file4.htmlTEXTMSWDË`Eø;^IøB¶ªªÄ Dr. Leon James Report on "The Third Force in LanguageTeaching"
"The Third Force in Language Teaching"

By: Leon James, Ph.D.

University of Hawaii

1972


Pages: 61-77


APPENDIX
Workshop Title: /ES/TE/FL/Teacher


TRANSACTIONAL ENGINEERING WORKSHOP
FOR THE FL TEACHER
FEATURING
AN ETHNO-SEMANTIC PERSPECTIVE
ONON
THE FL TEACHER AND THE SETTING
INTENDED FOR THE DEEPENING OF ONE'S UNDERSTANDING
IN THE SIX DIMENSIONS OF
INDIVIDUAL, PRIVATE, EDUCATIONAL, PHILOSOPHICAL
PROFESSIONAL, PERSONAL
WHICH REPRESENT A DERIVATIVE GROWTH LINE




As a method of approach, transactional engineering for language teachersis a specific application of two old and well established techniques of rationalanalysis. The first is represented by the structural morphophonemics outlined inthe I Ching, one of the oldest texts available to us from ancienttimes, and its exhaustive cataloguing of social settings into a double trigramtaxonomy known as "the 64 Hexagrams." The second is represented by thecoordinate system of functional localization known as "the CartesianSystem." These two successful approaches are combined in the Teacher's Kitas "the Double Hexagram." In this procedure, practiced during theWorkshop, the individual teacher learns to map or represent any problem ordilemma so that they come to be understood objectively and recognized asevolutionary steps in a pre-formed setting of necessity-and-choice. Thus, thechanging appearances of individual dilemma come to be viewed as against theunchanging background of wisdom and recycled process.

More specifically, the conceptual taxonomy and behavioral dialecticsmade visible by the Double Hexagram reveal the actual nature of wisdom as amechanical and deterministic outcome of pre-established arrangements known as"ethnosemantic outlines." Thus, the technique of "ColorWisdom" exemplified in the accompanying charts, serves to make visiblesemantic and conceptual patternings known as "glossaries," Thesenatural interrelationships are implicitly contained in the works we call"dictionaries;" a glossary is a Cartesian representation of theseimplicit connections that form the basis for constructing text in discourse.Once ideas and notions are plotted as "arrays" within the ColorChart's rows and columns, their connectedness emerges as a string of text whichis mechanically transformable into an assertion, definition, or statement. Forexample, consider the juxtaposed arrays in the accompanying chart (p.2). Therows in the chart are independent of each other and represent various conceptualdomains or socio-spheres of action. Each horizontal array describes sixnatural phases of the domain in question. Thus, the first row marks the sixnatural points of pronominal reference. The second row outlines the naturalprogression of "words" on their way to becoming"utterances." In the third array is represented the evolution of anytransactional episode which starts from the "individual's perspective"on it and ends with the "personal and particular" realization of it asa unique event. The fourth row in this chart takes the individual from hisprimary and original "enculturation milieu" to his completion inpersonal "understanding and wisdom." Finally, in the last row, asubjective and individually enculturated phenomenon such as"intuition" is gradually and regularly transformed into the objective"actualization" of a particular performance.

The Teacher's Kit Chart shown in the accompanying diagram (link located below thisparagraph), is a double hexagram that allows plotting of any problem or dilemmathe teacher may encounter in the course of his daily round. Thus, six TeacherRoles and six Teacher Positions are arranged into a double matrix of 36"Role Positions. " These are identified by the diagonal labels in thechart. By moving through this chart up, across, and in their combinations, theteacher is able to chart a pathway that orients him to specific directions indecision making ("choice," upward movement) and reveals to him thespecific directions of evolutionary change ("necessity," movementacross). Assertions definitions, and statements are automatically produced byreading the chart in any one of the available systematic orders. Same examplesare as follows (in each case, the words in all caps are from the chart and theyare made into an assertion by adding the functional argument operators appearingin small letters):

Example : Assertions from Teacher's KitChart

    (a) METHOD involves PHILOSOPHICAL PROGRAMMING (or "thephilosophy of programming") while APPROACH involves INSTRUCTIONALDIAGNOSING ("instructional diagnosis").

    (b) CREATIVITY is PROFESSIONAL PROGRAMMING while EXPERIMENTATION isPHILOSOPHICAL COACHING (vs. SPONTANEITY which is EXPERIENTIAL COACHING) .

    (c) from INTUITION, which is EXPERIENTIAL PROCESSING, to EXPERTISE, whichis PERSONAL PERFORMING, the teacher must engage himself in the interveningsupportive steps of INTERPERSONAL FACILITATING (the "TEACHER-PUPILDYAD"), INSTRUCTIONAL PROGRAMMING (the "CURRICULUM"),PHILOSOPHICAL DIAGNOSIS (the "CONTEXT") and PROFESSIONAL COACHING (or"TRANSACTIONAL ENGINEERING").

