Priorknowledge angloslides

Carol Lethaby
clethaby@clethaby.com
Twitter: @clethaby
Website: clethaby.com
Use your brain!
Prior knowledge in ELT

Before we start:
1 What do you understand by the term
‘prior knowledge’ or ‘background
knowledge’?
2 What kind of prior knowledge do your
students have?
3 What does prior knowledge have to do
with the brain and learning?
4 How can we use what learners in
Mexico know already in English language
teaching?
Prior knowledge: Carol Lethaby, 2018

1 What is ‘prior knowledge’ or
‘background knowledge’?

“If I had to reduce all of cognitive
psychology to one principle it would be
this: the most important single factor
influencing learning is what the learner
already knows. Ascertain this and teach
him accordingly.”
(Ausubel, 1978: flyleaf)

•“the single most widely
demonstrated difference [in
learning outcomes] is prior
knowledge.”
•(Clark, 2014: 335).

Students who have a great deal
of background knowledge in a
given subject area are likely to
learn new information readily and
quite well. The converse is also
true.
Marzano, 2004

Prior and background knowledge
•Prior knowledge – previously acquired
knowledge gained through life and
experience
•Background knowledge – academic prior
knowledge
• (Marzano 2004)

•Note: faulty background knowledge can
also affect learning, so it’s important to
check for this too.

2 What kind of prior knowledge
does the learner have?

Two types of knowledge
•A knowledge of the world
•B knowledge of language

A Knowledge of the world / content
knowledge

B Knowledge of language
•Knowledge of L1
•Knowledge of L2
•Language awareness

Knowledge of L1

implicit knowledge

Present perfect
tense? I’ve never
heard of it!
Excuse me,
could you tell
me about the
present perfect
tense, please?

Knowledge of L2

explicit knowledge

Excuse
me, could
you tell
me about
the
present
perfect
tense,
please?
Certainly! It’s
formed with the
present tense of
the verb have
and the past
participle, for
example, I’ve
eaten my dinner.
It has different
meanings …

Language awareness
•Understanding of how language / languages work
“Insight into pattern in language has been
shown to be a key element in aptitude for
foreign language acquisition”
(Hawkins, 1987: 4)

What do we know about what our
learners already know?
•They know a lot of Spanish
•They live in Mexico and know about
Mexico
•Their educational background – the
schools and education they receive
•Their cultural background and norms in
Mexico
•Some of the English they already know

3 What does prior knowledge have
to do with the brain and learning?

Neuroscience

Brain cell

Brain cell (neuron)
• Adults have about 100 billion

Neural network based on synapses
(connections)

Connections!
•Language processing in left hemisphere
•Different processes / tasks associated with
different areas, but …
•Synapses – connections between neurons
•New information – connections
•Known information – reinforces connections –
using complex neural networks

So …..
How can we use this information
to help learners to learn?

Howard-Jones et al, 2018
•Applying the Science of Learning in the
Classroom
• In Impact Journal of the Chartered College of Teaching

Howard-Jones et al (2018)
•Engagement, building and consolidation

Engagement
•“The relationship between engagement
and learning is not a simple one. While
engagement can lead to learning,
learning can also lead to a more positive
emotional response and further
engagement with learning.”
• (Supekar et al, 2015 in Howard-Jones et al, 2018)

Building of knowledge
•“For new learning to be acquired in an
educational and meaningful sense, it
must also be connected to prior
knowledge, and this requires two-way
communication.”
• Howard-Jones et al, 2018

•In other words, teachers need to find
out and activate what learners know
already.

•(“the building of new knowledge is
often accompanied by increased
activation of the prefrontal regions of
the brain” Van Kesteren, 2014; Howard-
Jones et al, 2018)

Consolidation of learning
•New learning is more vulnerable to loss
• While we are using effort to process to remember and
apply new information the working memory is at full
capacity.
• As we consolidate our learning, the effort becomes less
and it becomes more permanent
• We make the connections stronger and we can then use
automatic processing.
•The importance of PRACTICE!!

For example:
• Ss learn that by adding –ed to a verb they can speak about
the past
• At first they apply this rule consciously and with effort
• As the rule becomes more consolidated they don’t need to
apply so much conscious effort and can learn something
new – working memory is freed up
• If this knowledge is not consolidated – reinforced / practiced
/ used – the learner will forget the rule as it remained in
working memory only briefly and will be lost when learner is
focused on / trying to learn something else.

