Learning Through Attending and Observing

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.