Fostering the Development of Cognitive Factors in your EFL Students by Amanda S. Byrd

Posted on November 12, 2012

Fostering the Development of Cognitive Factors in your EFL Students
“Yes, you will. And I will warn you now that not their blood but your suspicion might build evil in them. They will be what you expect of them…I think when a man finds good or bad in his children he is seeing only what he planted in them after they cleared the womb.”
“You can’t make a race horse of a pig.”
“No,” said Samuel, “but you can make a very fast pig.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden
          This is one of my favorite quotes and has been hanging in my classroom since I started teaching eight years ago.  The quote left a big impression on me not only as a teacher but also as a person because it challenges one´s idea of perception and his role inside it. Not everyone is a genius. Not everyone has the orator skills of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  Not everyone has the drive or desire to be fluent in more than one language.  So, why should I even try to make my students something they are not? To answer this question I will refer back to the dialogue quoted above. We teachers cannot change and average student into an Albert Einstein or into another John Steinbeck or Tennessee Williams, but with the right stimulation and guidance teachers CAN bring out the best in each student. As the quote says, we CAN make them very fast pigs. The question language teachers must ask is, “How can I foster an environment that promotes the highest learning from each student?”
          The idea that just because students are around the same age and are in the same class, they should be in the same stage of language development is preposterous. To raise the verbal intelligence, phonetic awareness and the long term memory of these abilities a teacher needs to first know where each student´s capabilities lay. Differentiation inside the classroom allows each student to realize what they are truly capable of doing independently. When they are taught to pick “good fit books” and have the liberty to read what they choose then reading becomes a meaningful experience and the advancements they make will stick in their long term memory. When students are grouped by phonetic ability and receive direct instruction within that ability then you can see progress because they are given tasks within their own range of capabilities. When students are given instruction just slightly higher than their independent working level then learning will take place. Differentiation is the only way to make this varied instruction level possible.

Learn Slovak! or Learn Slovak?

 

Learn Slovak!
Or
Learn Slovak?

Any person who advances in their profession will come to a moment in their career when they begin to forget what it was like at the start. They forget how it felt to dump all of the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle on the floor and think to yourself, “What the hell am I doing?” They forget that feeling of being at the edge of the 10m platform ready to jump……or not?
The hardest part of doing anything new is convincing yourself in that small moment to just do it. And that’s when all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle somehow seem to find each other, or you experience the thrill and fright of plummeting from a 10m platform with an acceleration of 9.8 m/s2.
Why should we experience these moments again if we already went through them, overcame them, and have even developed a skill in that area? Why would I want to start a new language…again….after already having done it several times before?
The answer to these questions is quite simple. “To not get stuck.” As humans we have a tendency to form habits and patterns of behavior. J.B. Watson explored this in his research on human behavior; but just because it is a commonality amongst us humans doesn´t mean that it is healthy, or progressive.
The most amazing thing about being human is the possibility of creativity, and the power of creation. In my experience, nothing stifles creativity like being stuck in a rut. So here I am, ten years after beginning to learn Spanish,  fifteen years after beginning to learn French and I am ready to go back to the beginning again and learn Slovak; or am I?
My first, and perhaps only, class of Slovak was last Friday. I did not prepare myself for this encounter the way I should have so I was very….um….fresh, shall we say. In complete honesty I was not looking forward to the class. However something delightfully unexpected happened. The growing feeling of nervousness and excitement traveled through me as I stared wide eyed at a person jabbering off in some language that I totally didn´t understand. It was the catalyst that ignited a desire to meet the challenge.
We can say that these are the small moments in life that wake you up and remind you that you are forever young and fresh. Life hasn´t come to a standstill, your behavior has. And it doesn´t have to be that way! Trying something new or starting over again doesn´t put you back or behind in life. It actually propels you forward. It awakens the creativity inside you and takes you to new and exciting states of being.
So to answer the proposition in the title I have to choose “LEARN SLOVAK!” and spark a little bit of enjoyment of a challenge back into my life. Who knows, maybe one day it will come in handy, but even if it doesn´t I know, for the time being, that I am not asleep in this life. I am wide eyed and ready to go!

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