|
This is a really beautiful, and COMPLEX, analysis. But in some ways I think the problem is even more beautiful and complex and SUBTLE than the answer.
Perhaps I am wrong. I'm not very good at reading Korean data! Help me, Yeongmi!
Listen and Repeat
HOW DOES THE TEACHER CAST THE ROLES?
HOW DO THE LEARNERS LEARN THE LINES?
HOW DO THE TEACHER AND LEARNERS DEVELOP THE SITUATION?
The data I've chosen is from the Korean class 듣말쓰(which means listening, speaking, and writing) in which thirty five 4th graders are studying what the advantages of writing a letter are. In my paper, I will explain how the teacher casts the roles by inviting students inside the story, how the students learn the lines using pictures and written expressions that are already given in the pictures, and how the teacher and the students develop the situation by up-taking the others’ utterances or using their own experiences. Finally I will discuss alternative ways she could have solved these problems.
A very good metaparagraph. Now, last Tuesday we saw that SOME theses are "heuristic" and some theses are "hypothesis-testing". Compare:
a) What are the effects of content-based instruction organized around stories?
b) Do higher levels of teacher demand result in higher levels of abstraction?
c) How can teachers effectively apply writing conferences to the improvement of writing?
d) Do children talk more when they are inside the story or outside it?
You can see that SOME of these questions are yes/no questions and others are wh-questions. But that's not all. Some of these thesis topics are really fail-safe--whatever data emerges from the study is the answer to the question. And others are a little riskier--it's quite possible to have your hypothesis proved wrong.
Yeongmi has written her paragraph as heuristically. But it would also be possible, particularly in hindsight, to write it like this:
"In my paper, I hypothesize that the teacher casts roles by inviting students inside the story. I hypothesize that this makes it easy to teach the lines using pictures and written expressions. I hypothesize that it makes it somewhat more diffiuclt to develop the situation by up-taking the others’ utterances or using their own experiences."
In this way, Yeongmi draws attention to the fact that the SOLUTION of one problem can become the SOURCE of the next one, that the RESULT of one set of problems becomes the REASON of another, that the CONSEQUENCE of one circumstances is the CAUSE of another.
She can make the same point heuristically as well. Now that she has written her paper, she KNOWS that there are unforeseen problems. She can make these unforeseen problems the topic of her paper:
"As the teacher casts the roles and the learners learn the lines, the situation creates unforeseen problems: a) the children confuse the real with the imaginary situation, and b) when the children fully realize the imaginary situation they do so in unrealistic, and socially inappropriate, ways."
Firstly, the teacher casts the roles of 홍빈 and 홍빈 엄마 by inviting her students inside the story. She asks the students to imagine 홍빈엄마’s emotions(“어떻게 말하고 있는거예요?”) and to express the way the mother speaks(“말해 봐 봐.” “다 같이 말 해 봐 봐. 시작!”)
Very good use of quotations in parentheses. See how easy it is to check Yeongmi's argument against the data!
Yeongmi's technique of quoting in parentheses is really just the sentence level equivalent of a technique we've seen before: using SANDWICHES of introduction-data-interpretation.
T: 어떻게 말하고 있는 거예요? 말해 봐 봐.
T: 다 같이 말 해 봐 봐 시작!
By saying “all together”(“다같이”), the teacher is casting all the students as 홍빈 엄마. Moreover the teacher makes the students repeat the line(“너 또 게임하고 있냐?”) one more time in the hope that the students can really understand the mother’s feelings by asking like this:
T: 어.. 덜 실감난다. 한 번 만 더. 시작!
However when she teaches the third picture, she casts the whole class as 홍빈 at this time.(“자, 다같이 홍빈이 목소리로 시작!”)
Good. As we'll see in class today, this is a common problem. The story teller has to be two places at one time--one foot inside the story and one foot outside. When we do the cartoon task in "let's review", for example, the teacher has to do something like this:
T-T: Now, I point and I say. "Minsu says, 'What time is it?"
T-S: Now, Yeongmi points and we say: "Oh, no! I'm late!"
S1-S2: Now, Yeongmi points and Miyeong says.
Sx-Sy: One of you points, and one of you says.
You can see that with REPORTED SPEECH (that is, "Minsu says, 'What time is it?'") there is talk in text, but there is also text in talk--the story teller has to tell about his own story telling. That's postmodernism for you!
T: 3번 그림을 봐주세요.(소란스러운 분위기) 하나, 둘. 셋.
홍빈이 얼굴 보세요. 얼굴이 벌그레해지고 눈썹이 당황한 표정이 역력해요
자, 다같이 홍빈이 목소리로 시작!
Ss: "그게 아닌데..."
As a result of this exchange, every student is 홍빈 엄마, and is 홍빈 as well. Interestingly this exchange causes a confusion that the students don’t understand who is saying what to whom and why.
Good.
In the data below, the teacher is asking what do the students themselves do when they make a mistake(“그럴 때 여러분은 어떻게 하나요?”) and a boy still seems to stick to speak about his mom. (“그럴 때 엄마가요…”)
When we use "dialogue" in the context of a textbook, we usually mean a text dialogue. When we use "data" we usually refer to the talk about the text. So the DATA refers to the "dialogue" between teacher and student.
