Situated Learning in ELT
Willy A Renandya, 21 April 2022
I first came across this term some 30 years ago when I read work by a number of cognitive scientists who were interested in understanding the nature of learning.
These scientists were particularly interested in understanding why transfer of learning is hard, i.e., why students can’t apply what they learned in school to deal with real world problems.
Their research provides very important insights for people in education, including those in language education. Some of the key insights are summarized below.
Learning happens in specific contexts
These contexts help people make sense of the learning points
Learning is hard in the absence of clearly defined contexts
The downside however is that it is difficult to transfer what you learned in one context to a new context.
The last point is particularly important for those of us who have been wondering why students can’t use the grammar and vocabulary they learned in class for real communication outside the classroom.
In class, our student may understand what a word means and may in fact be able to give a good example of how that word is used in a sentence.
But that same student may have difficulty using that word in a real world context outside the classroom.
In other words, transfer of learning does not happen because the contexts of learning and using the word are very different.
So what do we need to do?
The answer is quite obvious, isn’t it?
We need to bring real world contexts into the classroom. I know it is not possible to fully recreate or replicate really world contexts, but we can definitely bring in many of the features of authentic contexts into the classroom.
If you want to teach a child how to ride a bicycle, the best thing to do is to use a real bicycle to help her learn how to ride it. Your job is to provide continuous support and perhaps a bit of an explanation when things go wrong.
Further readings
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