We've gone all Google at my place of work. I'm still not quite sure if this necessarily a good idea.
On the one hand, it does mean that things are incredibly easy to share - colleagues can work simultaneously on worksheets, photos and resources can be sent with the click of a button, and it's child's play to create communities and websites, AND there's even the new Google Classroom app to play with.
On the other, it's incredibly easy for well-meaning people with all the spatial conceptualisation of a loaf of wet bread to create huge, arcane and functionally useless hierarchies of folders and subfolders that take one down a dizzying maze of technological befuddlement. Google Classroom is a nice idea, but it's even less feature-rich than Edmodo at present. And, perhaps more importantly, do I really want to be at the beck and call of my students at the ping of a button?
One of the problems if technology in class is that it can make it all too easy, in a way, and what can end up happening is that the technology becomes the object of the lesson rather than a resource to deliver lesson content and the learning objectives. I've had scheduled IT classes in the past where the learners may well be writing something on a blog or wiki, but the reason for writing is obscured by the act of typing and negotiating menus and buttons on a word interface.
Now, don't get me wrong - I love it when students email me their homework. I find that I can mark it and give feedback faster (and, I think, better) when I have a nice pristine electronic sheet in front of me than a sadly tattered piece of A4 torn from a notebook. The question is this: should we insist that all homework is mailed in rather than handed in?
I think that it very much depends of several factors. The first is the language level of the learner. In my Advanced groups, emailing work in is pretty much the norm, and in fact I think that it's appropriate. A lot of these learners are working full time and using English in professional correspondence electronically, so the medium of communication and practice is appropriate. But for lower level learners, it can be a more complex picture. As a rough rule of thumb, I'd say that the lower the level of English, the more handwritten work should be done. Quite apart from avoiding the temptations of spellchecking, it also helps the teacher analyse issues with the way learners engage with the language as they write - all kinds of errors and mistakes are apparent in handwritten work.
The next thing to consider is the learner's native writing system. Clearly, if someone has Arabic as their L1, writing in latin script provides its own challenges - not merely the formation of the individual letters, but also writing in the other direction, ensuring the text is left margin justified, and so on. I also wonder what the act of writing in an unfamiliar direction has on a learner's thought processes.
Two further factors are the age of the learner and their exposure (and attitude) to IT. Younger learners are far more likely to either be proficient users of tech, or adapt quickly to using it. Adult learners, on the other hand, may present challenges in the way they approach computers. for some, it's quite clear that they have a motivational issue with many kinds of technology - very similar, in fact, to the affective filter that some people have ramped up to high levels, leading them to be ineffectual language learners.
So, for example, broadly speaking, if I had a 40-year-old Georgian student in a pre-intermediate class, I'd probably want him or her to hand in a handwritten piece, while a 20-year-old German in an FCE class would be better off emailing their work.
Of course, we could compromise and ask students to write out their work, then scan it and email it.
One more point to consider though: Language is not merely an act of mind and ear and tongue: It it an act of the whole body. I feel that learners who make notes, who write things out, who copy things down off the board, are more likely to be better users of English. Put simply, the act of writing actually consolidates the language in the learner's mind - using the hand confers, as it were, a shape to the words and the grammar. Words and syntax are given tangibility and (literally) made palpable by the application of pen to paper, by the subtle movements and pressures of fingers grasping the instrument. And that is a skill that may be in danger of being lost by solely relying on technology.
Showing posts with label Learning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Learning. Show all posts
Wednesday, 8 October 2014
Monday, 18 February 2013
Four Types of Language Interactor
Well, half term is upon us, and the work load is shifting round to a vaguely lighter pattern, so I thought it was high time I endeavoured to produce a post. In fact, I'm going back to a previous entry, as I want to expand on how we deal with different types of language user.
Working in FE as I do, I come across a veritable smorgasbord of language learners of different nationalities, backgrounds and ages, and this of course presents very different challenges from those in a monolingual classroom. I have one group that can best be charitably described as :Ladies What Lunch, or more accurately Ladies Who Use The Classroom To Catch Up On The Latest Gossip. While they are all very polite and lovely, they have about as much chance of becoming fluent in English as a fish has of developing opposable thumbs.
There are also students who are, in fact, fluent English users - it's just that they use a different variety of English, such as Hinglish, and much of what they produce either seems very weird to a British English user, or actually prevents them from effectively communicating with others.
I have also taught Academic English, FCE, CAE, so in these groups I tend to get learners with a very determined perspective, knowing precisely the things they want to learn. This is the kind of learner that actually bays for MORE grammar.
Then there is a big fat group of people who need to learn English just to get on - these are a big slice of my ESOL learners, people who for whatever reason have come to live and work in the UK and need English in order to live.
The problem is, what to do with all these different learners when they're all bunged in together in the same class?
A couple of years ago, I gave a presentation at the English UK Teachers' Conference on the subject of Global Englishes, and I came up with the analogy of a language being like a city in the way that people interact with it. A couple of years down the line, I feel my analogy still holds water, so I'd like to (re-)introduce four kinds of Language Interactor, where we usually encounter them, and how to deal with them.
1 The Tourist
The tourist is the kind of learner who is 'just visiting' a language, just as a tourist passes through a place. Tourists look around, take photos, maybe scribble a postcard home - but then leave. Their interaction with the place is relatively minimal, especially if they're the kind of tourist who follows the environmentalist's maxim of 'take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints'. Alternatively, the Tourist wanders round in a kind of terrified daze, petrified of everything they see in this strange new place, clinging on desperately to anything that remids them of home, and deeply glad to get the Hell out when they can.
This kind of learner is really not going to do much with the language. He or she will only work in class, and then not particularly well, and hardly does anything with it when they are outside. In other words, they just come in and out of the language, with little attempt to understand it. Looking back at my career as a neophyte language learner, doing French at school, I can safely say that I was a Language Tourist.
2 The Commuter
The Commuter comes into the city, moving with purpose and speed towards their destination. They work diligently for a given chunk of time, then, at the appointed hour, they move with equal speed and purpose back where they came from. Their movements have a specific goal - namely, do the work necessary and get out of the city again. The Commuter may know everything he or she needs to know between points A and B, but may not have considered that points C,D, or E even exist.
