#7

One of the things that were discussed from Chapter 3 was how similar the ginkgo nut was to learning. Wong said that both could be displeasing and sometimes be irksome. When someone steps on the ginkgo nut, it will release an odor so foul that someone wouldn’t be able to stand. The same thing could be said of learning. It is understandable that learning can be considered as an acquired taste. There are so many things that can be unpleasing and discouraging to a student especially when he or she is just beginning to explore the realm of learning—it make take years and hard work before the student develop the “taste” for learning.

            Learning could be an acquired taste because there are so many things that blocks a student from finding pleasure on the act. For example, the material may be too hard for the student to comprehend. Instead of trying to work on the solutions to a problem that’s too hard for him or her, the student may choose to give up entirely. He or she might not have teachers who encourage their efforts and instead highlight their mistakes, as well as understate their efforts. This environment fosters a state in which the student may not be as agreeable to learning. However, Wong also describes something called “problem posing” in order to help the students learn a new language in ways that wouldn’t leave a bad taste/experience for all involved.

            According to Wong, “students learn the new language through dialogue and meaningful activity.” It is not enough for teachers to give students the rules of the grammar and memorize thousands of vocabulary then expecting these methods to be enough so that the student could learn a new language. A more substantial help is needed. For example, Vygotsky claimed, “An activity that is generative of higher mental processes is a socially meaningful mediated activity. The source of mediation is either in a material tool, in a system of symbols, or in the behavior of another human being.” When I was first learning English, one of the activities that my teacher gave us was encouraging the students to read one after the other. When we didn’t know how to pronounce a word, our other classmates could help us. Sometimes, groups would enact a passage that we read in class. This only helped us volunteer more often and made English into our own language.