Name: Vishva Gajjar
Roll no.: 33
Paper: 12 (English Language Teaching-1)
Submit to: English Department (MKBU)
Learning
through Attending and Observing
A teacher is teaching only when the children are learning and in
order to learn children must attend. A teacher, therefore, must know not only
the subject-matter he has to teach but also how to present it so that the
pupils will attend to it. When children attend they adopt an attitude of
alertness; they listen, watch, think, and ask questions. This attitude is
accompanied by certain unmistakable bodily signs; alertness is expressed both
in general posture and in facial expression; concentration is shown by an
absence of fidgetiness, and, in fact, of any activity that would distract. When
people are attending very intently, even their breathing is shallow, a fact
that is reflected in the common phrase, "breathless attention". There
are, however, individual differences in the bodily accompaniments of attention,
and wise teachers will recognize this fact by allowing individuals to depart in
minor ways from conventional postures when a class is showing rapt attention.
Something can be done, however, to help children to attend by training them in
habits of suitable bodily posture. It is, for example, sometimes advisable to
start work with young children by very brief exhortations to sit up and look;
with older children, the habit of sitting up when an oral lesson is about to
begin should be established and exhortations should no longer be necessary.
There are other occasions when it may be advisable to rely on the intrinsic
interest of the lesson to catch and hold children’s attention; on these
occasions, the lesson is started and the follow as a matter of course right
bodily postures.
When, therefore, we appeal to instinctive interests in order to
help children to pay attention to subjects that are not in themselves
interesting it is desirable to avoid negative interests such as those arising
from fear, and to use positive ones such as interests in construction, curiosity
or self-assertion. Then not only shall we help children to attend to what is
relatively uninteresting, but we shall also encourage the development of new
interests. We shall extend the range of things to which children are ready to
pay attention.
It is sometimes objected that if we give children interesting
work, or if we present work so as to arouse interest, we are depriving them of
valuable training, the discipline of hard work and the discipline of having to
attend to what is not interesting Consider first the question of working hard.
If it were really true' that children did not work hard when they were
interested would be a very serious objection, but a moment's reflection Will
assure us that this is not so. The child who tries and tries again is the one
who is interested in what he is doing. By giving children interesting work we
are making it possible for them to work hard at the job instead of working hard
at keeping their minds off other more interesting matters. In interesting work
the effort goes into the work; in uninteresting work the effort goes largely
into the attending. It is important to remind ourselves that children are not
interested in work that is too easy. In fact, the challenge of something
difficult is often a good method of inciting them to attend. The second
objection to interesting work was that the children were missing the excellent
disciplinary value of having to attend to something that made no appeal to
them. If this were true the objection would be a serious one, but the fact is
that we cannot entirely cut out all uninteresting work. Even the most
interesting job has its moments of drudgery. A girl may enjoy making a dress,
but dislike the stage of putting on the fasteners. Her keenness to finish the
dress will help her to attack this dull job wholeheartedly so that she will be
getting practice in a very useful habit, the habit of attacking work, whatever
it may be, with vigor. We see here one of the dangers of not presenting work to
children in an interesting way. They are liable to develop a habit of attacking
their work in a spiritless way and of never expecting that it will eventually
become interesting.
·
Reasons for Attending:
In many books on psychology it is stated that there are different
kinds of attention. Attention is, for example, sometimes classified as
volitional and non-volitional, the distinction being whether the attention is
sustained by an act of will or not. Other psychologists distinguish between
voluntary, non-voluntary and involuntary attention. Voluntary attention
corresponds to volitional attention, that is to say, it is sustained by an act
of will. Non voluntary and involuntary attention are sub-divisions of
non-volitional attention. Both types are sustained by direct interest, but an
act of involuntary attention is in opposition to the person's dominant interest
of the moment.
When, in any given situation, we consider why children are
attending the following questions will be helpful:
(a)
Are the children attending because
they have a direct natural interest in the subject?
e.g., young children engrossed in making a self-chosen model.
(b)
Are they attending because they
have an indirect natural interest in the subject?
e.g., children working
hard at arithmetic for competitive purposes.