In this manner, the teacher continues to practice reading the chartuntil he develops the analytic facility in the objective description of hissituational conditions and pragmatic realities. Sooner or later in thispractice, the teacher comes to the reassuring and exhilarating discovery thatthe color system of coding notions and ideas is simple and already known by him!Reflecting our common ability of producing text in discourse and in thought isthe shared interpersonal framework of 'common' "sense" or"common-sense knowledge" only the explicitness of the sharedethno-semantics is lacking, not its underlying and intimate familiarity. Thecolor coding system is a version of this explicitness. It is a version couchedin a style and in a register that suits the current mood of the times--freedomand responsibility in professional self-management.


The Psycho-dynamics of Discourse = The Descending Light Trigram

The Ethno-semantics of Discourse = The Ascending Dark Trigram

History/Ideology/Biology

The Ethno-dynamics of Discourse = The Descending Dark Trigram

Poetics/Rhetoric/Dramaturgy

The Ethno-semantics of Discourse = The Ascending Light Trigram

Enculturation/Socialization/Assimilation



As the individual endeavors to improve himself, he experiences variousfeelings of unease. Hesitancy and reluctance restrict the individual's availablescope of action. "Transactional Engineering" is a phrase we use torefer to the idea of professionalizing one's movement on the"ordinary" daily round ("from bed-to-bed"). That is, viewingthe day's activities as a engineering task involving transactional exchangeswith others in actual settings. Another way of saying this is that theindividual who adopts a professional objectivity about himself--his dailysequence of

Experimental performance is the actualization of personal competenceand the transformation of intuition into expertise. Following the etiology ofevents and placing then into the taxonomy of the Double Hexagram directs themind towards the enunciation of sound and correct judgments of all matters thatcome before it. It is a guide to the perplexed, a source of wisdom to theinexperienced, a map to the confused. But foremost, and in essence, it is arepresentation of the dialectics between necessity and choice, that ineluctablemovement on the interface between the objective and the subjective, thespontaneous and the self-conscious, that for which we are responsible withinthat which pre-forms our judgments.

That Wisdom is unitary and unchanging over time and epochs of historicalgroups is a truth that has been affirmed and re-asserted by those of everygeneration of man who have understood the nature of the "planetarycondition." Confucius, Aristotle, Descartes, Einstein, William James,Franklin Jones, and others have written about the true process of radicalunderstanding as separate from the accumulation of knowledge throughspecialized studies (e.g. philosophy and science) and the improvement in theexecution of specific skills. This essential separation releases the individualperson from inadequacy and defensiveness and substitutes for them theintelligence of already available wisdom, the mode of operation of spontaneityand objectivity, of awareness and understanding of the real parameters whichcontain the natural evolution of experience and its continuous transformation.

UP and ACROSS: "The Double Hexagram System of CHOICE andNECESSITY"




QA.

Q. What are you doing about CREATIVITY in your METHOD?

A. The philosophy of your programming in your preparation beingprofessionalized is having creativity in METHOD.

Q. What's the difference between a teacher's Competence and herexpertise?

A. A teacher's expertise is seen in her personal performance--thatreflects her proficiency; but her competence is seen in her preparation, priorto performance: it is her personal processing of the pupil, the culmination ofher focus on the pupil.

- "What's your APPROACH?"

- "My instructional diagnosing is task-oriented rather thanpupil-oriented."

Q. What's the key to solving classroom management problems?

A. Classroom management has to do with instructional coaching orassimilation to a climate of task orientation, It is not pupil oriented. Nor isit an indication of the teacher's proficiency per se. Classroommanagement problems reflect a deficiency in the role of teacher as coach. Thekey to solving classroom management is to see it first and last as a settingproblem, a staging problem, not a teacher problem or a pupil problem. Theremedies: making regulations and routines explicit (cf. "contracts"),make norms functional rather than evaluative (cf. Prisoners of WAR campnotions).

Q. How is a teacher to experiment with wisdom and spontaneity?

A. Basically, experimentation for the teacher must involve his coaching rolerather than his programming role. Instructional programming, i.e. thecurriculum, is never authentically experimental: experimentation should affectthe curriculum only indirectly, through context and diagnosis. Authenticexperimentation involves the teacher's focus on his own setting as the contextfor the philosophy of his method. Experimentation, in its application tocoaching, must be harmonious with the teacher's personal style, more so thanwith his personal skills in programming.

