Teaching English without teaching English | Roberto Guzmán | TEDxUPRM

In this talk, Roberto discusses his three-phase system, which he uses to teach English without teaching English to improve the learning experience for students and the teaching practice for professors.

Roberto Guzmán is a full professor at the University of Puerto Rico, Aguadilla Campus. Guzmán teaches undergraduate English courses in which he stresses the development of critical thinking skills and hands-on language development skills. He's also a freelance writer and political commentator on the WPRA 990 AM radio show Comunicando with host Toti Figueroa. So far, Guzmán has published, among other books, "The Devil's Advocate Reader," "Tropical Tales of Terror," "Mitos y Conflictos en la Biblia" and "Heroes."

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

I started teaching
undergraduate English courses

in the University of Puerto Rico,
Aguadilla Campus, about 20 odd years ago,

and I quickly became frustrated.

I love my job,

but I was frustrated with myself,
and I was frustrated with my students.

And it wasn't anything
my students were doing wrong.

On paper, they were learning English.

I would give them tests,

and they'd know everything about pronouns,
adjectives, syntax, grammar.

You name it, they knew it.

And they could prove it
by passing the tests in writing.

However, when I tried to have
a conversation with my students,

when I tried to have
just a casual conversation,

I would get this
deer-in-the-headlights look

like ...

(Laughter)

And then they would go into what I call
"Porky Pig Syndrome."

They would go,

(Imitates Porky Pig's stutter)

(Laughter)

It just wasn't working.

And I was frustrated
because I said, "I can't do this."

These young men and women,
when they graduate,

they're going to go
into a work environment

in which they are expected
to think at higher levels of cognition.

They're expected to analyze,
to synthesize, to evaluate,

and they have to do it in a language
that is not their first language,

in English.

And I wanted them to be there.

And what happened was that I started
experimenting with this and that,

and after a while, I developed
a system which I think worked.

I call it "Teaching English
without teaching English."

What I did was I moved away
from the grammar,

and I developed a system

in which I divided the class
into three stages.

The first stage, I give
my students a BS detector,

and this BS detector

(Laughter)

is a fully functional, portable
but high-maintenance mental device

that they install into neurons.

And whenever they detect BS,

which is very frequently,

(Laughter)

the alarm should go off.

"BS, BS, BS, BS."

(Laughter)

How do I do that?

Well, the BS detector has three parts.

Part number one
is critical thinking skills.

I have my students learn
that whenever they read anything,

whenever they listen to a TED talk,

whenever they listen
to a debate, a conversation,

they should ask
a number of specific questions.

For example, Is the speaker
being specific?

People who know what they're talking about
usually are very specific.

They can say who, what, where,
when, how many, how often.

Now, people who are -
how shall I say it? - BS artists

will run away from specificity.

They will not be specific because
specificity entails responsibility.

And when people are not specific,

I point out to my students
that usually it's one of two reasons.

Either they do not know
what they're talking about,

and there's nothing wrong there -
we're all ignorant in different fields.

And if you don't know,
you cannot be specific.

That's a human trait.

But sometimes people are not specific

because they don't want you to know
what they're talking about.

And now there's an ethical element
of betrayal there, of concealment.

So, the first thing that they
need to learn is ask specific questions:

Is the speaker comprehensive?

Is she looking at
all the available evidence?

Is the speaker looking at
the burden of proof?

When you say something,

you are responsible
for providing evidence for that claim.

If they're talking
about a scientific topic,

is there replicability,

is there experimental data
to support that claim?

And once I get that part
of the BS detector firmly installed,

where they will ask specific questions
on whatever they read, see or hear,

I go to the second part.

They should detect logical fallacies.

And logical fallacies are mistakes
people make in the reasoning process.

And we all do it.

For example,

(Spanish)

Every time I forget my umbrella, it rains.

Do you really think there's a relationship

between the weather
and you forgetting your umbrella?

Wouldn't that be fantastic?

Because then this four-year drought
they have in California -

(Laughter)

all we have to do is get Californians
to forget their freaking umbrellas,

and then it'll rain, okay?

That's a non sequitur.

That's the name of that fallacy
of false cause and effect.

A happens, then B happens.

And then you assume that A caused B.

Maybe, maybe not.

You have to check.

Another logical fallacy
which is very common is ad hominems.

And ad hominems are nasty little things

because this is when
the person gets personal.

Instead of attacking your arguments,
the person attacks your person.

They attack your integrity.

And unfortunately, political debate
is usually polluted by that.

When somebody is loosing an argument,

instead of sticking to the merits
of the arguments,

they back off,

and then they start
getting nasty and offensive.

Ad hominems are terrible,

but they're very useful in the hands
of people who have no scruples.

And another logical fallacy
that's very popular

is argument from authority.

This must be true

because somebody who knows
more than me says it's true.

And I have my students learn

how to identify at least five or six
of those logical fallacies.

