A danger in ESL: Personalization can be too personal

In almost every unit of almost every ESL textbook, there is a part where students use the grammar or vocabulary to describe themselves or their experiences.  Even without a textbook, teachers quite properly, try to elicit personal statements from their students.  Usually, this is a good idea.

On his blog, “An A-Z of ELT, Thornbury discusses where these discussions could take you:

In his novel, The Folding Star, Alan Hollinghurst (1994) recounts how the protagonist, a young Englishman recently arrived in a Belgian town, sets himself up as a private English tutor. One of his pupils suffers from asthma, and our hero idly asks him if he knows how he got it.

“I didn’t quite make the story out at first, I was chivvying him and making him repeat words without knowing I was taking him back, like some kinder and wiser analyst, to the scene of a childhood tragedy” (p. 20)

Some of the most personal things I have learned from my students has come from Exam questions and particularly from speaking exams.  At least this is
more private for the student.

However it works out, it is often information I don’t really want to know.

“Surprises [no, my students don't really call me that], my girlfriend and I learned everything about each other’s body that it is possible to know.”

“My boyfriend and I have an intimate relationship.”

“I play Maple Story after school.”

“One goal is to make fantastic love.”

“I like Super Junior.”

Granted, some of these points are not as titillating as others, but none of them do I want to know – and some I disapprove of – fandom of Super Junior, especially!

Back to Thornbury:

When I first encountered personalization it was of the type: “Write 5 or more true sentences about yourself, friends or relations, using the word ago“.

This is taken verbatim from Kernel Lessons (O’Neill et al. 1971), one of the first coursebooks I taught from. The fact that the sentences had to be ‘true’ was regularly ignored or overlooked by both teacher and students. The point was not to be ‘truthful’ but creative. Creative and accurate.

This little personalization task invariably came at the tail end of a sequence of activities whose rationale was the learning and practice of a pre-selected item of grammar. The personalization was really just a pretext for a little bit of creative practice, as well as serving as a first, tentative step towards translating the language of the classroom into the language of ‘real life’.

It’s hard to explain to a student that the truth is not required, only that English production is.  And even when that may be understood, sometimes the english is a little off, so you need to ask questions to clear up the meaning of words and phrases.  Now, I am requiring the student to continue and complicate their possibly made up story.  Is this english or interrogation class?

Thornbury makes only a limited conclusion and finishes with a question:

…Arguably, by foregrounding ‘what really matters to a person’, personalization both motivates and scaffolds these adaptive processes.

So, how do we accommodate the need for personalization into our classes? And – more importantly – how do we deal with learner resistance to it?

Perhaps we need to encourage and explain the option of creating a story.  Instead of, “What does your home look like?”, we should ask the student to “Describe a home that you would like to live in.” or ask students in the dorms -which we already have some knowledge of – to describe them.

She wrote it but it's not hers

I don't follow YA vampire stories much.  My sister was reading the Twilight series-possible for some school-based reason as she is a high school English teacher- and was embarrassed when I looked it over and began reading it.

Still, as I learned from my attempts at Nanowrimo, putting words to page is not easy, and writing any story creates a strong personal connection with that story.

L.J Smith - author of vampire Diaries, has been fired by Harper Collins and now a ghost writer will continue the series.  The blog post I read was unclear whether Smith's name will continue to be on the cover.  Either she will still be listed as the author or it will say something like, "Created by L.J. Smith".

On the one hand, the contractual details were there to find, if she knew how to read legalese and had some experience as a writer.  She was hired by Harper Collins to provide a series of stories, the titles and cover images of which had already been selected.  I guess the simplest way to look at it is that she was the surrogate mother...no, she actively provided more information to the 'baby' than the 'parents' did.

Two excerpts from the post:

She isn’t allowed to write another word of a series that belongs to her, a series that she has spent years writing and creating and putting her heart into because Harper suddenly decided they don’t want her to write anymore. And now a random ghostwriter (who’s skills and voice could never even remotely live up to L.J’s) is taking over.  