Resistance by the person to this process of inevitability-and-choicemagnifies change into crisis, reluctance into obstanance, and hesitancy intoanxiety! These common symptoms are avoidable by the individual through theaction of UNDERSTANDING. Understanding ("to stand under" or"sub-stance") is the act of experiential performances itresolves the dilemma of involvement vs. resistance by re-positioning theindividual witness, by altering the scope of his situation. This resolution isthe dissolution of life as dilemma. It represents the professionalization ofliving. In the mode of the experiential performance, the individual person seeshimself act: his genuine spontaneity guarantees him freedom from arbitraryaccountabilities. The person of understanding is the individual who, having seenhimself act and heard himself talk, witnesses himself, afterwards, in theprocess of intellectualizing experience.

Introduction:
Standard
Ordinary
Facework
Register

=
The SOFRegister

    Note:
      Behavioral instructions in the SOF registerconcerning one's conduct in an interpersonal interaction employ mnemonicformulate in the form of slogans. Evident in: (a) self-improvement courses andprograms; (b) training in bargaining for management professionals; (c) advice toteachers and students in manuals; and (d) in supervisory settings: advice totrainees in therapy and counseling.

    Problem:

      To specify the parameters that relate to slogansin terms of a characterization of moves in a conversational episode. Thischaracterization amounts to a translation process from the SOFregister slogan to the scientific register of a functional analysis (TE).

    Design: Stage A:

      (a) instruct P 1 topartake in a conversation with P 2 where P 1 and P 2 are given prior instructions via a SOF slogan profile(practice?).

      (b) analyses transcript of conversation showing how (a) affects (b).

      (c) possibly: Skinnerian design: 5 dyads?

      pre-briefing
      conversation
      P1 andP2

      |
      |
      |
      |
      post-briefing

      |
      |
      |
      |
      de-briefing

      (d) possibly: get personality ratings, impression formation items on eachother, at the end. ? since pre- and de-briefing will affect it.

      Stage B:

      (a) identify Transactional Engineeringinstructions based on Stage A analyses.

      (b) using these, instruct P 1 and P 2 as in (a)Stage A.

      (c) analyze transcript for perf. ach.

      (d) compare transcripts for perf. ach. in two types ofinstructions

      (e) obtain ratings at the end.

    Analysis : (1) Does perf. ach. improve overthe SOF slogans when instructions are in the TE register? (Stage B -d)

    (2) What are the mechanisms of impression formation? (management) (Stage B -e)

    Discussion : (3) What are the mechanisms of interpersonaleffectiveness? (Role Types & Personality Theory)

    (4) Implications for training counselors.

    (5) Improving behavioral instructions.




Notes on SOF Register Sloganson Behavioral Instructions and theirTE Register Translations

SOF:

1. Poise: Be polite. Do not interrupt. No not show your cards. Tryto foresee opponents questions. etc., etc.

2. Transactional Styles Be clear. Be knowledgeable. Be firmyet do not appear inflexible. Do not criticize. Make statements of facts, beobjective. Reason logically. Check feedback. etc., etc.

TE:

1. Poise: Specify manner of Greeting and Leave-taking. Specifyremedy for interruptions (types). Specify legitimization and ratificationreplies.

2. Transactional Style: Identify assertion types. (Possiblyonly two or three to keep study manageable and realistic). Identify role typestyles (two or three). Personalizing comments.

Only when SPONTANEITY is set as the framing of the individual as a taskcomponent, that is the stage setting of the liberated teachers and findsexpression interpersonally in counseling, instructionally in classroommanagement, philosophically in experimentation, professionally in transactionalengineering, culminating in the teacher's personal pedagogic style.

1.) Language Belongs to the People.

2.) Linguistics Belong to Linguists.

3.) Teaching Belongs to the Teacher.

4.) Transactional Engineering Belongs to the Setting.



Two Old Time Slogans aboutLanguage

"THe wise use of language saves us from ignorance and ultimateconfusion."
"School is the place where the uses and richnessof language can be well learned and, hence, preserved in thecommunity."


Language Belongs to the people



Psycholinguistics, Ethnosemantics, andDiscourse

1. The underlying or pre-topical mechanisms of discourse production:

    (a) conceptual glossaries (enculturation)

    (b) topic focus (referential setting or socialization)

    (c) exchange units (meaning and function or assimilation)

2. The surface or topical mechanisms

    (d) transactional claims (speech acts)

    (e) presentation or display frames (style)

    (f) discourse text or utterance (transcripts)

Ethnosemantic techniques of discourse analysis includes topic domainfragmentation, morphogenetic evolution of predication in terms of derivativetrigram components called topic nominal constructions, and transcript notationsystems that represent functional relationships in discourse events(conversation, text, and discourse thinking), Applied empirical investigationsinclude conversational analysis, annotations of text (including reading,commenting, interpreting, understanding), and the cataloguing of indexingpractices (deistics, reference, identity, theme), No special prerequisitesneeded for the course.

