Provoking Thought: Memory and Thinking in ELT

H. Houston

BookSurge Publishing 2009, 222 pp., £10.29

isbn 978 1 4392 5119 7

Most people get excited when they get or buy a newbook. All English teachers get excited when they buyor get a new resource book. A new resource bookmeans new ideas: sometimes brand new, sometimesideas once used but forgotten. Most often it meansideas that could not necessarily be exploited aspresented in the book, but something that could bedeveloped, adapted, downgraded (made easier), orupgraded (made more challenging) for a particularclassroom. The book under review is no exception butat the same time, it is one.

This resource book aims at encouraging students,motivating them, developing their academic skills, andcreating a student-centred atmosphere in theclassroom. On the one hand, it is very student centred,on the other hand very teacher friendly because in thePreparation section of the teacher’s notes, the mostcommon note is ‘Preparation: none’. All the activitiesin the resource book are integrated skills activitiesthat develop a number of skills (for example reading,listening, and speaking) within one activity. And thisis something that teachers do appreciate. The book isall about ideas that require no or limited resourcesand no special preparation for the activity. In this way,teachers can get ideas from the book to complementthe textbook they use daily, ideas that can be used toaccelerate learning and make routine classroomactivities more enjoyable and more participatory.

The book consists of an introduction and fivechapters. In the Introduction, the author revisits theupdated version of Bloom’s taxonomy and stressesthe importance of developing thinking skills in allsubjects including language lessons. The authorreminds teachers that in order to be fluent inlanguage, students need more than just words andgrammar, they need thoughts to express. He offersteaching tips for using thinking as a resource and forusing the activities in the book, together with a list oferror correction techniques teachers can choosefrom. Educational reforms in a number of countries(including Estonia) stress the importance ofdeveloping critical and creative thinking. This couldbe done by using appropriate techniques andactivities in the lessons. And it is exactly what thebook under review provides.

The first chapter expands on the topic of thinking.It provides 19 different activities as ‘warmers’,

‘middlers’, or lesson ‘enders’. In the introduction tothe chapter, the author gives a brief overview ofthinking styles and the concept of reflective teaching.One of the activities that I will definitely start using isa warmer (‘Thought of the day’) that encouragesteachers to make use of quotes by famous people ona variety of topics, for example thinking about anddiscussing the quote with the students. Otheractivities that looked intriguing (as well aseye-opening) were ‘Hindrances to thinking’, whichdiscusses six habits that hinder thinking and ‘Creativeand critical thinking’, which discusses the essenceand differences between them. The last two activitiesmentioned can be used with advanced adult studentsas well as in ESP classes. The activities are presentedwith a step-by-step procedure, suggestions forvariations, and the chapter ends with further readingrecommendations.

The second chapter is dedicated to the topic ofmemory. The author briefly describes the types ofmemory, outlines ten effects that could acceleratelanguage learning, and provides a list of tips that helpto remember vocabulary. The introductory part isgood reading right before the new school year to recalland remember the theory that underpins practicalactivity. There are 22 versatile activities frommnemonic ones to ‘learning to learn’ ones in thischapter. I am personally very interested in the topic ofmemory and try to find ideas and activities thatsupport learning and remembering and I gota number of useful activities that help to enhancelearning names, new words, phrases, etc. Theactivities in this chapter provide students with studyskills such as classic memory techniques,sense–memory–fantasy technique, invite studentsto share their learning techniques, and offersolutions to common memory problems. Thechapter ends with an interview with Marilee Sprenger(an author of books on memory and learning, seeSprenger 2007) that expands on the topic ofmemory further.

The third chapter is related to the topic of creativity.The introduction outlines the basics of brainstormingand offers a wide range of quick brainstorming,problem-solving brainstorming, and mini-projectbrainstorming techniques. The author providesa short list of examples in each category and teacherscan do some brainstorming in order to extend the list.Most of the activities in this chapter will work inclasses where the language level of students is quiteadvanced, though there are some ideas that could beadapted for lower-level language students. Themajority of activities in this chapter help students tocome up with solutions for different problems they

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face or might encounter in their future life. Thelast activity, ‘10 ways to boost your creativity’,includes reading on the same topic. The chapter endswith an interview with Starko (2009) who haswritten Creativity in the Classroom, which as its nameimplies is a book about fostering creativity in theclassroom.

