Subject: Re: Summary #2 Transactional distance theory (II)
From: Ania Lian (ania@lingua.arts.uq.edu.au)
Date: Wed 10 Nov 1999 - 09:55:54 MET
Date: Wed, 10 Nov 1999 18:55:54 +1000 (EST) From: Ania Lian <ania@lingua.arts.uq.edu.au> Subject: Re: Summary #2 Transactional distance theory (II)
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On Tue, 9 Nov 1999, Wendy Lowe wrote:
> Dennis Nelson, in response to Ania Lian, described a "good teacher",
> mentioning that such a gem helps learners learn without telling them,
> helps learners feel prepared for what is to come and makes them eager
> for the next installment.
Should the teacher prepare learners for teh next installment to come or
rather should the goal of teaching be to assist learners in teh task of
preparing for the unpredicted and unpredictable? In other words, is teh
goal of teaching to prepare for teh classroom tasks or for the life
outside the classroom. I would welcome a definition of the teacher in
terms of some broader criteria of teaching goals and their explicaion. The
goal seems to me to require to help us all in teh task of formulating a
working model of learning and teaching rather than a list of beliefs whose
legs and arms are not attached to any network of critical pedagogic
models.
> In closing, does anyone have any examples of situations (classroom,
> distance) where transactional distance is affected by teaching
> strategies or course design?
For example when teacher understands that pronunciation is about clear
speaking clearly, loud and about telling learners how sounds are produced.
Effectively every paper produced on pronunciation learning tells us this
story. Now, for the sake of the argument, let us imagine that
pronunciation difficulties are not a product of sounds being
spoken clumsy nor are they a product of learners not understanding
how sounds are produced. Now, what happens is as follows:
(a) transactional distance between learners and teachers is close (i.e.
there is not much distance) because teachers managed to convince
their students about the trueth-value of their understanding of how
sounds need to be learnt. I.e. learners undertsand the teachers, the
issue is: so what, does it help? what does it help? It may help the
relationship in teh clasroom but see (b):
(b) students cannot learn because the theory of interpretation is
actually wrong as we have hupothesised it for the argument's sake,
(c) students are convinced that they cannot learn to pronounce
(d) students are convinced that they are not quite as smart as they
thought especially in teh face of teh fact that one students actually
got the sounds right! and they did not... bit of a shame for them
(e) theoreticians run with big statements like: you cannot teach second
language pronunciation,
(f) educationists conclude that no matter how close the distance, learning
is a matter of more variables (like intelligence) and we end up with
studies on apptitude in learning.
(g) on some chat list for those who are too enthusiastic to stop thinking
and talking, some person called 'Ania' :-)continues to keep asking:
should learning (or failure to learn) be conceived as a function of
a mutual understanding between teachers and learners?:-):-)
Ania Lian
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