Immersion and social pressures

When we think about the best way to learn a foreign language, we think of immersion.  There is simply no substitute for the constant exposure to the language that comes from living in country that speaks that language.  But what other factors make immersion successful?

It has been said that learning is change and that in developing the ability to speak a new language, we are adopting the perspectives that are part of the new language.  We absorb a new culture and develop the skill to see two potentially contradicting perspectives on issues.  While this is confusing at first, it gives us the ability to think in new directions and possibly to solve problems or understand views that we could not understand before.

The immersion experience has been described as a process of reconstructing your social identity.  It is easier to adapt to new ideas and new concepts when you are placed into a living situation where they exist and the ones that you knew before did not.  With migration comes the pressure to adapt to the new rather than the social pressures to stick to the old.  And finally a sense of anonymity that comes with being alone in a new country may lead people to lose the inhibitions that prevent them from making the all-important errors.

Immersion frees you from the ties and social pressures that keep you afraid to be someone new.

Is your textbook becoming your curriculum?

A lot of times courses tend to have a textbook at the centre of the curriculum.  As Auerbach (1995) so eloquently puts it "the goal becomes to cover the material rather than to uncover what is important to students".
There are several disadvantages to having the course revolve around a textbook.

1. The textbook is probably produced and distributed to ESL learners around the world and therefore cannot attempt to identify the common errors and weaknesses of the particular group that you are teaching.
2. A text book is teacher-driven not student-driven.  This means that the teacher is reinforced as the dominant entity in the classroom.
3. The incentive for publishers is to then create the most comprehensive texts possible rather than to focus on delivery of what the particular students require.  The more comprehensive the text, the less opportunity for students to interject their own experiences.
4. Selecting a text without input from students sends the message that they are not part of this process. 
5. Text exercises often focus on rehearsing the correct forms rather than generating new meanings, sharing the information in a way that personalizes the language to that particular student.  It is teaching as apposed to managing the acquisition of language. 

Auerbach, E.R. (1995).  The politics of the ESL classroom: Issues of power in pedagogical choices.  Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Trial and error and trial again

It wasn't until the late 1960's that we changed our paradigm of ESL students as producers of faulty English to intelligent, creative thinkers who are working through the progression.  A progression to produce closer and closer approximations of the complicated linguistic system that native speakers use with ease.

We started to look not just at the errors that the students were making but at the creative brilliance behind their successful hypothesizing and testing routines.  Encouraging good habits of hypothesizing and testing, encouraging students to make the errors and learn from them and providing an environment where the students feel not just safe but enthusiastic about doing this is simply the hallmark of a strong ESL educator.

But how do you measure up with your consistency in confirming or refuting these hypotheses?  In his book Teach like a champion, Doug Lemov gives some great tips on how to establish a standard for right and wrong answers and states that it is important to uphold the standard.  Giving a response that does not confirm the correctness or incorrectness of the answer in the students' minds is not doing them any justice.
And therein lies the balance of being a strict judge and a lenient peacemaker.  The greatest skill that a teacher can have is the ability to constantly monitor and correct the troops and yet maintain the morale to keep them marching.