Intro – Matt

Hi, I’m Matt and I decided to come back to college after around ten or so years of being involved in central California’s local music scene. I’d become tired of living the luxurious life of leftover pizza and beer from venues after shows and decided that I had get a real job. But I didn’t want to do that, so I came back to school. Since then my earlier hobbies, like studying Japanese/music/et cetera, materialized into good grades and that led to a longer college career than originally intended. I transferred here as a junior a couple of years ago, and this is my last semester as an undergrad. Honestly, I’d prefer to continue travelling and doing whatever, but that’s life.

I spent a lot of time taking classes revolving around language, which soon brought me into the TESOL program, and now seems to be leading my into the TIL Master’s program. This course is one step on that path.

The passage from the reading that I thought the most striking was on page 21. It’s rather long, and the whole page should probably be reread to get my point. But for a short snippet:

“…a training program that consists of instructional settings separated from actual performance would tend to split the learner’s ability to manage the learning situation apart from his ability to perform the skill. Given a sufficient disjunction between the skill being taught and the actual performance situation, one could imagine an actor who becomes expert as a learner—but who never actually learns the performance skills themselves. This possibility seems to be what periodic tests of performance are supposed to guard against. In an apprenticeship relation, where the learner is actually performing routinely, this kind of abstract exam is less relevant.”

For an illustration, I’ll give a quick real life example. Recently, my girlfriend wants me to learn how to cook, because I can’t. She thinks I’ll starve or something. And I probably will. So she goes through great pains to show me recipes, techniques in cutting and frying, and the like. All of these things are laid out and explained to me in fair detail, and I get it. But finally, when I take knife in hand, I’m like a three year old with a live fish. Forget the fry pan, I’m putting out fires. These are only slightly exaggerated illustrations, but the point should be clear. It’s completely possible to learn something, but not be able to perform it.

Maybe it falls back to something like muscle memory. It’s something musicians talk about quite often; being able to do something without really thinking about it is the only way for that action to appear natural. Consciously thinking about an action can be a distraction to the actual performance of the act.