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Personal page of Marklen E. Konurbayev, Professor of English linguistics at the Faculty of Philology. Member of LATEUM

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The Essence of Teaching

Plenary talk at the Conference of LATEUM, Moscow State University

Many years ago one of my old friends told me a parable:

Once there was a young man who wished to find a teacher. And he went and came to an old man who was famous throughout the lands for his wisdom, and he said to him in the voice full of awe and respect: “Hail thee, wise man. I came a long way only to find thee and to become your follower and a disciple.

The old man greeted him back and said:

- Well, isn’t it wonderful when a man of your age seeks knowledge and advice from the one who is more experienced in life. Join me now, for I am going to go on a pilgrimage. But before we start, may I ask you about one small formality. Why don’t you swear that you truly intend to become my disciple and that you shall surely obey me in everything I shall tell you to do.

And the young man solemnly vowed a vow that he shall follow his teacher in everything. And they both started on a pilgrimage and walked and stayed for a night in one open place. And since the weather was good they did not seek any shelter. And while they were sleeping it suddenly started raining and the teacher woke up and rushed to his disciple who was sleeping soundly being exceedingly tired after a long walk and started covering him with a blanket. At this moment the young man woke up and began shouting at his teacher full of indignation to the effect that it was his (disciple’s) duty to take care of his teacher. And the teacher patiently listened and quietly returned to his bed.

On the morning the disciple decided to do a very clever thing (as he thought then). He solemnly came up to his teacher and said that beginning with this day he refuses to be his disciple but wishes to be a teacher himself.

- All right, – said the teacher, obediently.

And they continued their way. When they again stayed for a night in one open place. The disciple announced that being a teacher – he commands the old man to stay and rest and he himself shall go and get firewood. The old man shook his head and said:

- You do not understand the essence of learning, young man. It consists in the following: all things that are done for your sake – receive with gratitude, while all things that are in your power – do yourself!”

Well this ancient wisdom concerns learning, and I shall return to it at the end of my talk. And what about teaching? In fact I did not think of it until I received my Certificate of Higher Education and started teaching myself. I didn’t have very many teachers before that, and I always thought that their strongest point was the abundance of knowledge. Partially this was confirmed by what I heard one evening in 1991 from the late Professor Akhmanova. She was 83 at that time. We were returning late in the day from the meeting of the sitting of the Dissertation Board when suddenly after a pause she said to me with a note of desperation in her voice: “You know, I have so many things to tell you all. So much knowledge to pass. I can’t possibly take it away with me – everything that I accumulated during my lifetime.”

Thus, being convinced that the main prerequisite for good teaching is the amount of knowledge I started striving to grow in knowledge.

And then, on some other occasion, when I was proudly presenting some of my small discoveries to Olga Akhmanova, she, seeing my stupidly satisfied and self-conceited face, said to me: “And can you teach it to anyone, Marklen? If not then there is very little use in all your findings”. I stopped shot sorry and ashamed for my stupid pride and thought: “Yeah, yeah! Aren't there hundreds of people in the world who have profound knowledge in so many things but who can hardly teach anything. And they grow old, and die as the Kantian thing in itself ”. An outstanding Persian poet and a philosopher of the 13^th century Jalalutdin Rumi wrote: “A traveller without a guide shall waste a hundred years to cover a two days’ distance”. Well, are there many guides around who can truly manage this two days’ distance themselves and not lead a traveller into a pit?

And I thought of all these things and came to the conclusion that good teaching is far from being just information sharing, as many people mistakenly think, but an art that exceeds in its complexity many sciences. No! Teaching is definitely not information sharing, at least not just information sharing.

The modern American writer of Lebanese origin who became famous in the whole world for his book “The Prophet” thus wrote about teaching:

No man can reveal to you aught

but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of our knowledge.

The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his followers, gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faith and his lovingness.

If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind.

The musician may sing to you of the rhythm which is in all space, but he cannot give you the ear which arrests the rhythm nor the voice that echoes it.

For the vision of one man lends not its wings to another man.

And even as each one of you stands alone in God's knowledge, so must each one of you be alone in his knowledge of God and in his understanding of the earth.

Well, at first sight the conclusion seems to be quite odd: teaching is not information sharing but love and inspiration.

Not quite so. In fact both elements are logically connected. The learner is inspired as he makes progress and achieves results in learning and getting new knowledge. Well, what should a teacher actually do to guarantee such progress in learning and the desired good results? Here probably another parable would help to get the right answer.

In Paulo Cohelio’s Warrior of the Light there is an episode where an old woman tells a young child a legend of a huge temple with a lot of bells that was once erected on the shore of the sea. And the child went and asked the fishermen about the temple and they told him that the temple has long drowned in the sea and if one sits on the seashore and listens attentively he may actually hear the tolling of the bells of the temple. The child went and spent months and years on the seashore but heard nothing. He was nearly disappointed but suddenly realised that the time was actually not wasted – since he had learnt to hear and understand the music of nature – the sound of the waves that ebb and flow and the voice of the seagulls soaring in the air. And that was exactly what the old woman intended to teach the young boy to do.

