[ProfessionalDevelopment 2296] Re: Whatdo wemeanbystudentinvolvement and critical thinking?Steve Kaufmann steve at thelinguist.comMon Jul 14 15:20:11 EDT 2008
Janet, Heide and all, The reasons for wanting to learn a language, or improve in a language, are important, because they are the immediate short term goals, as I mention in another article <http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dhr5gc97_214ftqr44dz> on Pickthebrain. However, the short term goal is just the start, and it can be the start of a long journey. For me, the goal of language improvement should be fluency, not perfection, but comfortable literate fluency. I do not believe there are short cuts as in "I will just learn how to fill out this form". "I will just learn enough to do my job." " I will just learn enough for the test." This is true, in my opinion, for ESL learners and native speakers who are functionally illiterate. I believe that language learning is an ongoing journey, in one's own language as well as other languages. The main task of a teacher is to spark the interest, if that spark is missing, and then to encourage the learner to continue to study, as independently as possible, not just or even primarily in the classroom, but even more on his or her own. I do not believe it matters so much how much the learner gets involved with the classroom. What matters more is what the learner does away from the classroom. With the accessibility of books, audio material, the Internet, and MP3 players, we can all create our own world of language learning. The teacher can touch many more learners via the web than can be accommodated in classrooms. I think that if we are going to attack literacy, teachers need to be reaching out to far more people than is the case right now, when only a few % of people facing literacy obstacles are doing much to improve their skills. Language and literacy practitioners need to look beyond the classroom. Steve -- Steve Kaufmann www.lingq.com 1-604-922-8514 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.nifl.gov/pipermail/professionaldevelopment/attachments/20080714/3f83bfc5/attachment.html
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