Thai-English Language Exchange Issues - Essay Example

A Thai-English Language Exchange The Conditions of Learning My narrative is an account of a Thai-English language exchange. For a short period, about three months, I met regularly with a university student of Thai citizenship. I agreed to teach him some English and he agreed to teach me some Thai. The settings were informal. Sometimes we met at a coffee shop. Other times we met at a public place, such as a park or a library. The sessions, in general, lasted no more than an hour. There were three meetings per week. We were of the same general age, but our motivations were clearly different. He wanted to study English to help with his university coursework. My motivation was more casual. I was simply interested in learning a little spoken Thai and a little about Thai culture. I wasn't interested in learning to read or to write Thai. This narrative will concentrate on the application of Cambourne's prerequisites of learning to my language exchange experience. These prerequisites, or conditions of learning, are immersion, demonstration, expectation, responsibility, approximation, employment, response and engagement. As noted by Cambourne, these conditions of learning do not exist in isolation. Rather, these conditions are intertwined. A learner's ability to approximate the target behavior, for instance, may be difficult or impossible absent immersion or demonstration. That said, the eight conditions set forth a clear analytical framework for assessing my Thai-English language exchange. Immersion: My Contextual Lack of Authenticity Immersion refers to the depth and the comprehensiveness of the learning or literacy experience. It refers to the extent to which the learner is saturated by the learning experience. It also involves, in important ways, questions of authenticity. In my case, immersion was gravely lacking. As a result, it was difficult to approximate the modeled behavior, the spoken Thai, and my expectations were consequently diminished. My instructor was a native-speaker of Thai. He was well-educated and well-prepared for our lessons. From the point of view of immersion, however, he was my sole authentic connection to the Thai language. In the background, during our lessons at the coffee shop, there was English music playing on the radio. Everything, from menus to posters on the wall to the conversations at adjoining tables, was in English. Trying to focus on my Thai lessons was at times a distraction. It seemed external to the physical and cultural environment. In short, the lack of the immersion element affected in a significant way my total learning experience. The lack of authenticity and the lack of a broader learning exposure to the learning goals left me feeling a bit hopeless about learning to speak Thai. Demonstration: Creating Realistic and Practical Situations The second condition of learning, the demonstration prerequisite, concerns the modeling of the target behavior. This modeling may be formal or informal. My Thai instructor was rather creative in this respect. He brought magazines to our meetings and used them as teaching aids. I recall one lesson where we studied shopping and prices. He brought a clothing catalogue, a Thai silk catalogue, and a Thai cooking book as teaching aids. He handed me a worksheet in which he had typed English inquiries such as, "How much is a coke", with the Thai equivalent written alongside in English script. He modeled the correct pronunciation, made relevant grammatical distinctions, and created a salesperson-customer role-play for the clothing and silk catalogues and a waiter-customer role-play for the Thai cooking book. We took turns playing each of the roles. This was one of the most beneficial aspects of my learning experience. I was able to demonstrate what I had learned in a fairly realistic way. The context in which I was able to demonstrate my knowledge, based upon my instructor's models, was also quite practical. My instructor downplayed the theory in his presentation and modeling. As we were studying in the coffee shop, he asked how I would order a cup of coffee. To my surprise I was able to do so, though my pronunciation felt awkward. While the lack of immersion influenced me in a negative manner, the emphasis that my instructor placed on demonstrating the literate behavior in realistic and practical contexts influenced me in a positive way. Expectations that were dampened by the absence of immersion were slightly rekindled by the presence and the creative use of the demonstration principle. Expectation: My Diminished Expectations An additional condition of learning is the expectation principle. This refers to the idea that the learner believes that he can learn the literate behavior and that he will be successful. This is a more complex issue in my case than immersion. The immersion factor in my case was static. Immersion was always absent, a non-factor. I was always learning Thai in an English-speaking environment. I was always in an English-speaking culture. Thus, there wasn't any variability in terms of immersion; the same, however, cannot be said about the issue of expectation. My expectations changed and shifted almost constantly. Initially, my expectations were quite high. I imagined that I would be able to learn some conversational Thai rather easily. I have always been a good student. I have always enjoyed learning new things. I didn't account for the particular difficulties of learning a language very dissimilar to my own. My enthusiasm influenced my instructor greatly. He prepared lessons and handouts for an eager and confident student. Later, as mentioned, the lack of a contextual authenticity, and the crude stage of my Thai language foundation, caused a shift in my expectations. I lost confidence in my ability to pronounce Thai correctly. I lost confidence in my ability to concentrate on my learning tasks. There were even a few times, frustrated by my lack of progress, that I considered feigning an illness and canceling a class. My instructor was an excellent English student but I was a poor Thai student. Though he was polite, I think he shared my opinion. Expectations regarding my ability to learn Thai were substantially diminished. He was immersed in an English-speaking environment and therefore able to demonstrate and employ his literate behavior whenever he desired; I, on the other hand, had no such opportunity. In the end, this influenced both instructor and learner to pursue the English lessons more rigorously and the Thai lessons more casually. Responsibility: Relationship Allowed Exploration The responsibility principle is fundamentally a function of the extent of the learner's willingness to explore beyond his current level of development in the literate behavior. What choices does the learner make in terms of choosing what questions to ask and what roles to assume This condition of learning was present in a very substantial way. I was of the same age as my instructor. Our social status was similar and we were able