Cainntear wrote:One of the things that bugs me in education is how educationalists completely fail to understand the consequences of their own research. (...) the big idea for most of this century was "learning objectives" or "lesson goals" -- tell students what they're going to learn because research somewhere along the line pointed out that people who didn't see the point of what they were doing were less likely to learn. Of course, it's fairly obvious, but it's good research points it out, and I think that's a bigger issue than general "hate" for a technique -- it's a matter of not seeing the point.
Maybe there is more research concerning "lesson goals" than concerning "method hatred", but the two are actually not mutually exclusive. And knowing about the goals in broad terms may not be as relevant as knowing what to learn here and know. If a teacher would tell ME that my stipulated lesson goal tomorrow would be to do a convincing rendering of a screaming drunk US red seal dumped in a French bordello to be flogged by a lady in black leather while she yelled obscenities in French at me, then I would know what was expected of me - but I would refuse to do it, and if anybody tried to force me to do it I would spend my time on thinking about ways to escape and (if possible) how to kill the teacher, not on learning French. OK, the roleplay in modern language classes may be less dramatic, but the general situation is the same.
Actually it is
possible that you
can teach people by kicking and flogging them and yelling at them, and at some point they might break down and learn something in spite of the situation (isn't that the idea behind military training?), but luckily language schools aren't allowed to use that amount of physical violence any more. And until you have broken the mental spine of a learner the resistance against disgusting teaching methods will just grow and grow and grow.
My stipulated goal for this evening is something more tangible and modest (and devoid of histrionics), like working through a couple of pages in a couple of Slavic languages and learning some 40 or 50 words in the process, and maybe also to have a look at some old papers about Albanian grammar and make them into green grammar sheets. And I have decided those goals myself, which is one reason I see forward to doing those things.
As for Benny Lewis it has been revealed long ago by himself, no less, that he also does hardcore homestudies of grammar and other things. And of course that's part of the story, but we can still discuss who would profit from engaging in those early discussions with natives (not to be confounded with one to one courses, where the teacher/mentor is actively teaching you something) - and also what it takes to learn from such encounters. It may not be 'speak from day one' then, but maybe from day two or three.