This kind of learner has a very fixed point of view. They may well have exact knowledge of the language, but it is not broad knowledge - for example, they might be able to tell you in excruciating detail all the uses of perfect tenses, but they don't really know enough to use it outside the class or in a natural context. This learner will know enough to pass exams, and function well in English, but for them the language is a means to an end. They are more likely to view language as a subject of study, rather than as a skill.
What Tourists and Commuters have in common is that they are approaching the language from the outside - that is, they don't, as it were, habitually live in the language. This may be literally true: If you have a monolingual group in a Non-English Speaking country, then learners are far more likely to regard language as a study subject rather than a skill - that is, they are travelling into and out of the language. The difference between them is that Tourists tend to have low motivation while Commuters tend to be more highly motivated, although possibly only about specific learning points.
3 The Citizen
The Citizen, is, surprise, surprise, someone who lives in the city. They know the place well, feel at ease in it, and can find their way around with little difficulty. Typically, though, they may take the place for granted: They might live near to a place of historical interest, but never actually visit it at all, simply because it is just there. Likewise, they know their own part of the city intimately well, but there may be quarters and outliers that they are unfamiliar with.
This type of learner is, of course, a Native Language Speaker - but which variety? Just as a city can have different districts with distinctive characters, so can language. In terms of teaching English, this kind of learner can be especially challenging - after all, they speak the language already, so what in fact are we teaching them? It's more akin to instructing someone in the layout of a different part of the city they already inhabit.
4 The Denizen
The term 'Denizen' can mean, simply, 'inhabitant', but it can also mean 'a foreigner who has been granted rights of residence - and sometimes citizenship', and it is in this context that I use the term. The denizen, in our model of a Language City, is someone who has to live within the city, even though it is not necessarily a place entirely familiar to them. Some denizens may know it quite well, and like the place: for others, it is a disquieting, alien, even terrifying place to be. Some are there to work, some there because of family, some for reasons they don't really understand - but the key feature is that they have to live within this city, and they encompass a variety of attitudes towards it, from enthusiastic participants to sullen, angry follwers.
This type of learner is what we might imagine the typical ESOL student to be - someone who has settled in the UK (or another NES country) and who needs to learn English in order to get on, get citizenship etc. We also see that this type of learner's attitude towards and motivation for learning English can vary widely. However, we can also find the Denizen in countries where English, for whatever reason, is a requirement of some kind - it may be, for example, that it is an offical second language, or the medium for judicial/official procedure. We can expect the learner's attitudes in these kind of situations to vary from acceptance to extreme resentment.
The key similarity between the Citizen and the Denizen is that they experience language from within - they are either born into it or have to live within it. However, we can also say that some Citizens are at times like denizens, or even tourists, when they 'visit' other areas of the language. Likewise, some Denizens are on their way to becoming Citizens, or are Citizen-like, as are some Commuters.
This whole model is meant to be dynamic and show that things can and do change within the ways people interact with a language. I hope to show that Kachru's model of language, where you have a kind of 'superior' version of the language in the middle and weaker ones outside of that, is not the only way to look at language learning and acquisition.
In my next post, I'll look at the motivations of each group as language learners (even citizens!), and the problems each pose teachers in the classroom.
Working in FE as I do, I come across a veritable smorgasbord of language learners of different nationalities, backgrounds and ages, and this of course presents very different challenges from those in a monolingual classroom. I have one group that can best be charitably described as :Ladies What Lunch, or more accurately Ladies Who Use The Classroom To Catch Up On The Latest Gossip. While they are all very polite and lovely, they have about as much chance of becoming fluent in English as a fish has of developing opposable thumbs.
There are also students who are, in fact, fluent English users - it's just that they use a different variety of English, such as Hinglish, and much of what they produce either seems very weird to a British English user, or actually prevents them from effectively communicating with others.
I have also taught Academic English, FCE, CAE, so in these groups I tend to get learners with a very determined perspective, knowing precisely the things they want to learn. This is the kind of learner that actually bays for MORE grammar.
Then there is a big fat group of people who need to learn English just to get on - these are a big slice of my ESOL learners, people who for whatever reason have come to live and work in the UK and need English in order to live.
The problem is, what to do with all these different learners when they're all bunged in together in the same class?
A couple of years ago, I gave a presentation at the English UK Teachers' Conference on the subject of Global Englishes, and I came up with the analogy of a language being like a city in the way that people interact with it. A couple of years down the line, I feel my analogy still holds water, so I'd like to (re-)introduce four kinds of Language Interactor, where we usually encounter them, and how to deal with them.
1 The Tourist
The tourist is the kind of learner who is 'just visiting' a language, just as a tourist passes through a place. Tourists look around, take photos, maybe scribble a postcard home - but then leave. Their interaction with the place is relatively minimal, especially if they're the kind of tourist who follows the environmentalist's maxim of 'take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints'. Alternatively, the Tourist wanders round in a kind of terrified daze, petrified of everything they see in this strange new place, clinging on desperately to anything that remids them of home, and deeply glad to get the Hell out when they can.
This kind of learner is really not going to do much with the language. He or she will only work in class, and then not particularly well, and hardly does anything with it when they are outside. In other words, they just come in and out of the language, with little attempt to understand it. Looking back at my career as a neophyte language learner, doing French at school, I can safely say that I was a Language Tourist.
2 The Commuter
The Commuter comes into the city, moving with purpose and speed towards their destination. They work diligently for a given chunk of time, then, at the appointed hour, they move with equal speed and purpose back where they came from. Their movements have a specific goal - namely, do the work necessary and get out of the city again. The Commuter may know everything he or she needs to know between points A and B, but may not have considered that points C,D, or E even exist.
This kind of learner has a very fixed point of view. They may well have exact knowledge of the language, but it is not broad knowledge - for example, they might be able to tell you in excruciating detail all the uses of perfect tenses, but they don't really know enough to use it outside the class or in a natural context. This learner will know enough to pass exams, and function well in English, but for them the language is a means to an end. They are more likely to view language as a subject of study, rather than as a skill.
What Tourists and Commuters have in common is that they are approaching the language from the outside - that is, they don't, as it were, habitually live in the language. This may be literally true: If you have a monolingual group in a Non-English Speaking country, then learners are far more likely to regard language as a study subject rather than a skill - that is, they are travelling into and out of the language. The difference between them is that Tourists tend to have low motivation while Commuters tend to be more highly motivated, although possibly only about specific learning points.
