In his chapter on Activating Intuitive Heuristics, Kuma talks about learners’ self-discovery. Idealistically, I am a huge advocate for this type of thinking. I think without a doubt, some of my more memorable learning experiences have been through self-discovering rather than a more direct, lecture based method. I think the challenge I often run into when taking this more idealistic view on education is in regards to a practical application of this ideology. Kuma says in the first paragraph of chapter 8 that “When applying [heuristics] to language learning and teaching it means that an important task facing the language teacher is to create a rich linguistic environment in the classroom so that learners can activate their intuitive heuristics and discover the linguistic system by themselves.”
The problem I find with this is that it is so difficult to determine where the line should be drawn in terms of freedom of self-discovery. We have talked in class many times about integrating multiple approaches to teaching in an ELL classroom, and it does not seem possible or practical to implement this in its entirety because students would be missing out on a lot of beneficial instruction from the teacher.
I liked your blog and what you said, I can relate to it and it really made me think. Thank you :)
ReplyDeleteI agree that it would be hard to integrate such self-discovery into a curriculum on a regular basis while still spending the time needed to get through the material. I wonder if there are textbooks out there that integrate direct teaching and self-discovery in a workable way...
ReplyDelete