Experiential teaching
The goal of the experiential language teaching cycle is to help students reflect on what they experienced during FSA and apply this new knowledge to future experiences (see Figure 4).
Figure 4: Experiential learning cycle based on Kolb (1984)
The cycle begins by doing: students have an experience, such as a conversation with their host family.
After this experience, engage students in reflecting: What happened during the conversation? What went well? What did the students not understand (for example, did the host family use slang, or was the conversation about an unfamiliar topic)? What could the students do differently next time?
The next step is connecting: How does this conversation relate to other linguistic or cultural topics? What can students conclude about their host culture based on this conversation with the host family?
After some connections are made, students can start preparing for future interactions: What will they do differently during their next conversation with the host family? How can they prepare for future conversations?
The cycle begins anew the next time students have an experience. As a teacher, you play an important role because you can help students process what happened and to make sense of the unexpected. You can engage in this cycle several times per day, and the learning from the cycles can carry over throughout the FSA experience.
Like task-based language teaching, experiential language teaching can include the use of authentic materials and promote meaningful interactions between students and locals (see Table 3). However, experiential language teaching is different from task-based language teaching because there is no predetermined outcome and no specific task that students need to carry out.
Table 3: Task-based language teaching and experiential language teaching: Similarities and differences
| Task-based language teaching | Experiential language teaching |
|---|---|
| Use authentic materials | Use authentic materials |
| Encourage meaningful interactions among students and/or with locals | Encourage meaningful interactions among students and/or with locals |
| Clearly defined outcome or task that students need to carry out | No clearly defined outcome or task; instead, students need to embrace and reflect on the unexpected |
| What counts is the result: students are evaluated based on the accuracy of the completed task | What counts is the process: students are evaluated based on their engagement in the learning cycle, how they understood (the reflection process), and how they adapted and changed their behaviours |
Refer to step 2 in the Interactive lesson planner [Word, 86k].