VoyForums
[ Show ]
Support VoyForums
[ Shrink ]
VoyForums Announcement: Programming and providing support for this service has been a labor of love since 1997. We are one of the few services online who values our users' privacy, and have never sold your information. We have even fought hard to defend your privacy in legal cases; however, we've done it with almost no financial support -- paying out of pocket to continue providing the service. Due to the issues imposed on us by advertisers, we also stopped hosting most ads on the forums many years ago. We hope you appreciate our efforts.

Show your support by donating any amount. (Note: We are still technically a for-profit company, so your contribution is not tax-deductible.) PayPal Acct: Feedback:

Donate to VoyForums (PayPal):

[ Login ] [ Contact Forum Admin ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, [2], 3, 4 ]

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Date Posted: 15:54:15 10/28/04 Thu
Author: José Euríalo
Subject: Re: Autonomy and teachers as the worst people to teach languages
In reply to: Micheline Marra de Lima 's message, "Re: Autonomy and teachers as the worst people to teach languages" on 20:03:16 10/27/04 Wed

Micheline:

Obrigado pelas observações e pelas perguntas!

Antes de tentar responder suas perguntas, devo dizer que LEWIS (1986), no livro que mencionei, não fala sobre autonomia do aprendiz, mas discute a estrutura e o ensino de verbos em Inglês (o título da obra é “The English Verb: an exploration of structure and meaning”); ok?! Entenda-se, portanto, que, quando ele fala sobre fracasso, o ‘fracassado’ ali não é um aluno autônomo; ok?!

Quanto a possíveis respostas para suas questões “O que seria antieducacional para o autor? Ele esclarece isso posteriormente?”, devo lhe informar que, após aquele trecho que citei, continua LEWIS (1986):

“(…) Language teachers sometimes say ‘This is all right –I understood/enjoyed it’. This does not mean that many more students failed to understand it. Too much explanation given too quickly can confuse instead of helping. The result may even be worse than that –it make students feel they can ‘never’ understand.

An example from a quite different field may help the teacher to understand. How do you react to this?: ¾ : 1/8. For many people their immediate reaction is ‘I can’t to maths’, or ‘I hated fractions’; ‘I never understood them’. In many British schools, students were taught the “rule”.

To divide fractions, invert and multiply. If we apply that to the example above we get: ¾ x 8 = 6, which is the correct answer. The strange, and unfortunate thing is that many students could apply this rule to a set of examples, get the right answers, but still not understand fractions. What is the point of the rule? Has it helped students to do the exercise? –probably. Does it help them to understand the underlying problem? –certainly not. If the teacher saved time at all, it was only at the expense of the students’ understanding. It made students feel maths was ‘impossible’, not something for them, and even something unreal.

Look now at the following problem:
‘A cake is cut into eight equal pieces. Somebody has eaten a quarter of the cake. How many pieces are left?’
Most students find this question so easy they can do it in their heads. A few diagram helps:
(Aqui, há um diagrama, um desenho representando um bolo dividido em 8 partes, com 6 delas hachuradas).

The interesting thing is that the problem is exactly the same as the one which intimidates do many people when it is put in symbols, and done using a strange “rule”.

The same problem may be put in three ways:
The cake problem described above.
In words: ‘How many 1/8ths are there in ¾?
In symbols: ¾ : 1/8.

A few people, who are ‘good at maths’ find the last of these the easiest. For them, the answer is ‘obvious’, and they cannot see why anybody else finds it difficult. For many people the same question in words is much easier, but easiest of all is the same problem expressed practically –the cake problem- one which we can understand on the basis of our experience. The same problem expressed in symbols seems completely artificial. What does the problem mean? Why does anybody want to know the answer to it? Turning it into symbols makes it more difficult but, for most people, the biggest problem of all is to understand the “rule”. By accident, the teacher changed the activity, and made it more difficult. Instead of trying to understand and answer the problem, students are trying to understand the rule which is supposed to help!” (LEWIS, 1986, p.15-16).

Parece-me que há um tropeço no primeiro parágrafo transcrito acima (e esse não foi meu!), mas creio que agora você compreenderá o que Lewis quis dizer. Se você quiser, poderei deixar o texto completo do capítulo 2 do livro de Michael Lewis no setor de xerox da FALE, na pasta da Profª Vera Menezes (se ela não se opuser a isso, claro!), pois são apenas 3 folhas.

Sinta-se à vontade para questionar. Só não sei se terei condições de esclarecer mais. :-)

Obrigado,

José.

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Replies:

[ Contact Forum Admin ]

Forum timezone: GMT-8
VF Version: 3.00b, ConfDB:
Before posting please read our privacy policy.
VoyForums(tm) is a Free Service from Voyager Info-Systems.
Copyright © 1998-2019 Voyager Info-Systems. All Rights Reserved.