What’s new on Chá Pedagógico?

DEAR COLUMN READERS, HOW’S IT GOING?

Chá Pedagógico is back in the latest issue of New Routes Magazine with amazing news! Our sponsor DISAL took us to the largest edtech conference in Latin America, Bett, to record a special episode on Myths and Facts about Technology in Education.

André & Rudy recording face-to-face for the first time at Bett 2024

Before we share our conclusions about that episode with you, we have something even cooler to share. Guilherme Scarpim, a talented artist, and amazing illustrator was commissioned to create a banner summarizing all the episodes we had recorded up until the BRAZ-TESOL International Conference in Goiânia. Here’s the link for you to download his fantastic artwork we printed on a banner.

SO, WHAT DID YOU GUYS THINK?
Must we always include digital tech in our lessons?
My school wants to include new tech tools.
Will my classes change?

In Episode 4 of Chá Pedagógico recorded at Bett, our discussion emphasized the fact that, while technology is essential for progress, mainly digital tech nowadays, it must be used carefully in education. Teachers need proper training to use these tools effectively, and technological aids should support or assist, not substitute, student learning and linguistic production. The brain only truly learns when we take action because neuronal connections need to be built. AI tools like ChatGPT can be beneficial but cannot replace the building process required for learning to take place. In fact, nothing can truly replace real human interaction and experiences.

Great question. As we highlighted during the amazing episode at Bett 2024, if you have the chance to talk to the principal or your coordinator, ask for training because you will need to incorporate the tools into your lessons and they must be there for an actual reason and not because the school said so. Tech tools tend to be engaging to students, but they won’t captivate them unless the features are under the teacher’s control. Once you are familiarised with the tool, it needs to become part of your lesson plan so that students can use it in a meaningful manner. The teachers’ role is to guide students in order to achieve their best performance through using the tool.
 
Watch our episode on this topic here.

The idea that digital tech cannot replace the human factor was also discussed in Episode 6: How to Get the Best (out) of Your Students, perfectly captured in the illustration below by Guilherme Scarpim. After all, humans have emotions and need to reflect on their learning process to be able to develop effective learning strategies (metacognition).

Watch our episode on this topic here.

Should I always follow the rules when teaching? Is there another way to teach a language and its grammatical rules?

In Episode 5: Normative Teaching – The Pitfalls of Going for the Rules, Rudy and André offered a critique of normative teaching methods, particularly the traditional approach to teaching grammar through strict rules. Sure, explicit/direct teaching can often be necessary. However, sometimes breaking the rules is the best way to go. Think about teaching the Present Perfect tense to Brazilian students. If you spend too many minutes explaining the rules (deductive teaching), you’ll probably cause cognitive overload in your students: too much abstract information. On the other hand, if you work with models from a course book and your students have to figure out the rules themselves (inductive teaching), it might be too hard for them and, you’ve guessed it right, cognitive overload again. Why not compare Present Perfect to its equivalent in Portuguese and get that out of the way to focus on more practice?

The episode also contrasted prescriptive methods, which dictate language use, with descriptive methods, which observe actual usage, and discussed the concept of “experiential blindness” by Lisa Feldman Barrett, where preconceived rules hinder the perception of objective reality. We need to nurture and embrace metalinguistic awareness, learning by doing, using contextualized lessons, and drawing on students’ experiences. Let’s avoid rigid rule-based teaching to prevent limiting students’ language understanding and flexibility.

There it is. Instead of focusing on the rules, focus on the meaning, on what the construction expresses. Explore categorization (a cognitive activity). For instance, in what situation do we use the present perfect tense? Maybe to describe habits. First categorization. The structure goes HAVE VERB, here we will use the verb ‘study’. When a habit is described, we have an ‘actor’, the one acting, and the ‘subject’, whatever is being studied. Categorization two. Considering that under the ‘actor’ and ‘subject’ categories there are plenty of options, the focus lies on the constant ‘have studied’. By using the students’ cognitive skills to address constructions, not only is the possibility for cognitive overloadreduced, since dealing with rules and new language production and processing is too much, but the teaching becomes more meaningful.

Watch our episode on this topic here.