3 The Citizen
The Citizen, is, surprise, surprise, someone who lives in the city. They know the place well, feel at ease in it, and can find their way around with little difficulty. Typically, though, they may take the place for granted: They might live near to a place of historical interest, but never actually visit it at all, simply because it is just there. Likewise, they know their own part of the city intimately well, but there may be quarters and outliers that they are unfamiliar with.
This type of learner is, of course, a Native Language Speaker - but which variety? Just as a city can have different districts with distinctive characters, so can language. In terms of teaching English, this kind of learner can be especially challenging - after all, they speak the language already, so what in fact are we teaching them? It's more akin to instructing someone in the layout of a different part of the city they already inhabit.
4 The Denizen
The term 'Denizen' can mean, simply, 'inhabitant', but it can also mean 'a foreigner who has been granted rights of residence - and sometimes citizenship', and it is in this context that I use the term. The denizen, in our model of a Language City, is someone who has to live within the city, even though it is not necessarily a place entirely familiar to them. Some denizens may know it quite well, and like the place: for others, it is a disquieting, alien, even terrifying place to be. Some are there to work, some there because of family, some for reasons they don't really understand - but the key feature is that they have to live within this city, and they encompass a variety of attitudes towards it, from enthusiastic participants to sullen, angry follwers.
This type of learner is what we might imagine the typical ESOL student to be - someone who has settled in the UK (or another NES country) and who needs to learn English in order to get on, get citizenship etc. We also see that this type of learner's attitude towards and motivation for learning English can vary widely. However, we can also find the Denizen in countries where English, for whatever reason, is a requirement of some kind - it may be, for example, that it is an offical second language, or the medium for judicial/official procedure. We can expect the learner's attitudes in these kind of situations to vary from acceptance to extreme resentment.
The key similarity between the Citizen and the Denizen is that they experience language from within - they are either born into it or have to live within it. However, we can also say that some Citizens are at times like denizens, or even tourists, when they 'visit' other areas of the language. Likewise, some Denizens are on their way to becoming Citizens, or are Citizen-like, as are some Commuters.
This whole model is meant to be dynamic and show that things can and do change within the ways people interact with a language. I hope to show that Kachru's model of language, where you have a kind of 'superior' version of the language in the middle and weaker ones outside of that, is not the only way to look at language learning and acquisition.
In my next post, I'll look at the motivations of each group as language learners (even citizens!), and the problems each pose teachers in the classroom.
Friday, 16 March 2012
Brand New, Shiny New, Shiny Brandy New Tech in class: Worth it?
As some of you may know, I have a twitter feed (@pjgallantry, since you ask), and I follow plenty of my fellow educators through it. I'm also, as some of you may know, a bit of a tech geek - I love brand new shiny gadgets and websites and all sorts of electronic wotsittery. And I have a Vice-Principal in my institution who is eager, excited and and indeed deliriously delighted about all forms of e-learning. Putting all these things together, you would think I'd be happier than a dog with two dicks about being able to combine all the helpful ideas on Twitter, my own techno-enthusiasm, and having the support of a senior admin guy to help my students learn English, wouldn't you?
You couldn't be more wrong.
All I see is a hopeless mishmash of poorly joined-up enthusiasm with little actual thought of what it entails practically and pragmatically.
Let's start with the most fundamental of all - access. Not every student can afford an ipad, or an Android-driven tablet, or even a smartphone. Believe it or not, some students, especially older learners, don't even want a smartphone, or a tablet - and some find using computers difficult. Does this make them losers who don't deserve to learn? Hell it does. If learners are not at least beginning their learning from a level playing field, then neither true learning can occur, nor can the teacher honestly say they are teaching - all they are doing is playing at teaching.
point two: materials. The major publishers have, as we know, taken quite a long time to latch on to how e-materials can be produced. Some more tech-savvy teachers have produced decent materials that work on a variety of platforms, but even so, what is out there is horribly uneven in terms of quality and, pace the first point, accessiblilty. Currently, if any teacher is truly serious about offering equal opportunity of learning to all their learners, they need to have (near-) identical materials available online, as an app, in pdf, as a .doc or equivalent and as a good old bit of paper.
point three: just because we, as educators, get excited about a new piece of tech or a new website or whatever, it does not necesarily follow that a) our students will be equally excited or b) that the brand new shiny thing we have discovered is actually, genuinely useful or game-changing in the class. We might love Twitter or Vimeo or whatever, but unless we consider how pragmatic it is to use it, and how often, it is far too easy to overindulge ourselves to the detriment of learning - but because we're using the new tech or website, we can convince ourselves taht actually we're teaching well, or the students are learning well!
I'd like to suggest a few points that anyone who is getting excited about new tech/software should think about.
1) What does this do that the old method doesn't? If the answer to this is 'nothing' or 'I don't know', then don't use it. Either work out how it is different, or leave well alone. This applies to websites, software and hardware.
2) What does this do better than the old method? Answer as above, really
3) Will my learners benefit from some discovery that excites me? If the answer is 'no', the leave it out of class.
4) Do my learners have access to this online resource I want the class to use? If they don't, then you are the one disadvantaging them. Rethink your approach.
5) Can my students afford this piece of tech? If the answer is 'no', then why are you basing your lesson around it?
One thing I have noticed amid all the excitement over tablet technology - the students I have don't have tablets, but they are quite avid users of smartphones. However, it is glaringly obvious from their use that they see them as accessories to learning rather than necessarily portals for learning - in fact, they browse language sites and apps rather than rely on them. This is an important thing to note, as it means that they have do with language apps on their phones what they naturally do with the other software on it - use it in a casual, relaxed way. If I made them use their phones in a more concentrated 'LEARNING-STYLE' way, they probably wouldn't use them as effectively. Instead of making dedicated learning-rich apps, it might be better to create ones that encourage and support the natural way people browse their phones for information.
You couldn't be more wrong.
All I see is a hopeless mishmash of poorly joined-up enthusiasm with little actual thought of what it entails practically and pragmatically.
