ad-free
Channel / Source:
TEDx Talks
Published: 2016-05-26
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pZa6R3rmRQ
I started teaching undergraduate English courses in the universe report of equality yet campus about twenty odd years ago and %HESITATION I quickly became frustrated hi I love my job and I was frustrated with myself and I was frustrated with my students and it wasn't anything high schools were doing wrong on paper they were learning English I would give them tests and they know everything about pronouns
additives syntax grammar you name it they knew it and they could prove it by passing the tests in writing however when I try to have a conversation with my students when I try to have just a casual conversation I would get this deer in the headlights look like and then they were going to this this what I call Porky pig syndrome difficult etiquette etiquette again ha
ha it's just it just wasn't working and though I was frustrated because I said I I can't I can't do this but these young men men and women when they graduate they're gonna going to all work environment in which they're expected to think at higher levels of cognition they're expected to analyze to synthesize to evaluate and we have to do it in a language that is
not the first language and English and I wanted them to be there and of what happened was that I started experimenting with this and that and after awhile I developed a system which I think worked our high quality teaching English without teaching English what I did was I moved away from the grammar and I developed a system in which I divided the class into three stages
the first stage I give my students a B. S. detector and though this be asked that sector are it is a fully functional portable but high maintenance mental device that they installed into neurons and whenever they see that said dictate port or thinks he's may detect a VS which is very frequently are they should call off the alarm should go off and penis penis penis plans
handle how do I do that will the because the doctor has three parts part number one is critical thinking skills I have my students learn that whenever they read anything whenever they listened to a tape talk whenever they listen to a debate a conversation they should ask a number of specific questions for example is the speaker being specific people who know what they're talking about usually
are very specific they can say who what where when how many how often now people who are who are how should I say of the S. artists or what will run away from specificity they will not be specific because of specificity in tails responsibility and when people are not specific I point out to my students that usually is one of two reasons either they do not
know what they're talking about there's nothing wrong there we're all ignorant in different fields and if you don't know how you cannot be specific that's a human trait but sometimes people are not specific because they don't want to you to know what they're talking about and now there's an element unethical element of of betrayal there of concealment so are the first thing that they need to
learn as ask specific questions our is the speaker of comprehensive is she looking at all the available evidence is the speaker looking at the burden of proof when you say something you are responsible for providing evidence for that claim a is the speaker if they're talking about a scientific topic is our replica ability is there experimental data to support that claim and once I get that
part of the B. esoteric they're firmly installed will they will ask specific questions or whatever they read see or hear our I go to the second part they should detect logical fallacies and of logical fallacies are mistakes people make inductive reasoning process and we all do it for example us in particular what somebody young you have a every time I forget my umbrella it rains a
really do you really think there's a relationship between the weather and you forgetting your umbrella a wouldn't that be fantastic because then does for year drought they have in California all we have to do is get California so forget her to freaking umbrellas and then it'll rain okay then that's a non sequitur or that's the name of that fallacy hopefuls cause and effect a happens then
be happens and then you assume that a Cosby maybe maybe not you have to check another logical fallacy which is very common are Adil means and I'm hoping Ms are nasty little things because this is when the person gets personal instead of attacking your arguments the person attacks your person they they attack your integrity and up unfortunately political debate is usually polluted by that when somebody
is losing an argument instead of sticking to the merits of the arguments they back off and then they start getting nasty and offensive I'd only names are terrible but they're very useful in the hands of people who have no scruples and another logical fallacy that's very popular is argument from authority of this must be true because somebody who knows more than me a says it's true
and %HESITATION I have my students learn how to identify these five or six of those logical fallacies are the third part of the PS detector out I take from Benjamin bloom it was a wonderful scientist who started thinking about thinking and this guy said out what we do with our brains when we're thinking and he identified fire six skills a pending on which taxonomy use and
for example the basis of all learning is remembering memorization and %HESITATION you need that for for for everything you need that for everything however if you stay at that level when which you you only memorizing you repeat that's not deep thinking that's how deep thinking at all and now you have the situation where %HESITATION you must find out if the speaker or that is is really
a deep thinker does he know his stuff in detail or is he merely repeating some talking points that somebody gave him again questions will help you identify whether you're dealing with a big %HESITATION deep thinker or not and here you analyze you synthesize you evaluate that's where I wanted to take my students but first I had to get off on obstacle out of the way of
most people feel that it's wrong change your opinions to be tentative and no that is not true a if we want to grow as a person and as a society we need to be of are open to change our minds change our minds constantly because as the world changes we must change with the world and I'm gonna quote George Bernard Shaw here well he made the
following observation he says progress is impossible without change and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything so I had to destroy that power them that you must know all the answers no you should know all the questions and be not be afraid to ask them once they have the B. S. detector firmly installed we move to the fun part of the class here we
watch Ted talks we go into YouTube we read essays from the internet or from the local newspapers and we don't use text books we use whatever is happening in the world for example this semester we're talking about the Syrian refugees four million people running for their lives why are they running well where are they more than a thousand have drowned trying to get from North Africa
to Europe at that's current events and I want to make my students aware that this is happening and we also speak about a porticos economic crisis and here we have a wonderful resource a Joseph Stiglitz Joseph Stiglitz is a world class economists we can have a noble prize for for economics and this guy wrote a few articles about a situation wherein and make specific suggestions for
