Teaching memorable lessons. A theoretical overview
by Vasilica Pana, “Mihai Viteazul” National College, Ploiesti
Keywords: emotions, imagery, visualisation, creativity, ownership, motivation, memorable activities.
Abstract: Teachers’ creativity in exploring a range of activities that involve students’ emotions and making students visualise things and think critically will work wonders in acquiring knowledge that can be used in effective communication. Emotions make learning memorable.
It has become common knowledge that our lives are subjected to technology and visual stimuli, and our students belong to a multitasking generation. Therefore it is getting more and more difficult for the English teacher to involve students to work effectively in class. By using critical creative strategies that foster “processing and thinking” in our students, we engage them intellectually as well as affectively. Once the students are motivated to produce their own individual responses, they will need to use the language meaningfully so as to express their feelings. Furthermore, when students realise that teachers do not focus on the correctness of an expected answer but on their personal contribution, they feel empowered by the language as they experience appropriateness.
Isn’t it interesting that we process information quite differently? We all see, hear, and feel different things in spite of the fact that the information is the same in each case. However, it is generally accepted that we have a dominant modality, namely a dominant way in which we process information. Some of us are predominantly visual and our vocabulary may contain phrases such as: “I see what you mean”, “Look here”, “I have a clear picture of what you are saying”. Others are predominantly auditory and our vocabulary may contain phrases such as “That sounds right to me”, “I hear what you say”. Finally, some of us are kinesthetic. We learn best by moving or involving the body; we are the ones who have such difficulty in sitting still in a classroom. Our vocabulary may contain phrases such as “That feels right to me” or “I can’t get to grips with this problem”.
Since we all have different learning styles, as teachers we should have them in mind when teaching our students. It is in fact the staple diet in primary classes when explanation is combined with pictures and moving around the room. The information taught by activating VAK(Visual, Auditory and Kinesthetic modalities) is stored in the brain, in the limbic system and what we manage to store there is never forgotten.
The question which arises is “How can we teach students in a way that they forget less?” We all know that imitating and repetition are the stepping stones to a better performance in learning. If somebody is yawning, we start yawning, if we see a person full of energy, we become energetic, too. The explanation is given by the American writer, David Dobbs, in “A Revealing Reflection” through the existence of “mirror neurons” in our brain. For some, this explanatory power makes mirror neurons the biggest neuroscientific discovery of the past decade. “This completely changes the way we think about how our brain works”, says Marco Iacoboni of UCLA, a mirror-neuron researcher. The eminent cognitive neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran even ventured that “mirror neurons will do for psychology what DNA did for biology: they will provide a unifying framework and help explain a host of mental abilities that have hitherto remained mysterious and inaccessible to experiments.”
So, language learning is about imitating. We learn through mirror neurons. A good example of mirroring is when in conversation there is good rapport, the two persons lean forward, when one person leans backwards, the other one does the same. Crying during movies shows mirror neurons at work, as well.
James E. Zull, a biologist with keen interest in how the brain learns, points out that thinking and learning are chemical processes: “Emotions and thoughts are physically entangled”, concluding that if there are no emotions, there is no learning. It is also interesting the way in which he describes “the battle for attention” in “The Art of Changing the Brain”. He points out that “different sensory signals physically compete for attention in the brain, and those that are the strongest win out. It is a physical battle” and “teachers must encourage learners to want to use their reason. It is true that if we don’t repeat things, our memory grows dim but if something made sense to us emotionally, we also can recall amazing amounts of details. Memory is a complicated business for the teacher. Do we want our students to remember or to memorize things? Do we want them to learn so they can remember or to memorize in order to learn for a test, an exam or just a good mark?
Students must feel the relevance of their learning and repetition is not enough. With only repetition, neurons stop being active. Zull shows that “changing connections in the brain is learning”. How can teachers make things relevant? Let’s think of mental imagery and visualisation. Often connected to our emotions, visualization comes from inside rather than outside our mind and what is more, our mental images are not only limited to the visual , but also include the auditory, tactile, kinesthetic, olfactory, and gustatory. For example tell your students to picture freshly baked bread; they will automatically associate it with its smell, as well. When mentioning lemon they immediately feel the pungent taste in their mouth. One can clearly see that words are glued to images. If somebody tells us not to think of spiders, as we hear these words, the opposite inevitable happens; we get a mental picture of a spider.
Antonio Damasio, professor of neuroscience at the University of Southern California, points out that “Mental imagery is an important factor of who we are and how we use our brain effectively”. If teachers are aware that imagery contributes to our students’ learning and making them remember better what they have learnt, the will surely help students focus their attention. If teachers can transform verbal meaning into visual meaning, students will easily understand the situation. Translation doesn’t have the same impact.
