My guest blogger this week is Joanne Fenton, Languages Faculty Head at Macarthur Anglican School, where Indonesian is taught from Kindergarten through to Year 12. She writes: “Where are you from?” “Wow, you are so good at Indonesian!” “Where are you studying?” Anyone who has visited Indonesia will know the friendliness of the Indonesian people. People love to ask questions of tourists, showing great interest in the Australian way of life and in us as individuals. As Christians, we are called to love God with all our heart, soul, strength and mind and to love our neighbour as ourselves. What if we could give our students a simple but practical way to show love and care for others through teaching them conversational skills? The title of the first unit in our Year 9 Indonesian elective course is Making Connections and the concept focus is to explicitly teach conversational intelligence. One of the core elements is teaching students to ask questions. It is very easy as teachers to spend a disproportionate amount of class time teaching our students to answer questions, with the underlying message being that conversation revolves around them and has little to do with the other person.
Our goal is to teach our students that conversation is reciprocal and involves skills such as active listening, maintenance and repair strategies. Students learn to sustain a conversation by specifically commenting on what the person has said previously, using simple phrases such as “Fantastic!”, “Me too!”, “Really?” and “That’s interesting”. By listening attentively to what is said and responding in a way that invites further connection, students can convey that they value and care for that person. This unit had an immediate and positive impact on our students, who loved using their active listening skills when they visited Indonesia on a study tour. In the same way that the kindness of Indonesians is one of my strongest impressions from my visits there, I hope that we can teach our students to bless others through their willingness to extend the hand of friendship as they converse with the Indonesian people they meet. Jo Fenton, Macarthur Anglican School
1 Comment
Rachel Moore
8/11/2016 11:59:12 am
Hi Jo, I love your ideas in this post. I could really help my kids expand beyond our handy stand by for French "et toi? et vous?" - "and you?"!
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