Kumar Chapter seven and eight and Brown

Kumar chapter seven is about language awareness from two countries of United States and Britain. Also, it talked about whole language movement and it was interesting. It is really interesting to learn about language movement. In Korean education, many educators focus on teaching content than teach the language and social aspect and others. For example, Korean students learn statistics when they are 8^th grade and they have to study for 14 hours of the day to study the content.  However, Korean students lack at developing critical thinking and Korean educators do not fulfill individual student’s needs. If Korean education fulfills individuals’ needs, rate of suicide within secondary students will go down or many Korean students don’t have desire to go to different country to learn the language. Also, if educators focus on social development, rates of bullying can decrease.  Kumar quoted, “Language is intricately woven into the fabric of human life. It is closely linked to the relationships between mother and child, between self and society, between thought and action, between war and peace” (pg 156). It is important to think as educator to use language instead of misuse and abuse the language. Many educators are so focus on teaching the content and the grammatical language instead of fulfilling individual’s needs. This makes some ELL students drawn away from the language. How can we constantly test ourselves to assure students needs? How do we know if we are used to some curriculums? How we focus on the students?

Kumar chapter eight and Brown book talk about heuristics. Heuristics is a word that I am unfamiliar with. According to Kumar, he stated that “Heuristics refers to the process of self-discovery on the part of the learner. It also refers to a particular method of teaching--” (176). Kumar chapter eight talks about how the students can learn the language from their own than following direction. However, I was thinking that it can be problematic for some students. Many Asians students are so used to following directions than learning on their own. Therefore, they can be more stressed for the students. Some methods can work for some students. Educators have to think about the method that they are using can fit the students cultural values and their needs. However, should educators change methods because of students cultural values or should educators make students to adapt the methods? What is changing methods can stop students from developing? Sometimes, adapting and changing can be effective for students. Are there negative aspects of Heuristics? Heuristics can be positive but there isn’t any perfect method. I believe that as educator, we constantly need to create new methods.