Nov 10
Dear All:

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?

Gerry Lassche
____________________________________________________________
Work Address:                       work (+82) 0662 680 1542
c/o HRD Team                        fax  (+82) 0662 680 6012
LG Chemical                         h.p. (+82) 019 616 9966
70-1 Hwachi-dong                    email [log in to unmask]
Yosu, Chunranam-do                        [log in to unmask]
South Korea
555 050


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