Reading Reflection Number Five asks us to dive into the idea of students’ learning, viewing, and listening skills. As Tompkins alludes to in detail throughout the chapters, viewing and listening skills are often taken for granted in the classroom. These skills (and quite often we forget they are skills) need to be developed and nourished in a learning environment so that they can allow further understanding in the classroom and in the “real world”. For this posting I want to stay away from educational jargon, and avoid simply restating what the text presents more brilliantly and clearly then I could ever imagine. Instead, I want to reflect how the ideas presented in the chapters and in module 5, and whether they are being used effectively or ineffectively at Columbia International College’s Learn English and Explore Canada Summer Camp.
Note: Full Disclosure – I am the camp’s Assistant Camp Director...so I have some familiarity with the institution – and perhaps some bias as well!
And as any good writer would do, I need to begin with some hypocrisy...some of that educational jargon that I wanted to avoid must be explicitly drawn forth in order o provide a foundation and basis for my thoughts. Please bear with me.
Aesthetic Listening: This type of listening is performed when individuals listen for enjoyment. That seems relatively simply – something that we can wrap our heads around, because it would seem we do this pretty much all the time. It is only when we dive into other types of listening that we discover the depths of “listening skills”. Moving forward...
Efferent Listening: This type of listening is used to understand a message. Now the example I am about to give borders (and probably infringes) more extensively on viewing skills, but it remains valid. It is very possible to listen and view the movie Inception for the wonderful action scenes and cinematography. This is suspect would fall into the Aesthetic Category. But to try and understand the movie – to listen for comprehension – to understand the complexities of the dream-world – to discover Leonardo’s plan to plant an idea into one man’s mind – this I suspect would fall into the Efferent Category.
And if we can agree that Critical Listening is designed to aid (encourage) the evaluation of a message, then we can utilize critical listening to help figure out if anything in Inception, actually has any form of impact on our social world (that being said I still don’t know).
I look at the summer campers that we have at Columbia – and I wonder how these listening skills are being used, how effectively the activities and lessons created for them are even improving these different listening skills.
In a classroom we can teach aesthetic, efferent, and critical learning skills by means of different classroom activities and assessments – and we can do this overtly and covertly. For example we can encourage development of these learning skills by (fig. 8.2):
Aesthetic: encouraging the use of listening centres, watching students perform a play (or readers theatre), and by encouraging guided conversation.
Efferent: listen to oral oral reports, book talks, participate in writers groups, perform mini-lessons specifically on the types of listening, and having students share their projects.
Critical: Listen to debates and political speeches, view commercials and other advertisements, and by evaluating the themes and arguments in different types of literature.
These ideas merely scratch the surface of how to induce these learning skills – but they provide some good starting points. Relating it to my summer camp experience thus far, I first have to ask what I think is an obvious question: Since we only see these students for three or four weeks, can we really access these skills and improve upon them in such a short amount of time? My initial thoughts are...maybe not, but I think we would be doing a disservice to the students if we didn’t give them the opportunity to try. Our program is very diverse in that we offer three hours of ESL lessons in a classroom setting each day. These lessons are loosely based on the Ontario curriculum, and focus more so on developing their conversational English and practicing it in social settings. Students have the opportunity to go into the community and experience conversation with Canadians (at the grocery store, in the park, and while on different excursions). I believe these types of interactions would be examples of Efferent Listening. Aesthetic Listening is encouraged when we take the students to watch a movie or have them listen to English music, poetry, and (some) literature. For these types of activities students can appreciate the English language as a form of communication – they don’t necessarily have to try to understand it in all circumstances – just gain more exposure to its use in our culture. Critical listening may not occur quite as frequently – but it does happen (and often not when we expect it to). I have already had multiple conversations with students concerning discipline – where they are forced to evaluate what I am saying. In addition, I have had conversations with students concerning medical issues, transportation information, and scheduling/procedural instructions – where they must evaluate what I am saying in order to provide an intelligible response – in English!
In the same way we require our students to listen, we also encourage them to talk. Their opportunities to do so are ever-present. We encourage talk in the ESL lessons, during their science/art/sports/computer activities, on their evening trips, and during their excursions to Bark Lake and Eastern Canada – situations where they are off campus and pressed into speaking the English language. While our students may not use the ideas presented for elementary students quite as explicitly or comprehensively as Tompkins discusses, we do encourage it somewhat similarly. For Aesthetic Talk we ask students to: prepare stories to tell, perform reader’s theatre (loosely), read parts of a script, describe objects, and encourage them to use props, facial expressions and gestures, and always seek clarification. Likewise for Efferent Talk we have students: conduct interviews, participate in debates, explore topics in depth, seek facts and opinions, and attempt to persuade others towards their reasoning. When presenting their ideas students are instructed to rehearse, organize, use note cards, and support their opinions with facts or anecdotes. These activities are performed one-on-one, in small groups, and in front of large audiences. What makes the students’ experiences unique is that while they are doing this, we are looking to see them think in English, which for someone like me – who only speaks one language – is really taken for granted. I am learning so much on a daily basis from these kids. By observing the instructors, and having conversations with students, I am learning good (and not so good) strategies that I can apply as a junior teacher. The 18 dollars an hour suddenly seems worth it!
In chapter ten of the text Tompkins explores the positive connections between Visual Arts and Language Arts. She explores the benefits of learning and teaching language through Drama and the reasons behind it. I discussed Reader’s Theatre in my 5.1 forum post so I won’t rehash those points again; instead I want to use this space to advocate once again for improvisation as a learning tool in the classroom. I am not exaggerating when I say that my one-year education in the Second City Improvisation Program was perhaps the most enjoyable “formal” learning experience of my life (although I shouldn’t call it conventional, but I did pay for it, and we did have instructors, so...). I realize drama and improv are different, but both involve exploring language in front of an audience, and both require performing that encourages students to be active in an uncomfortable (for most) setting. During our online meeting for this course Zoe mentioned discomfort as a positive when learning – this idea really struck me. For some reason I hadn’t thought of this before. In any event, improv can be used in a classroom to unite the students, to explore different genres/tones/moods/expressions, and give students the opportunity to “play” characters that have come up throughout the year – and think like they do, act like they do, be them. I encourage PEOPLE of all ages to get into improv on some level – because I know the benefits – especially to younger students and adolescents – can have lifelong effects.
Thank you.
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