Page 83 - Beyond Methods

Maximizing learning opportunities 71
3.3.9 First, using selected texts from students or combining the background information and the text given above, help your learners understand what the basic issues are. Again, instead of telling them, ask leading questions so that they themselves can come up with an- swers. Then, ask them why McDonald’s is targeted by anti-globalization protesters in several parts of the world. Have them form two groups and debate whether or not it is fair to target McDonald’s, and what the protesters achieve by doing so.
3.3.10 Finally, ask the students to consider all the readings and the discussions, and write a brief report of what they have learned in doing this project. Ask them to focus on both language and content: any new ideas, new vocabulary, new grammatical structures, or any other no- table items they may have come across.
Exploratory Projects
I present below two interrelated exploratory projects designed to help teachers do a self-assessment of their attempts to generate learning opportunities in class. The first one relates mainly to what the teacher taught and the second one to mainly what the learners may have learned. An important caveat: because it is difficult to as- certain clear evidence for the creation and utilization of learning opportunities, all we will have are teacher perception of learning op- portunities created and learner perception of learning opportunities utilized. The point to remember, though, is that the feedback from this informal project, however unscientific it is, is still of immense value to the teacher (for a more systematic way of studying teach- ing acts, see the exploratory projects in Chapter 13). For designing these two projects, I have drawn ideas from Ellis (1995), Kumar- avadivelu (1995a), and Slimani (1989).
Project 3.1: What the Teacher Taught
3.1.0 We learned that display questions elicit a closed set of pre- determined answers, and referential questions elicit an open-ended set of unpredictable answers. We also learned that, compared with display questions, referential questions are likely to generate more learning opportunities. This exploratory project is designed to help you analyze your questioning pattern and its possible impact on the creation of learning opportunities.