Let's start with the most fundamental of all - access. Not every student can afford an ipad, or an Android-driven tablet, or even a smartphone. Believe it or not, some students, especially older learners, don't even want a smartphone, or a tablet - and some find using computers difficult. Does this make them losers who don't deserve to learn? Hell it does. If learners are not at least beginning their learning from a level playing field, then neither true learning can occur, nor can the teacher honestly say they are teaching - all they are doing is playing at teaching.
point two: materials. The major publishers have, as we know, taken quite a long time to latch on to how e-materials can be produced. Some more tech-savvy teachers have produced decent materials that work on a variety of platforms, but even so, what is out there is horribly uneven in terms of quality and, pace the first point, accessiblilty. Currently, if any teacher is truly serious about offering equal opportunity of learning to all their learners, they need to have (near-) identical materials available online, as an app, in pdf, as a .doc or equivalent and as a good old bit of paper.
point three: just because we, as educators, get excited about a new piece of tech or a new website or whatever, it does not necesarily follow that a) our students will be equally excited or b) that the brand new shiny thing we have discovered is actually, genuinely useful or game-changing in the class. We might love Twitter or Vimeo or whatever, but unless we consider how pragmatic it is to use it, and how often, it is far too easy to overindulge ourselves to the detriment of learning - but because we're using the new tech or website, we can convince ourselves taht actually we're teaching well, or the students are learning well!
I'd like to suggest a few points that anyone who is getting excited about new tech/software should think about.
1) What does this do that the old method doesn't? If the answer to this is 'nothing' or 'I don't know', then don't use it. Either work out how it is different, or leave well alone. This applies to websites, software and hardware.
2) What does this do better than the old method? Answer as above, really
3) Will my learners benefit from some discovery that excites me? If the answer is 'no', the leave it out of class.
4) Do my learners have access to this online resource I want the class to use? If they don't, then you are the one disadvantaging them. Rethink your approach.
5) Can my students afford this piece of tech? If the answer is 'no', then why are you basing your lesson around it?
One thing I have noticed amid all the excitement over tablet technology - the students I have don't have tablets, but they are quite avid users of smartphones. However, it is glaringly obvious from their use that they see them as accessories to learning rather than necessarily portals for learning - in fact, they browse language sites and apps rather than rely on them. This is an important thing to note, as it means that they have do with language apps on their phones what they naturally do with the other software on it - use it in a casual, relaxed way. If I made them use their phones in a more concentrated 'LEARNING-STYLE' way, they probably wouldn't use them as effectively. Instead of making dedicated learning-rich apps, it might be better to create ones that encourage and support the natural way people browse their phones for information.
Friday, 2 April 2010
Mind the Gap.
Here's a question for you - what do the following all have in common?
So why am I bringing it up?
The point is this: do the ones about language actually test a knowledge of language, or do they in fact only test an ability to solve a problem? In other words, it strikes me that many of the tasks in student workbooks are not real tests of language knowledge whatsoever, but exercises in learning skills.
Let me give an example task to you.
Here are three rules.
If a sequence of numbers is 3 digits and ends in 9, follow it with 12.
If a sequence of numbers is 3 digits and ends in 7, change the 7 to 9 and add 12.
If a sequence of numbers is 4 or more digits, it must be preceded by 21.
and here are some sequences:
Now change the rules to those describing how to make comparative adjectives in English.
The simple fact is that many of the exercises we do with our students do not in fact test their understanding of language, but their cognitive and problem-solving capacities. Someone who can understand a logic problem, as long as the problem and a model solution is clearly presented, should be able to solve any given issue. Now, while it may be useful for someone to comprehend a given set of rules, it does not necessarily follow that that person is in fact capable of using the language in a way that is comprehensible, simply because languages have a nasty habit of not following their own laws. This is why, whenever we do level testing, we should always look at a suite of abilities rather than rely on the good old grammar test prior to deciding a language level. It also explains, by the way, why EFL students tend to score higher on formalised language tests which are generally problem-solving based tasks, than ESOL students.
- A cryptic crossword puzzle
- A cloze (aka gap-fill) exercise
- A sudoku puzzle
- A grammar exercise where you have to write the correct form of the verb
- An algebra exercise
- one of those team-building things where you have to work out how to cross a river using a piece of string and two dead dogs or something
- a reading task asking you to identify words and phrases in context that mean the same as a given set of synonyms
So why am I bringing it up?
The point is this: do the ones about language actually test a knowledge of language, or do they in fact only test an ability to solve a problem? In other words, it strikes me that many of the tasks in student workbooks are not real tests of language knowledge whatsoever, but exercises in learning skills.
Let me give an example task to you.
Here are three rules.
If a sequence of numbers is 3 digits and ends in 9, follow it with 12.
If a sequence of numbers is 3 digits and ends in 7, change the 7 to 9 and add 12.
If a sequence of numbers is 4 or more digits, it must be preceded by 21.
and here are some sequences:
- 329
- 5437
- 777
- 919
- A427
- 3424245539
Now change the rules to those describing how to make comparative adjectives in English.
The simple fact is that many of the exercises we do with our students do not in fact test their understanding of language, but their cognitive and problem-solving capacities. Someone who can understand a logic problem, as long as the problem and a model solution is clearly presented, should be able to solve any given issue. Now, while it may be useful for someone to comprehend a given set of rules, it does not necessarily follow that that person is in fact capable of using the language in a way that is comprehensible, simply because languages have a nasty habit of not following their own laws. This is why, whenever we do level testing, we should always look at a suite of abilities rather than rely on the good old grammar test prior to deciding a language level. It also explains, by the way, why EFL students tend to score higher on formalised language tests which are generally problem-solving based tasks, than ESOL students.
Tuesday, 9 March 2010
More on depression and speaking
Yesterday's post, and the ideas behind it, has prompted quite a bit of interest among my colleagues and over on one of the discussion boards I frequent, and got me thinking further too. This morning, I did a bit of thoroughly unscientific research with my L1 (that's an intermediate-upper-intermediate level) and E3 (pre-int - int level) classes. I asked them, first 'does speaking in English ever make you feel depressed?'
The answer was almost unanimously 'yes', except for one student who just giggled. Mind you, she does tend to giggle at pictures of kittens, handbags, passing clouds and occasionally while staring blankly into space, so...
I then asked 'why?'
You can probably guess the types of answer - embarrassment, fear of mistakes, frustration, etc.
I then asked, 'are there any situations which make you feel particularly embarrassed?'
Here the answers were varied. For a significant portion, it was talking on the phone: others mentioned more formal social situations such as going to the bank or talking with their children's teachers. A few of the more confident students said that they couldn't answer colleagues back in more formal meetings.
I then asked 'What situations/things would you like to talk about, but feel you can't?'
Here the answers were varied, ranging from talking to the council about housing benfits, to discussing schoolwork with a teacher, up to talking about politics, environmental issues, dance and music.
