Robotizing, Can we Prevent it?

By Flor de María Vila

Nobody is exempted from becoming accustomed to what is easy, pleasant, beautiful, relaxing, or familiar. In fact, there is no reason to consider coming to be habituated to those things as being even evil. However, when getting used to staying in our comfort zone makes us, teachers, turn into sort of androids, only then, this becomes more dangerous than anything else in our profession.

In a teaching context, robotizing implies becoming mechanical, always waiting for instructions and, in a way, not exerting control of our professional life. The idea of robotizing makes me think of not being able to be proactive.

What are the “symptoms” of having already turned into a robot?

a.    Teaching by the book.

b.    Becoming predictable

c.    Not making any changes when giving a lesson even if this is done with students of different characteristics.

d.    Clinging blindly to the same teaching strategy because “that´s the one that works.”

Even if we present one or more of these features, we may still believe that is not important since we possess experience and knowledge. Unfortunately, I have to remark that being experienced and knowledgeable is not enough. It is very valuable to demonstrate expertise and knowledge. The problem is not being able to use those qualities in the best manner may turn to be a disaster.  

What are the threats of switching into a robot?

a.    Replacement: If we do not use our experience and knowledge in the best way, we will be one more of the many teachers that share the same tired characteristics.

b.    A demanding job market: The job market will always try to find personnel with the qualities that help satisfy its clients. In our context, this means teachers who are experts, educated, efficient, effective and adaptable. The last quality is an inescapable requirement since the current students do not have the same features as those our students of 5 or 10 years ago had; let alone the students we used to teach when we graduated.  Efficiency and efficacy are definitely crucial since the offer of learning a language in the shortest and fastest way is available at the tip of the fingers, meaning that the offer of a number of apps has increased a lot lately. If our experience and knowledge are not enough to help achieve the objective of learning efficiently, we will become a candidate to be replaced. Believe me, there are many willing and brand new teachers waiting for a vacancy.

c.    Experience and knowledge: Believe or not, those same advantages could become our doom. Staying in our comfort zone and believing those to be our endless treasures may blind us and inhibit us from taking the opportunities that could help us evolve.

What is then the way out?

a.    Take your backpack of knowledge and experience and use it to your benefit.

b.    Hauling your backpack, cross the path of proactivity to reach its other end: innovation. The prize: a guarantee of keeping your attractiveness for the job market and definitely a quality of not being easily replaceable.

I could not end this article without mentioning the importance of being honest to ourselves and to our students. We became teachers because we decided to do so. There is no such idea that we chose this profession because there was nothing better to do or because we just happen to know the language we are teaching. We could have decided to be tourist guides, we could have begun a career in international sales or any other plausible job. We decided to become teachers and this is a responsibility we have acquired. We cannot fail our students’ expectation that we are going to do our job: help them achieve their learning objective and do whatever it takes to succeed in doing that.

Are there any other threats of robotizing? 

Feel free to share your views on this subject

BIOGRAPHICAL DATA

M.A. in Cognition, Learning and Development from PUCP, B.A. in Education with a major in English Teaching. Ms. Vila is currently Teacher trainer, Pedagogic Consultant and Member of the Research Team at Centro de Idiomas de la Universidad del Pacífico. She is Academic Director of International Contacts (test training & foreign applications advisory) and relationship manager for American universities´ MBA admissions officers with International Contacts. She is official Examiner for several University of Cambridge tests, freelance consultant with Universidad ESAN, experienced speaker on diverse English teaching issues for prestigious institutions, and senior international examinations trainer (GMAT, GRE, TOEFL, IELTS).

Are we in Reality Assessing Reading Comprehension? Is it Legitimate to Evaluate What we Have Not Taught?

By Flor de María Vila A.

        Nowadays the capacity for reading comprehension is frequently discussed. Among the many ideas that are debated comes that related to how much we, as a nation, have improved in reading comprehension. We are no longer in the 69^th place but in the 62^nd in PISA (the Program for International Student Assessment). That appears as good news. However, it is valid to wonder, how much we teachers in general, or teachers of English as a foreign language, have cooperated to improve the reading comprehension level of our students.

        In a previous article I probed if we, teachers of English, are instructing learners on how to read or whether we are just evaluating how well students already do it in their own language. Regrettably, I am afraid that in general we just settle for evaluating; we do not teach how to read or help our students to improve their reading comprehension. Ask yourself honestly the following questions: What activities do you carry out in addition to activating students ‘previous knowledge? Do you know and teach reading strategies? Do you guide your students to use reading strategies before, during and after reading? Do you know what metacognition is? Do you teach how to use metacognition in the process of reading?

        Grasping what one is reading is more than the ability to remember ideas and information that are directly stated in the textbook material (Literal Comprehension). Neither is just the ability to extract ideas and information not directly stated in the textbook material, using prior or background knowledge to assist in such understanding (Inferential Comprehension). Truly, these are the two most common and basic levels of reading comprehension. Most textbooks come with many exercises appraising and promoting these levels of comprehension. In our lessons, we tend to think that if students can answer the questions provided by the textbook, they are then able to understand what they are reading. And this may be true, but we are not teaching them how to read; in many cases, we are just setting the scene by explaining the meaning of new words, asking a few questions to create interest and setting the time to do the exercise.

         Have you had your students make predictions about the probable meaning of the text? Have you monitored your students´ comprehension by questioning them, having them think about, and reflect on the ideas and information in the text? Have you helped students to relate what they have read to their own experiences and knowledge? If more than one answer is negative, it is very likely that you are not teaching how to read but simply helping them to fill out the exercises provided.

        It wouldn´t hurt to find about other levels of reading comprehension such as evaluative, appreciative, applied and critical. Knowing what these other levels of comprehension really mean will enable us to design and propose other kinds of activities to teach how to read or to help our pupils improve their understanding of what they read in our classes or anywhere else. Together with these levels we should also review or learn the reading strategies used before, during and after reading any text no matter whether it is short, long, easy, or difficult; no matter whether it is reading for pleasure or for doing an assignment. 

        Think about the following and share your ideas:

Is it possible to teach reading in our classes? Can we help our students improve their reading comprehension? How?

Biographical Data

M.A. in Cognition, Learning and Development from PUCP, B.A. in Education with a major in English Teaching. Ms. Vila is currently Pedagogic Advisor and Member of the Research Team at Centro de Idiomas de la Universidad del Pacífico and Academic Director of International Contacts (test training & foreign applications advisory). She is official Examiner for several University of Cambridge tests, freelance consultant with Universidad ESAN, experienced speaker on diverse English teaching issues for prestigious institutions, and senior international examinations trainer (GMAT, GRE, TOEFL, IELTS)