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by R. Subasinghe

Learning is a tedious process in traditional learning in which both the teacher and the learner have to be tensed even for little proportions. Students do not get enough opportunities to give outlets to their emotions in such learning, where emotional involvement is a necessary requirement in the learning process.

Teachers exhibit their negative emotions of anger or impatience at times that are not conducive for 'humanistic learning', the influence of which is evident in the methodology of modern education systems. The role the emotions play in learning is not paid adequate attention in traditional teaching and learning.

Therefore, a search has to be made in looking for a method of teaching English Language by making use of emotions in a positive manner. According to such a methodological approach, students ought to get opportunities to give outlets to their emotions in the process of learning, that makes what is learnt to be firmly stabilized in their minds.

In traditional teaching, generally, the teacher was concerned only with the ability of the student in his or her rational thinking. However, according to the new approach we suggest to use in teaching, the ability of the student has to be aroused always by one or many emotions.

Learning process has to be supported always by strong or weak impulses of emotions creating feelings of release to the students from those emotions, giving them happiness or enjoyment with the discoveries of learning instead of stress or boredom.

This would make what is learnt to get a firm hold in the students' minds. Because of such release, students would love the lessons and the learning process and be really involved in learning with only the required proportion of conscious effort. While improving the confidence thus gained, they pick up the langauge structures without any unwanted conscious interference.

Based on this background referring to emotions, stress and how they were involved in traditional teaching, let us now consider some of the important methodological features that have to be considered in teaching a language in a modern classroom.

i. Complete learning process: Three stages in the learning process have to be recognized which have to be completed in making the learning process to complete.

These three stages are recognition, process and production. Although recognition of these three stages are important in learning other subjects too, here we illustrate them only as they relate to the learning of English language.

1. Recognition

Recognition of the language structure/item by the input taken from eyes and ears

2. Process

a. Thinking alone how to use the structure (without knowing they do so)

b. Thinking and discussing at the same time with the other students in groups.

3. Production

Responding to what is recognized, thought and discussed in completing the learning process

In a university student's learning process she or he:

i. Listens to a lecture (recognition)

ii. Reads or thinks or writes down in note form what is learnt, or discussing with his or her colleagues at a later time. Writing in note form may be done at the same time as listening to the lecture or while reading. (process)

iii. Writes down notes or a tutorial or gives an oral presentation in completing the learning process (production)

When a university student takes down notes while listening to a lecture, it is making the learning process complete within the lecture room itself. The following illustration is to explain this point.

In learning, listening and reading are receptive skills and speaking and writing are productive skills. All these four skills, along with the processing skill of 'thinking' are included in these three stages. 'Listening and 'reading' are the stages in 'recognition; 'thinking' is a skill of processing, and 'speaking' and 'writing' can be considered as mixed in the second and the third stages of 'process' and 'production'.

In the traditional classroom only teacher talking was emphasised. Students were supposed to talk, read, think and produce on their own. In a new approach towards teaching methodology, the three stages of recognition, processing and production have to be covered within the teaching period itself so that the learning process is completed then and there.

ii. Thinking process: Students' thinking process, which stage generally occurs before the third stage of responding, has to be considered as central in teaching and learning. It should be fused positively with one or many emotions to make learning meaningful, not stressful, and for the proper subconscious fixation of what is learnt. For this thinking process to take place, students are allowed to discuss in pairs or groups before they respond, which is the active stage of the thinking process. Some students may prefer to think in isolation at this stage.

iii. Linguistic thinking process: A division can be made in the thinking process as non-lingual thinking' and 'lingual (linguistic) thinking'. As for example in 'non-lingual thinking', an instance of recollecting a piece of music that does not contain lyrics can be given. In our experience of such thinking, no lingual element is to be seen.

