Say "Thanks" even if you don't mean it

Abstract

           Imagine people stop saying “thanks” to each other. Some of them could give up doing what they do for a missing casual “please” or “Thanks”. People normally like compliments, and the word “Thanks” is the cheapest of all means of support. We don’t necessarily need prizes, rewards or expensive gifts to thank someone. Wise people know the magical effect of the word so they never forget to offer it to people around them even those who just step aside to let them pass in the hallway. Many things would be lost just for want of a little kind word even if it is void of sincerity. Life experiences show that for want of a simple “please” or “Thank you”, many great plans were abandoned unfinished, and many other promising projects were aborted. Therefore, “Thanks” or any sort of complimenting words can make a big difference. The digital learners should learn to say “Thanks” even if they don’t mean it. They should know that it practically costs nothing to sow gratitude and to be polite. This is the constant lesson they will keep taking throughout their existence.

It costs practically nothing to say “Please” & “Thanks”

The Constant Lesson for Digital Learners

Hybrid lessons and Independent learning, The Tacit Relationship

- INTRODUCTION

            Distance education is gaining ground over conventional teaching and learning settings and methods. However, not all schools and learners have access to this luxury. It is still out of reach for the majority of schools and learners around the world. Therefore as a preparatory step, hybrid education is to be initialised in terms of blending traditional and online teaching for students to get more than enough of their needs. Generally, teachers plan their lesson for face-to-face casual classroom setting, but they can also plan it for online pursuit. Learners will be able to take the lesson and practice it at home via the web long before they can discuss it in class.

            Releasing the lesson from the traditional classroom rigidity is one of the best options to help students learn in their own pace, and learn to solve problems critically to eventually become independent learners. They have time enough to study before coming to class for discussion and deeper understanding of the course. This relationship between being independent as a learner and hybrid learning is tight but not evident.

            This paper is not meant to explain how a hybrid lesson works or can be planned in detail, nor is it meant to show how to implement flipped classroom model. This paper just tries to emphasize the importance of hybrid learning within the constant fast change that is widening the gap between old teaching methods and modern learning settings and tools. If we don’t conquer technology now and exploit it for the efficiency of education, it will simply ruin the future of our (addicted to mobile devices) kids.

- METHODOLOGIES

- HYBRID COURSES

- FLIPPED CLASSROOM

- CONCLUSION

Read Whole Paper

Incorporating Root Cause Analysis (RCA) in Technical and Vocational Education

Introduction

        The journey for learning has always been arduous, but when adequate means are available, it becomes less burdensome. By adequate means I mean everything which makes learning purposeful and fruitful. For the digital students, learning has become at their disposition thanks to the multitude of resources and the easiness of accessing them. However, for the millennial learners who rely greatly on search engines to answer all their questions, learning is getting more complicated and more risky at the same time because they are predisposed to accept any answer provided even though their question was not the exact one they want to ask. They need special cognitive skills to evaluate before accepting the provided answer.

          The necessary skills to cope with real life nowadays have become great in number and diverse in type, but also hard in adjustment. Unfortunately those skills are not yet taught at school. As it has become ludicrous that school delivers information which doesn’t help the learners build an emotionally, physically, intellectually and financially balanced personality, real life skills have to be integrated in school syllabi. This is no longer a suggestion; it has become an obligation. For scientific and technical streams, teaching English as a foreign language requires a blender material which must entice the students to activate and make use of their long term memory and to use their thinking abilities appropriately as real life skills. In real life, they will surely have to deal with situations that need vigorous investigation and be faced with problems which need long lasting original solutions.

          Obviously, in the past few years, young people didn’t use to face the same problems as youth have to face today because life is getting more complicated. Subsequently, nobody can imagine the harshness of problems in the future. They will certainly be more complicated according to the complexity of their professional, emotional, marital, financial, social, administrative, and legal sides of life.  They will have no excuse as they will be responsible for their acts as adults, so they need to develop critical thinking from now, and learn to solve problems by going deeper to the source of any issue to fix it for preventing it from recurring. School can provide them with the basic skills, and it is for them to develop those skills and improve them via intensive practice.

CONTINUE READING

The Dynamic Type of Education Needed for Today

INTRODUCTION

    It must be understood that education has always been dynamic. Its role is one, and it is to help children grow naturally. It provides them with the necessary academic knowledge (concepts and theories) and enough experience (for building sustainable careers) to develop and grow normally with life. Education is not meant to mess up with the kids’ innate settings. It’s only meant to discover, to foster and to sharpen their talents and to incite them to be creative and innovative. It is for kids that education is primarily destined.

          No doubt, like any other “living” entity, Education should be looked after carefully so as to grow healthier and stronger. As it is the keystone in the development of nations, it should be given greater care to grow straight, robust and prolific. Without a strong well managed educational system, no applicable learning and subsequently no progress are to be expected. Any educational system not aware of this yet is doomed to reproduce mediocrity.

As it will continually implement those invalid outdated methods and those boring frustrating contents, barren educational systems will permanently become the cause of the poor outcome of long years of continual inappropriate teaching techniques and no serious authentic practical scientific research and critical thinking skills. Hence, the seeming uselessness of school for personal, communal and national development will gradually become a general impression.

