Read the article and do the assignments that follow

A FRESH LOOK AT THE CLASSROOM

Translate the situation into English cramming it with the Thematic Vocabulary.

Type of Intelligence Question numbers

KEY - Multiple Intelligences Profile

Linguistic 1, 7, 11, 31, 35

Logical-Mathematical 10, 24, 30, 33, 38

Spatial-Visual 8, 15, 18, 20, 36

Musical 2, 16, 21, 28, 34

Bodily-Kinaesthetic 3, 14, 25, 29, 40

Interpersonal 5, 13, 17, 22, 37

Intrapersonal 6, 9, 19, 23, 27

Naturalist 4, 12, 26, 32, 39

v Test Your Knowledge of Vocabulary

Що стосується теорії множинного інтелекту, то вона суперечлива й дійсно викликає багато дискусій. Основна проблема полягає в тому, що важко однозначно визначити термін «інтелект», який є одним із найважливіших аспектів сучасної психології. Але чому цей термін викликає так багато протирічь? Відповідь заключається в тому, що саме поняття «інтелект» має досить серйозний вплив на життя людини, її можливості й соціальний статус.

Традиційно інтелект, і взагалі обдарованість людини, ототожнювали з її показниками IQ тестів. Але видатний американський психолог Говард Гарднер зробив революційне припущення, що інтелект не дорівнюєся розумовим здібностям людини. Це більш широке поняття, яке включає і різноманітні способи пізнання світу, що реалізуються під час вирішення проблем у повсякденних життєвих ситуаціях. Гарднер запропонував нові критерії для визначення інтелекту, розробив і обґрунтував теорію множинного інтелекту, виділивши його 8 типів: кінестетичний, міжособистісний, внутрішньоособистісний, лінгвістичний, логіко-математичний, музикальний, просторовий, натуралістичний.

Хоча практично кожній людині властиві 8 типів множинного інтелекту, всі ми значно відрізняємося тим, що кожен має унікальну комбінацію природжених розумових якостей і здібностей. Деякі здібності домінують в особистості від народження, їх рівень функціонування достатньо високий. В той же час сформованість інших якостей є дуже низькою і не відповідає нормам.

Зрозуміло, що активно використовуючи свої природні здібності й таланти протягом свого життя, людина підживлює їх, чим стимулює їх подальший розвиток. Проте не слід обмежуватися тільки сталим стилем мислення. Для вирішення різноманітних життєвих задач і участі в нових ситуаціях конче потрібно знати свої сильні та слабкі сторони, розвивати недостатньо розвинуті складові інтелекту та формувати нові стратегії мислення і поведінки.

І останнє, якщо ми зуміємо продемонструвати різноманітний арсенал стилів пізнання і типів інтелекту, нам є чим пишатися.

¨ TEXT 7

My intention in the plenary was to help people to see their everyday place of work in a fresh light.

I began my plenary by attempting to make the classroom strange. I wanted people to see the classroom in a fresh, new and unfamiliar way, because it is a place we spend so much time in, that perhaps we cease to see it for what it is. I gave my own definition of the classroom.

"A classroom is a place where a group of people (called students or pupils) choose (or are made) to spend regular periods of time being taught (and perhaps learning) a subject by an individual (called a teacher) who probably knows more about the subject and how to help his/her students to learn it than they do."

I at least had time to work on this definition, whereas I gave the conference participants very little time to come up with a definition of or a metaphor for the classroom. However, here is a selection of the ones I was given:

A classroom is a place where equally important partners (teacher and students) work together to build a strong house, brick by brick, with more or less equal contributions; where they feel themselves safe, renovated, enthusiastic and eager to carry on building more storeys.

A classroom is like a funfair.

A classroom is like a garden.

A classroom is like a jungle; a boiling pot; a mixed pizza; a stage; life.

A classroom is a honeycomb - individual cells, all interconnected, perhaps filled with sweet stuff, but also some wax.

A classroom is a weird setting where people have to utter weird (and usually meaningless) pieces of language, which usually do not have any purpose.

A classroom is a place where I am not bound by the constraints of the institution's administration. It's freedom.

A classroom is a beach, sometimes sunny and warm and sometimes windy and cold. But there's always someone around.

A classroom is a mini-version of society.

A classroom is a complex crucible.

A classroom is a cauldron of spells, which boils and cools and needs tending and sometimes produces magic and sometimes produces a nasty but necessary medicine and sometimes produces just a mess.

A classroom is like an ocean. There's no end to the things you could explore and get excited about.

A classroom is an environment where students with their teacher turn sketches of learning into nice colourful pictures.

A classroom is rapidly becoming an irrelevant place for learning.

Whether this little exercise helped to defamiliarise the classroom or not I don't know; perhaps we really needed to spend longer on this exercise, teasing out the implications of the different metaphors and similes.

I then went on to look at what we generally do in English Language Teaching classrooms. And in order to do this, I made two gross over-simplifications. I talked about two teaching cultures. The first, which I called Culture A, is one where the teacher, a figure of authority, is above all a transmitter of knowledge, where students learn about the language. And the second, Culture B, is one where the teacher creates the conditions for learning to take place, where students learn how to use the language as a means of communication through communication. The first I associated with the teacher as 'sage on the stage'; the second with the teacher as 'guide on the side'.