Lastly, I asked 'do you sometimes feel as though you are disabled?'
A unanimous 'yes'.
and 1 giggle.
The finding that most interested me was the one about which things people would like to be able to talk about. It shows, I think, that the level at which students would consider a conversation 'deep' and 'satisfying' vary enormously. It's no wonder that language learners do get so demotivated.
It's also set me off on what may turn out to be a rather exciting tangent of thought, but I'm going to have to put in a bit of research first. More later.
The answer was almost unanimously 'yes', except for one student who just giggled. Mind you, she does tend to giggle at pictures of kittens, handbags, passing clouds and occasionally while staring blankly into space, so...
I then asked 'why?'
You can probably guess the types of answer - embarrassment, fear of mistakes, frustration, etc.
I then asked, 'are there any situations which make you feel particularly embarrassed?'
Here the answers were varied. For a significant portion, it was talking on the phone: others mentioned more formal social situations such as going to the bank or talking with their children's teachers. A few of the more confident students said that they couldn't answer colleagues back in more formal meetings.
I then asked 'What situations/things would you like to talk about, but feel you can't?'
Here the answers were varied, ranging from talking to the council about housing benfits, to discussing schoolwork with a teacher, up to talking about politics, environmental issues, dance and music.
Lastly, I asked 'do you sometimes feel as though you are disabled?'
A unanimous 'yes'.
and 1 giggle.
The finding that most interested me was the one about which things people would like to be able to talk about. It shows, I think, that the level at which students would consider a conversation 'deep' and 'satisfying' vary enormously. It's no wonder that language learners do get so demotivated.
It's also set me off on what may turn out to be a rather exciting tangent of thought, but I'm going to have to put in a bit of research first. More later.
Tuesday, 21 October 2008
Acquisition and Learning
Well, the original purpose of this journal was to help with my studies and my work. Here's an essay I've just completed: see what you think.
Compare the concepts of language acquisition and language learning with reference to your reading and experience. Explain their relevance to three different learning situations in which you have had a direct teaching role.
Introduction
Since the nineteenth century and the rise of various theories of how languages are learned, one consistent area of research has been how children learn their mother languages, and how best that can be replicated in the language classroom in order to facilitate the simplest and easiest way of learning a target language. Since the 1970s, further research has been undertaken into understanding the differences between the seemingly unconscious way in which young children learn and the way in which adult learners learn languages, what processes are involved and how these might affect how we learn, and teach, languages. Arguably the currently most dominant theories are those of Stephen Krashen regarding language acquisition and language learning, as laid out in Second language acquisition and second language learning (1981), and how they relate to his and Tracy Terrell's Natural Approach theory (1983). While the Natural Approach, according to Krashen himself, falls under the umbrella of the Communicative Approach, nevertheless his own theories on Acquisition, learning and the differences therein has had a significant impact on language teaching, methodology, materials and texts since the 1980s. In this essay, I will compare the concepts of acquisition and learning, first exploring in brief some of the historical background behind the rise of Krashen's theory of second language acquisition. Next, I will compare the concepts in relation to classroom practice, based upon current materials and my own classroom practice, and explain three teaching situations which illustrate the concepts, and finally I will explain my own attitude towards acquisition and learning based upon my own experience.
The historical background behind acquisition and learning theories
It may be said that, broadly speaking, earlier approaches to language teaching and learning focused either on grammatical accuracy or on seeking to create conditions in which language is learned in a way closest to how a child acquires language, the two prime examples being the Grammar Translation Method and the the Natural, or Direct, Method, of ca.1900. The latter involved in its initial stages the instructor reading a text and then asking questions in the target language, often involving 'a great deal of pantomime' until the learner could comprehend phrases and sentences in the language being studied. It would only be after this initial phase that he or she would be expected to produce, and only later that grammar would be studied. While the Natural Method should not be confused with the much later Natural Approach, it did have something in common with the later idea. It is only later that there was consistent research into and analysis of what learners actually do. It was long held, for example, that (adult) learners of language would learn grammatical structures with greater or lesser speed depending on how close or distant their L1 was from the target language. This 'Contrastive Hypothesis' maintained that the learner's L1 could exert a positive or a negative interference depending on whether the language being studied contained the same grammatical feature as L1. However, when language learners were actually subjected to research during the late 1960s and 1970s, this hypothesis was found to actually have very little bearing on how L2 is learned. These 'Morpheme Order' studies sought to discover whether there is a natural sequence in which the structures of any given language are learned. While the initial studies have now come in for criticism, an outcome was that there does indeed seem to be a universal order of acquisition, and that we have an innate capability to acquire a language system from birth. Moreover, adult language learners appear to acquire language in much the same order as a child acquires his or her L1. However, there are still differences in these two processes: acquisition and learning.
What is Acquisition?
Acquisition, according to Krashen (1981), is the process best described as the 'natural' way in which first language development occurs in children. It is an unconscious process, involving the development of language proficiency by understanding a language and using it to communicate effectively and meaningfully. Krashen and Terrell (1983) state that the primary use of language is to communicate, and as such, language is naturally acquired in morphological 'chunks' – either word by word, utterance by utterance, or phrase by phrase, and that grammar has little to do with the natural way in which languages are acquired. Research does bear this out: Children acquire words according to their needs, and only later develop the 'framework' to create longer, more complex structures, the better to convey more complex meanings and information. Moreover, this framework takes time to become fully realised, and in the intervening time, children use an interlanguage – a form of the child's L1 in which he or she can experiment with language and where the rules and conventions are seemingly arbitrary and flexible. I can attest to this from my own experience of bringing up two children in a bilingual household. In the case of my first child, he initially acquired one language in preference to the other (in this case Turkish over English). However, due to a change of country just prior to his second birthday, he was plunged into a new language environment, and began to learn solely English, and his linguistic development subsequently proceeded in that language. By contrast, his younger brother (currently two years old) is exposed to both languages simultaneously at home, and also to Arabic via his childminder. When he speaks, he freely produces words in all three languages, but is at the point of clearly showing preference of lexical item depending on who he is communicating with. Nevertheless, his emergent interlanguage is still a mixture of vocabulary items from the languages he is acquiring. What is very clear is that there is very little discernible 'grammar' as such.
What is learning?
