Effective Language Teaching Methods - Research Paper Example

?means of teaching first year ab initio level Italian. The are honours degree level in Culinary Arts. The documentary is called 'Jamie Oliver - the Great Escape. I use the DVD version but it is also available on youtube. This documentary is proving very useful on a numbe of different levels. Firstly, it focuses on what the students are most interested in - food and cooking. It also introduces them to six different regions of Italy, to the culutre of eating in Italy and the language. The documentary is mainly in English, with some Italian spoken occasionally and they learn while enjoying themselves. Engaging Language Learners by Making the Learning Real It is well documented in cognitive science that learning does not take place until it is either shared or applied. Therefore, a major problem in language learning is its lack of reality. By engaging foreign language learners in real activities that use the target language the learning can be enhanced and accelerated. This study covers the use of Videos in the major interest field of third year culinary arts students to help them learn Italian. By using Educational Videos created for other educational aims, such as learning cooking techniques, the language learning becomes part of the engaging activity in their major interest and seems incidental. A study using Jamie Oliver’s Great Escapes to teach Ab Intio Italian to third year culinary students shows great potential for combining students’ major interest with Ab Intio language learning. It can both accelerate the language acquisition and enhance the major subject, especially with vocabulary, since the words presented are those the students already use quite frequently. The documentary is not entirely in Italian, but incorporates many useful words for cooking into the dialogue as techniques are demonstrated visually. Since any text that is focused upon one subject will be limited in vocabulary to that subject, the target set of terms becomes naturally smaller and easier to learn. Rather like scaffolding, this makes a connection with something in which the student has an intense interest creating a reality and allowing the students to actually to share and apply the language to their every day activities. It also has the effect of increasing interest in the language, thus motivating the students. Using Jamie Oliver’s Great Escapes Videos to Teach Ab Intio Italian There are 250 articles in the EBSCO database about Jamie Oliver, so he is definitely a popular television star chef. In looking at the series Jamie’s Great Escapes it is easy to understand why. His shows are not just about cooking, but include history and culture and authentic Italian language. By integrating visual images with written text, digital stories can be used to enhance and accelerate student comprehension (Burmark, 2004; Robin, 2008). Making content and connections relevant to students’ lives helps bring meaning and purpose to instruction in all content areas. Dewey (1912) challenged educators to meet students where they are, and these students are in the kitchen. By using a documentary series that focuses upon what most interest these students, the learners are engaged and motivated to learn what is important to the understanding of their craft. If we look carefully at these documentary episodes we see that they make the language very real. It is part of the cooking and the culture. Food is an intimate part of any culture, as is languages. Therefore it is no surprise that they go well together. They are central to who we are and understanding this idea helps us understand why these videos work so well. The lives of these students center around food. That is the center of their culture as culinary arts students. However, in order to become really great chefs, they must understand the food they cook and the culture in which it developed. In the first episode, Jamie Oliver says, himself, that he went to Italy to learn about the food and culture, to get away from his hectic life and absorb the Italian ways with food. This is probably why these videos seem so engaging and accessible to the students. Any teacher, in order to teach well, must understand learning and teaching intimately. One such understanding is that the content of any lesson must be real and important to the student (Bird 2005, 311). When using these videos, the students are learning on two or more levels. They learn the bits of Italian that are there, simply because the terms are either concerned with cooking or culture. One at a time, six different regions of Italy are explored, and the viewer learns that rationality is heavily embedded into Italian culture, especially in the food. In each one Jaime Oliver presents the important foods, and the culture in which they are shaped and the languages in which they are expressed. From these the students begin to understand the food and the language, and how closely they are bound. Many of the terms used in the series are special words for Italian cooking and many of these have actually become English expressions. This fact points out the close relationship between Italian and English, and the students can pick up on this to aid their memory of vocabulary and of some of the grammar. Most of the Italian in the series is spoken by the native speakers, though Jamie Oliver uses a few phrases and is sometimes corrected by his friends. By beginning with these words, a lesson can contain more related words which are also pertinent to the subject matter. I have used these