Hence come two morals. The first one is: a teacher bears responsibility for the final result of teaching. In teaching a foreign language it cannot be just: I’ll teach them some words, or I’ll teach them cultural concepts, or I’ll teach them a particular intonation contour. We are not teaching dead language, but a living human language. And the teaching can only be dynamic i.e. the material should be presented to the learner in the unity of all elements of the communicated message. It is also important to realise, that the task of teaching the whole system of the language in its lexical-grammatical entirety is hardly attainable. However, if we choose the philological approach, i.e. when the object of study is not a separate word or concept but a complete text, the stated task becomes quite feasible and the words are studied in their contextual meanings, in their relationship to one another within the framework of a particular situation and particular functional style. As a result of this dynamic approach we manage to build in a learner the objective picture of the living human language and what is more important (if the teacher is responsible enough, and he should be responsible for the final product and not just for individual lessons) teach him to use the language to the best advantage.

Again speaking allegorically, I would draw a comparison with the art of making animated cartoons. A teacher may draw individual cartoons. And they shall be nice and wonderful each one of them taken separately – but if he himself does not show how these cartoons work together and at what speed and in what succession – the child shall never see the moving picture. Thus the task of a teacher is to build a hierarchy of texts – graded in complexity, the scope of lexical and grammatical elements and the range of cultural and historical concepts to study. If such hierarchy is not built – the task of teaching turns into a haphazard selection of texts – fragments, dialogues, monologues where the sole argument a teacher uses for choosing a particular material is that it is very useful for the student to know a certain selection of phrases irrespective of a particular situation and functional necessity. The phrases like, for example, “wet paint” or “mind the gap” may surely be absolutely idiomatic. But snatched out of the context and without some thought given by the teacher why they should be taught at a particular period of studying they cannot be unsystematically introduced into the course studies.

The second moral that may be drawn from Cohelio’s parable is as follows: the world of language is very rich – like a vast ocean – and if we intend to teach a student to roam its endless spaces we are to explain to him the main trends and the shape of the borders and the bottom. Concentrating on the quality and the hue and transparency of water in every cubic meter is erroneous and futile. The student must come to these conclusions independently – although possibly under the control of his teacher. Plainly speaking, the approach to teaching should be categorial.

Philosophically speaking, if a man wishes to know the laws of moral he should begin by clearly distinguishing between something 100% good as opposed to something that is obviously bad. And he would know that all other cases are between these two extremes – closer either to one or the other. In this sense the book by Vladimir Mayakovskii “×òî òàêîå õîðîøî è ÷òî òàêîå ïëîõî – is a perfect and probably one of the best examples of the categorial approach to child upbringing. If we intend to make the learner feel rich semantic and stylistic potentials of this or that word – we are to explain to him that stylistic and semantic variability of words lies within a certain system where the extreme categorial points are clearly defined. High or elevated style vs. low style (jargon, vulgarisms). In semantics – basic nominative meaning as the neutral element of the system – contextual broadening of the meaning where the word acquires additional shades of meaning in the context – at one extreme and expressive narrowing (where the word becomes practically desemantised – at the other extreme – like for example: he was sweating from an avowedly insane bicycle trip, where the word “avowedly”  hardly means anything except enhancing the meaning of the adjective “insane”. If we wish to teach the learner how to put words together – we are again to explain to him the categorial nature of the language system and say that at one extreme there are free word combinations while at the other extreme – idioms proper, while everything between them is closer to one or the other point – the main criterion for distinguishing them being degree of idiomaticity or globality of nomination, where speech clichés, like “as far as something is concerned” or “I assume that” for example shall be nearly free in nature but not absolutely, since  they are reproduced in the flow of speech as ready-made units, as single blocks. When a learner chooses the wrong word – it is surely not enough to say that the word is wrong in this or that context, but he should know why he is wrong and what basically is the difference between his sentence and the one required by the context. The rules should be explained on the basis of easy to understand and obvious examples. Like for example in the following pairs where one word combination shall be correct while the other one is somewhat strange, odd or artificial:

Comfortable house – convenient house

I am convinced – I am confirmed

Who is your favourite writer – who is your favourite author.

Etc.

All these crucial theoretical postulates of stylistics and lexicology were thoroughly explained in the books written by my colleagues at the Department of English linguistics of the Moscow State University: Professors Andrei Lipgart, Natalia Gvishiani, Irina Giubbenet, in the works by the late Professor Akhmanova and Academician Vinogradov. And I am extremely grateful to them all for they helped me to improve my daily teaching practice.

Categorial approach in teaching gives greater freedom and flexibility so necessary in dynamic speaking both to the teacher and the learner. If I am teaching phonetics to the beginners, in categorial terms I surely begin with the articulation basis, explaining the setting of the main speech organs in pronouncing sounds. But this is not enough if we intend to achieve good results. All phoneticians know how exceedingly difficult to make the beginner flatten his tongue, draw it back from the teeth and pronounce #s 5 and 7 (a: and o:). Well it may seem that after such an explanation the categorial approach is in place and the teacher may safely proceed with the exercises, assuming that the ideal learner keeps all that invaluable information in his memory all the time. Does he? Does he really remember? Why don’t we try and develop creatively the practical tools for the learner to acquire the necessary articulation setting.

