Thinking Outside the Box

Sometimes we get so set in our ways that we forget to think. Yes, it happens even to you. All of us, at one time or another, get locked into a mindset that can prevent us from solving problems. Please watch the following video clip.

How could these people's actions reflect your own behavior? Apart from what you learn in your classes, can you think of new ways to improve your English skills and make the learning process fun?

How to Decide Who to Marry: By Kids

1. How would you make your marriage work?
Tell your wife that she looks pretty, even if she looks like a truck.
Ricky, age 10

2. How can a stranger tell if two people are married?
You might have to guess, based on whether they seem to be yelling at the same kids.
Derrick, age 8

3. What do you think your mom and dad have in common?
Both don’t want any more kids.
Lori, age 8

4. What do most people do on a date?
Dates are for having fun, and people should use them to get to know each other. Even boys have something to say if you listen long enough.

Lynnette, age 8

On the first date, they just tell each other lies and that usually gets them interested enough to go for a second date.
Martin, age 10

5. What would you do on a first date that was turning sour?
I’d run home and play dead. The next day I would call all the newspapers and make sure they wrote about me in all the dead columns.
Craig, age 9

6. When is it okay to kiss someone?
The law says you have to be eighteen, so I wouldn’t want to mess with that.
Curt, age 7

The rule goes like this: If you kiss someone, then you should marry them and have kids with them. It’s the right thing to do.
Howard, age 8

7. What is the right age to get married?
Twenty-three is the best age because you know the person FOREVER by then.
Camille, age 10

No age is good to get married at. You got to be a fool to get married.
Freddie, age 6

8. Is it better to be single or married?

I don’t know which is better, but I’ll tell you one thing. I’m never going to have sex with my wife. I don’t want to be all grossed out.
Theodore, age 8

It’s better for girls to be single but not for boys. Boys need someone to clean up after them.
Anita, age 9

9. How would the world be different if people didn’t get married?

There sure would be a lot of kids to explain, wouldn’t there?

Kevin, age 8

10. How do you decide whom to marry?
You got to find somebody who likes the same stuff. Like, if you like sports, she should like it that you like sports, and she should keep the chips and dip coming.
Alan, age 10

No person really decides before they grow up who they’re going to marry. God decides it all way before, and you get to find out later who you’re stuck with.
Kristen, age 10

*Thank you to Salma Rumman at Divine Caroline*

Isn't this sweet? Which one is your favorite, and why?

Problems with Multi-tasking

 

Students Think They Can Multitask. Here's Proof They Can't

By Maryellen Weimer, PhD

With easy access to all sorts of technology, students multitask. So, do lots of us for that matter. But students are way too convinced that multitasking is a great way to work. They think they can do two or three tasks simultaneously and not compromise the quality of what they produce. Research says that about 5% of us multitask effectively. The negative effects of multitasking in learning environments is now coming from a variety of studies.

The question is, how do we get students to stop? We can tell them they shouldn't. We can include policies that aim to prevent it and devote time and energy trying to implement them. I wonder if it isn't smarter to confront students with the facts. Not admonitions, but concrete evidence that multitasking compromises their efforts to learn. The specifics are persuasive and here are some examples to share with students.

