Lesson #1 - Contextual learning - Saturday, 9. December 2017
Roman explained how he was watching an American TV sitcom while he was in Canada. On it, the characters were expecting to "take a trip", which Roman interpreted to mean that they were expecting to go on holiday somewhere or to travel. Instead, one of the characters tripped and fell over. Roman said this surprised him because he was expecting something else. Depending upon the context in the program, "take a trip" could have meant a couple of things. I told him this is the element of surprise, which I believe is an element of contextual learning.
The second way of contextual learning is humiliation. In other words, you learn best by making a fool of yourself and feeling stupid for it. But it works. This happened to me years ago in Poland while I was trying to buy a bottle of red wine. I knew the Polish word for 'dry' (suche), and because I'd been living in the Czech Republic, I knew the Czech word for 'dry' is the same. So I asked the shopkeeper for a bottle of dry red wine. He reached behind him, took a bottle of wine from the shelf, and promptly wiped it 'dry' on his apron before handing it to me. There was an awkward moment of silence during which time the shopkeeper kept a poker face. He must have been dying for a laugh, for I quickly realised the word 'suche' in Polish, though it translates as 'dry', means the opposite of 'wet'. Realising I'd made an error, I felt like an idiot. Finally when he saw my humiliation, the man did burst out laughing, and then added politely, "You mean you wanted a bottle of 'wytrawne' red wine;" that word being the correct word to use when speaking about dry wine. It was an innocent mistake on my part, but I've never forgotten that word to this day. A teacher should never humiliate a student. However, if the student feels a sense of shame from a mistake, then that can help the learning process. That shopkeeper would have made a great teacher. He didn't humiliate me, rather I humiliated myself by my error, and the shopkeeper kindly corrected me.
The third aspect of contextual learning involves the element of humour. Again, using an example from Polish, I was studying Polish and came across a word I couldn't understand nor find in my dictionary. Google Translate didn't exist back then, or I wouldn't have this story to tell. I was dating a Polish woman then, and I saw her father and so asked him. He spoke not a word of English, but he was also a good teacher. He tried explaining the word to me as best he could, but I didn't get it. So he thought for a moment and then I saw a twinkle in his eye. He pointed to the ceiling--the woman's room was directly above us--and said at last, "It means the state of her bedroom." I knew that she had an untidy room, clothes strewn everywhere, so we both burst out laughing. (The word in question was 'bałagan', meaning 'mess'.)
Finally there's what I call, for lack of a better term, "enlightenment". This is a situation in which you did not anticipate learning anything, but by happenstance, you did learn something and you're better off in one way or another because of it. The example I have here took place during one of my daily German lessons in high school. Habitually I sat at the back of the classroom. This was back in the days of those old reel-to-reel film projectors. It came time to watch one of the films we regularly saw about Germany, courtesy of the German consulate. Because I was sitting in the back of the room, I was closest to the electrical outlet. Without any warning at all, my German teacher turned to me, handed me the projector plug, and said, "Bitte steck das in die Steckdose." Instinctively I took the plug and crammed it into the wall socket, realising I'd just heard a word ('die Steckdose') I'd never heard before. I have never heard it since. However, at that moment, I was enlightened. And in the 35 years since that lesson, I have never forgotten that word.
Lessons from the Classroom
The truth is, I've learned that my students are some of the greatest teachers I've ever had. You can learn a lot from students, and as a teacher I believe in putting my students at the center and letting them carry the lesson. My job is to guide and coach them.
It's not surprising, then, that my students have taught me a lot. I've made some notes from my various lessons, and I will share them here.