Language learning is a very different process from acquisition. It involves a process where the learner develops conscious rules about a language. It could be said that he or she learns about the language before learning the language itself. The outcome of this process is that the learner has clear, understood, knowledge of a language and can then verbalize this. In many respects, this means that a learned language is information learned much like any other subject, rather than the means or vehicle by which information is learned and disseminated, as is the case with L1. In contrast to acquisition, learning occurs in a formal taught environment. The development of the rules governing the target language may be helped by formal teaching techniques, such as error correction and testing. According to Krashen's theory, Learning cannot lead to acquisition, mainly because of how learning occurs, but also because of two other factors: the learner's internal 'monitor' and his or her 'affective filter'.
Acquisition, learning, the monitor hypothesis and the affective filter hypothesis
I have described above how acquisition is the process by which children acquire L1, and also how there seems to be a universal order of acquisition by which certain structures begin to appear in the learner's production. Research indicates that this order of acquisition also occurs in the way in which adult learners, whether in an informal or formal learning environment, acquire a target language. For example, the manner in which the negative is formed in English is typically initially expressed by putting 'no' before a verb ('I no go'), then by using an auxiliary correctly in one way, but incorrectly in another ('I don't go', but 'he don't go' or 'he don't can go'), before finally mastering the structure. This research into adult learners puts into question the entire notion of a grammatical syllabus. Surely we should teach English in a manner which most closely resembles the way in which we naturally learn our mother tongues?
This is in fact what Krashen and Terrel propose in the Natural Approach (1983). Some of the key features of this, according to Richards and Rodgers (2001) are that, firstly, the approach is designed to help students develop from beginners to intermediates in the target language; That specific objectives depend on learner needs; And that content selection should be interesting and foster a friendly, relaxed class atmosphere. The feature most relevant to our discussion is the role that the learner is expected to take. In the initial phases of a Natural Approach-based course, the student is not expected to contribute or produce until he or she feels ready to do so – in other words, once he or she feels a need to do so, imitating the need to communicate that is believed to drive language acquisition in children.
However, Krashen goes on in his SLA theory to describe other factors that distinguish Learning from Acquisition. First of these is the 'Monitor Hypothesis'. In short, this states that conscious learning functions only as a monitor,or editor, of what is uttered (as initiated by an acquired linguistic system), and provides a way of correcting language when we communicate. The efficiency of the monitor is affected by three conditions: Time, where there must be enough time for a learned rule to be chosen and applied; Focus on form, where the speaker is focused on accuracy or the form of what is produced; and knowledge of the rules, where the speaker, or performer, has to know the rules. As we have pointed out earlier, in second language learning, the rules of a language are generally learned along with the language.
Another factor that has been described is the Affective Filter Hypothesis. This states that the adult learner will be more or less successful in learning a language depending on the strength of their affective filter, that is, the emotional state, attitudes, motivation, self-confidence and anxiety he or she brings into the language learning environment. Krashen states that the lower the affective filter, the more successful the student will be in learning.
In other words, an acquired linguistic system is one learnt free of anxiety, or prior assumption. On the other hand, adult language learners have a set of assumptions and attitudes towards the target language and its culture that may or may not impede the process of learning.
One more important point to raise before we move on is this: Learning does not occur within acquisition, yet acquisition may, and does, occur within the learning process.
Examples from teaching situations
All my own teaching experience has been with young adult and adult learners, so I see students who are very much in the process of learning rather than acquiring English, albeit with some individual exceptions. One example was a student who had acquired highly fluent spoken English. Prior to entering the classroom, he had never formally studied the language: Instead, he had acquired what he knew of the language from his job as a waiter and bartender in a holiday resort, even to the extent that he spoke with a distinct London accent, despite never having been to the UK. Given his level of spoken English, it was anticipated before his initial assessment that his reading and writing would also be of the same standard. Instead, he tested out at ALTE level C2. He was disappointed by this, and once on the course with people with far lower levels of spoken fluency than him, he rapidly became frustrated and disillusioned, to the point that he stopped trying to learn any further.
The difficulty lay in that he needed to learn rather than acquire, even though he had acquired listening and spoken skills necessary for him to function, and function at a high level. Looking at his case through Krashen and Terrell's Natural Approach Theory, he had succeeded in acquiring a language in the most naturalistic way possible. However, in order to further his own career, he also required reading and writing skills, and this required a much more formal learning environment. In order to facilitate this, I had to first encourage him to continue learning. This I did by making him think about what it was he wanted and needed to learn, why this was, and how he could do it. This developed first through conversations, then through writing down his targets, then by breaking these targets down and showing him what he needed to learn. By involving him in the actual process of learning, and making him learn about language learning he managed to progress swiftly and far more happily.
I encounter similar issues with ESOL groups. Quite often, there is a disparity between spoken language, where long-term residents in the UK have acquired functional spoken capability, albeit one that is often limited to a specific set of social and work-based contexts, yet have highly limited reading and writing skills. Also, ESOL groups are frequently unfamiliar with the metalanguage and terminology frequently used when teaching a language, further evidence that they have not experienced a formal learning environment. Only through individual appraisals is it possible to devise an effective way of approaching how they need to learn further and what techniques are most likley to be effective.
By contrast, I have also dealt with groups (in the case I am thinking of, monolingual groups of Chinese students) who in had a technically high degree of knowledge of English, yet were incapable of functioning in the language environment simply because they could neither understand nor react to spoken English, nor were sufficiently capable of producing it to the degree that their grammatical knowledge suggested they should. In their case, they had achieved a great deal of learning but had experienced next to no acquisition. In their case, their frustrations with the language, while ostensibly similar to the first two examples, were in fact caused by the incapability to express the knowledge they believed they possessed, and this was compounded by the fact that they had to express themselves since they were studying in the UK. Many of them had aimed to go on to study at a British university after a year of studying English: with the realisation that they could not understand spoken interaction even at a relatively basic level, they became further discouraged. In the case of these students, exposing them to spoken interaction in class, encouraging them to listen to as much English as possible in their free time, and ensuring they reassessed their expectations all helped.
Conclusions
There is little doubt in my mind that Krashen's theories about acquisition and learning are, by and large, true. However, it may seem that some of his ideas are too simplistic, too much of the obvious being stated: one critic (Gregg, 1984) even goes so far as to suggest that he has no theory of language at all. I would take issue with the affective filter theory, and with some of the other features that he describes as distinguishing learning from acquisition, as I believe there is may be another way of explaining the difference. However, that falls outside the remit of this essay.