• In an experiment involving 62 undergraduate students taking a principles of accounting course, half of the cohort was allowed to text during a lecture and half had their phones turned off. After the lecture both groups took the same quiz and the students who did not text scored significantly higher on the quiz.
  Ellis, Y., Daniels, W. and Jauregui, A. (2010). The effect of multitasking on the grade performance of business students. Research in Higher Education Journal, 8. http://www.aabri.com/manuscripts/10498.pdf
• This research focused on the use of laptops in a 15-week management information systems class enrolling 97 upper division students. With student consent, researchers used a spyware program that tracked the windows and page names for each software application ran during class time. Students were encouraged to run "productive windows"—those that related to course content. Spyware also tracked the number of "distractive windows" students ran, including games, pictures, email, instant messaging and web surfing. Students had these distractive windows open 42% of the class time. Students who tried to listen to the lecture while using these distractive windows had significantly lower scores on homework, projects, quizzes, final exams and final course averages than students who looked at mostly productive windows. Researchers also found that this population under reported the extent of their multitasking.
  Kraushaar, J. M. and Novak, D. C. (2010). Examining the effects of student multitasking with laptops during lecture. Journal of Information Systems Education, 21 (2), 241-251.
• Students taking a general psychology course were asked to read on a computer a 3,828 word passage. One group used instant messaging before they started reading, another group used instant messaging while they were reading and a third group read without instant messaging. The group that used instant messaging while they read took between 22 and 59% longer to read the passage than students in the other two groups and that was after the time spent instant messaging was subtracted from the reading times.
  Bowman, L. L., Levine, L. E., Waite, B. M. and Dendron, M. (2010). Can students really multitask? An experimental study of instant messaging while reading. Computers & Education, 54, 927-931.
• A cross-disciplinary cohort of 774 students responded to a survey which documented that the majority of them engaged in classroom multitasking. Their multitasking was significantly related to lower GPA and to an increase in risk behaviors including use of alcohol, tobacco and other drugs.
  Barak, L. (2012). Multitasking in the university classroom. International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 6 (2)
  http://academics.georgiasouthern.edu/ijsotl/v6n2.html
• Students in a general psychology course completed weekly surveys on various aspects of the class. They reported their attendance, and if they used laptops during class for things other than note taking (like checking email, instant messaging, surfing the Web, playing games). They also rated how closely they paid attention to the lectures, how clear they found the lectures and how confident they were they understood the lecture material. The level of laptop use negatively correlated with how much attention students paid to the lectures, the clarity of the lectures and how well they understood the lecture material. "The level of laptop use was significantly and negatively related to student learning. The more students used their laptops in class, the lower their class performance." (p. 910)
  Fried, C. B. (2008). In-class laptop use and its effects on student learning. Computers and Education, 50 (3), 906-914.

How about you? Do you multi-task? How do you think it affects your studies and your ability to learn English?

Logical vs. Lateral Thinking: The Answer + A New Post

Here is what the girl did ....

The girl put her hand into the bag and pulled out a pebble. Without looking at it, she fumbled and let it fall onto the pebble-strewn path where it immediately became lost among all the other pebbles.

"Oh, how clumsy of me," she said. "But never mind, if you look into the bag for the one that is left, you will be able to tell which pebble I picked."

Since the remaining pebble is black, it must be assumed that she had picked the white one. And since the money-lender did not dare admit his dishonesty, the girl changed what seemed an impossible situation into an extremely advantageous one.

MORAL OF THE STORY:
Most complex problems do have a solution. It is only that we don't attempt to think.

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Wit & Wisdom

If people did not sometimes do silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done.
-Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein

Don't be possessed by your possessions.
-Photographer Lisl Steiner

Let everyone sweep in front of his own door, and the whole world will be clean.
-Author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.
-Feminist Gloria Steinem

It's the friends you can call at 4 a.m. that matter.
-Actress Marlene Dietrich

Pick one (1) of these quotes and tell why you like it.

Logical vs. Lateral Thinking

Welcome to the 2012-2013 academic year! To start the new semester in a deep thinking mode, I've posted a story for you. Read it and then answer the question at the end...

Many years ago in a small village, a farmer had the misfortune of owing a large sum of money to a village moneylender. The moneylender, who was old and ugly, was very interested in the farmer's beautiful daughter, and so he offered a deal.

The moneylender said he would forgive the farmer's debt if he could marry his daughter. Both the farmer and his daughter were horrified by the proposal, so the cunning moneylender suggested that they let fate decide the matter. He told them that he would put a black pebble and a white pebble into an empty money bag. Then the girl would have to pick one pebble from the bag.
If she picked the black pebble, she would become his wife and her father's debt would be forgiven.
If she picked the white pebble, she would not have to marry him and her father's debt would still be forgiven.
But if she refused to pick a pebble, her father would be thrown in jail.

They were standing in the farmer's field on a path covered in pebbles. While they talked, the moneylender bent over to pick up two pebbles. As he picked them up, the sharp-eyed girl noticed that he had picked up two black pebbles and put them into the bag. He then asked the girl to pick a pebble from the bag.

Now, imagine that you were standing in the field. What would you have done if you were the girl? If you had to advise her, what would you tell her?
Careful analysis would produce three possibilities:
1. The girl should refuse to take a pebble.
2. The girl should show that there were two black pebbles in the bag and expose the money-lender as a cheat.