to converse both formally and informally. To this end, I was able to instruct my instructor; that is, I was able to tell him what I wanted to learn. Once I had learned Thai greetings, I told my instructor that I wanted to learn about shopping and monetary expressions. Should I ever travel to Thailand on holiday, I thought, this would be useful knowledge. In this respect, I was able to dictate the substance and the direction of my learning experience. I was able to reflect on my successes and my failures. This aided me, ultimately, in setting realistic expectations and controlling, to a certain extent, my learning experience. The presence of this responsibility condition of learning, despite diminished expectations, allowed me to derive some learning benefits. My instructor recognized this and adapted well. Approximation: Frustrated by My Low Level of Development Developmentally appropriate practice serves as an appropriate starting point for any discussion of the approximation principle. This is somewhat akin to a matching principle; in particular, the learner should approximate the target literacy behavior at his own individual level of development. The learner should, at first, focus simply on using the literate behavior that he does know appropriately, rather than attempting to master literate behavior beyond his current state of development. As alluded to in the demonstration section of this paper, I was not as focused as I ought to have been. Rather than concentrating on what I did know, and rather than recognizing my limitations in Thai, I often attempted to learn vocabulary and expressions unrelated to my actual state of development. From the point of view of responsibility, I was trying to learn; from the point of view of approximation, I was trying to do too much at one time. This, in fact, often distracted my instructor. He entertained my tangents and answered my questions. In the end, time was wasted and lessons left incomplete. I was trying to learn a spoken language without any fundamental foundation. I was unable to identify any letters of the Thai alphabet. I was unable, in the beginning, to understand how the structure of the Thai language differed from my own language. I later learned that the Thai language is a tonal language. This made it almost impossible for me to approximate the correct pronunciation of even the most elementary Thai words without being able to identify a single Thai letter or tonal mark. Learning, for example, to say hello and thank you was possible; nonetheless, this lack balance, this neglect of the concept of approximation, dampened my expectations and most certainly, in time, lowered my Thai instructor's expectations. Employment: Little Opportunity This is a very practical prerequisite of learning. The employment principle refers to the real opportunities for the learner to practice and use what he is learning. Employment may be alone, perhaps an oil-painting, or with other people. It may be hypothetically conceived or a real-life situation or problem. This condition was almost completely absent. Aside from my instructor, there was no real opportunity for employment. More, because my instructor spoke English, he almost always explained in English. My employment opportunities with him were very controlled and limited. The lack of the employment condition negatively affected expectations. To compensate for this lack of substantial and meaningful employment opportunities, I instead tried to create Thai dialogues in the privacy of my own mind. In effect, I was talking to myself. It was slightly beneficial, but no substitute for genuine employment opportunities. Response: Mild Feedback Feedback, denominated the response concept of learning, is another prerequisite of learning. The nature of the feedback may manifest itself both formally and informally. My relationship with the instructor was significant in terms of response. I was always of the opinion that we were operating in a fairly informal environment. There were no grades and no exams. We laughed and talked about personal matters. In this context, feedback was superficial and subjective. There were no demands. There were no rebukes. The response condition, though present, was diluted. Feedback was instantaneous as the class involved only one teacher and one student. Still, the quality of the feedback was significantly influenced by our informal, casual relationship. Sincere feedback, constructive criticism, was never offered. It just wasn't a part of what we had agreed. Given our mutual goals the response condition was adequate, though the intellectual quality of the feedback was deliberately mild. This lack of a quality response does, though, threaten the integrity of the literacy behavior. As noted by Cambourne, "Therefore, before an error, i.e. a potential habit, becomes too strongly established it must be eradicated" ( p. 19). In my case, bad habits were never eradicated because our relationship precluded objective response. Engagement: The Benefits of a Private Learning Atmosphere To what extent is a learner actively engaged in the learning experience In this case, my instructor was not one of those whom Cambourne has referred to as "prisoners of a model of learning" (p.17). Indeed, the instructor was set free by his student's active engagement. The engagement principle refers to learner participation, or the lack thereof, in the learning experience. Engagement often depends on a number of factors. The learner's relationship with the instructor and the formality of the learning situation are examples of such factors that influence learner engagement. This condition of learning was present and influenced both the instructor and the learner in positive ways. There were no inhibitions resulting from unequal positions of authority, from large classes, or from conflicts of interest. I was engaged from the beginning; that my expectations rose and fell at times did not change the fact that I was actively engaged in the learning process. This was a very positive factor. The instructor was enthusiastic and he became a participant in the event rather than a detached director. The dialogue enhanced the learning environment. Conclusion In the final analysis, Cambourne's conditions of learning are very instructive as an analytical framework for assessing why my Thai language lessons were not especially fruitful. It wasn't the lack of a specific learning condition that made my Thai lessons difficult. Rather, it was the way in which the lack of some learning conditions, such as immersion, affected my learning experience in terms of expectations demonstration, and employment. There was little balance. More, the casual relationship between instructor and student benefited in some ways, such as engagement, while harming in other ways, such as response. I would approach learning goals very differently in the future. References Cambourne, B. (1988). The Whole Story: Natural Learning and the Acquisition of Literacy in the Classroom. Sydney: Ashton Scholastic. Read More