The third part of the BS detector
I take from Benjamin Bloom.

This was a wonderful scientist
who started thinking about thinking.

And this guy said, "What do we do
with our brains when we're thinking?"

And he identified five or six skills,
depending on which taxonomy you use.

And for example, the basis of all learning
is remembering, memorization.

And you need that for everything.

You need that for everything.

However, if you stay at that level
in which you only memorize and you repeat,

that's not deep thinking,

that's not deep thinking at all.

And now, you have the situation

where you must find out
if the speaker is really a deep thinker.

Does he know his stuff in detail,

or is he merely repeating
some talking points

that somebody gave him?

Again, questions will help you identify

whether you're dealing
with a deep thinker or not.

And here you analyze,
you synthesize, you evaluate.

That's where I wanted to take my students,

but first I had to get
an obstacle out of the way.

Most people feel that it's wrong
to change your opinions, to be tentative.

And no, that is not true.

If we want to grow as a person
and as a society,

we need to be open to change our minds
and change our minds constantly

because as the world changes,
we must change with the world.

And I'm going to quote
George Bernard Shaw here.

He made the following observation.

He says, "Progress
is impossible without change,

and those who cannot change their minds
cannot change anything."

So, I had to destroy that paradigm
that you must know all the answers.

No, you should know all the questions

and not be afraid to ask them.

Once they have the BS detector
firmly installed,

we move to the fun part of the class.

Here we watch TED talks,
we go into YouTube,

we read essays form the Internet
or from the local newspapers.

And we don't use textbooks.

We use whatever is happening in the world.

For example, this semester,
we're talking about the Syrian refugees.

Four million people
running for their lives.

Why are they running? Where are they?

More than 1,000 have drowned
trying to get from North Africa to Europe.

That's current events,

and I want to make my students aware
that this is happening.

And we also speak about
Puerto Rico's economic crisis.

And here we have a wonderful
resource: Joseph Stiglitz.

Joseph Stiglitz is a world-class economist
who even has a Nobel Prize for economics.

And this guy wrote a few articles
about the situation we're in

and made specific suggestions.

So, we bring that to class,
we read it, we discuss it.

We compare with what local politicians
are saying and doing.

And that fosters
an atmosphere of conversation.

And most of the students are so involved
on what's going on in terms of content

that they're not really aware
that they're acquiring the language,

because the central thing is, "Let's talk.

Let's check out what fulana wrote.

Let's check out what fulano said.

Let's compare notes."

Now, I have two ground rules

for this noisy, semichaotic
or chaotic classroom.

Number one: ad hominems are not allowed.

Under no circumstances
are you to offend personally

or attack another person's integrity.

You must respect everybody's freedom
to differ from you.

Rule number one.

Rule number two is ideas are not people.

Ideas do not have rights.

So, if somebody says something dumb,
something that's questionable,

including me, the professor,

you should feel free
to question that idea.

And that's not only a right that we have -

to question ideas
that don't make sense to us -

it's maybe an ethical responsibility

because a bad idea, if left unchecked,
can do a lot of damage.

We forget, for example, that Adolf Hitler
was in power for 12 years.

How did this man
who was so brutal and so evil

get control of one of the most
civilized nations of Europe?

Well, easy.

His crazy ideas were not
questioned early enough.

So, by the time German intellectuals
and people who had values were aware

that this guy was taking them
to a world war,

he already controlled
the nation's narrative,

he controlled basically everything:
the military, the police, the media.

And he just had too much power.

It took a world war
to remove Adolf Hitler from power.

So, when you see a bad idea,

especially a bad idea that can hurt people
physically or emotionally,

you may be morally obligated
to raise your voice and say,

"Mnh-hnhmmm. That's not a good idea."

Okay.

So, in this component
of interaction in the classroom,

once we have that out of the way,
we go into the third area.

And the third area is reading and writing.

And again, I have to remove
from my students the notion

that making mistakes is somehow bad.

No, it is not.

It even has a name;
it's called developmental errors.

So, if you want to learn a language,

you must be willing
to make mistakes, lots of mistakes

because that's how you know
the boundaries of linguistic rules.

So, I try to create an atmosphere

where my students
feel completely comfortable

to say whatever they want to say,
however they want to say it.

And it's interesting

because at the beginning of the semester,

I usually get two
or three students that'll say,

"Profe, a mí el inglés no me entra."

"I mean, I just can't deal with English."

And these same students -

when we're in the heat of the debate,
of the conversation,

they want to take part
in the conversation.

And then they start leaning to the left
and leaning to the right,

and they ask the magic word,
(Spanish) "How do you say ...?"

(Laughter)

But then when they say,
(Spanish) "How do you say?"

the other student says,
(Spanish) "Like this,"

and then there's peer tutoring,
and it's happening spontaneously.

I don't even have to wait
for these kids to raise their hands,

because I saw what happened.

