After 40 years of teaching, I have retired from the classroom with many lovely memories, a few embarrassing regrets, and loads of acquired insight into what teaching is really about.
In short snippets, I am sharing some of these insights with you throughout the coming weeks. This is #3.
Time in Class is Easily Wasted – Use It Wisely
Brains fascinate me. Brain study is still a relatively new science and nobody can thoroughly explain what we learn, why, when, or how. In the mid-1900s, people thought that we could build language into students’ brains like building blocks in lego. The method was called audiolingualism, and there were traces of it in my own schooling in the 1970s.
Two major things were wrong with this thinking. First of all, the brain is not an empty vessel that can be filled, and secondly, language is not a defined entity that can be cut into building blocks and stacked up until the vessel is full or we run out of blocks – whichever comes first.
All teachers tend to start teaching the same way they were taught. So did I. There was a lot of grammar-translation with wordlists and audiolingualism with drilling in my first years in class. What a waste!
My teaching was revolutionised when I learned about Stephen Krashen’s Natural Approach and his Second Language Acquisition Hypotheses. As I had already studied 5 languages with varied success, I could easily see what had been wrong in most of my language classes.
I have followed Krashen through the decades, as his theories have developed and crystallised into what he now calls the ‘Optimal Input Hypothesis’. For input to be optimal, it needs to have four qualities: It must be comprehensible, compelling, of rich language quality, and abundant. (S. Krashen)
The more Optimal Input the brain receives, the more natural, correct language the student produces. (Almost) all other activity in class is a waste of time.
If you want to learn more, you can listen to Stephen Krashen here.