we bring that the class we redid we discuss it we compare with what local politicians are saying and doing and that fosters an atmosphere of conversation and most of the students are so involved in what's going on in terms of content there do not really aware that you're acquiring the language because the central thing is let's talk let's check out what for Lana wrote lets Chicago
for Lionel said let's compare notes now we I have to ground rules for dis problem noisy semi chaotic a chaotic classrooms number one Adil means are not allowed under no circumstances are you to offend personally or attack another person's integrity are you must respect everybody's freedom to differ from you rule number one rule number two is ideas are not people ideas do not have rights so
if somebody says something dumb something that's questionable including me the professor are you should feel free two two questions that idea and that's not only of rights that we have to question ideas that are not possible make sense to us it's it may be an ethical responsibility because a bad idea if left unchecked can do a lot of damage well we forget for example did Adolf
Hitler was in power for twelve years how did this man who was so brutal and so evil get control of one of the most civilized nations of Europe will easy his crazy ideas were not questioned early enough so by the time German intellectuals and people who had values were aware that this guy was taking them to a World War off Q. already controlled the nation's narrative
he controlled basically everything the military the police the media and the he adjusts had to much power it took or World War two remove adult Fisher and power so when you see a bad idea especially expressed a bad idea that could hurt people her people physically or emotionally are you may be morally obligated to to raise your voices say %HESITATION that's not a good idea so
in this in this component of of interaction in the classroom once we have that out of the way we go on to the third area and the third area is reading and writing and again I have to remove from my students the notion that making mistakes is somehow bad but no it is not it even has a name it's called developmental errors so if you want
to learn a language you must be willing to make mistakes lots of mistakes because that's how you know the boundaries of linguistic rules so I try to read atmosphere where my students feel completely comfortable to save whatever they want to say however they want to say and it's interesting because at the beginning of the semester I usually get two or three students that'll say a profit
amusing little lanta I mean I just can't deal with English and %HESITATION these same students when we're into heat of what the debate of the conversation they want to take part of the conversation and then all these are leaning to the left and leaning to the right and they ask the magic word yeah but then when they sequel will say the sick the other students is
and then there's peer tutoring and it's happening spontaneously I don't even have to wait for these kids to raise their hands because I saw what happened they look at me once we have eye contact I say who you what do you think and then we'll start speaking in English and then he goes into a little bit of Porky pig syndrome some he starts going it again
and again and then we when he goes there when he gets the Porky pig syndrome sometimes that he feels a little embarrassed and I say no no no no a good one and then the safe belittled as he got one is bundled with course you wanna use Spanglish you Spanglish tell us what you think and they realize that they can make mistakes and nobody's going to
judge them nobody's gonna grade them worse this is part of the language acquisition process there's something really interesting before I adopted this method of I felt a little awkward it was like for example trying to have somebody understand what a special place a special food taste like and you described of before you say well I got it tastes like this and it smells like that and
the texture is like this and of do you really can you really owe her shared the experience of good food like that it doesn't mean that somehow it doesn't work so now you say okay I want you to get a good cookbook and memorize the recipe and for that do the trick no no it won't be the only way of no experiencing what good food is
like how it smells the texture that the taste of is another way and then I want to take my students to the point where they these understand that language is a wonderful it's a living thing and there's no way you can learn a language by simply memorizing rules by concentrating only on grammar and ups once the students are comfortable with making mistakes of the exchange in
the classroom becomes so much more dynamic of finally when we get to the writing process we go to the part where we say okay a that's right but again form is secondary to content I want them to get their ideas to get the evidence to get their feelings on paper and once they do that then they go into six stage number two which is less correct
the the paper so at first you focus on content not form and then you focus on form not content this is where you correct all the grammatical mistakes and you look at the the mechanics of the language so to speak and are they write summary reaction papers in which they they concentrate on one thing at first and then they worry about dove dug out the form
of the language later and I always stress form is more important than excuse me content is more important to form and I'll prove it are you take Stephen King or you take Isabel Allende but these are world class riders will these people when they write their manuscripts they send them to the editorials in the case of Stephen King Viking press and in Viking press they have
a professional large and this professional nerd is going to go to Stephen king's manuscript and going to make all he's going to be called a corrections that are needed now who has the fame and fortune night Stephen King it's not the expert on grammar so you can learn grammar from the machine you can have somebody proofread your paper but you cannot fake content you cannot fix
the passion and the suspense that goes into a good short story or a fantastic novel and my my goal is for my students understand number of things learning is a painful process you have all these narratives that society gives you everybody around the world has narratives and %HESITATION these narratives dictate how we feel about things but sometimes these narratives can be wrong and that's where we
get cognitive dissonance and cognitive dissonance basically says oh my god I can't believe that what you just said but now you have to make up your mind why are you rejecting that new idea because it's wrong or because you have a predisposition against that so you have to explore your narratives look it up whatever is causing the cognitive dissonance and then form your opinion on opinion
based on reason on critical thinking that I'm prejudiced so hopefully at the end of the semester my students will take a few things with them are I wanted to %HESITATION to understand that %HESITATION there's nothing wrong with asking questions they should be intense question Asker stay should resurrect the little boy what a little girl that was a three year old and was driving mommy crazier Daddy
you put you put Kate deporte que depoortere and shut up don't ask so many questions room will charge your outlook London and you know the rest are so we we beat the curiosity out of our students in my sixth grade they will not ask a question if their life depended on it and and my job I believe is to resurrect a little kid that little girl