Seeing as we live in an increasingly connected world where a
majority of our experiences can be customized to suit our desires and many of
the gadgets we use can be highly personalized to suit our self-perceptions and
identity projections. It’s only natural to expect that that our interactions
and experiences as learners should be tailored to our comfort, enjoyment and
preference. We could think of it as bespoke education! Certainly, we all have a
trove of old unpleasant memories carefully stored away in the dusty, cobweb filled
corners of the brain space we allocate for memories. You know, the section that
contains those dreaded scenarios of you feeling terribly anxious and sweaty
palmed with knocking knees' as you sat in your desk begging God that the
teacher wouldn’t choose you to answer that French or Spanish question that you
find difficult though it seems everyone else has got it and are ready to move
on to the next thing! I certainly have a corner filled with these dreadful
experiences as a struggling student of French and I suspect that the residual
effects of these negative experiences have had some impact on my dislike of
French people (just kidding…sort of.) and my apprehension to enroll in evening
language classes.
If only then I had known about disinhibition! I could have
separated my conscience from my physical body and given answers using my less
anxious ethereal phantom presence!
As mentioned by Cunningham in Liminality and
Disinhibition in Online Language Learning (2011) and defined by Joinsen,
disinhibition is “any behavior that is characterized by an apparent reduction
for self-presentation and judgment of others” (Joinsen 1998, p.44). Following this study, I
was intrigued to discover that in many cases, the occurrence of disinhibition
within cmc was accompanied by displays of negative behavior due to loosened
social cues, a sense of lessened responsibility and the assumption of
anonymity, but like Cunningham, I agree that in light of these occurrences,
disinhibition is a phenomena that can be used to the advantage of language
learners and I hope to find a way to help students engage this state of mind
within my physical classroom.
Since access to ICT is a bit of a challenge in my school, I
tried to brainstorm a few non technology-requiring methods for reducing anxiety
and inducing disinhibition in the classroom.
- At the start of each trimester, each student creates a
personalized fabric finger puppet to represent himself and each student should
also decorate his desk as a comfortable home space for his puppet.
- After naming their finger puppet (perhaps using a western
English name would be helpful for inducing disinhibition?) students will not
communicate f2f with each other and the teacher but rather, speaking through
their finger puppet and they could also develop a special voice to use when
speaking. Students can also make video presentations using their smartphones to
record (I can upload them to my laptop and share with the class using the
projector) and conversational tasks could also be practiced, recorded and filed
for later revision.
- The teacher could also have a puppet whose demeanor, voice
and role differs from the actual teacher. This might reduce anxiety for
students since they will be aware of the role definitions of teacher (authority
figure and assessor) and teacher as puppet (friendly / helpful) and also know
what role they should play depending on the mode of the teacher.
- Separate content: In the Pasfield-Neofitou article
(2011), some of the interviewed students woefully remarked that they might
always feel like Japanese foreign language speakers regardless of how much they
practiced (outside of total immersion). A few also pointed out a few advantages
to being a permanent foreigner, one of which was always having the freedom to make
mistakes since it is known by all participants in the conversation that the
initiator of conversation is not a native speaker.
I also found it clever that some students had devised their
own techniques for reducing anxiety and diverting native speaker aggression by
publicly announcing that they were passionate language learners who would make
a plethora of mistakes and in some instances they managed to avert aggression
by issuing an apology in advance. I felt that this willingness to acknowledge a
lack of proficiency, issue an apology, then exist and operate within the role
of permanent learner / foreigner functioned as a method of inducing
disinhibition and in the absence of ICT I could possibly devise this climate in
my classroom by separating content. While focusing on heavily academic,
topic related content that is distributed by the ministry of education, we
could all function as ourselves (non-puppet) given the seriousness and weight
of government assessments. When focusing on more pliable skills (speaking and
listening, light conversational topics, new English vocabulary) and generally
fun, interactive activities, students could switch back to their finger puppets
knowing that it will be perfectly acceptable, natural and a consequence free environment
to practice and develop their skills in English.
Everyday, as a language teacher and a less than
mildly competent learner of Arabic, I find myself functioning as a trained master
of torture by subjecting my poor Arabic speaking students to an unending
onslaught of unanswerable questions, verbal inquiries, unintelligible
dictations and assessed tasks that serve as harsh spotlights rooting every
timid, mute, illiterate, introverted, extroverted, apathetic and
enthusiastically energetic student out the nooks and crannies of their comfort
zones and onto a stage where their inabilities are showcased in front of their
peers.
Bravo, bravo! Encore, encore! I certainly deserve a pat on
the back don’t I? Seriously, all sarcasm and jesting aside, this is not a job
that I am proud of an certainly, even given the context in which I am expected
to perform, there is certainly a better way of doing things and I am grateful
that this week’s readings were able to shine a guiding and insightful light
onto a better path for instructing language learners.
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