As an example for linguistic thinking, the thinking process that goes on in a mind when practising to deliver a speech can be given. When we draw inferences from a map or a chart and express them in sentences in a langauge, or give our impressions orally on a piece of music that does not contain lyrics, we are transferring from non-lingual thinking into lingual thinking.

In second or foreign langauge learning, students have an already developed process of linguistic thinking which is expressed in the use of their mother tongue. What should happen in teaching a second or a foreign language is, focusing on this linguistic thinking process in mother tongue and converting it into a thinking process of the target langauge.

For this purpose, students are made to practice the structures of the target langauge in group work while using the mother tongue too. When using both mother tongue and the target langauge, students are not expected to forget or to de-learn the mother tongue to learn the target language, but use one to learn the other.

In such practice, the teachers and the students use the target language as the classroom langauge too. Here, the target langauge is learnt more for instrumental purposes than for integrative purposes. (Stern. - 1963)

iv. Meaningful situations: All activities should be meaningful to the students. When activities are 'meaningful' to students, students ought to feel they do those activities because they want to do them; not because the teacher asks them to do so. Those activities need not be mechanical, or appealing only to the intelligence of the students.

v. Adequate amount: The number of langauge structures introduced and the practising of them need not be too much or too less for a day. If the structures are too many or the practising too much, they have to be considered stress creating; and the expected acquisition process of the structure has to be considered as not taken place. If the structures or the practising are too less, they have to be considered a waste of time.

The ability as to how much students can acquire without being stressful has to be determined by the teacher.

When students show signs of restlessness or disinterestedness, such behaviour can be considered as signs of dealing with too much language input, or the practising has taken too much of time.

vi. Enjoyment: Students ought to feel they play games or they are engaged in enjoyable activities instead of learning. Such enjoyment comes only with proper emotional involvement. We may make a statement here as; the stronger the emotional involvement, the more enjoyable the learning is. We cannot witness the factor of enjoyment without proper emotional involvement.

vii. Process not the product: When a student is encouraged it is for her or his process of learning rather than what she or he has produced that the encouragement should be given. In an instance a weak student is actively involved in the learning process, she or he should be given the same recognition as the clever ones are given. This would not discourage the clever students because clever students too will be involved in the activities similarly, and they could gain more out of their involvement than the weak ones. Their special abilities will be shown in instances like examinations.

This would make the weak students to gain confidence and to feel they are not ignored, and they would feel they are not penalized for their inborn weaknesses. In traditional teaching, weak students did not get opportunities for recognition in the process of learning.

viii. Fluency not accuracy: In evaluating student performances in the learning stages, it is 'fluency', not 'accuracy', which has to be considered. By 'fluency', the ability to employ skills is meant. The more a student employs a skill, the more he or she should be recognize for his or her effort.

Accuracy of what he or she has produced in employing the skills are ignored here. By insisting on 'accuracy' when a student is performing a skill, a teacher disturbs the thinking process of the student, resulting in his or her forgetting what he or she is learning.

In an instance a student is disturbed two or three times while making a speech of five minutes, he or she would have to stop the thinking process so that he or she would have to stop his or her speech too. Such disturbances would only confuse the students making them learn nothing.

By appreciating and encouraging student to practise more and more of the skills involved, disregarding the accuracy of what they produce, students would develop the skill more, thereby learn more too because of the confidence they gain.

A question that can be raised at this point is how a teacher could teach without showing errors or mistakes. When errors are shown, following points can be taken into consideration:

i. Thinking process of learning of the students are not disturbed when showing the errors.

ii. The teacher knows there is enough emotional involvement with the students to comprehend the errors as errors.

iii. The teacher knows how many errors students have the ability to comprehend at one particular period of time.

Common errors repeatedly made by students can be shown to the whole class time to time so that many of them can learn them at one time.

There, errors are allowed to be made for sometime in the class with emotional involvement implicit in them; then the same emotional involvement is used for the students to recognize them as errors. Such showing of errors has to be considered as another step forward in learning rather than as a step backward.

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