T: 잘못 알고 화를 냈어. 엄청 미안해요. 그럴 때 여러분은 어떻게 하나요?
효근: 그럴 때 엄마가요.. 잘못했다고 미안하다고 해요.
The teacher tries to ask another boy, but that boy’s answer has the same problem to the previous one.
T: 엄마가 미안하다고 해요.. 너희는 어떻게 해? 너희는? 정균이 해 보자.
정균: 엄마가요....
This post-modernism problem is due to two reasons. One is that the teacher has the students to exchange the roles, so the students start to confuse who is saying what to whom and why. The other reason is that the teacher who keeps trying to speak inside the story and to invite the students inside the story, suddenly stands outside of the story and asks the students about what they are going to do, not about what 홍빈 엄마 is going to do. When she asks the question(“너희는 어떻게 해?”), obviously, she is standing outside of the story.
Now, as Yeongmi points out, the teacher is trying to do something rather complicated. The MOTHER has made a mistake, because Hongbin was industriously writing a letter and the mother unjustly reproached him with wasting time on computer games. The teacher asks the children what THEY do when THEY make mistakes, and in so doing the teacher is asking them to take the perspective of the mother character.
It's EASY for the adult to take the adult perspective, but it's rather more difficult for children. Even taking a MISMATCHING perspective is more difficult for children; after all, the adult has been a child, but the child has never been an adult!
I think it's particularly difficult in this case, because very often when adults make mistakes dealing with children they do NOT apologize and when they do the children get quite confused.
Now, I would like to discuss about the possible ways that the teacher could solve this problem. Firstly, she has this problem because she makes them speaking inside and outside of the story in rotation, and makes them to be 홍빈 and 홍빈 엄마 at the same time. Instead of doing this, the teacher could cast the roles by dividing the class into two parts using a space.(e.g. “Over here you are 홍빈, Over here you are 홍빈 엄마”) Another way she could cast the role is that casting one person for one role at a time which really happens later in the data.
Good. Both of these approaches WILL solve the problem if it is a casting problem. But suppose it's NOT a casting problem? Suppose it's a perspective taking problem? The kids genuinely CANNOT figure out what a mother does when she realizes that she has unjustly blamed her child?
It's a tough problem, Yeongmi! What the parent must do is to say that although IN GENERAL she has the right to blame the child for playing computer games, in THIS CASE she blamed the child wrongly.
The mother must somehow apologize in such a way that the child can distinguish between the abstract right to blame the child and the specific responsibility to check and make sure that blame is well founded before blaming.
Not easy, because of course when children quarrel the situation is usually much simpler; children either have the right or don't have it, and whether they use the right carefully or not is hardly ever under dispute!
T: 그러면 홍빈이하고 엄마하고 있어야겠다. 홍빈이하고 엄마. 먼저 홍빈이. 홍빈이...좋아 명현이 잘 할 것 같애 엄마... 엄마. 성대.
Moreover when the students sticks to inside of the story,(효근: 엄마가요… 정균: 엄마가요…) it would be good for the teacher to accept the students’ view and to decide to go back inside the story again.(“어? 정균이도 엄마 얘기 하네? 어. 괜찮아 엄마 얘기 해도”) I would like to say that staying in the imaginary situation and speaking inside of the story would help the students to understand the context concretely.
What happens if the MOTHER writes a letter to Hongbin? What would it say? Could she make it clear?
Secondly, I will describe how the students learn the lines using pictures and written expression!s that are already given in the pictures. Unlike an English class, students can read and interpret the meaning of what they read in a Korean class. As a matter of fact, it is hard to imagine that students in Korean class listen to the teacher and repeat after what the teacher say exactly. Instead, students look at the pictures or read the lines that are already given in the textbook, and repeat the content that they have understood by speaking out the lines. As you see below, the students repeating what they read.
태근: 이 게이야 너 또 게임하니?
Ss: “너 또 게임하니?”
When they are speaking out the line above, it is just repeating without understanding of the context. And then the teacher pushes the students a little bit into the imaginary situation, demands the students to speak in the mother’s voice by saying this:
T: 어.. 덜 실감난다. 한 번 만 더. 시작!
Ss: (more expressively) “너 또 게임하니!!”, 태근: “너 또 게임하냐아!!”
The teacher is asking for VARIATION. Now, variation can be of two types. One type we will call "syntagmatic"--that is, what follows on. So for example, if we add a FIFTH frame to the cartoon, where the mother writes a letter to Hongbin, this frame will "follow on" and continue the story.
Another type we will call "paradigmatic", that is, CHANGING rather than continuing the situation. So for example the children change the situation to make the mother a rather vulgar, nasty and uncouth person. But we can also change the situation by making the mother more polite (for example, by making Hongbin into a college student or by saying that Hongbin is not Hongbin, but in fact Hongbin's father, who also sometimes plays computer games).
Which is more interesting here? To continue the story or to change it?