(c)
Are they attending because they
have a direct acquired interest in the subject?
e. g., children
working hard at arithmetic for the sheer joy of the work.
(d)
Are they attending because they
have an indirect acquired interest in the subject?
e. g., children working hard at arithmetic because their
self-respect compels them.
In many situations it will be found that a child is attending for
more than one of the above reasons. For instance, in a craft lesson a child
attends to the work because of his direct natural interest in construction;
because of his indirect natural interest in self-assertion; he may also attend
because of his direct acquired interest in the craft which has resulted from
previous experience of it and because of his indirect acquired interest in
himself a person who produces good work.
· The Effect of Distractions:
During oral lessons it is sometimes necessary to recall the
attention of individuals who are attending to distracting stimuli, for example,
to a fly on the window-pane or to their own daydreams. This recalling should be
done unobtrusively and if possible without breaking the continuity of the
instruction; a look or a question is often enough. Nothing is more likely to
make children inattentive than teaching punctuated at frequent intervals by
petty admonitions. Other distracting influences are one's own sensations. Thus
a person in ill-health, or a person placed in an uncomfortable position will
find it difficult to attend to anything else. The same is there to some extent
when the position is luxuriously comfortable.
Children are more likely to be affected by distractions than
adults are, but there are wide individual differences among both adults and
children. Some people, not necessarily those who generally find it difficult to
concentrate, are seriously handicapped.
· Observing:
We have seen that attending depends on interest. A good observer
needs an interest in his subject but for him knowledge is particularly
important. A boy and his mother may both be intensely interested in a new locomotive,
but the boy will observe much more about it than his mother does. Where she
sees just a locomotive, he sees a locomotive of a particular class. He quickly
observes the special features of this class, for he has, as it were, a
ready-made plan to direct his observing. Compared with his mother he observes
essentials in a systematic way. Where his mother sees a certain number of
wheels, which she probably has to count, he sees a pattern of wheels and knows
how many there are without counting. The boy attends to the engine in a more
effective way than his mother because his previous knowledge helps him to
observe groups of related facts instead of isolated ones. Not only is the
mother observing these isolated facts unsystematically, but she is also trying
to memorize them. The boy, however, is recognizing parts that he already knows;
he is not memorizing them. In this recognition he is greatly helped by knowing
the names for the parts. One word is enough to label a part for him while his
mother has first to find the words to describe the part and then to rely on
this more or less "wordy" description.
The ability to read meaning into an experience occasionally leads
us into error. When we "see" a human figure where there is really
only a coat hanging on the floor, we are interpreting wrongly. We are suffering
from an illusion. In certain emotional states we are very prone to suffer from
illusions. When we are afraid we are often uncritical and ready to jump to
conclusions. When we are anxious not to observe a certain fact we are very
likely to overlook it. As the proverb says, "None as blind as those who
won't see". Trained observers are aware of these dangers.
· Listening:
The term "observing" is usually applied to seeing a
looking. Exactly the same principles operate when knowledge gained through any
of the other senses. A child who uses his well is called a good observer, a
child who uses his ears well called a good listener. In training good listeners
we must apply the same principles as in training good observers. Training in
listening is no less important than training in observing, and school life
provides many opportunities. Children should be trained to listen to orders, to
questions, to short lectures. A very useful exercise for training children to
listen is dictation, and the reproduction may be either oral or written.
Sentences, couplets verses should be dictated as wholes, and as children grow
older and more proficient the exercises should be made more difficult so that
an effort to listen and remember is required. If teachers want to train
children to listen, they should be careful to develop a habit if speaking no
more loudly than is necessary for children to hear. We do not turn a limelight
on everything we wish children to observe; we ought not to shout everything to
which we wish children to listen.
We can train listeners but not listening. Despite the common use
of abstract nouns the same is psychologically true of "attention",
"concentration" and "observation". They are not faculties that
can be trained. As we have seen, the factor that determines in any given
situation whether children attend, concentrate or observe is not their
possession of well-trained faculties but the whole situation—the habits,
attitudes, ideals, interests and previous knowledge of the children on the one
hand, the nature of the subject-matter on the other.
