What kind of learner are you?

When we are thinking about the differences in each student's learning style, it is useful to look at the E & L framework (from Ehrman and Leaver (1997, 2003)).  It provides 10 spectra on which we can place a student to get a better idea of how they will absorb information.

Think about each dichotomy as a seesaw.  How far and in which direction is the imbalance?

1) Analogue/Digital scale
Do you tend to absorb information easier through metaphors and analogies (analogue) or through cold facts (digital).

2) Concrete/Abstract scale
Do you prefer hands-on, experimental learning (concrete) or are you a book-learner?  Preferring to learn through lectures and concepts (abstract)?

3) Field Independent/Field Dependent scale
Can you focus on one small part of the whole quickly and easily?  Can you zero in on a small unit of language and focus on just that.  (Field independence is tested by finding a shape in a field of other shapes.  If you can do this quickly, you are field independent.)

4) Field Sensitive/Insensitive scale
Do you use the language environment for your learning (field sensitive) or do you focus on individual units of language out of context (field insensitive)?

5) Global/Particular scale
Do you see the forest for the trees?  Do you focus on overall meaning at the expense of the details?  If you do, you are a global processor.

6) Impulsive/Reflective scale
Impulsive learners think and respond quickly.  Reflective learners think first and then respond.

7) Inductive/Deductive learners
Do you like to create your own hypotheses and test them in the environment in order to learn (inductive) or do you prefer to draw conclusions from reliable sources to apply (deductive)?

8) Leveling/Sharpening scale
When you are looking at two things that are mostly similar, do you look for the similarities (leveling) or the differences (sharpening)?  Do you have trouble remembering the differences or can you recall them easily (sharpening)?

9) Random/Sequential scale
Do you like to work through the material in a sequential way or do you like to read random sections depending on what is interesting to you at the time?

10) Synthetic/Analytic scale
Synthesizers create something new with the pieces that they have.  Analyzers take to take apart words to see the parts that they are made up of.

Keep in mind that each one is a spectrum.  I am usually sequential but at times I will skip a chapter and head into one that interests me more, knowing that I will go back and finish later.

Each student is a different combination of these variables, each class is an average of each of these components.  Teaching is not an easy job if you are teaching right.

Source: Leaver, B.L., Ehrman, M. & Shekhtman, B. (2005).  Achieving success in second language acquisition.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Pidgin English- Helpful or harmful?

This is always a big debate in the teachers' room when you get some pragmatic teachers with ingrained habits who swear that students won't understand enough otherwise and the teachers who base their style on theories who swear that we should only provide authentic English.

I can see both sides of the argument although I never seem to agree with the way that it is being argued.  Intuitively, I believe that pidgin English is probably not doing the harm that people would have you believe.  Children have learner languages through which they develop on the way to fluency in the first language.  They have no issues with these intermediate steps becoming fossilized.  If you think of it that way, as a tool on the way to more correct discourse, I think the only danger is the teacher developing habits that they cannot break when the students are ready to develop beyond it.

I also believe that although it is not doing damage, it is probably a much more efficient use of classroom time to provide exposure to the entire language as soon as possible.  Grading the language should be done not through unnatural speed or grammatical simplification but through simplification of the idea.  If you keep the idea simple, you can make simple sentences that are correct and convey most of what you say.  It is simply up to the teacher's skill in conveying ideas at the right level for the student.

How to and how not to learn a language

When I arrived in Japan, I had no contacts or friends in the city I was assigned to and I was lucky. I was lucky to be living in an environment where I felt anonymous.  For it was that feeling of anonymity that led me to feel truly free to make mistakes.  It was a very different feeling to the university classrooms that I had studied in previously and I felt all of the inhibitions fade.  That is why I understand the negative impact that peer pressures can have in the classroom. 

The pressure to speak the first language often comes from the need to deliver respectful tones that a speaker feels can only be delivered in the first language. In Thai, to show respect to elders, you end sentences in Krab/Kaa.  This is difficult for my students to drop because they feel that without this honorific, they are not showing due respect.  The result is sentences like, “That’s right krab”.

Often, things just don’t sound polite enough because of our internal translation system.  I find it difficult to say “mai ow krab” to my mother-in-law.  It is a perfectly correct and polite response to an offer but in my head it sounds like, “don’t want it!” (The word for word translation is not want + Thai honourific.)

For me, the affective factors restricting me from freedom to play with the language came not so much from my peers but from my own beliefs.  I believed that there should be a switch.  I believed that I should only ever use and think in one language at a time.  I saw code-switching as a slippery slope.  Believing that mixing languages would lead to confusion and attrition of my first language, I felt that I had to learn Japanese from scratch in Japanese.

Now, I realize that I deprived myself of key learning strategies such as extension.  Sure, extension leads to errors (over-extension) but that is part of the learning process.  We notice a similarity (e.g. played, worked) and we make an assumption (add –ed to talk about the past).  We overextend (goed, doed) and then we learn the exceptions.  The benefit of this is that we apply one rule and straight away learn 80% (for example) of cases and then we learn the other 20% individually.  Makes sense to learn one rule and 20% individually than to learn 100% individually doesn’t it?

The fear of fossilization also slowed down my learning process.  I tried to learn everything 100% because the fear of learning something wrong, developing a habit and then not being able to change it later lead me to overanalyze simple input and think too much before I attempted a response. 

When we apply assumptions, we make mistakes.  Whether these assumptions are based on our first language (interlingual[1]) or based on what we already know of the target language (intralingual), they will lead us to errors which are really just signs of progression.  These errors show us that we are in progress from L1 to L2 (interlanguage[2]).  That is why we need to encourage students to make errors and to correct them not to avoid making them.

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[1] Brown, D.H (2007). Principles of language learning and teaching (5^th ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ:Prentice-Hall. PP 263-264

[2] A coin termed by Selinker.

Selinker, L. (1972). Interlanguage. International Review of Applied Linguistics, 10, 209-231.