Interesting point about attention spans. I've found I'm getting better with that after 10 months of ODing on long form Substack articles. Thank you for the interesting links here; they'll keep me busy for a while.
Which DELE was it? I had to look that up; in Portugal the different levels have their own acronyms.
I've been enjoying the shift to Substack articles as well. It makes a difference, doesn't it?
I took the C1 DELE. I needed the certification to apply for citizenship, so I wasn't too interested in putting in the extra work to try to get C2. I probably could have...I somehow managed to pass the writing part that I rushed through at the end. Have you taken the Portuguese version?
I'm struggling myself to focus on more immersive reads, and I thought I was always resistant to it. I used to love sitting down and dedicating an hour to a book and not thinking about anything else, but at the moment, with so many things demanding my attention, plus lots of writing to do (here on Substack and for my books), it's hard to not get distracted.
I was lucky that for much of my teaching career, there weren't too many classroom distractions. Then Instagram and TikTok appeared and it was a battle of wits, me against them.
So many demands on our attention is right! On one hand, it's great. There are so many things I want to learn about and read and do...but on the other hand, some sacrifices have to be made.
Thanks for the recommendation! I'll definitely have a look.
The state of perpetual distractedness is a phenomenon I think about frequently; from my own teaching experience, already from some 20+ years ago, I tend to see it as a mean counterpart to lacunae in prior educational experience as well. Of course, we have to reflect on the impact of media as well ... which of course is part of the phone addiction issue.
Two things come to mind reading your post.
One is that I feel the attention-span issue has begun to shape expectations in American public schools, and curricula/academic offerings start to conform to the learning capacity of media-drenched and device-addicted students. As a musician I am always dismayed to hear of the decline or elimination of music programmes in schools, as I believe the specific type of non-verbal learning associated with music has impact in other areas as well. (I'll write a short piece some time on how I tend to transpose music practice techniques to language learning).
A second observation is that you did not say much about the profile of your learners--age group, educational context, etc. I wonder about their interests and what would engage them. I read the article you selected and can understand well why, as an educator, you find it engaging, but I wonder if it also aligns to the interests of your students (it's also not as short a piece as I expected, given the problems you identified). Maybe you could say more about this when you report on the success of your experiment?
What you've written about is important and I congratulate you on putting it out for comment, and also for acknowledging that there are now few of us who are exempt from being challenged by the need to concentrate for long periods on a single action or topic.
I couldn’t agree more on your point about the attention-span issue shaping expectations and “encouraging” us to conform to learning capacity. This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot, not only with regard to attention span, but also with the advent of using AI.
For these pre-service business school students (studying digital marketing, luxury management and business administration), what they need to learn to do in English has completely shifted. Why learn to answer a customer complaint email when Chat GPT can do it for you? This was not an issue just LAST year!
Having run the same program successfully twice with outstanding reviews, I felt confident in most of the material and activities I chose. I tried getting them involved in the selection of material, peer teaching, presentations, communicative activities, etc. It just felt very different this year for some reason. If I’m part of this program next year, I’ll definitely approach it in a different way.
Can’t wait to read your piece on applying music practice to language learning! Sounds very interesting. 😊
I wrote it up in a hurry and will post it Thursday, I’ll be curious for your thoughts on it. To be honest, I’m very glad to not teach any more, there have been so many cultural changes over the decades and, as you say, things continue down the path. I worry about the impact of technology in human reasoning and potential acquiescence to machine logic and AI …
This is too funny! I'm working on a post for later this month and I'm quoting one of your posts!!
😂😂 We must have great minds…Thanks so much for the inspiration and I’ll let you know how it goes! 🤞🤞
Interesting point about attention spans. I've found I'm getting better with that after 10 months of ODing on long form Substack articles. Thank you for the interesting links here; they'll keep me busy for a while.
Which DELE was it? I had to look that up; in Portugal the different levels have their own acronyms.
I've been enjoying the shift to Substack articles as well. It makes a difference, doesn't it?
I took the C1 DELE. I needed the certification to apply for citizenship, so I wasn't too interested in putting in the extra work to try to get C2. I probably could have...I somehow managed to pass the writing part that I rushed through at the end. Have you taken the Portuguese version?
Please do! Your tailoring sounds fantastic!
I'm struggling myself to focus on more immersive reads, and I thought I was always resistant to it. I used to love sitting down and dedicating an hour to a book and not thinking about anything else, but at the moment, with so many things demanding my attention, plus lots of writing to do (here on Substack and for my books), it's hard to not get distracted.
I was lucky that for much of my teaching career, there weren't too many classroom distractions. Then Instagram and TikTok appeared and it was a battle of wits, me against them.
Here's a newsletter you might be interested in:
https://learnfrenchwithmaud.substack.com/
So many demands on our attention is right! On one hand, it's great. There are so many things I want to learn about and read and do...but on the other hand, some sacrifices have to be made.
Thanks for the recommendation! I'll definitely have a look.
The state of perpetual distractedness is a phenomenon I think about frequently; from my own teaching experience, already from some 20+ years ago, I tend to see it as a mean counterpart to lacunae in prior educational experience as well. Of course, we have to reflect on the impact of media as well ... which of course is part of the phone addiction issue.
Two things come to mind reading your post.
One is that I feel the attention-span issue has begun to shape expectations in American public schools, and curricula/academic offerings start to conform to the learning capacity of media-drenched and device-addicted students. As a musician I am always dismayed to hear of the decline or elimination of music programmes in schools, as I believe the specific type of non-verbal learning associated with music has impact in other areas as well. (I'll write a short piece some time on how I tend to transpose music practice techniques to language learning).
A second observation is that you did not say much about the profile of your learners--age group, educational context, etc. I wonder about their interests and what would engage them. I read the article you selected and can understand well why, as an educator, you find it engaging, but I wonder if it also aligns to the interests of your students (it's also not as short a piece as I expected, given the problems you identified). Maybe you could say more about this when you report on the success of your experiment?
What you've written about is important and I congratulate you on putting it out for comment, and also for acknowledging that there are now few of us who are exempt from being challenged by the need to concentrate for long periods on a single action or topic.
I couldn’t agree more on your point about the attention-span issue shaping expectations and “encouraging” us to conform to learning capacity. This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot, not only with regard to attention span, but also with the advent of using AI.
For these pre-service business school students (studying digital marketing, luxury management and business administration), what they need to learn to do in English has completely shifted. Why learn to answer a customer complaint email when Chat GPT can do it for you? This was not an issue just LAST year!
Having run the same program successfully twice with outstanding reviews, I felt confident in most of the material and activities I chose. I tried getting them involved in the selection of material, peer teaching, presentations, communicative activities, etc. It just felt very different this year for some reason. If I’m part of this program next year, I’ll definitely approach it in a different way.
Can’t wait to read your piece on applying music practice to language learning! Sounds very interesting. 😊
I wrote it up in a hurry and will post it Thursday, I’ll be curious for your thoughts on it. To be honest, I’m very glad to not teach any more, there have been so many cultural changes over the decades and, as you say, things continue down the path. I worry about the impact of technology in human reasoning and potential acquiescence to machine logic and AI …