For example:
• Ss learn new set of vocabulary items – about 10
• When you first introduce the words learners can hold them
in their working memory and work with them.
• If you practice and return to the words, this consolidates the
learning and they no longer take up space in working
memory as they’re making it to long-term memory (through
connections with what the learner already knows).
• If the words are not consolidated, the learner will forget
them as the working memory is taken up with something
new. The connections are not strong enough …

First principle of neural connectivity
“cells that fire together wire together”
•The more you do something the stronger the
connectivity
http://www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/live/2014/oct/02/the-greatest-brain-myth-there-ever-was

Second principle of connectivity
“use it or lose it!”
•If you don’t use the connection – it will
be pruned!
http://www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/live/2014/oct/02/the-greatest-brain-myth-there-ever-was

•“On a daily basis, we adjust and extend the
enormous knowledge base in our brain.”
•“It is very important in education that courses
build on each other as much as possible,
because knowledge builds from its
antecedents.”
• Building on prior knowledge: How does the student brain learn?
• May 12, 2014 Marlieke van Kesteren
• http://www.neuwritewest.org/blog/2014/5/12/building-on-prior-
knowledge-how-does-the-student-brain-learn

Applications to education
“… once we understand more about how
our brain uses prior knowledge (the stuff
we already know) to learn new
information, we could tap into our prior
knowledge better and more selectively
before we learn new information.”.””
Van Kesteren, 2014

“the single most widely
demonstrated difference [in learning
outcomes] is prior knowledge.”
•(Clark, 2014: 335).

4 How can we use what learners in Mexico
know already in English language teaching?

“the single most widely
demonstrated difference [in
learning outcomes] is prior
knowledge.”
Clark, 2014: 335

•“.. what students already know about
the content is one of the strongest
indicators of how well they will learn
new information relative to the
content.”
• Marzano, 2004

What prior knowledge do L2 students have?
•Content
•L1
•L2

How can we use what students know to help
them to learn more easily?
1 Use pre-tasks
• activate background knowledge
• build background knowledge

From: English ID 2 by Paul Seligson, Carol Lethaby and Luiz Otavio Barros, Richmond 2013

them to learn better?
2 Re-cycle and build on what
learners know:
- use a spiral curriculum
- start with what learners know
already

From: English ID 1 by Paul Seligson, Carol Lethaby and Chris Gontow, Richmond 2013

From: Just Right Pre-Intermediate by Jeremy Harmer, Ana Acevedo and Carol Lethaby Cengage 2006

•“It is very important in education that
courses build on each other as much as
possible, because knowledge builds from its
antecedents.”
• Van Kesteren, 2014

3 Know about learners’ interests / what they
know
•We are most interested in / motivated by the
things we already know something about
•(“interest in the topic is also important but
often is related to prior knowledge.”)
•Therefore … we need to make connections
between what we do in class and students’
real lives.

Check for ‘faulty’ prior knowledge
•Constantly be aware of prior knowledge –
don’t assume that learners know something
– check it.
•“faulty background knowledge”
•Eg basic vocabulary, parts of speech, names
of tenses
•Find out what the learners know.

Cognitive overload
4 Don’t overload learners

“Visual representations appear to be
most effective when they are designed to
support the cognitive processes
necessary for deep comprehension.”
Butcher, 2006

•If we present learners with too much
information – text and complex visuals that
don’t support comprehension of the text
this will be too hard for learners.
•Text and visuals need to support each other.
•It’s about working memory capacity and
therefore essential to activate and build prior
knowledge

Working memory
•Overload leads to information
loss – either incoming information
will not be processed, or an item “in
process” will be dropped for a new
one.
• https://sites.google.com/view/efratfurst/learning-in-the-brain

•Learning from Text with Diagrams:
Promoting Mental Model Development
and Inference Generation
•Butcher, Kirsten R.
•Journal of Educational Psychology, v98 n1
p182-197 Feb 2006

5 Use L1 to help learners learn English
“Research consistently shows that more new
words can be learned using L1 translations
than with L2-based definitions (Laufer and
Shmueli, 1997; Ramachandran and Rahim,
2004).” In Schmitt, 2008
German.aiflc

Language knowledge
• Research shows that learners need to know
approximately 98 percent of the words in
written or spoken discourse in order to
understand it well
•(Nation, 2006).
•Nation, I.S.P. (2006). How large a vocabulary is
needed for reading and listening? Canadian
Modern Language Review 63, 1: 59-82.

6 Use L1 and L2 knowledge
•Help students to notice similarities and
differences
•Use cognates – false cognates
•Build on what learners already know in English
eg words and expressions in English
•Predict problems – spend more time on tricky
areas, less time on easy things
•Use references to background and culture of
the student – make connections to real life

Summary
•Prior knowledge is essential in
helping us to learn new things
•We are finding out more about the
brain and how prior knowledge is
connected with new information
•We can use what we know about
the brain and how it works to help
us to help learners

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