Elizabeth Gilbert, a respectable writer, had a presentation in TED which is inspiring and encouraging for all of us despite what we do.
Her message is that we have to love our job, be stubborn about it, and believe that we will someday achieve an extraordinary, terrific consequence.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Extensive and intensive learning?
Imagine that you are a student who studies the theories and methods of teaching English as either second or foreign language, and one of your friends asks you an advise on how to study English because he/she is going to take English test such as TOEFL or TOEIC. How would you advise?
In fact, this is the case which happens to me sometimes, as I'm enjoying my campus life in Japan. When we are asked this kind of question by our friend, we're likely to observe the friend's English level and think what ability is needed for the test which he/she is taking, and give best appropriate answer we have come up with at that moment: this is the process that I do when I'm asked. Let's back to the answer of the question. Is there one best way to learn English for all the learners, for all levels? The answer is, unfortunately, no. Good ways to learn English depend on the learner's every single factor, age, first language, character, goals, skills and so forth. So, we take as many factors as possible into consideration, sometimes guess the missing factors, and extract a possible good way to achieve the goal. And after you answered the question, you get surprised at the time and energy you spent to get that answer, and wonder if there is a manual for advising language learners.
Well, I will not try my best to make a manual, spending all the summer break left over, but I would like to suggest today a useful aspect of learning when you are engaged in foreign language learning. That is extensive and intensive learning.
Extensive and intensive learning is not something totally new for the field of language learning (or, I would say English learning in this blog). This has already been introduced in reading field. While in extensive reading, the learners read a lot of books whose levels are slightly under their English levels, without looking up unknown words, while in intensive reading, they read books whose levels are the same or bit higher than their levels, with looking up each unknown words and pay great attention to the sentence structure. The quantity matters in extensive reading, and quality matters in intensive reading.
Having learned this idea, extensive and intensive reading, I have thought if it can be applied to other language skills, listening, writing, and speaking. And it seems that the idea works well on these three skills as well as on reading. When a learner practice writing, they can do both extensive writing and intensive writing, and so as in other skills. The important idea here, is that in the extensive learning, quantity matters, and in the intensive learning, quality matters. The purpose of the extensive learning is to get much experience of and get used to doing the task, and get knowledge from that experience, as the learner is exposed to a good amount of input. The purpose of the intensive learning is to consider and analyze the information from the task as much as possible, and get deeper insight of the target language. These two are not standing by itself independently, however. These two have to be balanced in order to get the most of the learning.
The extensive and the intensive learning is not something which can answer the previous question "what's the best way to learn English". It does, however, have potential to be one effective way to learn English, and I hope this idea will help learners who want to improve their language skills.
In fact, this is the case which happens to me sometimes, as I'm enjoying my campus life in Japan. When we are asked this kind of question by our friend, we're likely to observe the friend's English level and think what ability is needed for the test which he/she is taking, and give best appropriate answer we have come up with at that moment: this is the process that I do when I'm asked. Let's back to the answer of the question. Is there one best way to learn English for all the learners, for all levels? The answer is, unfortunately, no. Good ways to learn English depend on the learner's every single factor, age, first language, character, goals, skills and so forth. So, we take as many factors as possible into consideration, sometimes guess the missing factors, and extract a possible good way to achieve the goal. And after you answered the question, you get surprised at the time and energy you spent to get that answer, and wonder if there is a manual for advising language learners.
Well, I will not try my best to make a manual, spending all the summer break left over, but I would like to suggest today a useful aspect of learning when you are engaged in foreign language learning. That is extensive and intensive learning.
Extensive and intensive learning is not something totally new for the field of language learning (or, I would say English learning in this blog). This has already been introduced in reading field. While in extensive reading, the learners read a lot of books whose levels are slightly under their English levels, without looking up unknown words, while in intensive reading, they read books whose levels are the same or bit higher than their levels, with looking up each unknown words and pay great attention to the sentence structure. The quantity matters in extensive reading, and quality matters in intensive reading.
Having learned this idea, extensive and intensive reading, I have thought if it can be applied to other language skills, listening, writing, and speaking. And it seems that the idea works well on these three skills as well as on reading. When a learner practice writing, they can do both extensive writing and intensive writing, and so as in other skills. The important idea here, is that in the extensive learning, quantity matters, and in the intensive learning, quality matters. The purpose of the extensive learning is to get much experience of and get used to doing the task, and get knowledge from that experience, as the learner is exposed to a good amount of input. The purpose of the intensive learning is to consider and analyze the information from the task as much as possible, and get deeper insight of the target language. These two are not standing by itself independently, however. These two have to be balanced in order to get the most of the learning.
The extensive and the intensive learning is not something which can answer the previous question "what's the best way to learn English". It does, however, have potential to be one effective way to learn English, and I hope this idea will help learners who want to improve their language skills.
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