Continue Reading

Things that cannot be recovered

         There are at least three things in life that have to be carefully dealt with because once they are gone off, they cannot be recuperated or remediated. I’m referring here to the time when it is lost, the words when they are spoken, and the opportunities when they are missed.

           Let’s start with the lost time. Time is man’s terrifying adversary number one. It is pitiless. Once you waste it, you can never find it again. For most people, time is not precious until they lose it. Can you imagine the amount of time people waste every single day?! They have to feel regret after it is gone because they know they’ll never have it back. However they never learn, they make the same mistake again and over again. It is a part of their life which has been spared for nothing. Those who value time, they do their utmost to keep busy thinking and exploiting every moment the maximum. They firmly believe that “There are only two times in life, ‘Now’ and ‘Too Late’”

        The second is the spoken words. You need to watch your words closely. Once you say something, it is impossible to unsay it. It is always too late to undo once the word goes out of the mouth. It is just like the bullet; nothing can stop it, and nobody can imagine the damage it can cause. You have to think before you talk since what you say can be fatal for the others or for yourselves.  Therefore, you speak only when you choose your words carefully lest they should hurt, or make a jerk of you. If you don’t want to keep apologizing all the time, be the master of the words by not pronouncing them until you make sure they are harmless and maybe wise as well. Don’t forget that the wounds that some words cause last forever, and are never healed.

      The third one is the missed opportunity. Good opportunities seldom knock at your door, so you have to keep quiet and listen carefully. Maybe one day a roving good opportunity knocks at your door, then you shall be ready to seize it straight away otherwise, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life. Those precious occasions are not frequent just like luck. “Take full of every opportunity that comes your way” as Milka Duno said. Never miss it. If you keep missing opportunities, it is obviously your fault; that’s why life is a series of random chances which have to be seized and well exploited. Once they are missed, those opportunities are lost forever.

         To sum up, your life is made of beautiful things that you can easily and unintentionally ruin. So if you want to avoid this, you have to be dutiful with time by not to wasting it, and you have to watch your mouth for fear you should destroy your social life with stupid unnecessary comments or words, and finally you have to be vigilant to grasp the rarely presented opportunities before they are gone forever.

Download

Implementing "Active Learning" In Beginner EFL Classes

Introduction

            This is a performance for both Common Core and 1Bac students.  It is intended to directly involve students in the learning process and put them at the heart of the learning situation. It is also intended to engage, and stimulate the learners by giving them the opportunity to raise questions and participate in the making of the lesson. That’s what is referred to as “learning by doing”.

            The point is to go beyond the traditional usual (boring) type of EFL lessons which the students no longer feel like taking. This generation longs for new strategies which would help them construct meaning and become active learners for learning actively and creatively.

            The following activity is a kind of a true to life situation where grammar is integrated to sustain comprehension and subsequently natural English use in concordance with appropriate normal body talk, gestures and facial expressions. It might be a little time consuming activity, but the results are rewarding.

Continue Reading

Critical Writing for High School Students

Introduction

           

              High school students are not required to review or analyse books and authors’ ideas for which critical writing is basically used, they can instead be introduced to it through writing about the ideas they are the most familiar with and which they have to support or reject calmly and reasonably. Training on using logical evidence to prove or disapprove an idea is the start. In this early stage of critical writing, the students get to learn how to use solid arguments to support or rebut an idea or a notion. The students should bear in mind that critical writing is not descriptive or evocative, neither is it criticism for the sake of criticism.

              Critical writing is based on logic, evidence and persuasion where vague and common standpoints have no place within this type of serious work. No emotions, no opinionated attitudes, no conceit or weak evidence, no readymade authoritative assertions are allowed in critical writing. The students should learn to be unbiased, inflexible, steady, but also logical and reasonable in their methods. As they learn to evaluate everything they come across and not just accept it as it is, they also learn to write taking into consideration that the readers will most probably evaluate their product critically before they accept it. This is a valuable gain even for outside school situations. Once the students get acquainted with these conditions and regulations, they will have a much smoother access to higher academic education, and labour market.

              For a start, the learners should bear in mind that, at the University, critical writing is a tough task in the sense that it is almost scientific in its procedure. It is systematic and methodical. The students must make research to be able to “criticise” an author, a book or an idea. When criticising a literary work for instance, they must read a lot and conduct analysis to which results they have to commit. They also should check if the arguments have logical coherence or not and if they are supported by relevant evidence. Besides, they must check if the reasons are related to each other leading to a valid conclusion. They should go further and see if the author is biased. To be prepared for all this, the high school students should at least be trained through the basics of critical writing, but via academically approved models.

              At the first glance these conditions look excessive and very complicated for EFL learners. This might be true in part, but the more they practice it this way, the less stupid pieces of writing they do, and the more they accept to write. Teachers know how students behave towards writing, and the amount of despise they have for it. This is due to their ignorance of how to handle writing from the beginning to the end. Sometimes they write whatever they have in mind just like on social media. Without models to follow, they are like walking in the dark, they would stumble and fall and maybe give in. So, any procrastinating is an immense waste of precious opportunities.

Continue Reading