- For Teachers By: Richard Flynn |Audience: All Reading Jim
Wingate's How to use E.I. in teaching reading comp and phrasal
verbs, I found that I disagreed with almost everything in it.
The piece is about applying emotional intelligence to teaching
English, and starts with the sweeping generalisation that
'Emotion is life, response.' While emotion is a vital part of
life, I think this basic premise is overstating the case and
forgetting many other factors. He then applies this claim to
another bold claim that 'most English lessons have no life, no
response'. While there are many tedious teachers in the world,
there are also plenty of good ones whose lessons are full of
life and response. Mr Wingate's next step starts to trouble me:
Let’s look at a typical lesson. We read a text. We answer
comprehension questions. What strange behaviour! Look at life
instead. We read a text (eg. a letter from a friend). The friend
does not add comprehension questions to the letter. In the pub a
friend tells a story. The friend