Discussion Forum: This, that, these and those

Hello everyone,

I really wish we could find a way of expressing the idea behind "subordinating teaching to learning" in a more easily understandable way. It's such a mouthful and it just doesn't mean anything to most of those who read/hear it for the first time.

But I write "wish" because I'm not sure it's realistic to expect many people to understand something that supposes a whole series of previous awarenesses.

When I started creating my online interactive exercises I'd hoped that they could be a way of showing teachers in a practical way what "subordinating teaching to learning" meant. I'd thought it could be clear to them how an exercise was intended to force a series of awarenesses by :

presenting a series of visual situations to a student,
asking them to make decisions about each one,
giving them immediate feedback as to whether each decision was acceptable or not.

By noticing a pattern in the feedback, the student could develop their own criteria for acceptability.

As far as the students are concerned, many tell me the exercises are "easy" which is another way of saying that they do in fact quickly develop the appropriate criteria. Not always of course, so I still have work to do to make the exercises better. There are often not a enough situations for students who need more examples and more time to work things out.

For students it's not important that the pedagogy is invisible: their objective is to learn the language, not to understand how they do it - though of course, as human beings, they may be interested in that too.

Recently, I just happened to see something on the Internet which shows that the pedagogy can be invisible to teachers too.

Dúvida de inglês: this, these, that, those has a very clear presention of the grammar of these words using explanations in Portuguese, illustrations and translations into Portuguese. I say it's well done, because if you undersand the English, you can understand the Portuguese even if you don't speak the language.

What's the connection with "subordinating to teaching to learning"? you may be wondering. Why should this teacher be doing something they've never heard of?

Well, scroll down the page and you'll come to a section on Exercícios de inglês básico na Universidade de Franche-Conté and there you'll find among the first exercises this - that - these - those. If you didn't already know, you'll have guessed who created his set.

Now, I really don't want to say that my exercises are superior to what the Portuguese teacher did, but that they are different. Putting the two side by side (open two browser windows) and looking at the grammar explanation and the exercises on the same topic, it is very clear that the objectives are not the same.

I could write more on this, but I'd be interested to know what others see in the parallel pedagogical situations.

All the best,
Glenys

Hello Glenys,

"Subordinating teaching to learning" must be hard to practice in designing on-line exercises.

I looked into both exercises; yours and the one written in Portuguese. There are so many grammar books that have similar explanation and exercises to the latter one. So, what I'm writing is not only about the particular one but about many others including it.

"Explanation of grammar targets"

Giving explanation(knowledge) is taking students' work from them. I would like them to reach the knowledge at the end of the exercises or after they work more.
It's possible the translation of example sentences into students' mother tongue confuses students because the word orders are different and some words are missing or added in the translation. Students' focus won't be directly on targets but on comparing the English sentences and their translation.

"Examples"

Different uses of this/these/that/those can be shown at the very beginning of their introduction. Not only "This is a ruler," introducing "This is a green ruler. Is this a ruler? This is not a ruler. This ruler is not green." can show students the whole picture of 'this/these/that/those' world.
"Rulers, pencils, wallet, books etc." there are many cases where varieties of objects are used in example sentences. Students may not know some of them. If they find some new words, their attention goes to them. If we want students to concentrate on learning the targets, the examples should be as simple as possible to make the targets' function stand out.
Drawings/pictures in the text should be carefully designed. I tired to put myself as a student who is learning the targets for the first time and found two things. First, the size of the hands in 'that' examples is smaller than the ones in 'this' examples. This can be a concern for students because I was confused if I should look at the picture from my point of view or the person's, who is pointing at the objects. The other thing is the distance between the hands and the objects. How far should the object be apart from the hand when we use 'that'? This can be another discussion, but when I saw the pictures, this simple question came up to me, because the distance between 'this' case and 'that' case are not so different. I have noticed these things in other grammar books before.

"Practice"

Is 'explanation of grammar' the main thing or 'practice'? This shows the exercise writers' ideas about teaching and learning. Here I would like to talk about Glenys's exercises. Hers have no explanation about the grammar targets and encourage students to learn through doing the exercises.

I noticed;

It has varieties of uses of the targets; negation/questions(yes/no, WH) and others.
Answer choices are nothing but 'these/this/that/those.' Students can concentrate on working on the targets.
As students can get feedback on their answers right away, they can learn from their mistakes. Also, they can try the exercise repeatedly, so that it helps build up their criteria on the targets.

Looking at different types of grammar exercises, I became certain that the important thing is how much teachers can shrink their knowledge and skill of their English into the size of that of students' and create situations from students' point of view. I have been trying to make it happen in my class and now become realized that I can reflect it in making on-line exercises.

Thank you Glenys for giving a chance to look at those exercises from the standpoint of "Subordinating teaching to learning."

Michiko

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Hello Michiko,

I found it interesting to read what you have written. You are quite right, I think, when you say it's not a good idea to introduce lots of vocabulary in sample sentences. If the students are wondering what a ruler is, and a wallet?, and things like that, it's clear to me that they are not 100% with the real problem which is "this" and "that".

I would like to add something that I think is important: knowledge doesn't spontaneously transform itself into know-hows. All the knowledge in the world is perfectly useless when it comes to actually using the language spontaneously, when one doesn't have time to think and recite the rule. I believe that the only way to create a know-how is to do it until you know how... That's what Glenys has put in place.

Have fun in your classroom, Michiko,

Yours,

Roslyn

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