How CMCL promotes language learning
Upon
reflection, we (the researcher and his collaborators) realized that the two
areas are equally important: fostering CT in English language learning as well
as developing the students’ language proficiency. The task we undertook was
enormous, but it is crucial for the students’ success in their learning.
One
of the strengths reported in chapter 6 was that this CMCL was a platform for
teachers to engage in activities that would enable them to be reflective
practitioners.
On
reflection this study gave the researcher as well as the teachers opportunities
to learn for the members of the Bamboo Enterprise. The students were
cooperative and performed their best.
In
case study 3, we (the researcher and the teacher) admitted that despite our
anticipation, we did not adequately anticipate linguistic demand of the task
the students had to face.
We
have come to realize that collaboration is challenging, but it is the key to
success. Based on the literature review, there was enough evidence to show that
collaborating with one another is more effective than competing with each other
or learning in isolation. In fact, successful collaboration was found as the
key to success.
Collaboration
is indeed a means towards strengths.
The
collaborators said.
What
have I learnt? For me, this was the first time I guided a group of students
through the process of preparing a PowerPoint presentation. Of course, I could
not have done this without the technical know-how of Janpha and Junko. I
learned that it doesn’t matter if I cannot teach my students how to prepare a
PowerPoint presentation, or that I cannot guide them through a communication
exchange on a website, as long as I can recruit technical help. After all, one
person cannot be everything!
Another
reflection echoed similar tone:
What
have I learnt? Firstly, I have realised that there is a useful system called
Yahoo Group in which students can share their ideas freely on the Internet. I
have also realised that they begin to work both individually as well as by
sharing their ideas with other classmates when they are given a group task. If
they know exactly what they are supposed to do, they start searching
information, prepare presentation slides, and even practice their group
presentations on their own at the final stage of their project. All I had to
help them with was just to make sure whether they were on the right track. Some
of the students needed somebody to proofread their summary for their
presentation. Other students needed some help about how to use PowerPoint. I
helped some of them as much as I could, but I also saw them showing their own
summaries to each other in order to get some feedback or by learning from each
other with PowerPoint slides.
Another
one:
What
have I learnt? How I managed a long-term project that involves groups of
students. I learned how to use this technology myself, for example, PowerPoint,
website construction, Microsoft word, and chat rooms.
Like
the students, this CMCL has the potential because it has encouraged the
researcher as well as the teachers to be reflective in their understandings of
their work.
Potential
of this CMCL
The objective of
the study, as repeatedly mentioned, was to determine the potential of the
approach.
This initial
investigation suggests that this CMCL has a lot of potential. The five areas of
its potential are as follows:
There is strong
evidence to suggest that this CMCL promotes the students’ communicative use of
English. This CMCL was implemented in its broader sense entailing both online
and off-line communication. It has the potential to promote communicative
language learning. As demonstrated in all cases, English was actually used for
communicative purposes was nothing but ‘a common denominator’ Group activities,
with online and off-line supports, undoubtedly, have formed a trend toward
communication methodology.
We
agreed that this CMCL has the potential in enhancing the students’ critical thinking in language
learning. Certainly, CMCL has the potential to enhance
learners’ critical thinking in language learning. Its serious emphasis on the
environment could become a force within the ELT context. Critical thinking in
language learning could also become an effective way of safeguarding against
the abuse of information manufactured by the intentions of its sources, e.g.
media and politicians and so on. The teachers should set themselves as good
examples, open-minded, and develop themselves continuously.
This CMCL has
the potential to be a viable means for language teachers to conduct such
research. This study showed another way of doing it, thorough collaborative
research in the classroom, which has been a widely-practiced form of research
conducted by language teachers as practitioners (Brumfit & Mitchell,
1990; Cardenas, 2003; Kincheloe, 2003).Teachers need to continuously
learn and grow, like students or any other professions. Conducting classroom
research is another way toward professional growth (Richards, 2003), and this study has shown one
way it could be done. Two cases were examples. The teacher in case study 2
wrote his paper for a conference(Cambage, 2004). One collaborator in case
study 1 produced a related academic paper for her MA study (Kosaki, 2004).The two cases were examples
of how this type of collaborative research could be a means for teachers and
researchers could collaborate to develop themselves academically and
professionally.
Recently, in the
field of TESOL, teacher-researcher collaboration has been a new area of
interest. Two commentaries in TESOL Quarter gave their insights they gained
from their collaboration between teachers and researchers in TESOL(Hawkins & Leger,
2004; O'Connor & Sharkey, 2004). This is another way to
enable teachers to become reflective practitioners (Schon, 1983).
As a
Means To Actually Protect the Environment
English
teachers, too, have their part in saving the environment, the broken in nature.
Certainly, writing on the computer reduces the use of paper, and keeping the
texts online means reducing more paper waste. As shown in many projects with
the BE, many files were systematically stored and was ready to be retrieved by
other members. Participants did not need to print them out from the site.
