I am discussing language learning via the web with a group of ESL teachers. I questioned the ability and usefulness of teaching "collaboration, creativity, problem solving, critical thinking skills etc." on the grounds that it just interferes with language learning. Here is one response.

"I am a language learner. I have learned and continue to learn French and German and I still fail to see how collaboration, creativity, problem solving, critical thinking skills etc., don't help students learn. As a learner, I've had to use all of those skills when learning two new languages - whether I was writing, reading, listening or speaking. As learners, these skills are important and can't be ignored in language acquisition either.   Listening occurs in multiple 'acts' - the two that immediately come to mind are listening for information and reciprocal listening. Both types of listening require that the student be able to problem solve, think critically, access and process information almost in motion - they have to be able to do this while they are listening to a language - listening as part of language acquisition doesn't negate the need for 'skills' but rather a different application of skills. The same can be said for reading. Listening and reading within the language being learned is definitely important but I don't think we lose helping our students use the other skills as well especially if we want them to comprehend, understand and apply what they have read and heard.

I'm not disputing that listening and reading are essential parts, but I don't think they're only parts."

Any comments here?

Comments

[Katie]

Maybe my English isn't so good, but is this person saying that when you are speaking (thinking in) your non-native language, you are less intelligent than you are in your native langauge, and need to be taught how to think all over again? What went wrong in my childhood? I don't remember being taught how to think the first time.

My biggest struggle as a language learner is -- and I know this might sound shocking -- not understanding what the heck is being said, or what I am reading. Second to this is finding the words to convey what I would like. This isn't because I don't know how to think; it's because I lack the vocabulary.

Again, maybe I don't speak English that well, having never formally been taught how to think in it. Yes, we had "critical thinking" in high school, but I do not recall it being at all helpful in my own acquisition of my native language.

Also, my parents and grandparents never were taught how "to think critically." English was my grandmother's second language, meanwhile, and she spoke it fine. Her thinking capacity seemed relatively normal to me. We could talk about all sorts of subjects. It was as if thinking came naturally to her. I understand it's quite the phenomenon in humans, this thinking.

Also, since I can't stop: I took a literature class in Spanish at the local JC, and I believe they were trying to teach us how to think. We'd spend most of the class debating in Spanish, badly. The class was a waste of time for me as far as language learning went. I had to do that part on my own.

[John Fotheringham]

Well put, Katie. Krashen made the same case in his talk I saw here in Taipei a while back.

[Kevin Geoghegan]

Yeah, it's an obvious fallacy to suggest you think using language, otherwise babies wouldn't be able to think. And animals too. I can't see how practising "collaboration, creativity, problem solving, critical thinking skills etc." would help language acquisition much, although they sound nice objectives. That's the problem with that type of advice - they *expand* the problem of language learning by advising you to try lots of different activities. But you're only dissipating your efforts doing that.

[John Fotheringham]

Check out Steven Pinker's "The Language Instinct" for more on how humans do NOT think in language.

[ReadyReckoner]

I think you let your respondent off too lightly by arguing that training in this sort of "cognitive skills" is unhelpful for language learning - it is unhelpful and woolly minded, full stop.

It's one thing to analyse the processes involved in, say, learning a language and conclude that it involves collaboration, problem solving, and so on. But it does not follow from that that variations in performance between individuals are explained by different levels of attainment in relation to those processes, nor that those processes can usefully be taught. I suspect that when you examine things closely enough you will see that all human beings have to do those things to conduct their everyday lives - you can't learn a language without collaboration and problem solving, but nor can you go to the shops to buy dinner for the family. For this reason I think these things are best described not as cognitive skills - which can be learned and which some people master better than others - but as cognitive processes, which are simply part of how the human mind functions.

I do think language teachers, like any other teachers, can pass on skills and tips specific to the subject being taught - say, for example, that it is easier to learn a group of words if you search for a common root - but I have yet to see evidence that teaching generalised "cognitive skills" improves performance generally. In other words, I think you are right - it is simply distracting.

[Roberta King]

Well, I don't think you always have to specifically teach these skills, but using them is part of the learning process. It also depends upon what age students are and their previous experience. Many times I get highschool and university students who don't appear to know how to think and this is in their native language, never mind their second language. When you ask them a question, they cannot think of a response, usually because they have never been asked to really think about anything. They have been spoon-fed since beginning school, were rewarded for parroting the teacher and discouraged from forming opinions. I believe that critical thinking needs to be encouraged from early childhood in one's mother tongue which will then become a skill that can be transferred to learning another language.

[Mike]

I think that "collaboration, creativity, problem solving, critical thinking skills etc" help most students learn, but not for any of the reasons given in the quote you posted. That is just a bunch of sophisticated-sounding B.S.

Lets be honest. As you've posted before, most students taking a language course don't learn much. They don't care, they aren't interested. So what do these hi-faluting abstractions boil down to? They are ways to break thru the shell. "Collaboration" is a 10-dollar word for getting people to do things together. Well, if you're in a class and the assignment is to do something as a group in their target language, you're forcing people to use the language whether they really want to or not. It's social pressure. So even if its something as simple as pointing to an object in the class and saying "that is a X", when it's your turn you have to remember something you've learned and point to it. We know that practice cements learning, and this is forced practice. Calling it "collaboration" is a PhD thesis description of something trivial, same as what every other buzzword in the excerpt really means.

So don't take those things literally as if they're sophisticated concepts; all they mean is "we need to do something to get those kids to stop sitting there daydreaming".

[Steve Kaufmann]

Well put, RR.

[tuyota]

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