As teachers we spend a long time mastering our content.  It is only natural – and the first days of teaching, a matter of survival. In coming to grips with a text, figuring out how to meet learning outcomes and negotiating the classroom often we often are focussed on the minutia and not the big picture. When I look back on my early days of teaching – it was a lot of  teacher-centred “how to do” but not a lot of  student-centred “why to”. That is, I delivered a huge amount of vocabulary/structure sometimes to the detriment of meaningful learning; a ‘forest for the trees’ style of teaching.

Over the years my focus in teaching has evolved. This week I had the privilege of working with a group of Japanese language teachers who are interested  in expanding their classroom practices. What the group wanted to do provides a good focus for all teachers of any language – the key to creating interactive opportunities lies in answering the question “when would you use this in real life?”.

One of the teachers in the workshop asked if I ever taught about the Japanese house. I do and asked her what she did for that. She has students design an eco-house. It’s a great idea but, she realizes, not particularly interactive for students. I then asked her the ‘real-life’ question – “When do you talk about housing, use names of rooms and talk about features?” You could see it dawn on her as she answered “When  you are buying/renting a place to live.” Bingo! Suddenly a house poster project becomes “Finding an apartment”. Not only does the housing rental fair – the interactive portion – become the prime unit activity but it is also helpful in the future no matter what language they will be speaking.

Taking the time to think about the “when” of language leads to a classroom where students also see the big picture – the forest – and enjoy the journey through it.

Colleen