...[ this is a big ellipsis]  

I had no idea that these type of things can happen to a published author. So to those of you who are going to be published or hope to be published one day—read everything in the contract and beextra alert. Even if the publisher has a good name/reputation don’t let them fool you into thinking everything’s fine and dandy where legal terms are involved. Stay on top of things and make sure you are informed on everything that's going on. That means keeping close tabs and getting constant updates from your agent.

I've read some crappy self-published novels and much appreciate the editing at a publishing house provides.  Still, this is pretty grim news and I suspect that while it is bad news for Smith, it will also be so for Harper Collins and major publishing houses in general.  I sure hope all other options were explored before this one was chosen.
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Via a post on Google+ by Wil Wheaton.  I don't know if I can link to it from here. Try it.

I want this office.

Wade Davis, the 'explorer-in-residence' for National Geographic has a beautiful office.  I'm sure that if I had it, once I tired of climbing the ladder to view my books, I could be very productive.
Photo from Travis Price Architects.

Another from Washington Life:

Creative and content knowhow

Via Boingboing,  a link to an article on two types of knowledge, both important in the creation of new products.

The article features an air pistol with an air-pressure gauge built into the reservoir. The problem is, the gauge is at the end of the gun, directly below the barrel.  You must point the gun directly at your own forehead to check the pressure.

Technically, I don't think you could put the gauge on the side.  I am not sure where you could put it, but if a pistolry expert had spoken with the design expert, this design might have been cancelled.

Sudden Genius?

In Sudden Genius; the gradual path to creative breakthroughs,  Robinson explores the lives of ten geniuses; five scientists and five artists, to see if he can find any common threads to how, why and what makes a genius.

He starts by spending some time explaining his definition of 'genius', which  isn't easy.  He settled on the ten in his book as they are all considered geniuses even if what a genius is is not clear.

"An individual is judged to be 'creative', psychometrically speaking, if he or she can consistently produce a spectrum of divergent responses to a request, of which a proportion are markedly different from the responses of other individuals.  but not too different, otherwise they are not recognizable as answers to the request." (page 24)

He briefly looked at creativity tests, and I have linked to some in the past on this blog.  His research showed that they were measuring something, but it wasn't precisely creativity.  He wrote that subjects who took the test years apart typically scored the same but that a high score on the test did not make the subject particularly creative in real life.  They are quite similar to IQ tests, which have the same characteristics.

Turns out, geniuses don't have much in common.

"If creativity researchers have proved anything about 'a' creative personality, it is that beneath a huge variety of external behaviors, often unconventional, all highly creative people preserve a steely, autonomous determination." (5% - Kindle provided page numbers for my other quotes but not this one.)

Geniuses were driven people, who worked long hours, entirely by choice.

Oh, and many geniuses suffered the death of a parent or other traumatic family experience in their youth:

"Various explanations have been proposed by psychologists.  One suggestion is that creative achievement, delinquency, and suicide should all be viewed as dissatisfied responses to the society that took away the life of the parent. By criticizing or attacking existing social beliefs and practices, creative achievement enables an individual to develop in an independent, nonconformist way, rejecting society's rules and regulations." (Page 258)

This reminds me a researcher discussing why orangutan orphans began catching and eating fish, but wild ones did not.  I cannot find a link and the researcher was only offering an opinion, but he felt that these orphaned orangutans were not held back or meddled with by adults as they grew up.

Although many scientific breakthroughs necessarily come from collaboration, creative breakthroughs generally do not:

"Thus collaboration and teamwork tend not to be a feature of the lives of the exceptionally creative - inconvenient though this fact may be for advocates of 'brainstorming' and 'group creativity' in commercial companies and other institutions." (Page 265)

And where does formal education fit in?  Darwin hated school and Mozart was home-schooled.

