KOTESOL

KOTESOL - Korea Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages - is having its annual conference in Seoul this weekend (Oct 24-25), so I went to check it out.

In scope and size it is similar to a CATESOL conference. I was surprised to see that ALL the featured speakers - all 13 of them - were white - not a Korean among them. Some of the names were vaguely familiar to me (David Nunan, Scott Thornbury, maybe some others) - the one I noted particularly was John Fanselow, so I went to his presentation, entitled, interestingly enough for a student at Yonsei:

"Huh? Oh. Aha! - Difference between Learning Language through Rote Memorization and Predicting"

Well. Here's a teacher the exact opposite of teachers at Yonsei. His message is something like this (his words copied from a website):

I have rededicated myself to supporting change; breaking rules; having contrasting conversations, and trying the opposite. Supporting change and supporting different perspectives is the only way to move forward.

To illustrate, here's from another website:

The ways he suggested we break rules were simple:

􏰀 If you normally ask students to underline words they don’t know, reverse the procedure and ask

them to blank out such words and ignore them. Notice your normal practice and do the opposite.

􏰀 Notice the difference between the way people do an activity in a classroom and outside in

ordinary life. In classrooms people sit at desks to read – there is silence. At home people

sometimes lounge on cushions and listen to music while reading. Have reading happen this way

in class.

􏰀 Take a traditional practice like reading aloud in class and change some detail about the way it is

done. Ask the student to read silently, to look up from the page and then to say what she has read

to somebody in the room. The change in detail radically changes the whole.

Fanselow’s message in that lecture was “For goodness sake do something different next Monday

morning”.

In the session, he gave us a lot more of these "change the way we do things" examples - all of which were basically puzzles (ie students presented with incomplete or incorrect information and asked to figure out or predict the complete message). As a teacher, these things make (made?) great sense to me. I too would have thought such ideas, such efforts to "shake up" the learning process and engage the mind more actively, would be productive. They would have excited me.

But as a student - I just felt irritated. Why do I have to waste time figuring out puzzles in a language class? Why do I have to indulge this teacher in his idiosyncratic approach to teaching - an approach that I know will not be repeated in the next class? Will I really learn more than by just plugging away at the words and structures I need to know (ie repeat, memorize, practice etc.)? How can the teacher convince me, the student, that this puzzle-solving effort will pay off? If the teacher doesn't do that, then motivation, trust, confidence etc - all those really important things - are lost.

The best part - I met a Korean English teacher at the bus stop; we rode the bus to the conference together, talked a while, exchanged contact info, etc. Once that was done I felt my day was made. I met a Korean. He offered to help me with my Korean. Wow.

I don't think I'll go to the conference tomorrow. I think I'll stay home and keep "memorizing" what I need to know for the midterm next week.