Teaching as creating a flow-chart
Although this does not apply to all concepts and ideas, I often find my teaching to be similar creating a flow chart. The idea is to get students to think about what kind of information they need to gather in order to complete the process. To gather the relevant information, they need to ask the right questions, and put these questions in the right order. Depending on the answer to each question, they will also need to devise the next course of action. For example, in phonological analyses, one needs to decide whether two sounds are phonemes (the combination of which constitute different words) or allophones of the same phoneme (variations in pronunciation that does not convey difference in meaning). In order to do that, we need to ask a number of questions in a specific order. 1) Do the two sounds appear in the same positions in the same word? YES: they are allophones of the same phoneme (e.g. as in the case for an aspirated and non-aspirated t in the word dot). NO: ask the next question. 2) Do they appear in the same phonological environment (e.g. at the beginning of a word vs. the middle/end of a word)? YES: they are two separate phonemes (e.g. d/f in dog vs. fog). NO: They might be allophones of the same phoneme (e.g. /t/ in top (aspirated) vs. stop (non-aspirated))… The process itself is a bit more complicated than this. But I will stop here, since I think I’ve got my point across. The idea of explaining language behaviors and processes with a flowchart allows me to breakdown complicated processes into components. It helps my students appreciate how the human brain can gather and process information with such complexity at a subconscious level.
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