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What’s RT?

I was shy to admit that while I’m writing this line, RT is still, to put it bluntly, some ideal pedagogical theory in the ivory tower for my teaching reading. I guess it wouldn’t be a surprise when we meet this doubt once again among those participant teachers in the PD workshop we will hold for RT training in the near future.

Anyway, I feel there is a need for me to do some “experiment,” to put myself in their shoes.

My scenario
Suppose, faced with this doubt, how could we make it possible that a newly introduced pedagogical idea become more real—both cognitively sensible and instructionally practical —to a participant in our PD society.

(Then the following is my Think-aloud  on this issue…)

Browsing “piles of” the messages in our RT Line group which I’ve left behind for the past five days, timidly I clicked the Google site link on my Chrome and scanned the Week 2 reading materials and other resources.

“Oh, boy, I am the late bird for everything!” Justify to myself, “maybe reading others’ reflections on the Padlet would give me some good ideas for completing this assignment just in time.” Then my morning and afternoon hours were nicely spent in reading those well-written reflections on Padlet.

First I came to Cythia’s reflection. Her writing, in first section, seems to me some literature reviews for this new approach, nicely written in style of PHD research. It is really helpful. In a few lines I got concise definition for this theory as well as a case study where she shared her hand-on experiences for practicing this approach to a novel class. I learned from her lines that in what way students could benefited from this pedagogical approach.

Then, my exploration for RT was furthered when Mavis, in her reflection, popped up the same question I and, I guess, most of the Taiwanese high school teachers would have:

--Is RT applicable in real high school English class in Taiwan? How could students struggle through their discussion by means of a challenging foreign language?

Alas, Mavis’s following words for this “rhetorical question” were such a relief to me. I really like her delightful quote from the article, “It (RT) is particularly useful for ESL students who are often able to decode a text but do not fully understand what they have read.” Reading but not understanding seems to have been a “habit,” taken granted for most of Taiwanese students in English class.

I found similar thinking process going on in Huiping’s reflection. Her reflection lines were also constructed in a series of questioning and self-clarification. She described her presumed idea for implementing RT approach as some pre-set linear processing stages with four learners allocated with given role.

I was particularly impressed with her lines when she clarified this misconception I had held. She illustrated the core idea with a brief but illuminating statement, “The teacher needs to adjust the order of the four RT skills to suit the concept s/he is teaching; there's no fixed order for every class. It's all about what seems to fit best.” .

...These are the first three reflections on our site till now I've just read, and I would like to go on…

But I have to admit first that something unexpected has happened. Let's flash back what has been going on. In the past few hours, reading Cythia's concise review activates our prior knowledge on reading education, which helps to form a sensible prediction for my future classroom practice. Marvis's questioning reveals my anxiety for a newly introduced theory; meanwhile Huiping's insightful reflection clarifies my hidden misconception to this approach. Those words seem to me the shepherd for the lost lamb...

My initial doubt for RT approach has, more or less, resolved. I wonder what was actually going on for the past few hours. How could a person’s presumption for certain concept be transformed from a negative bias to a received belief.

I found our PD society as well as our RT Google site platform has served as a great facilitator for all the transformation inside one’s mind.

Those articles on theory, videos for classroom observation, individual reflection along with peer review and coaching, all come to a continuum. It is through this learning continuum that the essence of reciprocal teaching—systematic thinking via predicting, questioning, clarifying, and summarizing—is re-presented among you and me, the participants of a highly-connected learning organization.

I come to realize that the  momentum of learning is derived from ourselves. Working and learning as a one team is what our π-RT Society meant for.

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“Global competence is not an add-on,” Caton says. “It is implicit in every part of the curriculum” from kindergarten on.

This is the most impressive line in week 1 article where stories about global education in primary and secondary level are intriguing and illuminating for me as a high school English teacher in Taiwan.

It is nothing new that, since young, "English" is taught more as one of the academic subjects in entrance examination, less as a competency for global communication. Thus, there is nowhere to expect that English class in Taiwan would be beneficial for students' preparedness for international community.

Is this an universal phenomena for language education in all ESL/EFL countries?

When I traveled in Switzerland in my honey moon trip,  I was impressed with "local" people's competency for global communication.

It seemed somewhere in the countryside between Lausanne and Geneve where my wife and I lost our way. We tried to find our way back to the railway track, and ran into an old granny who was so nice to lead our way back. In our dialogue, she spoke good English with great fluency. She told us that her mother tongue is first French and second German since she has a French father and German mother. Italian is no Greek to her for it is the language between her husband and her.

Maybe the Swiss granny I met is the exception, you would say, and I coincidentally met one. I also thought in this way at first. But she told me that people with multiple ethnic backgrounds are nothing unusual in Switzerland. Multi-lingual communicative competency is considered a must since very young in primary education in her country.

When I told her where I came from, she said she knew Taipei is the biggest city in Taiwan. I was stunned. How come a "granny in Swiss countryside" had those geographical knowledge that most of Taiwanese students would not have for European cities.

She told me that her country, since ancient times, is geographically neighbored to three culturally dominating countries. Swiss are born to be inter-national; inter-national communication are thus part of Swiss everyday conversation.

"Of course. That's why traveling here is such a nice thing. You don't need to be afraid of getting lost!" She then gave a warmly smile to me.

Taiwan is a geographically maritime country. In a sense, we survive as a culturally and economically inter-national county. Global education in Switzerland shall be an great example for us.