Look At This
|
Communicating effectively
Teaching, like other forms of information transmission, is a communication process. Usually the teacher sends a verbal
message, which contains some information, to the learners who are expected to receive it and integrate it into their existing
knowledge.
This process is not so simple. First, teachers have to encode their thoughts into words and/or other forms of communication.
Then students have to decode the message; this means they have to make sense of it. Of course, teachers assume and take
steps to assure that what they send is received and decoded by their students in the right way. The clearer the message, the less
chance there is of it becoming distorted during the transmission and the easier it is to be decoded by students. To make sure
that this actually happens, teachers can do two things: strengthen their verbal messages by additional means such as visual
teaching aids, thus enabling students to receive the message over two or more parallel communication lines (the ear and the
eye). However, the two parallel messages must be matched in order to have an amplifying effect. If they are not, they create
confusion ("noise", in the language of communication).
Agricultural teachers have an advantage when teaching in the field. Students can observe by themselves and through different
channels of perception a situation which the teacher might find difficult to put (encode) into words. On the other hand, being in the
field, students are exposed to many more messages (impressions) coming from the environment which can distract them.
Therefore, teaching in the field must be as task-oriented as teaching in the classroom.
To make sure that students receive and decode their messages, teachers should look for feedback ¬p; a sign that students have
understood the message and integrated it into their conceptual framework. This feedback can be in different forms, for example
verbal, when students answer questions. Feedback is often encoded in non-verbal signs, for example when students express in
body language their reaction to what they have decoded from the message: they nod with their heads, they laugh after a joke, they
look bored and so on. Messages that are received by the students are filtered and stored temporarly in the short-term memory.
They are forgotten after about 30 seconds if they cannot be kept in mind or transferred to the long-term memory. Thus, we forget
casual telephone numbers very quickly unless we make an intellectual effort to remember them. The long-term memory receives
new information better when it fits into a framework of concepts which already exists. Incomprehensible and unclear messages
are not easily stored in the long-term memory and they are quickly forgotten. Competing verbal and audiovisual messages are
difficult to cope with. Showing something to students and talking about something different, weakens the transmission of the
message. Even a blackboard left over with notes from a different subject can distract students' attention and weaken their
reception of the teacher's new message.
|
|
