[진미주 영어교육론] Graphic organizer와 Advance Organizer

[Dio Jin 교수]

(1) Use of visuals:　

As a tool for language learning, visuals have probably always been present in the L2 classroom. Given the pervasiveness of media in the outside world today, students expect a visually rich learning environment. Visuals include, but are not limited to, photos or line drawings in the course textbook; stick figures, written text or other graphics on the black/whiteboard; studentgenerated posters; graphic organizers (such as a matrix or a Venn diagram); magazine pictures; digital photos; images or clip art downloaded from the Internet; slide shows (e.g., PowerPoint or Prezi); films; and, last but not least, streaming videos.

(2)　Graphic Organizer:

One type of visual that has been well documented　in the research literature is the graphic (or visual) organizer (H. Clarke, 1991).  Graphic organizers consist of diagrams or charts that help　students to organize knowledge using structures　such as grids or matrices, Venn diagrams, spider maps, time lines, causal chains, network trees, and　storyboards.

(3) Originating in the work of the cognitive　scientist Ausubel (1967), graphic organizers were proposed as one form of advance organizer (i.e., an organizational framework presented in advance of a lesson to emphasize its central idea) that could improve students' levels of understanding and recall.

(4) Advance organizer

An 'advance organizer is a cognitive instructional strategy used to promote the learning and retention of new information.

Ausubel suggests that advance organizers might foster meaningful learning by prompting the student regarding pre-existing superordinate concepts that are already in the student's cognitive structure, and by otherwise providing a context of general concepts into which the student can incorporate progressively differentiated details. Ausubel claims that by presenting a global representation of the knowledge to be learned, advance organizers might foster "integrative reconciliation" of the subdomains of knowledge - the ability to understand interconnections among the basic concepts in the domain.

An advance organizer is used to introduce the lesson topic and illustrate the relationship between what the students are about to learn and the information they have already learned. (either verbal or visual)

By using an advance organizer to link the new information to old information, the new information can be remembered more easily. There are three basic purposes of advance organizers. First, they direct students' attention to what is important in the upcoming lesson. Second, they highlight relationships among ideas that will be presented. Third, they remind students of relevant information that they already have.