episodes to get students to translate and learn the phrases for the cooking directions within any episode. As time passes it may be more exact to use some of these terms while they cook, since they are specific to the food and techniques of Italy. Another use of individual videos is a discussion of the culture and the food localized to that area, and important component in home language learning, as cultural significance give the words power and importance (Fitzsimmons and Lanphar 2011, 35). The students are asked to discuss what they see in the video, the scenery, the streets or food, or any other interesting points in simple Italian. In this way, the vocabulary is reinforced by visual representation and new synapses are created to make these connections. It is also possible that an unseen connection is being made to the students’ memory of the aromas of the different foods, though there is no way to prove this. To cover this possibility I included words describing all five senses in the vocabulary lessons. Normal memories are often attached to smells and textures, so why not intentionally create them that ways. In fact, I even asked the students to think and talk about the different tastes, textures and smells (Lee 2009, 57). This kind of discussion was very helpful to the students and they were engaged. They discussed questions about ingredients and what changes they might make. Previous to using these videos, these honors students did not know any more about the origins of the Italian dishes they were learning than points on a map of Italy. Following their discussion as we covered the different locales in the series I found that they made many connections between the locale and its geography and the ingredients and cooking techniques. Other cooking videos do not usually give enough information for these kinds of discussions. It furthers language by extending their use of Italian to describe the different places, but also makes more connections as they talk about it as they watch the video again. They also began sharing their personal impressions of certain ingredients. All of these areas of discussion using as much Italian as possible increased interest and engagement, and simulated a certain reality that is never present in using text alone (Lee 2009, 57). There are some differences in seeing the food prepared in a video that are not possible in a cookbook. For example, in these videos, the Italian is subtitled in English and this reinforces the auditory learning a s does the visual impression of the video. Another benefit is that the students can see the words pronounced by native speakers and mimic the ways they hold their mouths, lips, and teeth. So the learning takes place on all levels at the same time (Harji, Woods, and Alavi 2010, 37). Another thing which is not in the cookbooks is the information about the cooking tools and stoves. One of the videos in Italy had a super hot charcoal oven and the food is placed one a metal pallet on the end of a pole to get it into the oven. Jamie has to throw away some food he made that was overcooked. Duplicating a recipe is not always easy when you are using different equipment from the traditional. Due to safety regulations we have stoves in most places where flash cooking is not possible. A few restaurants, such as traditional pizza ovens have specially built traditional equipment, but extra measures must be taken for fire prevention. Another thing which Jamie does in improvise when he does not have the equipment he is used to using. For example, he created an oven by sandwiching a large baking pan full of orchette between a standing charcoal grill and a large pan fill with hot charcoal on top, wrapping the whole in foil. Talking about something like this is Basic Italian can stretch the students’ use of vocabulary well beyond the learned phrases. It is necessary to learn to create with a language to really master it quickly (Nikitina 2010, 90). Language is something so basic that we learn it before we know we are learning. Young children are not afraid of experimenting with words and sounds. It is as we get older that we seem to develop a need to be correct the first time we use new words. Though we still do not know the exact mix for children to learn, we know that they may practice dozens of times before they select the combinations which get the desired response. As adults we do not want to waste so much time and we cannot tolerate being wrong twenty times before we get it right. We simply have no patience. When learning a new skill is coupled with practicing a well learned skill the new skill is not so traumatic, since the learner is demonstrating the previously learned skill extremely well and confidently. The secondary skill is not the focus and it becomes more like the garnish on a great meal. I have seen the culinary students practice their new Italian while they cooked Italian and correcting each other and laughing. I think that this experience carried over to their main love is, perhaps, more important than the actual language lessons (Nikitina 2011, ). Using the videos created a realistic environment and practicing as they work in the kitchen becomes a totally authentic environment as they are trying to communicate with the new language in a very real and related situation. Story is a major component of this kind of learning style. Something about story binds people closer than informational communication alone. In these videos the students are travelling with a highly respected chef, watching him worry, make mistakes and learn and they