Iranian EFL Teachers’ and Learners’ Perspectives of Oral ...
The World of ‘Orality’. Two thirds of the world’s population are oral learners At least 70% of...
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Transcript of The World of ‘Orality’. Two thirds of the world’s population are oral learners At least 70% of...
The World of ‘Orality’
Two thirds of the world’s population are oral learners
At least 70% of the world’s least reached people are oral learners
What’s the situation in the USA?
50% of USA’s population desires a non-literate approach to learning
and decision-making
““Without writing, the literate mind Without writing, the literate mind would not and and could not think as it does, not only when engaged in , not only when engaged in writing but normally even when it is writing but normally even when it is composing its thoughts in composing its thoughts in oral form..””
Walter Ong
Primary Oral Learners…
Have never seen a wordWords are strictly sounds and have no
visual presenceIsolated sounds (words) have no meaning
until used in a sentence or a paragraph associated with a life event or story of a life event
Only know what can be recalled at a time of need
Primary Oral Learners…Carry what they know with them clothed in
stories, proverbs or mental pictures of life events, which they can remember in order to have the information they need
Do not tend to make lists or condense stories or form bodies of information into points, outlines, concepts, principles, steps in a process or other analytical type formats. Such formats are unnatural to their learning style and hard to remember
Primary Oral Learners…
Learn best through apprenticeships, mentoring and in communal groups of peers
Seldom isolate truths or teaching from their stories; they live them
View progress or success as being aware of and true to one’s heritage and doing acceptable things in acceptable ways
Memorize or remember long stories; treasured ones are not tinkered with or changed
Primary Oral Learners…They appreciate repetition Tend to be conservative and fearful of
changeView change of a valued, ‘heritage story’ as a
threat to their life and heritage. A treasured link and window to the past is severed
Can handle most thoughts, ideas, concepts, principles or teachings that a literate can handle, if it is properly clothed within a story
Primary Oral Learners…
Participate with the story teller in the “telling and living” of the story that is being told
Tend not to engage in more than one-step analysis; breaking up thoughts and holding them in suspension is very difficult
Literates…Develop the need and ability to reduce stories,
texts, and documents to a theme, a slogan, a “bottom line” statement, the “gist” of the story, an outline, principles or steps in a process
Constantly analyze people, life situations and events, thus drawing conclusions and lessons from them
Compare and combine information to form new truths or slightly different teachings or truths
Literates…As literate skills develop, they tend to shy
away from memorization and lose the skill due to lack of use
Tend toward individualism, thus moving away from being highly relational
Tend to turn inward, read silently, and suffer more from schizophrenic traits
Tend to demand their “own rights” as opposed to acknowledging the group’s rights
Literates…Tend to listen more critically to a story
thus not to participate in the story as much as an oral communicator
Feel a deep need to explain everything in great detail; comparing and analyzing all of the parts
As a person becomes more literate, sounds are recognized as written words that are known by their appearance and by their specific shades of meaning
Literates…
Tend to forget that markings on a page--words--can never replicate that word in its sounded form and life context. Thus the phrase--”words fail me.”
Become more and more text orientedDefine knowledge in terms of what can be
secured from files, books, computers, etc. and not in terms of what is remembered
Use words and names as “tags”
Here is the problem:
over 90% of all preachers of the Gospel have been trained to share the Gospel only to literates using an analytical type format which oral learners often find difficult to relate to or remember. Outlines, steps, principles, lists and similar constructions assume literacy; oral communicators cannot easily remember them.
When we require oral learners to respond to our literate teaching style, they just don’t measure up!