John Laver in his English phonetics writes about the so called mandibular setting within the framework of the English articulation basis. This is connected with the way we move our jaws in the process of speaking. I tried to focus my attention on this element of the articulation basis at the lessons of phonetics urging my students to make an effort and move the jaws along the imaginary horizontal axis backwards when trying to pronounce back English vowels (and the movement is practically insignificant – may be half a centimetre or even less). The results were very, very good. This backward mandibular movement resulted in automatic flattening of the tongue due to the increased tension in the root of the tongue.

I gave this example only to show that a mere explanation of the basic categories and the principal trends, waves and drifts in the language is not sufficient. The teacher should make an effort to direct this new knowledge along the practical track which is only possible in treating the language as I have already said, as a living being and taking into account all its various aspects. The approach should be dynamic. And the teacher is to show to the learner himself how he can create this necessary movement of thought through the masterful use of the language. The teacher ought to strive for perfection, in the sense that if he is teaching phonetics, he should not disregard the lexical, the grammatical or the syntactic side of the language. If he is teaching grammar, he should not think that phonetics is less important for him. The only difference between the teachers of various aspects of the language is that some aspects they are teaching but other aspects they can skillfully master themselves. A teacher cannot be a lopsided specialist in only one discipline disregarding all other sides of the language. Since, as I have said, he is teaching not the dead but the living human language. Only in that case he is capable of inspiring his students who see with their eyes that their teacher is perfect in explanation and a great master in practical command of the language. When this practical side is disregarded by the teacher this vast vacuity is filled with all sorts of demons – like laziness, jeering and lack of respect on the part of the students. As a result – no inspiration and no learning. This is important, because as Sir Alan Gardiner correctly stated – all learning is essentially imitation. But imitation of what or whom? If a teacher can set a good example of only phonetics but shows bad command of words, or if he is perfect only in grammar but phonetics leaves much to be desired – what imitation shall we expect from the learner? We all want him to be perfect in every respect by the end of the studies. But let us think, whether we actually set the necessary example ourselves?

Finally a couple of words about the art of learning. This subject as I understand shall be discussed in great detail at one of the sections later today, as I understand. Therefore I shall allow myself to mention briefly only a couple of points meant mainly for future discussion.

Every learner is striving for knowledge and perfection in application of this knowledge. But what is knowledge and how to build it?

Ancient Greeks taught us that knowledge is remembrance or recollection. But not of some implicit data your brain has from childhood as Plato thought but of the most recent facts one heard or read. Well do we create wide enough environment for the students to realize this most important prerequisite of all learning and how to find a balance between the time for the teacher to share his knowledge on the one hand and for the student to actually acquire knowledge, on the other? The question is – what must a learner remember to become proficient in practical command of the language. The answer seems to lie within the scope of teacher-learner interaction. The teacher explains the rules, conducts a sample analysis of model texts and then uses the models himself to show the way it can best be used by the learner. When the learner arrives at the point of usage of the language – he cannot possibly remember everything, every minute detail of the explanation and the analysis provided by the teacher. He remembers only the main points, around which all immediate context circulates. There is a balance between freedom for variation on the one hand and categorical non-freedom, the necessity to follow the basic rules, on the other. If the pivotal categorial points are correctly perceived by the learner – he feels a considerable freedom for variation, creating the necessary dynamism and facilitating the teacher’s task  to see to it that the learner does not exceed the limits of the categorial oppositions. There are hundreds of exercises oriented at working with the context of the situation and making the learner remember what he has recently studied. Retelling, back translation, text browsing, information retrieval, etc. All of these activities are directed at making the learner remember. And here the responsibility of the teacher is very high, for a learner remembers most of the time statically – some separate unrelated facts of grammar, occasional words that he didn’t know before and that are attractive to him, certain situational facts. Everything he remembers in the  course of the lesson automatically becomes his knowledge and the task of the teacher is not just to be pleased with the exercise of memory but to separate the wheat from the chaff and organize the remembered by the students linguistic facts – words, word-combinations and grammatical constructions into the desired for a particular level of studies system, preventing the beginners from using unusual and semantically and stylistically narrow constructions, focusing on the general stock of words and teaching the advanced learners the art of linguistic precision.

However not all learners are the same, of course. Some are capable of making good progress others are very slow, yet others are lazy and inefficient. The dynamic approach I have been talking about to a certain extent helps to cope with the task of dealing with them all in a single room, but the result is not always there. And now let me conclude with a parable once again that I am sure is very well familiar to this audience and that is very symbolic for this our conference and that gives an interesting shade to everything I have been speaking about in my today’s presentation:

Behold, a sower went forth to sow;

And when he sowed, some seeds fell by the way side, and the fowls came and devoured them up:

Some fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth: and forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth:

And when the sun was up, they were scorched;

and because they had no root, they withered away.

And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprung up, and choked them: But other fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold.

Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.