What is Language Learning?
Nearly all of us speak or sign a language. The speaking or signing we do is a physical performance. Behind that is something immaterial. The inaudible and unseen mental representation by which people assign meaning to utterances is linguistic competency. It is quite complex, and it develops naturally in the course of healthy mental maturation.
Only a small fraction of us are linguists. We analyze language and make observations. This is not a natural process. It is an academic pursuit in which scholars search out linguistic knowledge (i.e., knowledge about language).
Linguistic knowledge is not linguistic competency. This much is obvious. Unfortunately, many second language learners do not realize a less obvious fact. Not only are knowledge and competency different—there is no essential connection between them at all!
If a linguist teaches you about English grammar, that DOES NOT mean your competency has increased. Conversely, if there are clear indicators that your competency is increasing (i.e., you read more nuanced books, you understand more conversations, you speak more fluently), that DOES NOT mean you learned any grammar rules recently.
Our Goal and Our Focus
The goal of this website is to help students increase their English language competency.
I loved studying linguistics in graduate school, but I am not teaching linguistics to ESL students. In fact, I am not even teaching English. I teach literary appreciation, and I use English as the language of instruction.
Students in my class will be continuously exposed to English in spoken and written forms; however, our focus will rarely ever be on language. Instead, students are expected to analyze plot lines and observe character development.
Language acquisition is a nonconscious mental process. This is true of both native languages and languages acquired later in life.
We DO NOT learn new words by “memorizing” them; we solidify the less familiar words in our mental lexicon by interpreting their meaning in contexts we care about.
We DO NOT learn grammar by “internalizing” the rules presented in textbooks; we acquire aspects of grammar by navigating communicative encounters.
Pedagogic Principles
My curriculum is based on the work of Beniko Mason, Stephen Krashen, and Bill VanPatten. These researchers show that second language acquisition results when students read voluntarily, when teachers put forth compelling linguistic input, and when classroom activities have a non-linguistic purpose.
When a student is reading, it should be because she is interested in the material. When a student is listening, it should be because he wants to hear what comes next. Classroom activities should never be reduced to drills or phonic repetitions; rather, the culmination of classroom activity should be students learning something new.
Again, when I say, “students learning something new,” I DO NOT mean “students learning something new about the English language.”
As I explained above, I am not teaching linguistics. I intend to teach my students about human nature and the world around us, as would be expected in any literature course. Instruction is always in English, but the subject matter is not the English language itself.
Materials
My curriculum is made up entirely of stories. A student who has just finished a good story will want to read another. A well told story compels listeners to want to know what happens next. Stories spark curiosity, and they shape our understanding of the world.
I will casually and continually ask students to share with me any good stories they might be reading elsewhere. My hope is that students eventually join me is searching for stories outside of class that are worth sharing inside our class.
Story-listeners will turn into storytellers, storytellers will turn into story-listeners, and then back again. The reciprocity of a cooperative endeavor like this is precisely the sort of human interaction that contributes to language acquisition.
Lessons last 25 minutes. Cancelations are permitted at any time, and you are encouraged to send me a request if you wish to reschedule. However, I can only guarantee those time slots that are reserved two weeks in advance. The best practice is for students to choose a regular weekly schedule and stick to it as much as possible.
My name is Andrew Benjamin McRae. I am the sole proprietor of Sharing Stories, and I am the only instructor you will me on this site.
A happy irony overwhelms me in my efforts to become a better ESL instructor. As outlined above, my work is nurture students’ appreciation of stories. To the extent that I succeed, my students develop a greater appreciation for the English language (its contents and structures).
The irony is this: the harder I work to make students appreciate just one more story, the more I grow to appreciate the students themselves!
As it turns out, learning a living language is inseparable from meeting new people. I look forward to meeting you.