As a method of approach, transactional engineering for language teachersis a specific application of two old and well established techniques of rationalanalysis. The first is represented by the structural morpho-phonemics outlinedin the I Ching, one of the oldest texts available to us from ancienttimes and its exhaustive cataloging of social settings into a double trigramtaxonomy known as "the 64 Hexagrams." The second is represented by thecoordinate system of functional localization know as "the CartesianSystem." These two successful approaches are combined in the Teacher's Kitas "the Double Hexagram." In this procedure, practiced during theWorkshop, the individual teacher learns to map or represent any problem ordilemma 80 that they come to be understood objectively and recognized asevolutionary steps in a pre-formed setting of necessity-and-choice. Thus, thechanging appearances of individual dilemma come to be viewed as against theunchanging background of wisdom and recycled process.

More specifically, the conceptual taxonomy and behavioral dialecticsmade visible by the Double Hexagram reveal the actual nature of wisdom as amechanical and deterministic outcome of pre-established arrangements known as"ethnosemantic outlines." Thus, the technique of "ColorWisdom" exemplified in the accompanying charts, serves to make visiblesemantic and conceptual patternings known as "glossaries." Thesenatural interrelationships are implicitly contained in the works we call"dictionaries"; a glossary is a Cartesian representation of theseimplicit connections that form the basis for constructing text in discourse.Once ideas and notions are plotted as "arrays" within the Color'Chart's rows and columns, their connectedness emerges as a string of text whichis mechanically transformable into an assertion, definition, or statement. Forexample, consider the Juxtaposed arrays in the accompanying chart:

The rows in the chart are independent of each other and representvarious conceptual domains or socio-spheres of action. Each horizontalarray describes six natural phases of the domain in question. Thus, the firstrow marks the six natural points of pronominal reference. The second rowoutlines the natural progression of "words" on their way to becoming"utterances." In the third array is represented the evolution of anytransactional episode which starts from the "individual's perspective"on it and ends with the "personal and particular" realization of it asa unique event. The fourth row in this chart takes the individual from hisprimary and original "enculturation milieu" to his completion inpersonal "understanding and wisdom." Finally, in the last row, asubjective and individually enculturated phenomenon such as"intuition" is gradually and regularly transformed into the objective"actualization" of a particular performance.

The Teacher's Kit Chart shown in the accompanying diagram is a doublehexagram that allows plotting of any problem or dilemma the teacher mayencounter in the course of his daily round. Thus six Teacher Roles and sixPositions are arranged into a double matrix of 36 "Role Positions."These are identified by the diagonal labels in the chart. By moving through thischart up, across, and in their combinations, the teacher is able to chart apathway that orients him to specific directions in decision making("choice", upward movement) and reveals to him the specific directionsof evolutionary change ("necessary", movement across). Assertions,definitions, and statements are automatically produced by reading the chart inany one of the available systematic orders. Some examples are as follows: (ineach case, the words in capital letters are from the chart and they are madeinto an assertion by adding the functional argument operators appearing in smallletters):

    (a) METHODii involves PHILOSOPHICAL PROGRAMMING (or "thephilosophy of programming") while APPROACH involves INSTRUCTIONALDIAGNOSING ("instructional diagnosis") argument operators appearing insmall letters:

      (a) METHOD involves PHILOSOPHICAL PROGRAMMING (or "the philosophy ofprogramming") while APPROACH involves INSTRUCTIONAL DIAGNOSING("instructional diagnosis.").

      (b) CREATIVITY is PROFESSIONAL PROGRAMMING while EXPERIMENTATION isPHILOSOPHICAL COACHING vs. SPONTANEITY which is EXPERIENTIAL COACHING.

      (c) from INTUITION, which is EXPERIENTIAL PROCESSING, to EXPERTISE, which isPERSONAL PERFORMING, the teacher must engage himself in the interveningsupportive steps of INTERPERSONAL FACILITATING (the "TEACHER-PUPIL DYAD),INSTRUCTIONAL PROGRAMMING (the "CURRICULUM"), PHILOSOPHICAL DIAGNOSING(the "CONTEXT"), and PROFESSIONAL COACHING (or "TRANSACTIONALENGINEERING").

In this manner, the teacher continues to practice reading the chartuntil he develops the analytic facility in the objective description of hissituational conditions and pragmatic realities. Sooner or later in thispractice, the teacher comes to the reassuring and exhilarating discovery thatthe color system of coding notions and ideas is simple and already known by him!Reflecting our common avidity of producing text in discourse and in thought isthe shared interpersonal framework of common "sense" or"common-sense knowledge"; only the explicitness of the sharedethno-semantics is lacking, not its underlying and intimate familiarity. Thecolor coding system is a version of this explicitness. It is a version couchedin a style and in a register that suits the current mood of the times--freedomand responsibility in professional self-management.


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