How Students Learn
Before we start discussing the teaching of ESL, let’s introduce the idea of learning. How do students learn? How do we target our teaching most effectively? Where is the sweet spot for optimal and authentic student engagement and learning? Let’s answer this first with babies.
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I am personally astonished by the remarkable (and metaphorical) machine in a baby’s brain, that almost miraculous bit of neural architecture that allows an infant, without any training whatsoever, to take in heard sounds, quite often without seeing his mother’s mouth moving, and convert them into spoken words. No-one teaches a child this. No-one sits a child down to explain how an unvoiced consonant is made voiced by vibration of the vocal cords. No-one models the position of the lips to form the plosives or the tongue and upper palate to produce dentals.
How, therefore, is it possible that the infant’s brain, without any conscious thought, knows how to convert sound waves into the amazingly complex positions of teeth, tongue, vocal cords, palate and other vocal architecture? Later, is this the same neurological machinery that helps a child to start speaking the language without any formal education? Is there some deep instinctive reservoir of knowledge that a child is born with, even before she is taught anything, that helps her to choose the correct language for each situation?
However, none of our students are babies. They enter our classrooms with their mother tongues already in place. Our job, therefore is to add English to their cognitive cupboards, to make them bi- or possibly multilingual, and to use different methodology to that of parents and babies.
Before we start teaching, though, let’s make sure we are standing on the same pedagogical platform, the foundation on which all Gramatica teaching and learning is built. This foundation is built on some key principles.
Principle One
Students have brains
There is this odd notion, even in classes of adults, that Elementary students are like babies and Advanced students are like adults. Just because students don’t speak English does not at all mean that their brains are not working. Many of them are professionals in their own countries, with any amount of degrees, postgrads and other professional qualifications, so there is no doubt that they have the mental facilities to learn another language.
Of course, we are going to start with simpler language with Elementary students, but let’s not dumb things down unnecessarily. Just because the word gerund, for example, might be unfamiliar to most native English speaking adults is no reason not to teach it to native non-English speaking adults. I am always delighted, as a personal aside, when I hear Elementary students teaching each other with metalanguage like gerund and infinitive as naturally as they would talk about cars and houses.
Principle Two
Students crave structure
I can’t stress this enough. English has had some pretty bad press over the years, and students have heard stories about English’s myriad irregularities and exceptions. However, could I point out here that many of these irregularities and exceptions are in spelling and pronunciation, and that is because English is the child of many mothers, an odd assortment not only of maternity but also the spelling and pronunciation rules of those mothers.
English grammar, on the other hand, is remarkably simple and well-structured. It would be extremely hard for English speakers to communicate otherwise!
As a result, it is vital to teach structure first and for students to have ready access to the structures they need.
Principle Three
Students learn visually
Actually, we all do. We learn substantially more if we are presented with a combination of images and words than with words alone. We have no doubt heard the ancient saying “A picture paints a thousand words”, and it is true in your classroom as well as elsewhere.
Which, for example, makes more impact on you, the word or the image?
How, therefore, is it possible that the infant’s brain, without any conscious thought, knows how to convert sound waves into the amazingly complex positions of teeth, tongue, vocal cords, palate and other vocal architecture? Later, is this the same neurological machinery that helps a child to start speaking the language without any formal education? Is there some deep instinctive reservoir of knowledge that a child is born with, even before she is taught anything, that helps her to choose the correct language for each situation?
However, none of our students are babies. They enter our classrooms with their mother tongues already in place. Our job, therefore is to add English to their cognitive cupboards, to make them bi- or possibly multilingual, and to use different methodology to that of parents and babies.
Before we start teaching, though, let’s make sure we are standing on the same pedagogical platform, the foundation on which all Gramatica teaching and learning is built. This foundation is built on some key principles.
Principle One
Students have brains
There is this odd notion, even in classes of adults, that Elementary students are like babies and Advanced students are like adults. Just because students don’t speak English does not at all mean that their brains are not working. Many of them are professionals in their own countries, with any amount of degrees, postgrads and other professional qualifications, so there is no doubt that they have the mental facilities to learn another language.
Of course, we are going to start with simpler language with Elementary students, but let’s not dumb things down unnecessarily. Just because the word gerund, for example, might be unfamiliar to most native English speaking adults is no reason not to teach it to native non-English speaking adults. I am always delighted, as a personal aside, when I hear Elementary students teaching each other with metalanguage like gerund and infinitive as naturally as they would talk about cars and houses.