I then looked at some of the things all language teachers do in class, namely grammar, communication and interaction, language practice of a more controlled kind and the kind of talk associated with friendly chat, administrative matters and discipline (let's call it 'classroom language'). For each of these four areas, I addressed teachers in both culture A and culture B. So, for example, on the subject of 'doing grammar', I made the obvious point to Culture A teachers (or those more in that camp than in the Culture B camp) that teaching grammar rules, learning about the language, will not by itself enable pupils to use the language appropriately, accurately, fluently and effectively. Students must be given plentiful opportunities to use the grammar for real communication in class. And to Culture B teachers I said that not talking about the language, not helping students to notice patterns, not developing students' declarative knowledge of the language, deprives them of a valuable means of learning to become fluent, accurate, appropriate and effective users of the language. To teachers of both cultures, I said that a balance is necessary.

On communication and interaction in the classroom, I said to Culture A teachers: do more pair work, group work, role-plays, games, problem-solving and other activities that are likely to promote communicative practice. If you are controlling all the time, simply displaying and attempting to transmit your knowledge, your students will not become fluent, accurate, appropriate and effective users of the language.

And to culture B teachers, I said: if you do a great deal of non-teacher centred, communicative practice in class, don't forget the value of your telling, directing, modelling, correcting. Keep a balance.

And I attempted to do the same in the areas of controlled language practice and classroom language: to implore teachers in both cultures to look at what they are not doing very much of and to redress the balance a little bit. This was part of my overall attempt to turn around and look at their classrooms in a fresh way and perhaps even teach in a fresh way.

I then talked about recent research into effective classroom practice - research done into primary and secondary classrooms. The following features are ones that I thought had relevance to our ELT classrooms:

Time-on-task: the amount of time students are actively engaged in learning activities in the classroom as opposed to socialising, day-dreaming, misbehaving. The more opportunities the students have to learn (and this includes homework), the more effective the classroom.

Classroom management: the better organised the classroom (clear rules and procedures, efficient transitions from activity to activity, efficient handling of hardware and software, clear instructions etc.), the more effective a learning environment is.

Teacher expectations: you convey your expectation through your voice, body language, your words of praise and criticism, your choice of students to answer (and not to answer), your pairing and grouping of students, your corrections. If you have high expectations, the students will do better.

Personalisation and contextualisation: the more you lodge language practice in personal contexts - contexts that relate to students' personal interests and lives - the more effective the learning will be.

Appropriate questioning: teachers need to be aware of different types of questions (open and closed, higher and lower order, divergent and convergent) and to use them appropriately. They need to know how and when to ask which type of question. They need to leave an appropriate amount of time after each question ('wait-time') and they need to respond to students' responses appropriately. All of this needs to be conscious, not automatic, on the part of the teacher. And effective questioning and answering leads to better learning.

Lesson clarity: clear aims and a clear sense of direction are linked to more effective classrooms. If students know what they are doing and why (and that presupposes that the teacher knows!) they are more likely to learn more effectively.

Variety: variety both within a lesson and across lessons makes a difference. Teachers need to provide a variety of activity types within a lesson; and they need to alter the shape of lessons overall.

Challenge: students need to be challenged, but not challenged too much. If they are not challenged at all, they are bored; if they are challenged too much, they are anxious or they give up.

Once again, this section of my talk was an attempt to throw fresh light on different areas of our teaching, to look at areas where we might quite easily make a difference if we re-examined them in the light of recent research.

Finally, in my fresh look at the classroom, I looked at the area of rapport. I referred to both tact and teaching intelligence. Teaching intelligence is what all teachers possess to varying degrees. It encompasses all the intuitive skills we use in the classroom - the skills we tend to associate with our personality, the use of voice and gesture, our ability to get on with our students, to create a good atmosphere. It is the emotional side of teaching, the side of teaching that uses up a lot of our energy - emotional labour.

Tact is the key skill in teaching intelligence:

Tact is instantly knowing what to do, an improvisational skill and grace in dealing with others. Someone who shows tact seems to have the ability to act quickly, surely, confidently and appropriately in complex and delicate circumstances.

I suggested that the following were aspects of tact that effective teachers might posses - and that new teachers could develop. I do not believe that these are things we are only born with: they are skills that can be developed.

Being personally present: this means not being on automatic pilot. You really are there one hundred per cent, listening and responding and dealing with your students as real human beings! It means you have to be on good form, on the ball, alert - quite a tall order.

Being open and not over-planned: this means you need to plan, but not scripted. You must be open to change, ready to depart from your plan in response to whatever happens in class.

Tone: both your tone of voice and the 'tone' you create in the classroom matter enormously.

Genuine interest: this ties in with 'being personally present'. You must be genuinely interested in each student: your interest must not be faked. If it is, it will be recognised as such and students will be less involved.

Humour: this does not mean you have to tell jokes all the time. It simply means that the classroom should not always be a heavy place. At times (most of the time?) it should be a light place, where humour and fun is O.K. And this flows from the teacher.

Being confident: it is important for a teacher to be confident - but not over-confident. Over-confidence results in not listening properly.

Being calm and relaxed, but alert: this is difficult in the everyday rush of school life but there is no doubt that you and your students benefit if you are calm and relaxed. Perhaps the final feature in the list above of features that make for a more effective classroom is relevant here - challenge. But this time, it is challenge for the teacher. If the teacher is not challenged, she will be bored and her teaching less effective; and if she is challenged too much, she will be anxious. We all need to find that zone between anxiety and boredom so that our teaching remains fresh and effective.

I finished by suggesting that it was possible for both pre-service, inexperienced teachers and in-service, experienced teachers to work on developing all of the skills I had looked at in my plenary. But unfortunately, there was no time for me to develop how these skills might be worked on. Another day...

(Peter Maingay, 2000)

v Thematic Vocabulary

Дата добавления: 2014-12-23