Bringing Natural Learning Processes into The Classroom

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Bringing Natural Learning Processes into The
Classroom

• Increasing Learner Responsibility
• Steve Walters

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The Teachers Focus

• How can you help me become a better teacher?
• What new methodologies are there (for me)?

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The Teachers Focus

• The answer is under your nose!
• Defamiliarisation
• making the familiar seem strange

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The Teachers Focus

• After we see an object several times, we begin
  to recognise it. The object is in front of us and
  we know about it, but we do not see it - hence we
  cannot say anything significant about it....
  Tolstoy makes the familiar seem strange.... He
  describes an object as if he were seeing it for
  the first time, an event as if it were happening
  for the first time.1

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The Teachers Focus

• What to look at anew?
• The process
• The content
• The medium
• The roles

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The Process

• "I noticed that lessons taught by Korean
  teachers were communicative, but only some of
  them were highly interactive," said Mike Misner,
  a foreign professor at a teachers' college.
  "Because there are many students and only one
  teacher, simple teacher-to-student communication
  may not often be effective.2

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The Process

• Students will value things/activities that we
  show them we value by giving valuable time to
  them.

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The Process

• Who talks to whom
• The classroom as a place for dialogue
• User- friendliness of coursebooks and materials
• Collaborative learning
• Working with others the work place, play,
  support, teaching others

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The Content

• What do you enjoy talking about?
• Remembering
• Dogme - opportunism
• Stories
• Talking about things

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The Medium

• Doing things with language
• A sense of audience
• CLIL
• Other topics
• Simulations

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Roles

• Teachers and learners
• The expected roles
• Bringing other talents
• Allowing roles other than EL student, failing or
  succeeding or surviving

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• A little or a lot?
• The better-than situation

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www.nile-elt.com