TEACHING TECHNIQUES AND INSTRUCTIONAL AIDS
IN THE ESL ELEMENTARY GRADE CLASSROOM
To teach, says the dictionary (Page and Thomas, 1977) is "to impart knowledge or skill to another; to give instruction to another; to educate or to train another; to facilitate learning" (p. 337). Thus do the authors cover all angles while saying very little. Modern-day education (The goal of the school?) involves all processes "developing human ability and behavior" (Ibid, p. 112). Facilitating the acquisition and learning of a second language is essentially an educational experience rather than an instructional one--particularly in the case of children.
Education is an open system. Open systems are dynamic and exist in two environments, viz. intrinsic and extrinsic. They interact as multidirectional processes and, to quote von Bertalanffy (1950): "To perform work, the system must be, not in equilibrium, but tending to attain it." Since educational systems are living entities, i.e. processes rather than states, they "must allow some degree of tolerance" (Ibid).
In practical classroom terms, the concept of education as an open system, as opposed to instruction as a closed system, involves the constant modification of learning/acquiring behaviors as goal-directed activities affected by intrinsic as well as extrinsic factors and, simultaneously, affecting each other.
Children are, of necessity, open to the outside world, i.e. they constantly seek to exploit the environment with a view to surviving and growing. Seen in this light, they are parasites, as all living things are. It is therefore pedagogically erroneous to stress instruction (a closed homeostatic "dead" system) as against education (an open dynamic "living" system). All efforts must not be to "teach" (which may benefit the teacher), but to have the children learn, i.e. exploit the environment with a view to acquiring new behaviors--such as those of L2, a socio-cultural as well a...