Teaching language is an art which requires a broad base of knowledge from various disciplines in addition to the development of skills, many of which can be acquired through training and experience. There are many facets of English language education. They draw on knowledge from various disciplines which can be developed to a degree limited only by the effort provided by the teacher. The teacher should continuously strive to expand their knowledge in these various disciplines in order to be able to teach more effcectively and have a more indepth understanding of their students and the process of learning. This contributes to the personal growth of both the students and the teacher.

The basic element of the English Language environment is the class. The class is composed of students from a foreign culture, of various ages, socio-economic situations, education levels and life experience, and with different motives for learning English. They speak a different language than the teacher, and often hold different ways of learning, different personalities, different positive personal qualities and different problems. As a result of these factors the English language teacher greatly benefits from having an understanding of psychology, sociology, anthropology, economics, history and political science. These disciplines provide an understanding of the forces which have shaped the students and insights into how to adjust the teaching process to work in harmony with these forces. In addition to this, a knowledge of the native language of the students is a priceless asset. It allows the teacher better ability top communicate with the students, to troubleshoot, and to understand better how the students think. As you learn a foreign language, you begin to see that the structure of a language has elements which reflect the way that people of the culture who speak that language think and process information. Such insight can be uitilized by the teacher to fine-tune the teaching method to cater to the unique logic of the students' native language and cognitive processes shaped by culture. Understanding the student's native language also provides the teacher with closer insight into the culture of the students.

The Mind/Body Learning Process

The brain is an organ which is part of the interrelated organ system of the body just like the others. It functions according to the same basic principles as the others. It evolves through cycles of growth and decay, activity and inactivity, and exertion and repair. If we are to learn most efficiently, we must take into account this nature of the mind/body and develop a learning technique which utilizes this understanding.

When we talk about "learning" what does this term really mean? Is learning simply the act of retaining information from a book or speaker? Or is learning a more basic function which occurs on the physiological and mental levels simultaneously? Is it not the same process that we go through in learning to walk than it is in learning a mathematical formula or words from a new language?

The truth is that learning - at its core - is a basic physiological and mental function by which the mind/body system adapts to exposure to new information. In learning, we introduce input into the mind/body in an attempt to engrain it into the system. In this way the input becomes ingrained into the physiological structure of the system. Just like when we take a photograph. We expose the film to a controlled amount of exposure to external input (an image from the outside world), which is then chemically imprinted into the film. Our mind/body goes through the exact same process when we learn. In addition, since the mind functions through chemical reactions (like all other bodily functions) we can make an exact comparison between the process of imaging in photography and the process of imaging in the mind/body through the process of learning. To go a step further, we can say that all of the experiences that we have in the world is a process of learning. We are at every moment (while waking or sleeping) taking in information from the outside world. The real difference between plain experience and "learning" experience is in the quality of the process of information processing.

Practical Teaching Applications

Taking into account the nature of the mind/body described in the above section, we need to integrate these concepts into the development of our teaching technique. Addressing the different aspects seperately we begin to shape our method, experimenting and adjusting according to the specific characteristics of a given class. The fundamentals of the technique, however, remain the same.

In accordance with the fluctuating states of activity and inactivity, we introduce language information (both new and review) in discrete and repetitive spurts, allowing a period of processing between periods of exposure. This is a process which should be implemented on a regular (ideally daily) basis. As the mind is like a slide of film whose layers penetrate down deeply from the conscious into the subconscious, we use repetition to imprint information too the deepest levels possible. Yet since the mind also operated according to the natural cycles of exertion and repair, we need to repetitively introduce new information in discrete spurts seperated by periods of rest in which the mind processes and stores the information. The extent to which we repeat this process correlates with the depth of penetration of the new knowledge into the subconscious layers of the mind.

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