Innovation in Language Learning

Confucius's “teaching students in accordance with their aptitude” is enlivened with new significance when reexamined in the new teaching foreign language settings in a place outside China and reviewed under the theory of transformative learning. This presentation compares Confucius learning and transformative learnings and points out that the way knowledge transformed is different between the two theories. Confucian teaching works on the changes in learner more from the "outside," such as extrinsic motivation driven by social obligations, while transformative learning is "facilitated through consciously direct processes (Elias, 1997)", --more driven by an intrinsic motivation. In an institute specializing in teaching foreign languages such as Defense Language institute, the presenter notices that students are mixed, driven by both extrinsic goal and intrinsic goal to learn. How to conduct effective differentiated teaching makes a great difference. The presenter believes that real differentiated teaching/learning lies in how we deal with the extrinsic and intrinsic learners. The presenter will  demonstrate with ICT based successful classroom teaching and learning examples how to combine Confucian teaching and transformative learning and apply them appropriately to effective differentiated teaching and learning. The audience will walk away with a clear understanding how the antient thought and modern theories are different and how they, somehow, yield the same effect.

Keywords: transformative learning, differentiated teaching/learning;