To put it briefly, the three important areas in teaching are: relevance (e.g. if students don’t learn meaning, they don’t learn grammar), emotions (explanations are not always ideal, the sensory impact is essential for any kind of learning), and creativity or ownership (when students create something, they feel rewarded). If we convince students that learning is not unpleasant, we can be successful.
Another important thing is to bring students something from other areas such as art, science, environment or technology that would stir their interest. Having in mind the theory of multiple intelligences, students can excel in different areas, so, not all of them might be interested in English. Teachers should develop all intelligences: linguistic or verbal, logical or mathematical, bodily or kinesthetic, visual or spatial as much as they can taking into account the four Cs of CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning): content, communication, cognition, culture.
It is imperative to teach students to practise critical thinking in the classroom. Most students don’t set foot in the library any more: they look things up on the Wikipedia or the Internet. The Internet is a marvelous tool, but it requires to think about the information, about where it came from. The information is not always reliable and that is why critical thinking has become important. We need to teach students to practise intelligent skepticism to say to themselves “This might not be true/reliable”, to think about the way the information is presented.
How much do you think students will remember from a lesson? Only 5%. You remember more if you take notes and read them again and again. An interesting fact is that not everyone will remember the same 5% (J. Harmer). Consequently, teachers should come up with memorable activities, to use course books in a way that hey come to life. It doesn’t matter what you use but how you use them. Language teaching is not about: “Turn to page 65 and read”, it’s about interactive talk, activities that are language productive (e.g. Present Perfect will come out of your story, not from the textbook).
The question that arises is “How can one teach grammar imaginatively?” Einstein believed that “Imagination is more important than knowledge” because knowledge is limited while imagination embraces the entire world. Einstein’s teacher said: “Algebra is all about a hunt for a creature called X, and when you catch it, it has to tell you its name”. Teachers can do the same with grammar. For example, with young learners create a memorable name for a grammatical point by personalizing it: Present Simple can be the tense of Bored Bart, Present Continuous, the tense of Busy Betty, Present Perfect, the tense of Mr. Been. Imaginative grammar needs students to think outside the box as well as inside the box as Jurgen Wolff put it in “Creativity Now”. However, the advocates of twisted cliches would add that students should make sure they know the box before they go out of it. Teaching a controversial issue (e.g. how to be late, how not to listen to your teacher, how to accept negative emotions) can be more appealing as it generates more language. Teachers should encourage students to think and create motivation. It is imperative for them to do everything to get students either love or hate a text, but by no means be neutral, because if there is no emotion, there is no learning. Grammar also appears in the strangest of places: songs, rhymes, stories, jokes, jazz chants.
In conclusion, let us resort to our never-ending creativity as teachers and explore together different activities that will generate interest and enthusiasm, which will naturally result in our students' willingness and eagerness to use English for effective communication. In this way, students will find meaning in what they do in class and their involvement and personal contribution will make our teaching and their learning "memorable".
Bibliography
•Conference For English Language Teachers organised by Fisher International, Bucharest 2011:
1.Anderson Gary, CLIL Won’t Kill – Au Contraire (plenary talk),
2.Evans David, Critical Thinking in the Classroom (workshop),
3.Harmer Jeremy, Teaching Unplugged Beats Acquisition (plenary talk),
4.Hughes, John, Imaginative Grammar (workshop),
5.Lauder Nina, Making the Most of Stories (workshop),
•Damasio, Antonio, Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain, the Keio University Symposium, Sep. 2011,
•Dobbs David, A Revealing Reflection: Mirror Neurons, Talk, Walk and Culture, in Scientific American Journal, April, 2006,
•Iacoboni, Marco, The Mirror Neuron Revolution in Scientific American Journal, July, 2008,
•Jensen Eric, The Learning Brain, Turning Point Publishing, San Diego, USA, 2008
•Pilgrims 2011 Teacher Training Course, Canterbury, UK:
1.Gillian, Robert, Welcome to Teachers as Leaders (seminar),
2.Stephan, Sylvia, Effective and Affective Approaches to Using Music And Songs (seminar),
•Wolff, Jurgen, Creativity Now, Pearson Education Limited, 2009,
•Zull, James, The Art of Changing the Brain, Stylus Publishing, 2002.
Biodata
Vasilica Pana has been teaching English at National College “Mihai Viteazul”, Ploiesti for 28 years. She has been involved in a series of Comenius and Erasmus+ projects adding in this way a touch of real life communication to class and encouraging international contacts.