'miscellaneous'

Never miss a learning opportunity! This is the message that I took from Kuma's Chapter 3. I was really intrigued by all of the different examples that the author presented of ways that the teacher did and did not maximize learning opportunities in the classroom. I think the one that stood out to me the most was the example with the world 'miscellaneous'. After one student had some confusion, rather than explaining to the class what it meant, the teacher simply erased the word and replaced it with something else. I have to admit, I think I've done this before. When I taught at the ELI I think I did this to save time on the explanation and to avoid getting really off-topic. Furthermore, I think I mistakenly assumed in my head that the more advanced students would just understand that the replacement was a synonym and that the less competent students could just catch up later.

I was wrong.

The text makes a very good point here about utilizing every learning opportunity. The word that kept coming to mind was scaffolding, as each technique described in some way referred back to the teacher's responsibility to take students' mistakes and turn them into a way to learn.

And, all of this contributes to building students' communicative competence! When I started this blog post, I titled it 'miscellaneous' because I really thought that's what it would be! On the contrary, it is very clear that the techniques described in Kuma's Chapter 3 certainly contribute to students' ability to communicate better in the target language. In Communicative Language Teaching, as described by Larsen-Freeman, the teacher creates situations that will promote communication in the classroom and acts as a facilitator and co-communicator. The text emphasized role-playing, games, and information gap activities as a way of making this happen. Furthermore, the word 'authentic' jumped out at me a lot - authentic materials, authentic language, etc.

Finally, I completely agree with Larsen-Freeman when he states at the very beginning, "students may know the rules of linguistic usage, but be unable to use the language" (122). I could have been reading my own teaching philosophy! I think that teaching language use goes hand-in-hand with the rules. And I think that immersion in the language is one of the few ways to truly understand language use. Students need to feel free to talk and explore on in the language! Kuma writes, "it is only after a lengthy dialogue that she gave her own explanation" (53). He was referring to the teacher who allowed her students to discuss a certain issue before explaining her own interpretation. I think that is so valuable! The teacher obviously knows how to let her students explore the language, and then intervene when necessary. All of this, I think, is part of helping students to learn to be communicators in the target language.