"Can formal education ever instill this kind of exceptional creativity?  Not on the evidence of past geniuses.  In Professor Eysenck's parting shot at the academic system at the end of his study Genius, he writes, "The best service we can do to creativity is to let it bloom unhindered, to remove all impediments, and cherish it whenever we encounter it.  We probably cannot train it, but we can prevent it from being suffocated by rules, regulations, and envious mediocrity." (Page 278)

The book offered few suggestions on how to turn my son into a genius, but at the same time it did let me know what would be a waste of time.

Shocks to increase learning

No, not shocks as a punishment for misbehaving students.

There is research into how shocking some parts of the brain increases learning ability.

Some felt that the shocks quieted conscious parts of the brain so subjects wouldn't overthink their activities.  I think that is possible but wonder - the great thing about learning only a fraction of the actual research and information- if the shock could have erased some of the early prejudices and doctrines of the activity so that the subject could start afresh without misconceptions getting in the way.  A swimmer who has swum tens of kilometres using poor arm position needs to forget what he has been doing to change it.

Anyway, maybe electroshock is a shortcut. Time will tell.

failing Malls - what to do with them?

Being a fan of the genre, I immediately imagine using them as sanctuaries against the coming zombie hordes.

Via Boingboing, I found they are a real problem - malls falling into disuse, not zombie hordes.

Boingboing links to an article in the New York Times. An excerpt:

Cleveland’s Galleria at Erieview, like many malls across the country, is suffering. Closed on weekends because there are so few visitors, it is down to eight retail stores, eight food-court vendors and a couple of businesses like the local bar association.

So part of the glass-covered mall is being converted into a vegetable garden.“I look at it as space, I don’t look at it as retail,” said Vicky Poole, a Galleria executive. “You can’t anymore.”

Before looking at the rest, what uses can I come up with in three minutes: Before I start, let me get mallwalking out of the way.  It's a good idea, but it's not mine.
GO:

1. Other athletic activities requiring space but not equipment - hula hooping, roller blading...
2. indoor farmers market
3. outdoor gear set up area - learn how to set up your tent
4. learn how to fix your bike and other educational uses
5. oops, that last one is pretty big
6. day care
7. PSA poster area
8. Picnic shelter in case of rain
9. new location for libraries - problem - conflict with local bookstore
10. smoking area

Times up.

Huh.  I don't smoke and dislike the habit in others.  I guess desperation led to me adding it to the list.

Alright, lets see what ideas the article had in addition to the vegetable garden one above (which I really like).  This is the heart of the article so I will excerpt cautiously - please follow the link for more:

Schools, medical clinics, call centers, government offices and even churches are now standard tenants in malls. By hanging a curtain to hide the food court, the Galleria in Cleveland, which opened in 1987 with about 70 retailers and restaurants, rents space for weddings and other events. Other malls have added aquariums, casinos and car showrooms.
...
Even at many malls that continue to thrive, developers are redesigning them as town squares — adding elements like dog parks and putting greens, creating street grids that go through the malls, and restoring natural elements like creeks that were originally paved over.

I like the ideas in the above paragraph as they were completely absent from my list.  They are summed up as “Basically they’re building the downtowns that the suburbs never had,”  said Ellen Dunham-Jones...    I lived on the outskirts of a small town with highly spread out properties but I knew all of our neighbors and would have liked to be able to sit out on the porch and talk with passers-by.  A spacious indoor play area for kids, where parents could also feel comfortable would be welcome even though I can imagine liability insurance would be a challenge.

Oh, one other addition was a 'Wait Room', where people could have a coffee or beer and use computers while their significant other shopped.  And on page two you can read about how the indoor garden fared -good and interesting stuff.

I had been sure I could find a few blog posts on derelict shopping malls here in South Korea but after a short Google search I could find none.

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Challenge for my reader(s): what else could be done with failing malls?  Quick, to the comments!