The fourth chapter focuses on critical thinking. Theauthor believes that a critical thinking approach canadd a new layer to language learning and teaching.The first five activities are follow-up activities to thebrainstorming activities of the previous chapter.These can make good bridging activities from onelesson to another where the teacher can doa brainstorming activity in the end of one lesson andstart the next lesson with a critical thinking activitythat uses the material developed in the brainstormingactivity. Other activities help the students to learn todistinguish facts and opinions, explore their valuesand beliefs, become better at stating and supportingtheir opinions on different topics or recognizingweasel words (misleading words and expressionsoften used by advertisers). Most of the activities inthis chapter are meant for adult learners with quitea good command of the target language. I willdefinitely use them with my university students aswell as in teacher training. The chapter ends with aninterview with Ruggiero (2004) who is an expert oncritical thinking. The last chapter of the book consistsof 16 activities and is divided into three sections:working with topics and texts, generating ideas, andgetting feedback. The first section introduces six waysof graphic organization. In language classrooms,students most often operate with linear textsalthough graphic organizers can help people learnquicker and organize their ideas better. Visuallearners often both organize and store information inthe form of pictures, charts, graphs, etc. The sectionreintroduces the Venn diagram, the KWHL

technique,

n K ¼ what we already know

n W ¼ what we would like to know

n H ¼ how we can learn more

n L ¼ what we learnt

timelines, and the six-question (who, what, when,where, why, and how) technique that is used injournalism to develop a story. The activities in thesecond section of this chapter offer three ideas thatpromote generating ideas. One is Idea Constellation,which starts off as a regular mindmap brainstormingactivity, whereas the second step in the procedure isa pair/group work activity where students expandwords into phrases. Finally, the students developsentences and paragraphs from phrases and edit

them together. As a result, single words are put intocontext.

The last section of this chapter is dedicated to theways of getting constructive feedback from thestudents. The seven activities provided in this sectionwill teach students how to give feedback and willdefinitely provide the teacher with valuableinformation that could be used for developing thecourse.

One of the valuable assets of the book is the FurtherReading and Recommended Websites sections. TheIndex at the back of the book divides the activities into11 categories according to the technique (for exampleguessing, role play, discussion, etc.), function in thelesson (warmers, getting to know each other),learning style (kinaesthetic, reading), or resource(internet/computer).

The book was so inspiring that I decided to sharesome of its ideas at the Summer Seminar of theEstonian Association of Teachers of English in August2011. The title of the workshop was ‘You ARE creative!No excuses!’ More than 100 teachers participated inthis workshop. One of the activities we discussed is‘Thought of the day’ which encourages teachers touse a quote for sharing opinions and interpretationsin the beginning of the lesson. Teachers willinglyshared their own favourite quotes and together wecompiled a list of quotes to take with us. Anotheractivity that teachers decided to store in theirrepertoire was ‘Guessing words’. The game could beplayed in teams and you need a dice and index cardswith words to play the game. Every number on thedice corresponds to a certain action (1: mime theword, 2: translate the word, 3: make a sentence,4: draw a picture, 5: make a collocation, 6: givea definition, with 3 and 5 one has to use a word ‘blank’instead of the word on the index card) and teamstake turns to roll the dice, pick a word from a pile, dowhat the number suggests, and let the team guessthe word. Although the workshop was only an hourand half long and I managed to share only a tenthof the ideas and activities, one participantcommented that she got ideas for the wholesemester from it.

And last but not least, I have been taught not tojudge the book by its cover. However, I have toconfess that I did so with this one. The title wasintriguing and the picture on the cover of an oldblackboard with a speech bubble inspiring. Theresource book itself is full of inspiring ideas andeasy-to-use materials. In this particular case, thecover and the contents complement each other.Provoking Thought is an exceptional resource book

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because the activities in the book enhance learning,learning how to learn, learning how to teach, andteaching.

ReferencesRuggiero, V. R. 2004. Beyond Feelings. New York, NY:McGraw Hill.Starko, A. 2009. Creativity in the Classroom. New York,NY: Routledge.Sprenger, M. 2007. Memory 101 for Educators.Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

The reviewerPiret Kartner has been a language teacher in Estoniafor 27 years and has taught students of all ages. Shehas also taught ESP in a vocational school. She hasbeen teaching methodology of teaching English andSLA since 1996 at the University of Tartu. At present,she is working at the University of Tartu as a lecturerdelivering pre- and in-service training seminars forteachers of English, other foreign languages, andEstonian as an L2. She has published fourmethodology booklets on developing the four skills,several articles in Open, the journal of the EstonianAssociation of Teachers of English, and reviews oftextbooks and resource materials.Email: piret.kartner@ut.eedoi:10.1093/elt/ccr071

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