identify with him as a character. They also know that his Italian is not perfect and he struggles to understand, so they, as audience, struggle with him, straining to understand the Italian without looking at the subtitles. Then when they succeed they get a rush of pleasure far stronger than any response to simple answering of questions in a classroom or making up a conversation for practice. Just as people are immersed in movies to the point that they feel enough fear to emote, enough joy to grin and enough sadness to cry with the characters, immersing students into videos which capture their attention with interesting content and story causes a strong emotional response, and that reaction makes them remember. I have always believed that learning should be fun to be effective. Now I have had to modify that opinion somewhat since using these videos. Yes fun while learning does increase the effectiveness of the learning, but so does the incitement of other strong emotions . It is shown in research that “…emotional information is favoured in terms of attention (Vuilleumier,Armony, & Dolan, 2003) and memory (Kensinger & Corkin, 2003), and “emotional material may undergo more in-depth processing” (Buchanan et al., 2000; Mitchell, Elliott, Barry, Cruttenden, & Woodruff, 2003) . I believe there must be a chemical component in this, since memory is usually enhanced by emotions, no matter what kind. It does not seem to matter whether the emotional material or vocalizations are positive or negative, they are more strongly remembered (Doan 2010, 1065). If the emotions reach the stage of trauma that changes, as the mind will protect itself, but strong emotions which are less than traumatic enhance learning. However, I still think learning should be fun, because it most often brings the students back for more. The other component which plays an important part in learning from video is narrative (Marston 2011, 16). By deriving meaning from narrative we make sense of our world and create “real life references” Bruner (1987, p.18). V declare that, ‘stories about one’s experiences and the experiences of others are the fundamental constituents of human memory, knowledge and social communication.’ It is how we construct our memories. Therefore, using story in which the students are already interested, as in the story of Jamie Oliver’s travels in Italy has a very positive effect. Leveraging technology to enhance education has been tried in many different ways. In the early years of computer development many projects were tried and failed, mostly due to technical problems with either creation or delivery. Now the technology has reached a stage where it is not only easy to use , but it is easy to combine different technologies in order to create a whole learning environment. Domain learning which is peripheral to procedural learning can be presented in enhanced format for easy absorption and then connected to the procedural learning. This is what using Jamie Oliver’s Great Escapes videos has allowed me to do with these culinary arts students. The major components of learning in the classroom leveraged the use of visual cues, interesting content, language connected to cultural content, emotional reaction and activities based upon what the students saw and enjoyed. Because it was a more authentic learning environment, the students’ vocabulary learning was accelerated and because the language presented was relevant to their lives, the learning carried over to their daily activities in the kitchen. Thus the learning was applied in a natural context and group interaction furthered the reality of its use. While no control group was available, by comparing the assessments at the end of the years with assessments of average first year students, we can infer a positive or negative result. From my own experience I predict that there will be a positive correlation between this group and the average first year Ab Intio Italian language class. If there is no negative correlation, then it is still a valuable method to use, since the students like it. However, all the research in language learning and cognitive processing that I have reviewed indicates that the addition of story, emotional content, visual cues and engaging material will positively reinforce the learning. In future I hope to expand this idea into a whole language type curriculum, attaching video relevant to student career aims in order to enhance language learning. Video creation might be added as another pleasurable and creative activity to balance the more passive viewing of videos. More research needs to be done, especially with control groups, since none were possible here. Interviews with the participants would also enhance the research value. Finally it needs to be tried with other study groups in other procedural educational environments. As yet, I was unable to find anything in the literature concerning the combination of this kind of domain learning with procedural learning, since often the domain learning comes first and is limited to that content which is strictly needed for the procedural learning to be successful. Perhaps studies with other groups doping procedural learning of varying subjects and accompanied by control groups might be done in a larger venue than I had available and yield more information concerning the value of this combination. For my group it was decidedly valuable and it was fun. References Bird, Stephen A. 2005. Language Learning Edutainment: Mixing Motives in Digital Resources. 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