Gerry wrote:

>I am an English teacher in South Korea with LG Chem's HRD Team. I am
>looking at Gestalt theory as a means of underpinning the approach I take
>to teaching. The idea of schemata is especially intriguing to me. The
>idea that information, especially receptive language input, is organized
>into a cognitive framework could be useful in the following ways:
>
>(1) organizers, if provided to the student, may increase language
>production and proficiency;
>
>(2) organisational features of the teacher's delivery of language for
>study and practice may influence the retentiveness and durability of the
>langauge;
>
>(3) the nature of cognitive language structures may inform curriculum
>development; that is, if schemata is experience-based, then curriculae
>should be more task-based; if language-based, then more conversational;
>if heuristic, then grammar/syntactic. More likely is a hybrid of these
>mechanisms.
>
>(4) Such various combinations may differ across individuals (learning
>styles) and, perhaps, more importantly, generally across cultures
>(archetypes?), for the following reason: since language curriculums are
>developed within national educational agendas, such cultural differences
>in the way that people think and organise information and experiences
>may be profoundly important for orienting foreign teachers in the
>practice and application of language tecnique in the classroom on a
>curriculum-level, rather than on an individual level. Teachers, as
>resident classroom experts, could then be given more independence to
>modify syllabi within a set of nationally-devised parameters for their
>individual students.
>
>Any comments or suggestions?

Hi Gerry,
I found your application of Gestalt principles refreshing.  I love to see
people applying Gestalt in creative ways.

I made some associations while reading your post, and for whatever they are
worth I offer them.

First, it occurred to me that one of our associate editors at Gestalt! is
in South Korea and may be of some interest to you.  Jungkyu Kim, Ph.D., is
Professor of Psychology at Sungshin University in Seoul, helps train people
in Gestalt therapy, and also works at the Psychological Health Institute
(http://cc.sungshin.ac.kr/~phi) there.  (You can contact Dr. Kim at the
email address in the cc section above.)

Second, Iris Fodor wrote an interesting article assimilating cognitive
thought into Gestalt therapy, and that may be of some interest to you:
Fodor, I. (1998)  Awareness and meaning-making:  The dance of experience.
Gestalt Review, 2(1), p. 50-71.

Third, I sat in on an interesting workshop at the last AAGT conference in
Cleveland:  "We are what we say:  Creating ourselves through voice and
language." Lois Meredith, Ph.D.  She's from New York.  The tapes of this,
and other workshops, would probably still be available through the company
that did the taping, and you can find that information at the AAGT website
(http://www.g-g.org/aagt), just be sure to click on and follow the links
for the 1998 conference instead of the information being assembled for the
upcoming 1999 conference.

Phil