Principle Two
Students crave structure
I can’t stress this enough. English has had some pretty bad press over the years, and students have heard stories about English’s myriad irregularities and exceptions. However, could I point out here that many of these irregularities and exceptions are in spelling and pronunciation, and that is because English is the child of many mothers, an odd assortment not only of maternity but also the spelling and pronunciation rules of those mothers.
English grammar, on the other hand, is remarkably simple and well-structured. It would be extremely hard for English speakers to communicate otherwise!
As a result, it is vital to teach structure first and for students to have ready access to the structures they need.
Principle Three
Students learn visually
Actually, we all do. We learn substantially more if we are presented with a combination of images and words than with words alone. We have no doubt heard the ancient saying “A picture paints a thousand words”, and it is true in your classroom as well as elsewhere.
Which, for example, makes more impact on you, the word or the image?
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I once had a student tell me that her ESL notebook after one of my lessons looked more like diagrams of boxes and arrows than English notes, but those very same diagrams helped her to learn and produce some very strong written and spoken texts.
Another Pre-Intermediate student saw a visual diagram of the past tenses in her head when she was at a party later and used it to carry on a conversation that impressed her native speaker friends. Again, other students once told me that the visual structures I showed them filled in many of the gaps in their knowledge. They found the visual methodology a much easier way to learn.
Principle Four
English is a set of tools to use for life, not a set of rules to memorise for tests.
This is actually worth restating, larger and in colour.
Another Pre-Intermediate student saw a visual diagram of the past tenses in her head when she was at a party later and used it to carry on a conversation that impressed her native speaker friends. Again, other students once told me that the visual structures I showed them filled in many of the gaps in their knowledge. They found the visual methodology a much easier way to learn.
Principle Four
English is a set of tools to use for life, not a set of rules to memorise for tests.
This is actually worth restating, larger and in colour.
English is a set of tools to use for life,
not a set of rules to memorise for tests.
not a set of rules to memorise for tests.
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Let’s recalibrate English away, therefore, from its traditional image as a set of words on the classroom whiteboard to a set of life tools in the mental toolbox.
Yes, students are in a school setting, but they are not memorising information in order to pass a test as they did in their home country schools. Instead, they are learning how to be fluent and capable users of English tools in their daily lives. School will end, but their lives will go on. They have tests in school, but not out in their daily lives.
Principle Five
Students need to know the tools in their toolboxes
There are quite a few therefores that rise from Principle Four. Firstly, we as teachers need to know what the grammar and vocabulary tools are. We need to know them with close familiarity. We need to know the names of the tools. We need to know what the tools do. It’s no good to know, for example, that the fancy device you hold in your hands is called a smartphone if you have no idea what it does.
We also need to be able to choose the best tools for different situations. We need to know which tool to recommend to students in certain situations. Lastly, we need to be able to assess students when they use these tools and show them how to improve or extend.
Secondly, students need to know everything above. They need to know the names of the tools, like infinitive and present participle. They also need to know what these tools do. It’s this metalanguage that students should know.
Now you have read about the Mighty Mr Bloom and How Students Learn, it is time to move on to Teaching.
Yes, students are in a school setting, but they are not memorising information in order to pass a test as they did in their home country schools. Instead, they are learning how to be fluent and capable users of English tools in their daily lives. School will end, but their lives will go on. They have tests in school, but not out in their daily lives.
Principle Five
Students need to know the tools in their toolboxes
There are quite a few therefores that rise from Principle Four. Firstly, we as teachers need to know what the grammar and vocabulary tools are. We need to know them with close familiarity. We need to know the names of the tools. We need to know what the tools do. It’s no good to know, for example, that the fancy device you hold in your hands is called a smartphone if you have no idea what it does.
We also need to be able to choose the best tools for different situations. We need to know which tool to recommend to students in certain situations. Lastly, we need to be able to assess students when they use these tools and show them how to improve or extend.
Secondly, students need to know everything above. They need to know the names of the tools, like infinitive and present participle. They also need to know what these tools do. It’s this metalanguage that students should know.
Now you have read about the Mighty Mr Bloom and How Students Learn, it is time to move on to Teaching.
