thinking in the classroom: conceptual thought

Conceptual thinking is looking at something and being able to process the general idea of what that item is. For example, if you have a general notion of what a sentence is, you can use that knowledge to build upon the idea of making sentences to form a paragraph and making paragraphs to form an essay etc. The great thing about conceptual thinking is that once you can identify something and are able to categorize items, you do not have to continually relearn what a specific item is. In short, once you know a book is a book, you can add things into that category because you have an understanding that a book is something that is bound, has writing and or pictures, a cover and a back. Therefore you can place other similar items into the field because you have something to help you identify and categorize such as a magazine,a booklet, or a pamphlet.

Conceptual Thinking In the Subject Area

For language one of the most important concepts is the relation between the language being learned and the culture that it relates to. Language is in its own way, culture. For example, when learning the Japanese language, you cannot separate the process of learning to speak from the culture. This is because the culture had a huge impact on the way that the language developed. For example, you would not speak to a teacher or a stranger the same way that you wold speak with someone like a friend or a family member. Likewise, you would also not refer to yourself in a way that seemed to praise your status or the status of your family. You always want to show a great deal of respect for someone else while being humble towards your self. This aspect is indeed ingrained on the culture of the Japanese people and it would be virtually impossible to learn any of the language without gaining knowledge and understanding of the culture. The idea that language is culture is a concept that can be built upon and helps to increase ones' understanding of the language in whole.

However, there are other ways of thinking that can help to increase the knowledge of a person. For instance you can use inductive thinking to help you expand something from specific to general. In short, you form conclusions about the whole subject in a general way. With language still being our example, one could take the conceptual idea that language is culture and expand upon it with inductive reasoning to assume that all Japanese people follow the rules of etiquette when speaking to another person. Although this would be a false assumption, it would be a way to help understand they way that the Japanese language is used in relation to a persons position in society. The general assumption would be that any time you encounter a person of a higher social standing than yourself, you address them more formally than you would a friend or family member.

Although different in the way that thought is processed, both of these ways of thinking can help a student learn about a subject. Both an help to enhance the experience of learning and teaching so that both the teacher and the student can get the the most out of any occurance.