Re:Bits and pieces of data

Let me SUM UP.   In Jeonghwa's data we saw that teachers spend a lot of time asking questions. This actually creates a series of problems:   a) The teacher and the children speak different languages, because the former speaks grammar and the latter tend to use very short, grammar-less replies.   b) The teacher has less control over the course of the conversation because children often give dispreferred replies and ignore, for example, the goal of listening in favor of making up their own story.   c) The teacher finds it difficult to focus on both the accuracy and the appropriacy of the children's replies at the same time.   In Seong-eun's data we saw that one way to get around this is to play a guessing game, where the burden of grammaticization is in theory shifted to the children. But once again there was a series of problems.   a) The teachers tend to initiate using questions, and this means that the children once again simply supply lexical answers.   b) The answers are paradigmatically organized, and this does not appear to add much to cumulative complexity or development.   c) Once again, the teacher finds it very difficult to focus on both the rightness of the guess and the grammatical explicitness. It's not clear, for example, whether Junseok is being congratulated because he produced the first English sentence or simply because he guessed correctly.   In both cases, it's very hard to see learning, much less development, although Jeonghwa made a very convincing argument for the sentene "he's not invited". One thing we very clearly CAN see, though, is that teaching and learning are NOT causally related. In some ways, they seem to be INVERSELY related: the more the teacher teaches by asking questions, the less the children learn by authoring replies.   Jeonghwa, who gives the most penetrating and THEORETICAL analysis, reminded us of Vygotsky's quotation about Thorndike: Thorndike DENIES the social role of education and sees the relationship between teaching and learning as simply being that of provider and consumer.   Vygotsky argues that this is the relationship of a RICKSHAW PULLER and a CUSTOMER. But this relationship, which we find in parent-child and 과외 situations too, is not a good model for PUBLIC education. For one thing, it's too much work for the teacher. For another, it ignores the SOCIAL factor in education, the fact that education is really all designed around socializing children into a larger unit.   Translated into the language of our data, we see that the "pedagogical duet" we often see means that the grammatical burden belongs to the TEACHER instead of the children, and that the teacher is reduced to "pumping" the children with comprehensible input.   Let's see if Minkyeong's class is any different. It begins VERY promisingly, with a CHILD initiate. It's not only a child initiate, it's a METALINGUISTIC one, concerned with the way in which the materials are organized (alphabetical order). It's not only a METALINGUISTIC initiate, it's one that is directly concerned with the level at which written and spoken language appear to be integrated, that is, the grapheme-phoneme. Not surprisingly, the child is thinking in Korean.   S8: 그거... 그것도 ‘드’자로 시작하는데. 잠자리였어요. 그거? T: 잠자리? 잠자리 혹시 아는 사람? 영어로..   The teacher appeals to the collective. We can see that this teacher is a tough old TRAM DRIVER and NOT a rickshaw puller.   S14: (very quiet) Dragonfly. S1: 그거 뭐였지? S3: 아!! Sleepy.   Self directed speech! That is, what Piaget calls "egocentric speech", and what Koreans know is really SOCIAL speech but in the 혼잣말 form, where the speaker pretends to be thinking to himself but is really INTENDING to be overheard and understood.   We see a lot of this in English NOVELS, particularly after the eighteenth century, when it becomes important to develop the "inner life" of characters. But we see a lot of it in Korean LIFE, where people use it as a way of expressing feelings without having to qualify and limit their utterances out of deference to the addressee.   The child's self-directed speech is in English, but OFF task. Now, if we take this as a "teaching English through English" lesson, this kind of thing should be ENCOURAGED (because although it's off task, and irrelevant to our learning goals, it's an authentic use of English). Will the teacher praise it? Will she condemn it? Or will she leave it to the collective like a tough old TRAM DRIVER?   S1: 에?? (Ss laugh) S13: 잠자리! 잠자리... 곤충 잠자리! S14: Dragonfly. Dragonfly. T: That's right! Dragonfly. Ss: 아, dragonfly. S9: 드래곤? Dragon 그거 써요? 그게 뭔데..?   We saw that in Minkyeong's earlier data the children were very good at building mnemonic BRIDGES between sound and meaning ("dunkin donuts" and "donkey" or "donkey" and "Shrek"), and even between Korean words and English meanings. ("똥기" and "donkey "). Here they are building a bridge between a Korean loan word and an English word. "Dragonball" is actually in the news a lot these days!   We also saw last time that Minkyeong wasn't very good at following the kids' thinking: she didn't really understand the Shrek connection, for example. Let's see if she picks up on the opportunity to teach the connection between:   dragonfly dragonball dragonair   (Ss chatting) S3: 아, 잠자리. T: (writing) d. r. a. g. 자, ‘g'는 꼬리가 맨 아랫줄을 닿아야 돼. gon. o. n. S14: ‘o, n’이요? T: 에.. Yes. S3: 난 또 뭐라고...   Clear example of self-directed speech.   T: f. l. y. (pointing) Dragon-Fly. Ss: Dragon-Fly. T: 한 마디로 ‘용파리’야. ‘용파리’ Some Ss: 히히.. 용파리... 하하.. 용파리. S15: 그럼 선생님, 그거 뜻이 ‘잠자리’에요, ‘용파리’에요? T: 외국에서는 용이라고 생각하나 보지, 그치? DRAGON-fly니까.. S8: Drangonfly. 그냥 ‘dragon'도 ‘드’자로 시작하는데.. T: 네. S3: Dragon 파리? 헤헤.. dragon 파리. T: (writing) d. r. a. g. o. n. f. l. y. (pause) Okay. One more time. 자, 선생님이 쓰는 대로 써야 돼요. 순서를... S3: Dragon 파리야.   <중략>    T: Okay. What season is it NOW? Now. Some Ss: Spring. T: Yeah, it's spring now. 지금은 봄이죠. (pause) What can you see? (gesture) What can you see in spring? S1: Flower. T: Yeah. I see flowers. What else? (pause) Flowers.. 꽃도 보고... 현정, please? (S23 is inaudible) T: 응? S1: New teacher. T: New teacher. Yes. You meet a new teacher.   Here the teacher is VERY good at figuring out what the kids are talking about. Notice how she adds grammar too.   Compare:   a) Yeah, I see flowers. What kind of flowers? (UPTAKE) b) Yes, I see flowers. What else? (REBROADCAST)   Which road will lead to CONCRETENESS? Which one will lead to ABSTRACTNESS? Why?      And what else? Some Ss: Mmm.... T: In spring, flowers and...? (flying gesture) (Ss laugh) S1: Bee. T: Bee? Oh, ye모. Bees. We see bees. S27: Butterfly. T: Butterflies. And 예림? S28: Dragonfly. T: Uh? Yes. Dragonfly? Do we see dragonflies? (Ss burst into a laughter) No.... (very noisy) T: In what season, do you see dragonflies? S29: 어... 가을. T: Dragonflies 언제 나타나요? S1: Fall.   Bees, butterflies and dragonflies are all examples of....? (ABSTRACT GENERALIZATION)   dk