3. The girl should pick a black pebble and sacrifice herself in order to save her father from his debt and imprisonment.
The girl's dilemma cannot be solved with traditional logical thinking. Think of the consequences if she chooses the above logical answers.
What would you recommend that the girl do?
(The girl's choice will be revealed in the next post.)

The Benefits of Bilingualism

In case you're thinking that English is a crazy language and that you are even crazier for having decided to take it on, click on Why Bilinguals Are Smarter and see if you feel better about yourself.

And in case you have been unfortunate enough to deal with a family member or friend suffering with Alzheimer's Disease, the article should offer some comfort on that point, too.

After you've read, let us know...are you perhaps more inspired to improve your English and integrate it into your daily life?

Irony and Playing with Words

If you're not familiar with the work of Steven Wright, he's the famous erudite comic who once said:

"I woke up one morning, and all of my stuff had been stolen and replaced by exact duplicates.”

His mind sees things differently than most of us do. . .

Here are some of his gems:

1 - I'd kill for a Nobel Peace Prize.

2 - Borrow money from pessimists -- they don't expect it back.

3 - 82.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

4 - All those who believe in psychokinesis, raise my hand.

5 - The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.

6 - I almost had a psychic girlfriend ... but she left me before we met.

7 - OK, so what's the speed of dark?

8 - How do you tell when you're out of invisible ink?

9 - Hard work pays off in the future; laziness pays off now.

10 - I intend to live forever... so far, so good.

11 - What happens if you get scared half to death twice?

12 - My mechanic told me, "I couldn't repair your brakes, so I made your horn louder."

13 - Why do psychics have to ask you for your name?

14 - Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.

15 - The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.

16 - The sooner you fall behind, the more time you'll have to catch up.

17 - Everyone has a photographic memory; some just don't have film.

18 - If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.     

Which was your favorite? Why? 

The Technological Generation Gap: Can it Be Closed?

I had an interesting conversation the other day with a forty-something-year-old friend of mine, who is also the mother of pre-teens, and she made a poignant observation about the technological generation gap. We were discussing her son’s inability not to take his teacher’s group criticism personally, especially if he was not one of the guilty students. He seems to lack the ability to read the secondary clues behind the teacher’s words, to understand that she is not speaking directly to him or to any one student, but rather to a particular group of unnamed but guilty students. My friend’s perception is that today’s children and teens are of the texting generation. They communicate via short messages in print, lacking tone or facial expression; they live in a virtual world where words mean everything.

In contrast, today’s parents did not grow up communicating that way. If not talking face-to-face, we had only the telephone, requiring tone and intonation to tell us so much more about the message’s meaning than just the words. We grew up hearing tone as an implicit part of communication and, therefore, add it to emails and texts without even realizing it. This is why many adults become quickly offended by texts that sound abrupt or rude. We don’t see the tone, but we “hear” it in the words, adding the missing piece of our language puzzle. Teens, on the other hand, aren’t nearly as offended as adults when reading emails or texts; the words speak for themselves.

What are we to do? If Generation X can’t survive the virtual world without tone and intonation, but Generation Y can’t survive the real world without it, where do we meet? How do we learn to communicate through the generations without inadvertently offending our children or parents and having our message lost in translation?

Your suggestions are welcome!

The Kindness of Strangers

Imagine this scenario:

You're in a waiting room with people coming and going. A stranger several seats away asks you to watch her laptop while she runs to the restroom. You nod, and the woman is gone. One moment later, another stranger casually approaches the laptop, unplugs it, and wraps the whole thing under her arm as she walks away.

What do you do? Do you yell to her to stop? Maybe it's the first stranger's friend picking up the computer for her. I mean, who would be so brazen as to steal a computer in front of another person?

When the first stranger returns from the restroom and finds her computer gone, she turns to you with unabashed anger. "Where's my computer?!" Suddenly, the problem is yours because you took responsibility for a stranger's possession.

This kind of thing happens more frequently than you'd imagine. Because of this, I decided years ago not to accept responsibility when a stranger innocently asks me to "watch their stuff". So yesterday, when the first part of the above scenario happened, I smiled kindly at the woman and apologized, explaining that I wouldn't take responsibility for her computer. Oh, the dirty look that followed. And all I'm thinking is how does she know that I'm not the exact person who would steal it?

