THE FUNNEL METHOD

By Olga Nancy Orozco-Cañón

A funnel is a pipe with a wide mouth, good for feeding, often with  conical mouth and a narrow stem. It is used to channel liquid or fine-grained substances into containers with a small opening. Without a funnel, spillage would occur.

I wanted to begin this paper with the similarities and differences between Education and a Funnel.

Our concern is if our students are learning what they need in their life; I mean, if we as teachers are giving them the correct knowledge to face the career the want.

This funnel method will help us to know if those statements above  are clear or not.

A teaching method comprises the principles and methods used for instruction. Commonly used teaching methods may include class participation, demonstration, recitation, memorization, or combinations of these. The choice of teaching method or methods to be used depends largely on the information or skill that is being taught, and it may also be influenced by the aptitude and enthusiasm of the students. (Taken from Wikipedia the Free Encyclopedia)

About 3000 BC, with the advent of writing, education became more conscious or self-reflecting, with specialized occupations such as scribe and astronomer requiring particularskills and knowledge. Philosophy in ancient Greece led to questions of educational method entering national discourse.

Comenius, in Bohemia, wanted all children to learn. In his The World in Pictures, he created an illustrated textbook of things children would be familiar with in everyday life and used it to teach children. Rabelais described how the student Gargantua learned about the world, and what is in it.

The Prussian education system was a system of mandatory education dating to the early 19th century. Parts of the Prussian education system have served as models for the education systems in a number of other countries, including Japan and the United States. The Prussian model required classroom management skills to be incorporated into the teaching process.

Newer teaching methods may incorporate television, radio, computer, and other modern devices. Some educators believe that the use of technology, while facilitating learning to some degree, is not a substitute for educational methods that encourage critical thinking and a desire to learn. Inquiry learning is another modern teaching method.

Education today provides students with great tools to acquire knowledge in an easy and funny way. But how do they know the best knowledge? How do the classify it? How do they apply it? We must guide them to get the right choice. In this way, Inquiry-based learning is a constructivist approach, in which students have ownership of their learning. It starts with exploration and questioning and leads to investigation into a worthy question, issue, problem or idea.

It involves asking questions, gathering and analysing information, generating solutions, making decisions, justifying conclusions and taking action.

Here, students can use The Funnel Method to know what kind of knowledge they need at the end of schooling. Let's see:

SIMILARITIES:

• Ability to separate the subjects of interest.
• Starting from a 
• more general point toward the specific statement 
• or main idea.
• Acquire knowledge gradually.
• Mix different kinds of information.
• Have good results and reject the bad ones.
• Take the best knowledge and process it.

The main purpose in this paper was to visit the "Learning Supermarket" and fill the shopping cart with the topics studied during the sessions in our last module. Well, according to The Funnel Method, let's go shopping and buy the things students really need.

1. Language Foundation Stand: pour the Linguistics like the science they need.
2. Psychologicals Factors Stand: pour the motivation, self-esteem, empathy, attitudes. Also, phonological factor, long-term memory and verbal intelligence.
3. Learning Strategies Stand: pour approaches, methods and techniques.
4. The Behaviorist Stand: pour the stimulus and positive reinforcement.
5. Theories Stand: pour Universal Grammar with Chomsky, Cognitive learning with Krashen and the Sociocultural aspect with Vygotsky.
6. Communicative Competence Stand: pour the whole communications skills including errors and outstanding points.

Finally, we have an integral human being. The student who is able to face any aspect in his life.

To read more, please visit http://olganorozco.blogspot.com/

 

REFERENCES:

TEACHING METHOD [En Linea] Consultado: [2, Diciembre, 2012] Disponible en://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teaching_method

Carol Kuhlthau and Ross Todd. Outline six characteristics of guided inquiry. [En Linea] Consultado: [2, Diciembre, 2012] Disponible en:http://www.inquiringmind.co.nz/WhatIsInquiry.htm

Deci, E.L., & Ryan, R.M. (1985). Intrinsic motivation and self-determination in human behavior. New York: Plenum.

Crystal, David  The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language.  Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Vygotsky, L.S. (1962). Thought and Language. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.