Re:Final Exam Answers by 홍성은

[kellogg]

a) Get some data. Make sure it includes both children and the teacher.

▶ My data: 5th Grade English Class Transcript            

   - Date: Friday, November 28th, 2008

   - Students: Class 5-6

   - Lesson: 15. Can You Join Us? 1차시

   - Situation: The teacher is beginning the lesson 14 "Can You Join Us?" trying to get the students to perceive the target language ("Can you join us?", "Sure", "Sorry, I can't. I       (reason)     ") by using 6 picture cards mostly depending on T-S but not T-Ss to avoid rather dictatorial way of teaching and to get individual student's attention.

Look at this dialogue, from the Sixth Year book:

Mrs. Smith: Hello, everyone. Nice to see you again.

Students: Hello, Mrs. Smith.

Mrs. Smith: Did you have a nice vacation?

Students: Yes, I did. (sic)

Mrs. Smith: What did you do, Jinho?

Jinho: I visited my grandparents in 강능.

You can see that Mrs. Smith does BOTH forms of interaction: she asks a y/n question of the WHOLE class to involve everybody, and then, metonymically, chooses Jinho as a “representative” to explore the topic in depth.

According to Seong-eun, the former is a more “dictatorial” way of teaching, and the latter is a more “democratic” way of teaching. Seong-eun often has a rather MORALISTIC, almost RELIGIOUS, way of putting things: lessons are “good” and “bad”, or “dictorial” or “democratic”. This is a good, practical, teacherly way of thinking: it gives us “rules of thumb” that are easy to remember. Of course, it also allows us to say that some teachers are better than others (and God is better than anybody else!)

But of course this is at bottom an absolutist, anti-democratic, even dictatorial way of thinking. Sometimes whole class interaction is right, because everybody gets involved. Sometimes individual interaction is right, because we need in depth intervention.

Maybe it’s difficult to say that ONE particular form of interaction is always right, or even always democratic. Gandhi says that to the hungry man, God appears in the form of bread

T: (showing a picture card) Look at the picture. She is... (pointing to a girl in the picture card and tilting her head to one side) ... Nami? Ann? Right? Ann. Ann is.....?

Ss: Skating!

T: Skating now. (to the whole class) Let's go skating...to 동천 school this afternoon. (picking one student's number card to select one child to ask, and showing the number card to the whole class checking the kid's name from the class-list) Can you ...... Can you join us, 지연?

Ss: (after looking at the number card for 지연 and shouting at him) 장지연! 장지연!

(VERY interesting—this sort of thing happens a lot with the 전담 teacher.)

T: 지연! (pointing to the rest of the students and gesturing to 지연) We are all going skating. Can you join us?

지연: No! (looking at the board written some target language) Sorry, I can't.

T: (getting her facial expression‎! very disappointed) Why not?

지연: 어....%^&*&

T: Oh, sorry?

S: Many academy!

지연: Many academy.

T: Oh, many academy? You have to go to 학원?

지연: Yes.

T: Many many 학원? Notice how the “uptake” of the teacher does NOT add the plural form. Perhaps too much democracy and not enough dictatorship?

지연: Yes.

T: Good student! Good student! How about...(showing another picture card) soccer? (toward the other students) Let's play soccer. (toward 지연) Can you join us?

지연: No! I'm busy!

Ss: Hahahaha~

OK—the joke is that the student gets to shout at the teacher? Or is it that the student gets to jilt the teacher?

I think it makes a big difference. We need to explain to the children that jilting in any language is a great art—you don’t want to dump somebody you may need later (if only to make your real date jealous). You can’t just yell “No!” or soon you will find everybody yelling “No!” at you.

Seong-eun has already SHOWN this sensitivity—iconically and indexically, by looking disappointed and by modulating her voice. She has ALSO shown how to be responsive and sensitive by uptaking “no” and asking “Why not?”

How could the teacher “uptake” “No, I’m busy” in a way that would show children that yelling “no!’ is not sociopragmatically skillful? (Hint! There are always other fish in the sea! As my father used to say, young people always exaggerate the difference between one date and another!)

b) Look at how the teacher makes meaning (consider action as well as talk, grammar as well as vocabulary). Compare it to the way the children are making meaning. How are they different?

In the data above, the teacher is using picture cards with which the kids are very familiar and some active gestures (“pointing to the rest of the students and gesturing to 지연”) to transmit the abstract meaning of the target language ("Can you join us?", especially "join") to the children. There seems to be none of the unfamiliar new language exposed to the children in the teaching point.

