Modelling and Metacognition.

Kia ora tatou,

To continue the subject of learning vocabulary two elements of last week’s column deserve further exploration., modelling and metacognition.

How would one model the sorts of learning we have been talking about?

This is problematical because the processes take place in the brain and are not observable. The challenge is to make them observable. One way is the “think aloud” strategy. Let’s say we are presented with the task of adding cognitive depth to a chunk or word we are learning. (This where we try to use the word in new sentences, of think deeply about how that word works.)
If we were learning the word amber, the situation might look like this:
“Can I say, ‘… going to amber…’?”
“No because amber looks like a noun, it’s a thing not an action.”
“Ah but you could say it if Amber was a name!”
“But this word doesn’t have a capital A so it’s not a name.”
“ Well what about switching from green to amber and then to red like traffic lights.”
By doing it this way we can show how we are thinking about the word, its schema, and how it works.

Metacognition is the practice of thinking about thinking, in other words to have reflect on and be able to say how your brain works, how you approached a problem. This has been shown to be a very successful strategy for effective learning. By using metacognition learners can shortcircuit the learning process because they understand how they are learning, reflect on how successful the process is and can deliberately employ the strategy. The conversation above shows metacognition at work and models patterns of thinking for the student.

Metacognition is one of the reasons why bilinguals reach higher levels of achievement than monolinguals, because they are having to make conscious decisions about how language works on a daily basis.

We can help our students learn vocabulary more effectively by having conversations about words/chunks with them and in our conversations show by “thinking aloud” how we come to particular decisions about how that word/chunk can be used.

Noho ora mai na,

Chris