As you can see above, the students are now more involved in the imaginary situation than before. I would like to say that, in a Korean class, repeating is more like interpreting the situation in various ways and getting an understanding about what the context is. This understanding of the context leads the students to the next stage of “Listen and Answer”.
I think that ONE kind of repetition is like this. We repeat the communicative function but we vary the intonation or the expressiveness. We can also repeat the communicative function and vary the grammatical realization, e.g.
Ann: Let's go swimming.
Jinho: Sounds good.
Ann: How about you, Joon? Can you swim?
You can see that the communicative function is the same but the grammatical realization is different.
Take a look at Miyeong's work. She teaches "What a ... ....!" in a variety of situations: a tall man, a big pig, etc. Here, the grammatical realization is the same, but the vocabulary is different! Is the communicative function the same or not?
For Yeongmi, the essential thing is the communicative function, and she knows that depends on CONTEXT. That is why she is not really willing to change the context, and she's right.
Now I will explain how the teacher and the students develop the situation by up-taking the others’ utterances or using their own experiences. In the data below, the teacher says only once(“아, 이렇게 하자. 좋아. 중간에 아니 얘가 왜 대답이 없어? 이런 말을 집어 넣어보자. 자연스럽게 연결되게.”), and this is just a simple direction for what the students are going to perform rather than a deliberate line which develops the situation. When the dialogue starts, the teacher gets out of the situation and disappears. Now, there are only two characters exist(홍빈 and 홍빈 엄마). Interestingly 명현 keeps taking 홍빈’s role persistently, on the other hand, many of the boys take part in 홍빈 엄마’s role together, cooperatively. First 성대 starts repeating the lines in the textbook.
성대: 홍빈아! 홍빈아. 홍빈아!!
명현: 네
성대: 너 또 게임 하니?
태근: 오냐.
Isn't this a very intimate form of "yes"?
명현: 아니요
S1 is taking the mom’s role and answers the question by up-taking 명현’s answer(“아니요”)and adding his own thinking(“아니긴 뭐가 아니야, 게임하고 있는데”). 명현 is up-taking the form of S1’s answer(~하고 있는데) and uses it in his answer(“사회숙제 하고 있는데”)
S1: 아니긴 뭐가 아냐! 게임하고 있는데
명현: 사회숙제하고 있는데
Usually “있는데” is not a correct ending form of a sentence grammatically. The correct form is “있어요.” Instead of “있어요.” 명현 uses the word “있는데!” which contains the grammatical ending form and the complains about his mom’s misunderstanding as well. The other students, who still keep the mother’s role, catch the son’s complaint and add some anger by using vulgar words.(“이 새끼가”, “이놈이”) Can we say that the students develop the situation?
태근: 아니, 이 새끼가 뭐가 아니야?
S3: 이놈이!!
명현: 진짜 확인해보세요
태근: 아, 확인하기 싫어
S8: (컴퓨터) 껐어.
Ss: 하하하
Yes, but it seems to me that it changes the situation. I think that the reason why "새끼" is vulgar is that it refers to the offspring as animals. For that reason, it would not be used by a parent, right? So the mother is no longer the mother. We are in a different situation.
What situation? Vygotsky makes the point that when children imagine they are creative, but they are not always veyr imaginative; they tend to realism, at least at first. Very often, for example, they will "role play" quite realistic activities. Sisters might, for example, "role play" being sisters.
"In life the child behaves without thinking that she is her sister’s sister. She never behaves with respect to the other, just because she is her sister – except perhaps in those cases when her mother says, “Give in to her.” In the game of sisters playing at “sisters,” however, they are both concerned with displaying their sisterhood; the fact that two sisters decided to play sisters makes them both acquire rules of behavior. (I must always be a sister in relation to the other sister in the whole play situation.) Only actions that fit these rules are acceptable in the play situation. In the game a situation is chosen that stresses the fact that these girls are sisters: they are dressed alike, they walk about holding hands – in short, they enact whatever emphasizes their relationship as sisters vis-a-vis adults and strangers. The elder, holding the younger by the hand, keeps telling her about other people: “That is theirs, not ours.” This means: “My sister and I act the same, we are treated the same, but others are treated differently.” Here the emphasis is on the sameness of everything that is concentrated in the child’s concept of a sister, and this means that my sister stands in a different relationship to me than other people. What passes unnoticed by the child in real life becomes a rule of behavior in play. (Vygotsky, The role of play in development, 1932).
This lack of creativity is often particularly striking in English class, but this is the first time I've really seen it in a Korean class. We can say that the kids are "role playing" two schoolboys insulting each other!
From students' point of view, the situation is developed in an interesting way but for the teacher’s point of view, this seems to be a wrong direction. We want to teach students speaking politely. We don’t want them to learn bad words or swear words.
It seems to me that it is QUITE impossible to prevent children from learning them. The teacher's job is rather more interesting than that; it's to show the children that such words have CONSEQUENCES.
Let us say that Hongbin COMPLAINS about his mother in his letter to his friend. His friend's mother FORWARDS the letter to Hongbin's mother...and the story continues!