Week 7

The training I followed to become an ESL teacher largely relied on the notional-functional approach to language learning. The general idea here is that people typically do not learn a language by memorizing its grammatical structure but by trying to communicate a desire, a feeling, an idea, etc. in a specific context. This may seem rather basic of a concept, but several generations of students of English as a foreign language, having learned by heart all of the irregular verbs (go – went – gone, etc.), frieze in a panic if a native asks them “Hey, how are ya!?”, or worse still “Whaddup?”

The notional-functional approach shows how to organize lessons around specific notions (a particular context in which people communicate; for example, many aspects of language will be different if we are at a disco or at an airport) and functions (a particular purpose for communicating; i.e., are you looking for a date or to catch a plane). This approach tries to put language learners in realistic situations.

Particular methods of language teaching developed on top of the notional-functional approach: communicative language teaching and task-based language learning. The general idea here is that we learn a language by using it, we use language to communicate, and we typically try to communicate for a purpose. Priority will be given to “communicative competence” over accuracy (meaning that making mistakes is OK and an integral part of learning).

Now that I am a student again, and learning a new subject, I am confronted with a new learning theory called connectivism. Connectivism seems to emphasize breadth of knowledge over depth: knowledge is built by making connections between different ideas, fields and concepts; and what we know today may become obsolete tomorrow, but the process by which we build knowledge will remain similar (generalizing from the Wikipedia entry on connectivism).

Jackie made the following comment in our group discussion on Connectivism: Consider one of the differences between experts and novices. Expertise usually develops through “procedural knowledge,” i.e., practice and authentic experiences. When experts deliver training, however, they often focus on their “declarative knowledge,” which is naming, explaining, and discussing information. In other words, experts become experts through procedural knowledge but often train using their declarative knowledge (Stolovitch and Keeps 2002 / Stolovitch, H. D., & Keeps, E. (2002). Telling Ain't Training. Alexandria, VA: American Society for Training and Development).

I found this comment particularly interesting because it reflects entirely how I was taught to teach ESL: learning happens when we are put in an authentic situation and asked to perform a realistic action or task. This also echoes my “best learning experience”, which had nothing to do with a classroom, approaches or theories, but which had everything to do with learning to cope in an entirely new situation, using whatever resources at hand.