Vocational English-1

Sentences Given in the Classroom on March 15th, 2006

PLEASE DO TRY TO TRANSLATE THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPHS

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Jerome Bruner was influential in defining Discovery Learning. It uses cognitive psychology as a base. Discovery learning is "an approach to instruction through which students interact with their environment-by exploring and manipulating objects, wrestling with questions and controversies, or performing experiments" (Ormrod, 1995, p. 442) The idea is that students

are more likely to remember concepts they discover on their own. Teachers have found that discovery learning is most successful when students have prerequisite knowledge and undergo some structured experiences. (Roblyer, Edwards, and Havriluk, 1997, p 68).

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"Active Learning” is, in short, anything that students do in a classroom other than merely passively listening to an instructor's lecture. This includes everything from listening

practices which help the students to absorb what they hear, to short writing exercises in which students react to lecture material, to complex group exercises in which students apply course material to "real life" situations and/or to new problems.

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Active Learning

"Learning is not a spectator sport. Students do not learn much just sitting in classes listening to teachers, memorizing prepackaged assignments, and spitting out answers. They must talk about what they are learning, write reflectively about it, relate it to past experiences, and apply it to their daily lives. They must make what they learn part of themselves

(Chickering & Gamson, 1987)."

Active Learning is defined as any strategy "that involves students in doing things and thinking about the things they are doing". (*Bonwell, C., & Eison, J. (1991). Active learning: Creating excitement in the classroom (ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Report No. 1). Washington, DC: George Washington University, p. 2)

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Cooperative learning is a successful teaching strategy in which small teams, each with students of different levels of ability, use a variety of learning activities to improve their

understanding of a subject. Each member of a team is responsible not only for learning what is taught but also for helping teammates learn, thus creating an atmosphere of achievement.

Students work through the assignment until all group members successfully understand and complete it.

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In project-based learning, students work in teams to explore real-world problems and create presentations to share what they have learned. Compared with learning solely from

textbooks, this approach has many benefits for students, including:

• Deeper knowledge of subject matter;
• Increased self-direction and motivation;
• Improved research and problem-solving skills.

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The context for learning in Problem-Based Learning is highly context-specific. It serves to teach content by presenting the students with a real-world challenge similar to one they

might encounter were they a practitioner of the discipline. Teaching content through skills is one of the primary distinguishing features of PBL. More commonly, instructors introduce students to teacher determined content via lecture and texts. After a specific amount of content is presented, students are tested on their understanding in a variety of ways. PBL, in contrast, is more inductive: students learn the content as they try to address a problem.

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By definition, the term "authentic learning" means learning that uses real-world problems and projects and that allow students to explore and discuss these problems in ways that are relevant to them.

This approach differs greatly from the traditional "lecture" class, where professors give students facts and other content that students then must memorize and repeat on tests.

An authentic learning experience must incorporate authentic tasks. These are tasks, which, as much as possible, have a "real world" quality to them and are ones that students find
relevant to their lives.

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Ausubel’s Expository Learning

Ausubel's theory is concerned with how individuals learn large amounts of meaningful material from verbal/textual presentations in a school setting.

A major instructional mechanism proposed by Ausubel is the use of advance organizers: "These organizers are introduced in advance of learning itself, and are different from overviews and summaries which simply emphasize key ideas.

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Principles of Expository Learning

1. The most general ideas of a subject should be presented first and then progressively differentiated in terms of detail and specificity.

2. Instructional materials should attempt to integrate new material with previously presented information.

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Advanced Organizers

The "advanced organizer" approach to teaching is a cognitive instructional strategy used to promote the learning and retention of new information. Proposed by David Ausubel in 1960, this strategy is one of the most utilized methods of instruction in our schools today. http://vanguard.phys.udiaho.edu/mod/models/ausubel/index.html

In the development of this approach Ausubel (1960) promoted meaningful learning upholding that the most important thing a child could bring to learning situation was what s/he already knows. Therefore, meaningful learning results when that child consciously and explicitly ties new knowledge to relevant concepts within his/her schema. When this occurs it produces a series of changes within our entire cognitive structure. Existing concepts are modified and new linkages between concepts are formed. (http://www.edu.cuhk.edu.hk/~johnson/cmap/cmapguid.html)

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Ausubel & Expositiory Learning

Ausubel (1960) believed that meaningful learning is idiosyncratic and involves personal recognition of the links between concepts. The most important element of meaningful learning is not so much how information is presented but how new information is integrated into an existing knowledge base. (http://www.spjc.cc.fl.us/0/spns/lancraft/cmapping.html)

In order to enhance meaningful learning Ausubel believed that it was important to have students preview information to be learned. Teachers could do this by providing a brief introduction about the way that information that is going to be presented is structured. An example of this might be opening a lesson with a statement that provides an overview of what will be taught. In presenting outlines of information, teachers can help students see the big picture to be learned. http://vanguard.phys.udiaho.edu/mod/models/ausubel/index.html

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Robert Gagne was born in 1916 in North Andover, MA. He obtained his A.B. at Yale in 1937 and in 1940 his Ph.D. in Psychology from Brown University. He taught at Connecticut College for Women from 1940-49 and then at Penn State University from 1945-1946. Between 1949-1958, Gagne was director of the perceptual and motor skills laborartory of the U.S. Air force. It was at this time that he began to develop some of his ideas that comprise his learning theory called the "Conditions of Learning".

He is currently a professor in the Department of Education Research at Florida State University in Tallahassee. For the past 25 years, he has worked to interpret and apply the findings from learning theory/research, primarily to school learning. ... continued on the next part (13).

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Today Gagne is considered an experimental psychologist who is concerned with learning and instruction. Although his earlier work is grounded in the behaviorist tradition, his current work seems to be influenced by the information processing view of learning and memory.

Gagne’s theory stipulates that there are several different types or levels of learning. The significance of these classifications is that each different type requires different types of instruction. Gagne identifies five major categories of learning: verbal information, intellectual skills, cognitive strategies, motor skills and attitudes.