By Aaron Campbell · August 23, 2005
Thai students in the British and American Studies (BAS) program at Thammasat University in Bangkok have recently taken to blogging as part of their freshman English class. In addition documenting their language learning activities – such as reading Harry Potter books, keeping vocabulary notebooks, and working on creative group projects – students are also encouraged to write about anything that interests them.
I recently asked their teacher, AJ Hoge, about his approach. AJ believes strongly in a curriculum based on the Taoist concept of wu-wei, meaning ‘not forcing’ or ‘not striving’; what he calls ‘effortless acquisition’. The goal, he says, is to “stimulate language acquisition without the students resorting to drills, rote memorization, grammar analysis, etc.”
AJ designs his assignments to push students toward the use of authentic materials and, through blogs, toward authentic communication. Ultimately, he says, “I want to push them toward autonomy, so they won’t need a school and teachers to continue learning in the future.”
Links to BAS student weblogs can be found in the lower left column of AJ’s weblog, Effortless Language Acquisition. To learn more about AJ’s pedagogical approach, read his essay, An Effortless Acquisition Curriculum.
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alex
wrote on August 29, 2005:
Hi ,I’m a student from the Lycée Pasteur,the French school here in São Paulo. I liked your article because here in Brazil I have been studying 4 languages. French and Portuguese since primary school. English and Spanish since 2000. I really enjoy language classes because we practice them instead of learning them. ex: we use blogs to comunicate and to share our opinions. This blog work expand our autonomy and gives us an idea of our society.
Languages are always usefull!
Thank you for reading me! See you later
alex
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Aaron Campbell
wrote on August 30, 2005:
Learning by doing can often be more effective than simply studying something. Teaching something you already know to someone else can also be a good way to learn more. As they say in the Boy Scouts: “Learn one, do one, teach one.”
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kevin
wrote on September 07, 2005:
Hey, I am a little upset that you neve told me you have a new blog. I have been watching Tawawa for a year now waiting for an update. Then I see an email to the japanbloger list and much to my delight….
Dekita.
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