Category Archives: Education

Breaking the shackles of the timetable

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In my blog on 6th June I trumpeted the news that a school in the North of England had contacted me to discuss using Breakthrough to Learning in their school.

Three teachers from the school came down to Birmingham on 21st May, and what was my amazement to be told that they had already timetabled in Breakthrough to Learning in every year of the school from next September. This was something different! How was it that a school could respond to the needs of the pupils instead of fitting the pupils into the iron framework of the subject-based school timetable?

Since then I have been in constant touch with the school and have been pursuing the articles and websites they have sent me. I am still working on this, but have to share with my readers immediately a very exciting website:

www.learningfutures.org

 

 

 

 

Metaphor

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There are two ways of making abstract words from concrete words: one is nominalisation and the other is metaphor.

When I was working on the structure of abstract  language, I found it hard to flush into consciousness the metaphors embedded in everyday language. For example, we have no way of conceptualising time except by using a metaphor from space. (For instance, the chemist’s is between the grocery and the optician. The meeting is between 2.00 and 4.00.) For me as an adult, the processing of these metaphors had become automatic.

I’ve been reading a recent book on metaphor: I is an Other  by James Geary. He desribes research which indicates that children develop an understanding of different kinds of metaphor at different ages. Continue reading →

Teaching the target language

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I want to pick up my description of the theoretical foundation of the Wigan Language Project, which I gave in my blogs entitled: Applied Linguistics (June 11) and Applied Linguistics and Breakthrough to Learning (June 18).

The Target Language of Breakthrough to Learning was Academic English, the language needed for success in secondary school subjects across the curriculum. Following the methods of Applied Linguistics, I analysed the linguistic features of this variety of language, and then systematically taught them in the three books of Breakthrough to Learning. The systematic use of the course doubled the percentage of pupils gaining five or more GCSE’s grades A-C across the curriculum.

The effectiveness of the course was shown when the course was abandoned: the results dropped back in line with the parts of the course which the exam cohorts had studied in their first years in secondary school. Continue reading →

Interactive peer group learning

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This week’s blog continues Bob Farmer’s contribution. He applies his ideas on interactive peer group learning to teaching The Language of Ideas:

Low academic language skills have been shown to be associated with low academic performance in a variety of educational settings. Mary Mason’s computer package The Language of Ideas is a based on the principle that one of the differences between successful and unsuccessful students is that students who succeed have learned the abstract language of ideas. In order to get qualifications in any subject, therefore, students need more than good exam technique, they also need to learn about and raise their level of academic language skills. Continue reading →

Interactive Peer Group Learning

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I’m delighted to put up as this week’s blog a piece by Professor Bob Farmer. (Who is he? See at the end of the blog.)

Professor Eric Mazur is a distinguished Harvard physicist with a deep interest in teaching and learning. In the past, as a traditional university lecturer, he was successful in helping his classes achieve better than average grades and his clear lectures and demonstrations were highly rated by his students. More recently, however, Professor Mazur came to the staggering conclusion that his success as a teacher ‘was a complete illusion, a house of cards’.

Continue reading →

Applied Linguistics and Breakthrough to Learning

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In my last blog I showed how Teachers of English as a Foreign Language had abrogated to their profession  the title of Applied Linguistics.

The idea of applying these insights to the language of native speakers of English was squashed for a generation by well-meaning but dogmatic linguists in the sixties, who excoriated Basil Bernstein’s early work which had suggested that the difference between educated and less well- educated pupils in English secondary schools might be a linguistic deficit in the language of working-class children.

Unlike those linguists, I had substantial experience in teaching a mixture of middle and working-class pupils in English secondary schools, and I always thought that it was a shame that Bernstein’s early work was not followed up. Continue reading →

Applied Linguistics

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One of the most exciting and useful intellectual developments in the twentieth century was the establishment of the study of language as a science. To distinguish it from the abundance of earlier ideas about language, the modern study was called Linguistics. This consisted, first of all, of a scientific description of the language system – mostly, English. A number of models were developed – Chomsky’s Transformational-Generative Grammar, Pike’s Tagmemics and the one which I found most useful for descriptive purposes, Halliday’s Systemics.

The practical application of the new linguistics was eagerly taken up by teachers of English as a Foreign Language under the title of Applied Linguistics. Continue reading →

Jubilee!

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Better for the young people of this country – and the world – than the Queen’s Jubilee is the news that a secondary school in the North of England has taken up Breakthrough to Learning and is preparing to use it throughout the school from September!

My last blog recommended a lecture on the revolution in education by Professor Eric Mazur. It is exactly the same message as the ethos of this school. I quote from a pamphlet handed out to new teachers at the school:

We are about learning. We are unusual in that. So much time and energy in schools is spent on pursuing teaching standards, exam grades, league table positions etc. that, in reality, little time is left for learning. Continue reading →

Is education about teaching or learning?

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwslBPj8GgI&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Above is a site that anyone interested in education should view and rejoice in. It is a lecture by Eric Mazur, a Harvard Professor of Physics, entitled Confessions of a Converted Lecturer. He observes what many of us have noted – that, although printing has been around for four centuries, teaching is still based on the practice of a time when oral transmission from teacher to pupil was the only method of passing the knowledge and culture of a community from generation to generation. Continue reading →

Intellectual property and the internet

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I’ve been reading a very interesting article describing some experimental work in Australia by teachers improving the literacy of their pupils through the new technology of computers. *

No doubt, since 1998 many other teachers everywhere in the world have embraced the new technology, especially younger teachers who themselves grew up with computers. Because I recognise that the future must lie with these amazing new tools, I took advantage of the success of the book form of The Language of Ideas to rewrite it as an interactive computer course (www.languageofideas.co.uk)

My decision to make the Breakthrough to Learning courses available online has already borne fruit: this week a secondary school has contacted me for ways of implementing it throughout their school. Continue reading →