What would a person do if he/she were to win the lottery? Or, what would a child do if he/she were to get a box with the most fantastic toys imaginable in it? I guess that’s how I feel right now.
I have been reading ‘An Imaginative Approach to Learning’ by Egan and I feel like I have discovered a treasure trove. In this article are tools that are extremely useful for teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages.
It was an eye-opener to see how I could use tools such as stories, metaphors, binary opposites, rhyme, rhythm and pattern, jokes and humour, mental imagery, gossip (yes ‘gossip’), play and mystery to teach not only the usage of the language but also the use of the language.
I hope to use these tools in my country since it is of primary importance that students are comfortable with ‘oral skills’ before they can move onto learning the ‘theory’ behind the language. Egan says in this article “No one learns to speak alone – or to read and write or to think using theoretic abstraction”. I have always believed that students should be involved in group activities since two minds or more are better than just one. Egan says that learning occurs through shared knowledge or activities.
Also, he says “Be suspicious of the simple claim that young children and people in oral cultures are ‘concrete thinkers.” I have believed that it is important for students to use their imagination as much as possible so that they can improve their communication skills.
There’s so much that a student can learn by narrating a story or discovering the joy of writing a poem, or even creating a play that is a spoof of the latest movie that he/she has seen.
Where would we be if people hadn’t questioned the phenomena that occur in our planet everyday? I am looking forward to asking my students to write out their own story about ‘their’, ‘there’ and ‘they’re’. Who knows, maybe, I will have the next George Lucas or Luciano Pavarotti in my class?