What we cannot do is invoke acquisition in our students in the classroom environment. Nor can we teach in a way that perfectly mimics acquisition. All we can do, within the class, is try to create a synthesis between how languages are picked up and an analysis of how the language works. What we can also do is encourage students to explore the language outside the classroom: we can direct them to discover for themselves as much as possible, to expose themselves to the target language as much as possible, to immerse themselves within it. And most importantly perhaps, we should encourage them not to be afraid, to play with language, to be flexible and arbitrary, to seek to be creative, to turn off their critical, affective filters and experiment with what is possible – in other words, let each student be comfortable in their own interlanguage as they learn.
Compare the concepts of language acquisition and language learning with reference to your reading and experience. Explain their relevance to three different learning situations in which you have had a direct teaching role.
Introduction
Since the nineteenth century and the rise of various theories of how languages are learned, one consistent area of research has been how children learn their mother languages, and how best that can be replicated in the language classroom in order to facilitate the simplest and easiest way of learning a target language. Since the 1970s, further research has been undertaken into understanding the differences between the seemingly unconscious way in which young children learn and the way in which adult learners learn languages, what processes are involved and how these might affect how we learn, and teach, languages. Arguably the currently most dominant theories are those of Stephen Krashen regarding language acquisition and language learning, as laid out in Second language acquisition and second language learning (1981), and how they relate to his and Tracy Terrell's Natural Approach theory (1983). While the Natural Approach, according to Krashen himself, falls under the umbrella of the Communicative Approach, nevertheless his own theories on Acquisition, learning and the differences therein has had a significant impact on language teaching, methodology, materials and texts since the 1980s. In this essay, I will compare the concepts of acquisition and learning, first exploring in brief some of the historical background behind the rise of Krashen's theory of second language acquisition. Next, I will compare the concepts in relation to classroom practice, based upon current materials and my own classroom practice, and explain three teaching situations which illustrate the concepts, and finally I will explain my own attitude towards acquisition and learning based upon my own experience.
The historical background behind acquisition and learning theories
It may be said that, broadly speaking, earlier approaches to language teaching and learning focused either on grammatical accuracy or on seeking to create conditions in which language is learned in a way closest to how a child acquires language, the two prime examples being the Grammar Translation Method and the the Natural, or Direct, Method, of ca.1900. The latter involved in its initial stages the instructor reading a text and then asking questions in the target language, often involving 'a great deal of pantomime' until the learner could comprehend phrases and sentences in the language being studied. It would only be after this initial phase that he or she would be expected to produce, and only later that grammar would be studied. While the Natural Method should not be confused with the much later Natural Approach, it did have something in common with the later idea. It is only later that there was consistent research into and analysis of what learners actually do. It was long held, for example, that (adult) learners of language would learn grammatical structures with greater or lesser speed depending on how close or distant their L1 was from the target language. This 'Contrastive Hypothesis' maintained that the learner's L1 could exert a positive or a negative interference depending on whether the language being studied contained the same grammatical feature as L1. However, when language learners were actually subjected to research during the late 1960s and 1970s, this hypothesis was found to actually have very little bearing on how L2 is learned. These 'Morpheme Order' studies sought to discover whether there is a natural sequence in which the structures of any given language are learned. While the initial studies have now come in for criticism, an outcome was that there does indeed seem to be a universal order of acquisition, and that we have an innate capability to acquire a language system from birth. Moreover, adult language learners appear to acquire language in much the same order as a child acquires his or her L1. However, there are still differences in these two processes: acquisition and learning.
What is Acquisition?
Acquisition, according to Krashen (1981), is the process best described as the 'natural' way in which first language development occurs in children. It is an unconscious process, involving the development of language proficiency by understanding a language and using it to communicate effectively and meaningfully. Krashen and Terrell (1983) state that the primary use of language is to communicate, and as such, language is naturally acquired in morphological 'chunks' – either word by word, utterance by utterance, or phrase by phrase, and that grammar has little to do with the natural way in which languages are acquired. Research does bear this out: Children acquire words according to their needs, and only later develop the 'framework' to create longer, more complex structures, the better to convey more complex meanings and information. Moreover, this framework takes time to become fully realised, and in the intervening time, children use an interlanguage – a form of the child's L1 in which he or she can experiment with language and where the rules and conventions are seemingly arbitrary and flexible. I can attest to this from my own experience of bringing up two children in a bilingual household. In the case of my first child, he initially acquired one language in preference to the other (in this case Turkish over English). However, due to a change of country just prior to his second birthday, he was plunged into a new language environment, and began to learn solely English, and his linguistic development subsequently proceeded in that language. By contrast, his younger brother (currently two years old) is exposed to both languages simultaneously at home, and also to Arabic via his childminder. When he speaks, he freely produces words in all three languages, but is at the point of clearly showing preference of lexical item depending on who he is communicating with. Nevertheless, his emergent interlanguage is still a mixture of vocabulary items from the languages he is acquiring. What is very clear is that there is very little discernible 'grammar' as such.
What is learning?
Language learning is a very different process from acquisition. It involves a process where the learner develops conscious rules about a language. It could be said that he or she learns about the language before learning the language itself. The outcome of this process is that the learner has clear, understood, knowledge of a language and can then verbalize this. In many respects, this means that a learned language is information learned much like any other subject, rather than the means or vehicle by which information is learned and disseminated, as is the case with L1. In contrast to acquisition, learning occurs in a formal taught environment. The development of the rules governing the target language may be helped by formal teaching techniques, such as error correction and testing. According to Krashen's theory, Learning cannot lead to acquisition, mainly because of how learning occurs, but also because of two other factors: the learner's internal 'monitor' and his or her 'affective filter'.
Acquisition, learning, the monitor hypothesis and the affective filter hypothesis
I have described above how acquisition is the process by which children acquire L1, and also how there seems to be a universal order of acquisition by which certain structures begin to appear in the learner's production. Research indicates that this order of acquisition also occurs in the way in which adult learners, whether in an informal or formal learning environment, acquire a target language. For example, the manner in which the negative is formed in English is typically initially expressed by putting 'no' before a verb ('I no go'), then by using an auxiliary correctly in one way, but incorrectly in another ('I don't go', but 'he don't go' or 'he don't can go'), before finally mastering the structure. This research into adult learners puts into question the entire notion of a grammatical syllabus. Surely we should teach English in a manner which most closely resembles the way in which we naturally learn our mother tongues?
