Advance organizers

An advance organizer is a cognitive strategy proposed by Ausubel in his Subsumption Theory, which allows the learner to recall and transfer prior knowledge to the new information being presented. This theory is based on the idea that learning is facilitated, if the learner can find meaning in the new information. If a connection can be made between the new information and previous knowledge, the learning experience will become more meaningful to the learner. Therefore, the new information will be learned. The advance organizer is not a strategy used by the learner, but rather an instructional strategy used by the teacher. In essence, the advance organizer is a brief, general speech prepared by the teacher, before presenting the new material, to introduce the new lesson. In designing the advance organizer recall of previous knowledge relevant to the new knowledge is important. It should provide a bridge that links the known to the unknown, by including an abstract outline of the new information and a restatement of old knowledge. Theoretically, this will encourage transfer and application of old knowledge, to make the new knowledge more meaningful to the learner. In SLA advance organizers could be used to help the learner categorize new learning, in relation to their native language. The learner could then distinguish similarities and differences in the target language and their native language, thus carrying out a cognitive comparison between deviant and correct target language, forms or utterances. This may even reduce learners' errors as conscious attention is focused on these differences and similarities. The use of advance organizers does fit in with current teaching approaches, particularly with the communicative language approach. For in this approach, learners negotiate for meaning and the teacher acts as a facilitator of the communication process. For further information go to: http://web.syr.edu/~maeltigi/Cognitive/subsump.htm http://www.seas.gwu.edu/student/tlooms/ISD/ausubel.html http://www.lincoln.ac.nz/edu/tip/56.htm http://tecfa.unige.ch/edu~comp/edu-ws94/contrib/schneider/learn.fm.html