The Teacher and the Poet

10. Learning Partnerships

Learning intimately involves both task at hand and the relationships formed between the teacher and the learner and the learners in the group. All are equally important in learning. When people get together in a context of learning or business the first thing they focus on is relationships.

When people are uncertain about the task-when they don't know what they are supposed to do-they tend to place a stronger emphasis on relationship. Uncertainty in one area tends to put a need for stability in the other area. When people are uncertain about relationships, they tend to focus on what they think they are supposed to be doing; they seek out some sort of task.

When a teacher is introducing new material or teaching something that is either "difficult" or new, then people's focus goes to the relationship. They are going to want to know why they are doing it.

Another implication of this dual task and relationship aspect of learning is embodied in the process of cooperative learning. The process of cooperation has at least as much to do with relationship as it does with task.

You don't cooperate except in terms of relationship. But it's obviously not the kind of relationship in which people are all just standing around hugging each other. There is work to be accomplished. Cooperative learning is a description of utilizing both these dimensions to their fullest.

There are different levels of relationship as well. Some people are only in a relationship at an environmental level. It's a relationship in which they primarily react to each other because they happen to share the same space. This is what happens in the traditional classroom.

However, when you have to coordinate your actions with other people, then a more intimate relationship is formed.

When you have to do something to coordinate other peoples' behavior with what you do, you've got a more involved relationship.

When you have to coordinate your thinking process with another person, then an even more intimate relationship with that person starts to develop. There is a tighter bond that begins to emerge when you are teaching and learning from each other on a capability level. A relationship built around shared values and motivations, or one in which the permission to do something becomes dependent on somebody else, involves a deeper level of interaction-which incidentally, is not only tighter but can lead to more potential friction.

You can even have a relationship in which missions become intertwined. Your identity-the who you are-is coordinated with who somebody else is. This creates an interesting framework for accomplishment because it sets up a very deep basis for cooperation. Being on the same mission makes it easier to share the same beliefs and the same capabilities, the same behaviors and the same environment. This mirrors exactly what happens in the workplace and any course that even pretends to be about business English should be based on this premise.

One of the things we are beginning to realize, is that the reason we have two hemispheres-two parts of the brain-is because one part of the brain listens to all the non-verbal aspects of the language. These non-verbal aspects of language are called "meta messages" - because they are messages about the verbal messages being spoken. Meta messages are necessary to tell us what kind of communication we are being given. Is the speaker angry, asking a question or pausing because he or she is about to say something important? The answers are provided by the meta messages that come from all the non-verbal signals that accompany the words. The message itself may be verbal but to understand the message you need the accompanying meta message. So you may start speaking to people who are native speakers and they don't understand you even though you have all the right words. Often it's because you don't have the appropriate meta message. On the other hand if you were able to provide all the non-verbal cues, they could understand you better, even if you were not using the verbal part of language perfectly.