Designing posters to learn how to teach English
Des affiches dans la classe pour apprendre à enseigner l’anglais
Résumé
French culture has a long tradition of separating body and mind (Antonio Damasio’s popular book on the link between cognition, emotion, and internal body states is entitled “Descartes’ error”). This separation has led the educational system, and society in general, to downplay the importance of school subjects involving the body or requiring the use of one’s hands for technical or artistic pursuits rather than for holding a pen (a more ‘intellectual’ instrument). On the other hand, theories of embodied cognition hold that the sensory and motor systems play an essential role in cognition, a finding that has important consequences for educational practice. This case study focuses on French undergraduate students majoring in English and intending to become language teachers. It describes an Introduction to teaching methods course in which they discover, practice and analyze activities and design teaching material that they will be likely to use in their future profession. One of the resources they design are classroom posters. The use of visual aids in language teaching has a long history, and has been shown by modern cognitive psychology to be effective, especially in terms of memorization. The design of these posters and the demonstration of activities using them enables students to both express their creativity and skills at arts and crafts, and to experience first-hand the power of visuals in the language classroom. I present a few examples of posters created by my students using various kinds of materials (paper, cardboard, glue, twine, cotton, fabric, etc…).