Stephen Brewer
If you haven’t memorised it, you ain’t learned it: enhancing students’ memory & memory strategiesA teacher’s main job is to design and orchestrate learning situations. Students need space in the classroom that allows them to explore, enact action possibilities, and develop competent language skills from within. Teachers transform their students’ “enaction potential” by optimizing their memory for language. This session is part theory and part activity-based. This workshop is rooted in the premise that language learning can only take place provided learners can bring forth or enact “holds” in the L2 sound stream that they are exposed to and can use to co-construct meaning with others. This idea is not very different from the notion of “holds” that a rock-climber uses to scale a rock face. According to this enactive perspective, learning only occurs as a result of mutual interaction between the learner’s sensorimotor and cognitive capabilities and the perceived environment. Such an inside-out view of language learning does not minimize the importance of the environment or situation that teachers design and bring to bear on their students’ enactive capabilities. However, any potential “holds” inherent in the didactic environment can only emerge from the learner’s personal engagement with them. In this respect, memory plays an essential role in expanding students’ abilities to enact greater numbers of “holds” and thus function effectively in the various linguistic contexts they are immersed in. Memory strategies are also believed to significantly enhance enactive learning potential. Participants will take part in a number of activities that they can use with their students.
If you haven’t memorised it, you ain’t learned it: enhancing students’ memory & memory strategiesA teacher’s main job is to design and orchestrate learning situations. Students need space in the classroom that allows them to explore, enact action possibilities, and develop competent language skills from within. Teachers transform their students’ “enaction potential” by optimizing their memory for language. This session is part theory and part activity-based. This workshop is rooted in the premise that language learning can only take place provided learners can bring forth or enact “holds” in the L2 sound stream that they are exposed to and can use to co-construct meaning with others. This idea is not very different from the notion of “holds” that a rock-climber uses to scale a rock face. According to this enactive perspective, learning only occurs as a result of mutual interaction between the learner’s sensorimotor and cognitive capabilities and the perceived environment. Such an inside-out view of language learning does not minimize the importance of the environment or situation that teachers design and bring to bear on their students’ enactive capabilities. However, any potential “holds” inherent in the didactic environment can only emerge from the learner’s personal engagement with them. In this respect, memory plays an essential role in expanding students’ abilities to enact greater numbers of “holds” and thus function effectively in the various linguistic contexts they are immersed in. Memory strategies are also believed to significantly enhance enactive learning potential. Participants will take part in a number of activities that they can use with their students.