Information available means photocopying can be reduced. Moreover, texts
produced can be shared. In this thesis, CMCL by itself, through writing and
publishing on websites, is an act of conservation, an act of saving trees to
make paper as well as an act of reducing paper waste. Writing English, with
help functions, e.g. spelling checkers, on computers may slowly replace writing
using pen and paper.
Online networks
help make online collaboration easier, and sharing of expertise on
environmental issues. For example, a volunteer from Chile may wish to share how
Santiago had successfully resolved their water pollution with a group of
students in Bangkok. A global problem requires global efforts. Based on
observational learning principles, sharing of success stories can help
encourage others to do the same. A teaching profession that deals with language
education like TESOL often regarded by the public as having limited role in
societies, dealing with grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, rhetoric, how to
use words to attain power. It’s the profession dubbed by many critics as one of
the Sophists’ disciple. Recognizing the limitation of using words, the sixth
caucus asks TESOL practitioners to take constructive actions.
Kumaravadivelu (2003) has urged ELT practitioners
to work collaboratively with other stakeholders, e.g., fellow teachers,
learners, experts in the field, and community activists. Teachers should move away being passive
technicians, which is their traditional role, to being those of the
transformative intellectuals. However, his call has not been materialized,
especially in the field of TESOL. Neither nor he suggests any practical items
of advice for teachers or researchers.
More and more
progressive educationists and policy makers would like to see more schools and
communities work together to solve social and environmental, among others.
Jacobs (2004, personal communication), for example, would like EFL studies or
classrooms to actually do something to protect the environment, in addition to
just ponder upon something in the air. Following is a good example. Amy Hemmert
and Tammy Pelstring (2003), at CATESOL 2003 Convention
reported some examples of schools that had actually implemented environmental
projects. They gave the final thought as follows:
- As a society
we’ve come a long way.
- We still have
a long way to go to fully protect and effectively manage our natural environment.
- As teachers,
we now have a large number of resources available to us, especially on the
Internet.
- We need to
make sure that we continue to involve ESL students in environmental education
programs.
This study showed
that learning online and off-line can be mixed, and such learning does not have
to be isolated. CMCL is a means towards independent learning capacity. Most
people may fail to notice that some of the loneliest places are big cities.
There is growing argument that what will work best in this new learning
environment is, an appropriate one, a mixed approach which combined online and
face-to-face elements. Teachers need to find ways that suit their
circumstances. Needless to say, they need to think integration. An image of a
person sitting alone and felling lonely in front of the computer screen should
be the history.
However, it can
be argued either that interdisciplinary work need not be so ambitious or
theoretically demanding (e.g., an academic based in an English department and
an academic based in a Cinema Studies department may be quite readily able to
define a mode of interaction that is rooted in an interdisciplinary procedure
when examining a filmic text) or that it may be able to draw upon a set of
procedures and theories that have attained a measure of clear definition
(political economy). What is needed, perhaps, is clarity about what (and how
much) is being attempted. Different levels of ambition can be defined.
Plainly, for
example, there are different types of inter-disciplinary study:
Developing
conceptual links using a perspective in one discipline to modify a perspective
in another discipline
Recognizing a
new level of organization with its own processes in order to solve unsolved
problems within existing disciplines or problems that lie beyond the scope of
any one discipline.
Using research
techniques developed in one discipline to elaborate a theoretical model in
another
Modifying and
extending a theoretical framework from one domain to apply in another
Developing a new
theoretical framework that may reconceptualize research in separate domains as
it attempts to integrate them
Addressing broad
issues and/or complex questions spanning more than one disciplinary field. (Klein, 1990)
What certainly
seems to be the case is that, because the coverage of disciplines is incomplete
and partial (in both senses of the word) some migration of specialisms and some
hybridization is inevitable, and these need to be explored in any higher
education programme of learning. Linguistics’ interactions with the (other)
Social Sciences certainly illustrate this, with Psycholinguistics and Sociolinguistics
in particular firmly established as what can be called interdisciplines—areas
of knowledge, study and learning with distinct, evolving theoretical and
methodological procedures. Such interdisciplines are certainly not unamenable
to undergraduate study.
Even though a
real sense of being in a community, in this case BE, was not strong among
members. The best that this study can claim was that many members had benefited
from the support provided by the community. CMCL as a theme means working towards
knowledge-building community where knowledge can be systematically archived and
shared (Wenger, 1998).
We came to one
conclusion, that is: this CMCL has a lot of the potential in promoting
communicative use of English and enhancing critical thinking in language
learning. On top of that, despite difficulties, it also has the potential to be
a means for professional development through classroom research. This CMCL also
has the potential to be platform for teachers and students to put critical
thinking into action by actually, as one of the student websites has put it: Do
Something About It, protect the environment. Lastly, from a bigger picture,
this CMCL, from an ecological approach to language learning and teaching, has
the potential to be a possible theme in education.
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