This is a multi-level post, so I'm going to post this particular post here on newbricks.blogspot.com, a weblog dealing heavily with feedback and social intelligence, and also on my weblog for learning Chinese, whatseas.blogspot.com.
In particular, this is a perfect case in point of how to use social intelligence and feedback to reshape and create behaviors, in this case, to help new students learn a new language. It is crucial to recognize that learning a new language for a new student is not primarily a COGNITIVE activity, but a social one, which requires bringing new expectations, new hopes, and new motivating energy to the task.
Here's my mental model, my understanding, of the key variables:
While advanced students and faculty may find comfort in grammar and rules and cognitive techniques for learning, they are already assuming that a basis of confidence, optimism, and hope of success is in place. They know they can master this material, from experience. Short term difficulties are minor obstacles, which they know they will overcome. They have, in short, a kind of psychological momentum that carries them across stumbling points. And they have a social role that includes skill in this new language as part of their accepted and acceptable identity. Their lives have assurance from experience, and optimism about the future.
NEW students, on the other hand, come with none of that. They are very UNsure about their ability to complete this task. The skills and knowledge have no home in their head and lives at this point. Every obstacle seems like one more argument that this was the WRONG course to pick this semester, that they are NEVER going to learn this, and maybe they should drop the course now before it becomes a complete disaster. Their lives are filled with anxiety and depression. They do not yet know for sure that society and their peer group will find this action, learning Chinese, an acceptable activity. Maybe they will be hounded and punished by their friends for even trying this.
Given the above, here is a proposed activity, and then a discussion as to why this activity meets the emotional and psychosocial needs of the students in an efficient way, as well as teaching them Chinese.
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You can use the flashcard memory game for FREE. They have the character sets for all the major textbooks. The character set for our own book, Intergrated Chinese, Version3,
level 1, part 1, is here.
http://www.yellowbridge.co
Use SHIFT + CLICK to highlight more than one chapter to pull characters from.
If you select "Novice", you have 2 minutes and 30 seconds to find every match per page. I think my first effort at this I got 5 pairs (out of the 32 pairs) in that time. It gets much easier all by itself if you play it every day.
"Effortless learning!"
I was trying to think of ways to get the class more excited about helping each other.
What do you think of this?
We could divide into two teams, and compete to see who can complete the YellowBridge memory game for Chapter 2 in fewer seconds.
We could use the projector to show the grid on the large screen.
We would have to do all of the grid for one team, and record the time, then scramble it and pick a new grid for the second team, and record the time.
Each team would have a "batting order" and the team players would have to take turns in that order.
As each person "comes up to bat" they can pick any two squares they think match and point to them on the screen,and the person running the computer would click those two. If they match, or not, that completes that person's "turn at bat".
We could tell everyone that the best strategy is for each person to pick the HARDEST MATCH they are sure of. It would be silly foran advanced student to pick a really easy match, leaving only hard matches for the next players. Each person could find their own level. Be sure to leave some easy ones for the weakest team member to be able to pick from, or you will lose time as that person tries to find what might be a match.
I think it would be fun, and it would make people realize that their TEAM IS DEPENDING ON THEM to know these characters!
We could do this once or twice every Friday, say, and keep a running score for the rest of the term (9 more weeks / innings.)
The winning team gets... something. Some small prize.
What do you think?
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Ok, so here's how that activity meets the psychosocial needs of the beginning students.
First, successfully finding a match is a relatively easy task. The odds of success are high, so it is possible to do SOMETHING that wins social approval of a peer-group, your team. Peer-group approval is at least as powerful, if not more powerful, for this effect, than approval of an authority figure, the teacher.
Second, the rest of the team has to focus emotional energy on helping, urging, boosting, pressuring each member to successfully find a match, and rewarding them with a pulse of social approval when the match is found. For at least some time, they have to take on a nurturing, supportive, encouraging role to each other. This has a persistent lingering effect on both parties, those having that role, and those being held by it.
Third, these effects compound, in a closed feedback system, because the people you are boosting and adding morale to and encouraging to be stronger are, in fact, the same people who will turn around and be boosting you -- but now they will be boosting you in a stronger, more encouraged way.
Fourth, a clear message is sent to the brain's wiring that this type of associative recall has some time-pressure on it. It has to not just be recalled, it has to be recalled QUICKLY. In an era of school systems that don't teach mastery learning, this is a hard lesson to find a way to teach, that the recall needs to get faster, faster, faster, until it becomes effectively instantaneous and effortless.
Fifth, even experiencing this on a regular basis in class, such as once every friday, for all of 5 minutes (2.5 minutes per team), is sufficient to keep it "hot" in the brain, making it much easier to practice this exact same skill off-line, out of class, but now in a virtual social context where, with every successful "hit" or match, the brain is ALSO adding the psychosocial FLAVOR element that "AHH, THAT will make me more attractive to my peer group and make them happier with me as a team member!"
So the lessons that are being laid down are not just that this character has this meaning and this sound, but that knowing this character boosts my social standing in a tangible way, more so ever week, so the brain should keep on working on it in background mode even when the conscious attention goes off to work on other things. We expect to find, and I'm sure we will, that a great deal of BETWEEN-LESSON learning takes place. A grid that takes an average of 4.5 minutes to do today, revisited tomorrow, with no conscious work inbetween, will amost certainly take LESS THAN 4.5 minutes tomorrow, possibly 20% less time.
For me, the same grid took about 8 minutes the first day, 5 minutes the second day, 4 minutes for two days, and suddenly dropped to 2 minutes after two days off.
Also, this is just a satisfying activity -- the ratio of pulses of success to failure pulses is high. Not only that, but due to the nature of the game, removing some characters makes the remaining ones MORE EASY to match up, because there is less and less competition. So, again, there is a compounding effect, in that success leads to even MORE success.
So we have multiple, compounding, socially validated, socially encouraged feedback loops pushing on an associative-link formation in the brain, which is exquisitely wired to make exactly such links. The better the OTHER people on the team get, by the way, the higher the bar is raised, gradually, raising expectations on each of the team members to get faster and faster as well.
All of the mathematics works. This forms a grid that attracts, holds, persists, and evolves a stronger and stronger sense of certainty, confidence, and socially approved recall behavior.
Fluency at character and phrase recognition then takes that burden OFF the part of the brain needed to deal with grammar and other cognitive portions of language, and puts those into a socially supportive soup of confidence where THEY, in turn, can take root and find a home, which then releases further confidence and energy back into vocabulary building and fluency acquisition.
Oh, yeah, -- I included the picture of fresh baked chocolate chip cookies, mmm mmm good,
just to demonstrate the power of associative context to change the mood and feeling around a subject. It works! Your "rational" self may not see the difference, but the social animal host you are riding around it surely does.
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