is a good informal way to get to know your students the first week of school. Self-confidence is also a big issue with second language learners. If you give them a checklist that rates them on a scale, you as a teacher can figure out how they feel about speaking in small groups, large groups or one on one with the teacher. Using different techniques is necessary to keep students motivated and I think that using checklists is a great way to get to know your students.