Essays on the Teaching of English
Raymond Stopper
Based on His Book, Teaching English, How To….

Active Learning

10-Second Review: Questions and purpose make learning active.

I read somewhere that formal education today can be defined as giving answers to questions that the students have not asked. And maybe that’s the place to begin in motivating students to learn. Begin with questions phrased in such a way that students will actively seek the answers.

Listening to a lecture would seem to be the opposite of active learning. However, I can remember a course in The Philosophy of Communism, in college, in which I was completely absorbed by the teacher’s lectures, which were toneless, delivered in a monotonous voice, but, in class period after class period, revealed the ideas in the theory of Communism. I went into the class with a question and a purpose. I knew nothing about Communism, at the time a major threat to the democratic world, and I wanted to find out why its proponents believed so passionately that Communism represented the inevitable future of the world. The class on The Philosophy of Communism answered my question.

Put the question in the words of the students and you’ve “got ‘em.”