Hi teachers, friends and ELT gurus the world over!

Welcome to my Our Discovery Island author blog! To get things started I would like to point you towards some very cool pedagody articles on the Our Discovery Island website. Today's post is focused on my own article there, called:

Why Isn’t Jinny Learning (Remembering) Words?: Motivation, Affective Filters and Vocabulary Learning

You can find the full article here below or attached to this post:

http://www.pearsonelt.com/ourdiscoveryisland/high_american_english/learn_more/proven_pedagogy.asp

Here is a section of the article for your consideration and comment:

Fluency in language production occurs where ‘procedural knowledge’ through ‘automotization’ becomes ‘fast and without deliberation’ (DeKeyser, 1997). To achieve this automaticity, students need time on the practice court of language learning. This will go a long way towards guaranteeing their success in the L2. But what if they don’t enjoy certain key aspects of the practice? It’s obvious that if we are going to ‘remember’ things we need to practice remembering them, but what kind of practice will lead to students committing to more practice with the foundational aspects of language learning such as vocabulary? With children, this is surely where the traditional classroom ends and the ‘personal adventure’ which David Paul  refers to in "How to Teach English to Children in Asia" (2003)  begins.

This notion of 'personal adventure' is key for David Paul and also underpins the philosophy behind the Our Discovery Island.

Our Discovery Island uses an approach called W.A.R.M as our practical application of 21st Century Learning approaches:

• Whole Learner
• Authenticity
• Repetition
• Motivation

The W.A.R.M approach was developed by Dr. David Nunan, the senior pedagogy advisor to Our Discovery Island - we'll hear more about that in future blog-posts.

Take a look at this clip from the O.D.I. online world and think about these concepts of how "personal adventure" and "W.A.R.M" fits into the design of these materials...

This is the opening to the Level 3 coursebook for Our Discovery Island. Again consider the importance of learning as an adventure.

Learners crash onto Space Island!

More posts in the next few weeks about parts of this article and connected to methods and materials to come. Love to hear your comments, feedback and questions - and then will follow up with a post with my own comments on these two examples of exemplary materials design for Young Learners.

Much love and respect to all the teachers out there.

Aaron Jolly.