xmca@weber.ucsd.edu writes:
>Interestingly, this was all done in a regular old EFL classroom (15
>students doing similar conversations) without any props etc. Just the
>desire to interact socially in a language that they do not use outside of
>this inauthentic context. I am very interested in applying AT to this: if
>anyone has any interest, I'd appreciate the dialogue (I finished the full
>transcription this morning together with a narrative of the entire 55
>minute classroom lesson).
Phil, i've been considering your question over the weekend - one way of
positioning the activity is under the concept of "play" or "theater" -
there's lots of work on children's play (Keith Sawyer is an activity
theorist who has looked at children's play. and of course vygotsky was
intrigued by the theater - wrote about Hamlet.
but i think that this is a good example of imaginary work - visualizing a
practice - before actually practicing it out in the community. i think
that it's a mistake to think that the classroom is an inauthentic context
- it's quite an authentic context with an enormously complex cultural
history - it's the activities within the context that would be authentic
or inauthentic, i think.
and it looks to me like this was an authentic activity.
phillip
* * * * * * * *
* *
The English noun "identity" comes, ultimately, from the
Latin adverb "identidem", which means "repeatedly."
The Latin has exactly the same rhythm as the English,
buh-BUM-buh-BUM - a simple iamb, repeated; and
"identidem" is, in fact, nothing more than a
reduplication of the word "idem", "the same":
"idem(et)idem". "Same(and) same". The same,
repeated. It is a word that does exactly what
it means.
from "The Elusive Embrace" by Daniel
Mendelsohn.
phillip white
university of colorado at denver
denver, colorado
phillip_white@ceo.cudenver.edu
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