The woman left the computer anyway, which means if she was prepared to do so, she shouldn't have asked me in the first place. If she's that trusting, she should have simply taken the risk, hoping that nobody would have touched the laptop since I was present.

For the record, I once witnessed a mother ask another woman to watch her toddler sleeping in the stroller so she could run to the bathroom. People...please!

I hate not to be the Good Samaritan, but this is setting yourself up for trouble. If I sound cynical, answer me this. Why does airport security specifically advise travelers not to accept goods from others in the airport and to report abandoned luggage? Life can be beautiful, but it's also pretty dirty sometimes. Agreeing to take responsibility for a stranger's property is never wise. And asking strangers to take on that burden is unfair.

If your item is that valuable, pack it up and take it with you. And if you're really willing to leave it for a few moments, go for it (but not with young children) and hope that honesty and morality will prevail. Like Anne Frank wrote in her diary, "Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart."

What about you? Would you take responsiblity for a stranger's property? If so, under what circumstances?

Peace in Israel and Lebanon

I have a unique opportunity in my profession, which is to rule upon high over my own miniature version of the United Nations. Okay, so I’m really only an ESL instructor and it's really only a classroom of students from all over the world, but as the professor, I wield my authority respectfully and with great appreciation for what I, too, can learn from my students. Take Israel and Lebanon, for example.

I’m not talking about the nations here but rather of two students in one of my classes – both beautiful, intelligent, and outspoken young women who sit near each other and are, therefore, often made to work together when we do small group activities. They are both worldly women in their own ways: Israel is born of Jewish Persian and Libyan parents, while Lebanon is a professional ballet dancer who has lived in Paris. On this particular day in class, they were put together with Nicaragua (another lovely and not-so-shy girl) and Colombia (an attractive and reserved middle-aged woman).

During the activity, these four women made up only one group out of five, but watching them caught my interest the most. The activity required the students to work together to rearrange items on a list and divide them into main points and supporting details. Colombia gracefully sat back as Nicaragua, Israel, and Lebanon strongly but civilly debated the various options.

Israel saw things one way, Lebanon saw things another way (they both were correct), and Nicaragua disagreed with both of them as she firmly and rather confidently stated her position. So adamant was she (and so wrong as it turned out) that Lebanon could only sit back and shake her head, waiting for the opportunity to prove Nicaragua wrong. Israel kindly tried to tell Nicaragua where her reasoning had lost its footing while Colombia opted out of the debate, and it was during that moment I noticed a glint of respect in Lebanon’s eyes. She knew she and Israel were right even though they saw the situation differently, and I think she was proud of the way Israel was trying to logically argue the point, which was a challenge given Nicaragua’s dramatic facial expressions. Israel and Lebanon never teamed up against Nicaragua; they seemed to understand that some battles just aren’t worth fighting...which is when I asked myself why their home countries can’t see things as clearly.

Yes, this is an oversimplification of real-world dilemmas, but for a moment, Lebanon and Israel were on the same page albeit through different viewpoints. With nothing more than a glance, this was understood. I imagined Lebanon and Israel (who never talk to each other apart from these forced exercises) going out for coffee after class and reveling in their newfound commonality.

Eventually, though, I had to put a stop to Nicaragua's argument (because I wasn’t sure how patient Lebanon would really be – she was actually sighing deeply) and tell her she was on the wrong track. She took it well enough and openly listened to Lebanon explain the point. All the while, Israel’s bright smile told Lebanon that she concurred even if she would have expressed it differently.

As we discussed the activity as a class, all eyes turned to the board, where I was outlining the final results, and I felt a bit sad. I wished I could have prolonged the group activity so I could fool myself into believing there was hope in the world simply because two young ladies of such different philosophies had found a common ground. With all that’s going on in Egypt and the Middle East in general, the ESL classroom seems the only safe place for these nations to come together. I’m proud to be part of that, and I went to sleep that night after class thinking about Israel and Lebanon and dreaming about their newfound friendship. I know these girls said nothing to each other when class ended, but it’s my dream. And it all has to start somewhere, doesn’t it?

How about you? Have you learned any lessons of tolerance while studying here at BC?