It seems to me that 지연이does not really understand what “I’m sorry, I can’t” means. It does not mean the same thing as “No! I’m busy!”

 So the children must have no particular difficulty understanding individual vocabulary during the lesson. They are seen to get those familiar language to well organize to use them precisely in the given context. I think those old knowledge (e.g., the language of 6 picture cards, Can you        ?, Sorry, I can't, etc.) must play a good role for supporting the children to grasp the abstract meaning of " Can you join us?" 

Look:

T: What time is it?

S: It’s ….

Now, the answer will ALWAYS be changing—quite literally every second. But the question NEVER changes. It’s always the same.

Remember that we said there were TWO kinds of meaning, which Volosinov calls “tema” and “znachenie” (Vygotsky calls them “smysl” and “znachenie”, but it’s the same idea.)

“Tema” is pragmatic. It’s immediate. It’s what you do in the here and now. “Znachenie” is semantic. It’s abstract. It’s the sort of thing you find in a dictionary.

But we don’t JUST find semantic meaning in the dictionary. We use semantic meanings in order to CONSTRUCT pragmatic ones.

The question “What time is it?” is FULL of semantic meaning, because the word “time” is general here. But the answer is full of pragmatic meaning. And we use the question to construct the answer.

The teacher is also struggling to get the kids to notice the meaning (actually pragmatic meaning but it seems very abstract for the kids to internalize its proper use) of the target language "Can you join us?" . She is trying to contextualize [ "(to the whole class) Let's go skating...to 동천 school (동천 is very popular for a skating rink located near my school) this afternoon", "(toward the other students) Let's play soccer", "(to 지연) Can you join us?"] what situation the expression‎! is commonly used in real life through her overaction, that is, she seems to need at least more than three roles to get the language useful (pragmatic).

There’s a built in problem, or rather TWO problems. The first is grammatical, and the second discoursal.

Let’s tackle the grammar problem FIRST. Consider the following pairs of expressions:

a) Let’s play baseball.

b) Now, hit the baseball.

a) Let’s play piano.

b) Now, sit at the piano.

a) Let’s go skating.

b) Let’s go to Mongcheon.

(Minkyeong! Which expression‎ is more concrete, and why?)

Now consider THIS expression‎:

a) Let’s go skating at Moncheon.

b) Let’s go skating in the Lotte World rink.

(Minkyeong! Which expression‎ is more concrete, and why?)

We can see that preposition and article use really depends on the concreteness (that is, the PRAGMATIC meaning, the “tema” or the “smysl”, of the utterance.

Now, let’s consider our DISCOURSE problem. Our teacher uses SIX cards. And she’s going to use ALL of them. So in ONE afternoon the teacher has to go play soccer, go skating, etc.  Each card WEAKENS the pragmatic meaning of the next one.

Why? Think of Jisu. Every week, she takes her best team of students out for 떡보기. Now, these are real students eating real 떡보기. So when she offers points, this real pragmatic meaning.

Now think of Jiyeon. Maybe his “many academy” (sic) are real. Maybe he is just thinking of a good reason to be rude to the teacher. But what is certain is that the TEACHER’S skating trip is NOT real. And the more places she schedules to go after the class, the less real it is.

I can see the teacher is using iconic meaning by showing picture cards one by one in which shows some character's action for the expression‎! "Let's              .", by showing her facial expression‎! realistically ("getting her facial expression‎! very disappointed"), and by making the context more plausible so that the children feel like they are talking in the real discourse but not in the simulated situation designed for the rote learning which is far from the kids' real life. She is also inviting indexical meaning by doing the visible action of pointing to something ("pointing to a girl in the picture card", "pointing to the rest of the students", "toward the other students", etc.). It is noticed that symbolic meaning is being used by simply presenting the main language on the board so that the children can refer to ["No! (looking at the board written some target language) Sorry, I can't."]. Written language on the board might be used for the bridge to connect the teaching point (e.g.,vocabulary or grammar in teacher's mind) to the children's meaning making process without forced pressure from the teacher.

Notice how Seong-eun not only compares the different ways of meaning making (by the teacher and the students) she also juxtaposes them—she shows how the children use the teacher’s meaning making to make their own. If you think a moment, you will see this is the same thing we saw when we compared “What time is it?” and “It’s …”.

