Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Alan Waters
The importance of thinking for language learning has been recognized for
some time. E LT activities which encourage active mental processing have
Introduction It is widely accepted that learning occurs when the mind makes connections
between what it already knows and new, hitherto unknown items of
information, i.e. that knowledge is constructed by the use of thinking
processes—the ‘cognitive’ theory of learning (Gleitman 1995). As a
consequence, there has been a steady growth of interest in E LT, especially
from the late 1980s onwards, in the use of problem-solving activities as
a method of encouraging cognitive processing by learners (Nunan 1989;
Skehan 1998). Many modern international and national textbooks (for
example, Nelson et al. 1999; Soars and Soars 2003) nowadays incorporate
such activities as a way of stimulating active thinking by learners, both in
order to increase their knowledge of the language system and their ability to
use it in communication.
However, in some parts of the E LT world, problem-solving exercises still
appear to be infrequent. Thus, as a European teacher put it in a recent
global E F L teaching activities survey, ‘there are not many task-oriented
or project-based materials in our textbooks’, a situation mirrored by a
significant part of the rest of the data (Waters 2004). Also, in another
recent study (Cai 2003), observation of a wide range of secondary-level E F L
lessons in an Asian country showed that nearly all the teaching activities
involved were of a relatively mechanical type. One possible reason for this
situation may be lack of awareness about the ways in which the thinking
level of activities can be conceptualized, and the implications for lesson
design. Thus, in what follows, an attempt is made to provide a relatively
straightforward framework for analysing the types of thinking promoted
by ELT activities, and to use it to illustrate how a range of thinking levels
can be incorporated into ELT lessons.1
figure 2
Two main levels of
thinking
By adopting this perspective, it is possible in the first instance to size up
whether an E LT activity falls into one or other of the two superordinate levels
in the left-hand column. In this way, the crucial initial appreciation of
whether the activity involves thinking at the second, higher level, or only the
first, lower-level one, can be made. It also enables the teacher to make an
insightful initial ‘reconnaissance’ without getting too closely involved in
attempting to untangle the intricacies which sometimes beset attempting to
distinguish between the details of Sanders’ individual categories, especially
the remaining ones, the first of which is turned to next.
Other activities which can be seen as falling into this category are
language focus practice exercises, i.e. ones designed to reinforce and give
further understanding of how rules of this kind work, as well as those
which ask learners to look for logical relations in ‘non-linguistic’ content
(for example, in the context of this lesson, learners could be asked to say
how various procedures for making the same paper object are similar or
different).
Implications Two main implications arise from the above. First of all, it is important
to note that, as mentioned earlier, a lesson (or lesson series) on a given
topic would not normally include all of Sanders’ categories of thinking,
because, for example, some of the steps may already be sufficiently well
understood, any topic becomes boring if focused on for too long, and so
on. On the other hand, there is a case for seeing the kind of thinking involved
in the first four categories as the essential minimum needed for learning
to be demonstrated, since they encompass a basic learning cycle that i)
begins with creating ‘subsidiary awareness’ (Polanyi 1958) of the learning
point—the memory and translation categories, ii) moves on to establishing
‘focal awareness’ (Polanyi op. cit.)—that is, the interpretation category,
and then iii) provides for a ‘transfer’ (Gagné op. cit.) or ‘learning by doing’
(Skehan op. cit.) stage—the application category. Ideally, for reinforcement,
an activity involving the type of thinking associated with one of the
remaining categories might also be used, the appropriate choice depending
on a ‘reading’ of the students’ needs and capabilities at this point, and so
on. But the overall point is that the core sequence just outlined helps to
ensure that activities concerned with both of the two equally important
main types of thinking—‘staying within’ and ‘going beyond’ the
information—and, within the latter, the practical application of learning,
are included in the learning unit, and in a closely integrated manner.
Secondly, it should be noted that, in the sample lesson activities above,
although the level of thinking gradually increases, the level of language
remains unchanged. Thus, in the case of all the main sample activities, what
Conclusion The use of activities involving problem-solving and other more complex
types of thinking has become increasingly common in recent years.
However, there are some parts of the E LT world where this trend has not
yet become widespread. It is hoped that the conceptual framework and
sample activities provided in this article will help those teaching in such
situations to see how activities which stimulate thinking at a variety of
different levels can be used in an integrated way, and with learners who
do not have a high level of knowledge of English as much as those
who are more advanced.
Final revised version received January 2005