They look at me.

Once we have eye contact,
I say, "Julio, what do you think?"

And then Julio starts speaking in English.

And then he goes into a little bit
of Porky Pig Syndrome sometimes.

(Laughter)

He starts going,
(Imitates Porky Pig's stutter).

(Laughter)

When he goes there,
when he gets the Porky Pig Syndrome,

sometimes he feels a little embarrassed,

and I say, "No, no, no. Go on."

And then he says, (Spanish)
"Can I say something in Spanish?"

"Of course. You want to use Spanglish?

Use Spanglish. Tell us what you think."

And they realize
that they can make mistakes.

And nobody is going to judge them.

Nobody is going to grade them worse.

This is part of the language
acquisition process.

Now, there's something interesting.

Before I adopted this method,
I felt a little awkward.

It was like, for example, trying
to have somebody understand

what a special plate,
a special food tastes like.

And you describe the food.

You say, "Oh, my God.

It tastes like this,
and it smells like that,

and the texture is like this."

And can you really share the experience
of good food like that?

Somehow it doesn't work.

So, now you say, "OK. I want you
to get a good cookbook

and memorize the recipe."

And will that do the trick?

No, no, it won't.

The only way of experiencing
what good food is like, how it smells,

the texture, the taste

is another way.

And I want to take my students
to the point where they understand

that language is a wonderful -
it's a living thing.

And there's no way
you can learn a language

by simply memorizing rules,

by concentrating only on grammar.

And once these students are comfortable
with making mistakes,

the exchange in the classroom
becomes so much more dynamic.

Finally, when we get
to the writing process,

we go to the part
where we say, "OK, let's write."

But again, form is secondary to content.

I want them to get their ideas,
to get the evidence,

to get their feelings on paper.

And once they do that,

then they go into stage number two
which is, "Let's correct the paper."

So at first, you focus
on content, not form,

and then you focus on form, not content.

This is where you correct
all the grammatical mistakes

and you look at the mechanics
of the language, so to speak.

And they write summary-reaction papers

in which they concentrate
on one thing at first,

and then they worry about the form
of the language later.

And I always stress
content is more important than form.

And I'll prove it.

You take Stephen King,
or you take Isabel Allende.

These are world-class writers.

Well, these people,
when they write their manuscripts,

they send them to the editorials.

In the case of Stephen King, Viking Press.

And in Viking Press,
they have a professional nerd.

(Laughter)

And this professional nerd is going
to go through Stephen King's manuscript,

and he is going to make
all the corrections that are needed.

Now, who has the fame and fortune?

It's Stephen King.

It's not the expert on grammar.

So, you can learn grammar from a machine.

You can have somebody
proofread your paper,

but you cannot fake content.

You cannot fake the passion
and the suspense

that goes into a good short story
or a fantastic novel.

And my goal is for my students
to understand a number of things.

Learning is a painful process.

You have all these narratives
that society gives you.

Everybody around the world
has narratives.

And these narratives dictate
how we feel about things.

But sometimes, these
narratives can be wrong.

And that's where we get
cognitive dissonance.

And cognitive dissonance basically says,

"Oh, my God. I can't believe that -
what you just said."

But now you have to make up your mind.

Why are you rejecting that new idea?

Because it's wrong or because you have
a predisposition against that?

So, you have to explore your narratives,

look at whatever is causing
the cognitive dissonance

and then form your opinion,

an opinion based on reason,
on critical thinking, not on prejudice.

So, hopefully at the end of the semester,

my students will take
a few things with them.

I want them to understand

that there's nothing wrong
with asking questions.

They should be intense question-askers.

They should resurrect
the little boy or the little girl

that was a three-year-old

and was driving mommy crazy or daddy,
(Spanish) "But why? Why? Why?"

And, "Shut up. Don't ask
so many questions.

(Spanish) Children should be seen and ..."

You know the rest.

(Laughter)

So, we beat the curiosity
out of our students,

and by sixth grade,

they will not ask a question
if their life depended on it.

And my job, I believe, is to resurrect
that little kid, that little girl

and say, "You know something?

Ask questions constantly,
even dumb questions.

Ask them."

And you should fear
not the people who ask questions.

You should fear the people
who fear questions.

Because growth and maturity,
and all things in life

come from our ability to say,
(Spanish) "Why?

Why should I believe that?"

People that are smart,
that are competent, that are ethical

are not afraid of questions.

Sometimes you just
can't get them to shut up

because they're so passionate
about what you're talking about

or what they believe

that they will just flood you
with information.

That's what I think
we should concentrate on.

I want to close this talk
with this thought:

"I believe my job as an educator

is to open as many doors
as I can for my students

while allowing them the freedom to decide

if and when they want to cross
the threshold of any of these doors."

I want my students to learn how to cook,
not to learn how to read a book.

And that's how I teach English
without teaching English.

Thank you.

(Applause) (Cheers)