Fostering the Development of Cognitive Factors in your EFL Students
“Yes, you will. And I will warn you now that not their blood but your suspicion might build evil in them. They will be what you expect of them…I think when a man finds good or bad in his children he is seeing only what he planted in them after they cleared the womb.”
“You can’t make a race horse of a pig.”
“No,” said Samuel, “but you can make a very fast pig.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden
This is one of my favorite quotes and has been hanging in my classroom since I started teaching eight years ago. The quote left a big impression on me not only as a teacher but also as a person because it challenges one´s idea of perception and his role inside it. Not everyone is a genius. Not everyone has the orator skills of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Not everyone has the drive or desire to be fluent in more than one language. So, why should I even try to make my students something they are not? To answer this question I will refer back to the dialogue quoted above. We teachers cannot change and average student into an Albert Einstein or into another John Steinbeck or Tennessee Williams, but with the right stimulation and guidance teachers CAN bring out the best in each student. As the quote says, we CAN make them very fast pigs. The question language teachers must ask is, “How can I foster an environment that promotes the highest learning from each student?”
The idea that just because students are around the same age and are in the same class, they should be in the same stage of language development is preposterous. To raise the verbal intelligence, phonetic awareness and the long term memory of these abilities a teacher needs to first know where each student´s capabilities lay. Differentiation inside the classroom allows each student to realize what they are truly capable of doing independently. When they are taught to pick “good fit books” and have the liberty to read what they choose then reading becomes a meaningful experience and the advancements they make will stick in their long term memory. When students are grouped by phonetic ability and receive direct instruction within that ability then you can see progress because they are given tasks within their own range of capabilities. When students are given instruction just slightly higher than their independent working level then learning will take place. Differentiation is the only way to make this varied instruction level possible.
maniblanca 