This is in fact what Krashen and Terrel propose in the Natural Approach (1983). Some of the key features of this, according to Richards and Rodgers (2001) are that, firstly, the approach is designed to help students develop from beginners to intermediates in the target language; That specific objectives depend on learner needs; And that content selection should be interesting and foster a friendly, relaxed class atmosphere. The feature most relevant to our discussion is the role that the learner is expected to take. In the initial phases of a Natural Approach-based course, the student is not expected to contribute or produce until he or she feels ready to do so – in other words, once he or she feels a need to do so, imitating the need to communicate that is believed to drive language acquisition in children.
However, Krashen goes on in his SLA theory to describe other factors that distinguish Learning from Acquisition. First of these is the 'Monitor Hypothesis'. In short, this states that conscious learning functions only as a monitor,or editor, of what is uttered (as initiated by an acquired linguistic system), and provides a way of correcting language when we communicate. The efficiency of the monitor is affected by three conditions: Time, where there must be enough time for a learned rule to be chosen and applied; Focus on form, where the speaker is focused on accuracy or the form of what is produced; and knowledge of the rules, where the speaker, or performer, has to know the rules. As we have pointed out earlier, in second language learning, the rules of a language are generally learned along with the language.
Another factor that has been described is the Affective Filter Hypothesis. This states that the adult learner will be more or less successful in learning a language depending on the strength of their affective filter, that is, the emotional state, attitudes, motivation, self-confidence and anxiety he or she brings into the language learning environment. Krashen states that the lower the affective filter, the more successful the student will be in learning.
In other words, an acquired linguistic system is one learnt free of anxiety, or prior assumption. On the other hand, adult language learners have a set of assumptions and attitudes towards the target language and its culture that may or may not impede the process of learning.
One more important point to raise before we move on is this: Learning does not occur within acquisition, yet acquisition may, and does, occur within the learning process.
Examples from teaching situations
All my own teaching experience has been with young adult and adult learners, so I see students who are very much in the process of learning rather than acquiring English, albeit with some individual exceptions. One example was a student who had acquired highly fluent spoken English. Prior to entering the classroom, he had never formally studied the language: Instead, he had acquired what he knew of the language from his job as a waiter and bartender in a holiday resort, even to the extent that he spoke with a distinct London accent, despite never having been to the UK. Given his level of spoken English, it was anticipated before his initial assessment that his reading and writing would also be of the same standard. Instead, he tested out at ALTE level C2. He was disappointed by this, and once on the course with people with far lower levels of spoken fluency than him, he rapidly became frustrated and disillusioned, to the point that he stopped trying to learn any further.
The difficulty lay in that he needed to learn rather than acquire, even though he had acquired listening and spoken skills necessary for him to function, and function at a high level. Looking at his case through Krashen and Terrell's Natural Approach Theory, he had succeeded in acquiring a language in the most naturalistic way possible. However, in order to further his own career, he also required reading and writing skills, and this required a much more formal learning environment. In order to facilitate this, I had to first encourage him to continue learning. This I did by making him think about what it was he wanted and needed to learn, why this was, and how he could do it. This developed first through conversations, then through writing down his targets, then by breaking these targets down and showing him what he needed to learn. By involving him in the actual process of learning, and making him learn about language learning he managed to progress swiftly and far more happily.
I encounter similar issues with ESOL groups. Quite often, there is a disparity between spoken language, where long-term residents in the UK have acquired functional spoken capability, albeit one that is often limited to a specific set of social and work-based contexts, yet have highly limited reading and writing skills. Also, ESOL groups are frequently unfamiliar with the metalanguage and terminology frequently used when teaching a language, further evidence that they have not experienced a formal learning environment. Only through individual appraisals is it possible to devise an effective way of approaching how they need to learn further and what techniques are most likley to be effective.
By contrast, I have also dealt with groups (in the case I am thinking of, monolingual groups of Chinese students) who in had a technically high degree of knowledge of English, yet were incapable of functioning in the language environment simply because they could neither understand nor react to spoken English, nor were sufficiently capable of producing it to the degree that their grammatical knowledge suggested they should. In their case, they had achieved a great deal of learning but had experienced next to no acquisition. In their case, their frustrations with the language, while ostensibly similar to the first two examples, were in fact caused by the incapability to express the knowledge they believed they possessed, and this was compounded by the fact that they had to express themselves since they were studying in the UK. Many of them had aimed to go on to study at a British university after a year of studying English: with the realisation that they could not understand spoken interaction even at a relatively basic level, they became further discouraged. In the case of these students, exposing them to spoken interaction in class, encouraging them to listen to as much English as possible in their free time, and ensuring they reassessed their expectations all helped.
Conclusions
There is little doubt in my mind that Krashen's theories about acquisition and learning are, by and large, true. However, it may seem that some of his ideas are too simplistic, too much of the obvious being stated: one critic (Gregg, 1984) even goes so far as to suggest that he has no theory of language at all. I would take issue with the affective filter theory, and with some of the other features that he describes as distinguishing learning from acquisition, as I believe there is may be another way of explaining the difference. However, that falls outside the remit of this essay.
What we cannot do is invoke acquisition in our students in the classroom environment. Nor can we teach in a way that perfectly mimics acquisition. All we can do, within the class, is try to create a synthesis between how languages are picked up and an analysis of how the language works. What we can also do is encourage students to explore the language outside the classroom: we can direct them to discover for themselves as much as possible, to expose themselves to the target language as much as possible, to immerse themselves within it. And most importantly perhaps, we should encourage them not to be afraid, to play with language, to be flexible and arbitrary, to seek to be creative, to turn off their critical, affective filters and experiment with what is possible – in other words, let each student be comfortable in their own interlanguage as they learn.
Friday, 11 July 2008
Acquisition within learning
Insight: In acquisition, learning does not occur. In learning, acquisition may occur. By this, I mean that when we acquire information, in this case languages, we do not consciously analyse, criticise or judge what has been acquired: It just is. However, when we learn, we apply a critical process - we may ask ourselves what we are learning for - in other words, there is some form of conscious motivation involved. Even though this happens, some information is (uncritically, non-judgementally) acquired. We see evidence of this where students, even in the midset of ropey writing, produce a perfectly executed phrase or sentence or turn of speech. It indicates that that phrase has been acquired syntactically. If we were to ask the student why they used that, they would probably not be able to give a good reason.
Just thought I'd share that with you.
Just thought I'd share that with you.
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