The teacher is making meaning by using command ("Look at the picture") and calling one kid ("지연!“) to get children's attention, by using statement (”We are all going skating.") and statement mixed with some question-like fragment ("She is...Nami? Ann? Right? Ann") to give information, and by using question or question-like fragment quite a lot ("Ann is....?", "Can you join us, 지연?", "Why not?", "Oh, many academy?", "You have to go to 학원?", etc.) to check integration what the kids are understanding. The teacher is mostly using question form utterances (more than the half of her utterances are question-form with up intonation) to get children's attention and immediate response. The teacher is depending rather on T-Someone than T-Everyone interaction to make actual or pragmatic meaning of the language. While the teacher is relying on grammar ("You have to go to 학원?”) turning over whole grammatically correct sentences to the student, the kid seems to avoid using a whole sentence by spitting out only vocabulary ("many academy"). Good—very well expressed. “Spitting out only vocabulary!” Although the teacher seemingly looks successful to get what she wants the child to be taught, that is, teaching point, from the kid, 지연 (“sorry, I can't", " No! I'm busy!"), the teacher talk should be changed to the way of giving rise to the children's creativity for using rich grammar and vocabulary in response to the teacher's utterances preventing the kids' only yes-no reaction without any thought and effort.

Bravo, Seong-eun! Notice that she ends with a QUESTION, which she’s going to take up in the next part of her answer! How can our teacher get within the “zone of proximal learning”?

c) Is the teacher talk within the learners' "zone of proximal learning"? How do you know?

  Yes. I notice that the teacher talk is within the learners' "zone of proximal learning". In the data above, the boy's (지연 chosen randomly by the number card) hesitation to catch the new knowledge (the way to respond as "sorry, I can't. I'm busy" to the question-formed offer "Can you join us?") doesn't last long by the meaningful context designed by the teacher and glancing at the written language as a clue on the board. Presenting written language with no forced pressure is thought to be a good support for the children to perceive what they are to learn with the optimal level of written language, which should be comprehensible for the young kids. The children are seen to get the actual pragmatic meaning of the language "Can you join us?" as “Let's do something together.", or "Can you come to do something with us together?" and its proper use in real life through the teacher's constant effort for making meaning understood by all means (especially "contextualization"). I can see 지연 might have internalized the main point of the lesson as the data progresses, that is, he could only respond like "No!" in the beginning of the data, but he finally answered "No! I'm busy" as the teacher expected, though he failed to include the other target language "Sorry, I can't" to be more polite, which he seems to have learned already voluntarily at the beginning of the data by being noticed written language on the board.

If the teacher talk is not within the learners' "zone of proximal learning", the child would not respond at all in a way they are supposed to be taught and they would give up to return the teacher's input from the beginning to the end of the discourse.

I think that Seong-eun’s answer is correct, but NOT the reasons she gives. She says that the question is within the ZPL because the child can answer. But isn’t it the case that if the children simply answer, it’s because they are NOT within the zone of learning, because they already KNOW the answer?

What’s important in Seong-eun’s data (what supports her argument that the child is learning and not simply repeating something previously learnt) is that the child DOESN’T answer easily. First of all, he can’t answer right away. Secnodly, he answers TOO vehemently and TOO quickly. And thirdly he gives agrammatical responses, which sound curt and rude.

How to present this to Jiyeon? Well, he is growing into a young man. He needs to learn that if you keep turning down dates with beautiful young women you will eventually discover that will turn down dates with YOU. (Actually, there are some good lessons in our book on precisely this subject, e.g. Fourth Grade Lesson Seven, and this very lesson in the fifth grade book.

 But the child, 지연, is reacting or answering quite correctly and precisely to the teacher's questions not moving away from the context designed for the actual use of the language. I believe that if the guided meaningful discourse presented in the data above were to be repeated several times with other kids, the target language would be fully understood and internalized by the kids.

Good! Once again, Seong-eun ends with a good question which will lead us on to the next problem.

d) Is the talk within the learners' "zone of proximal development"? How do you know?

Yes. The talk is within the learners' "zone of proximal development". The teacher talk is seen to be fixed to the 5th grade of children's developmental stage Is fifth grade really a whole developmental stage? Think of learning: is the timetable the same as the lesson, in terms of actual learning? the teacher seems successful to get children's attention, elicit their quite precise response and keep the discourse going on. She is just adding input ("Can you join us?", "Sure", "Sorry, I can't") which is slightly new or difficult to the students previous knowledge ("Let's            " , "Can you      ?"). This process can lead the kids to properly organized LEARNING and, if the process of learning once takes place, it awakens his/her developmental process to foster communication with other people in his or her environment.

Good. Very convincing. One of the important differences between learning and development is that development actually CHANGES the way in which we learn. It’s for this reason that very often development results in a DECLINE with respect to learning.