Image credits: https://kidstarnutrients.com/health/family-nutrition/tips-to-feed-a-picky-eater/
Aristotle gave the structure of a great speech to his students. He framed it around Ethos-Pathos-Logos. According to him great things are achieved if one knows the art of persuasion well.
He taught his students the art of persuasion through delivering a powerful speech.
When we consider a teacher in a classroom setting or any other setting what comes to light the most is that she/he has to speak to deliver a lecture or speech most of the times. He/She has to communicate effectively to his/her students.
Imagine a classroom where a teacher is teaching and the students are all around the classroom. The teacher is focussed at completing her curriculum. She has received a deadline and now finally she is just at her job.
In another classroom all the students are sitting with eyes and ears glued to what the teacher is teaching. She is delivering her lecture with certain notes and diagrams or graphs which she is interlacing while teaching.
In both the cases we have professionals.
Both are focussed.
They know their task.
They know their targets.
But the way to achieve the target is absolutely different.
One has a captured audience and the other simply has the audience but no ways and means to capture their attention.
It is somewhat similar to what happens when a salesman simply tries to sell a product and a veteran salesman sells the solution of the problem to the buyer.
While teaching communication skills to the students we teach that words or speech gain only 20% of the audience’s attention. Where as 80% is contributed by the body language, your tone, intonation, expressions, etc.
Curriculum delivery becomes fairly easy when the relationship between the teacher and student is empathic and considerate.
So how to do it?
Here we go-
Ethos-Pathos-Lagos
Ethos- Is your own character. It is your credibility that you build as a teacher. It tells, persuades or even compels the audience to believe in you.
So, when we speak of command over the subject, inter twinning practical examples in your teaching material or taking them out for an experiential class where you deliver the lecture to co relate things around you into the teaching material it is all a part of building credibility.
The more knowledge you have you will be able to deliver to it in a better manner. It is important for a teacher to build her credibility.
You want the students to trust you that whatever material you are delivering is important for them to remember, understand and reproduce.
The more the faith the better the understanding by the students. It is directly proportionate. Build on faith. Hence professional development is constantly suggested to keep upgrading your knowledge and skills.
The new generation has a lot of information at the command of their finger-tips. If you are able to cater to their interests in unique and innovative ways you have won half the battle.
Let us understand with the example of advertisements.
Big brands higher celebrities to advertise their product. Why?
The customers value the celebrity. They trust them and in turn that trust gets converted into compelling them to buy the product because it has been endorsed by the celebrity.
You will also find some ordinary people making a great impact through the advertisements.
We do remember the TATA motors ad launched on Durga Puja. It showcased common people being a part of the celebrations. Enjoying the routine. Just feeling and being happy.
What I mean to say is by being happy in a class you automatically endorse that the concept that you are teaching is pretty good, simple and easy to understand.
Pathos- It is the empathy that you have for your audience. You are addressing some of their major concerns. These are the problems that the students are facing related to the academic content or concepts. They are confused or totally unaware of these topics. In a way you are voicing their concerns and then providing them the solutions.
Remember through pathos you are touching the emotions of your students. You need to appeal to their senses, memory, nostalgia, feelings of joy, excitement, integrity, etc.
We often stick to an advertisement because it involves high drama of emotions. You sit back and take note of it and then ultimately you remember.
Apply the same sequence of thoughts to your students. It happens just the same with them.
The goal will be sooner achieved because they will remember what you have taught because of the emotions that got entangled or ran free or uncontrolled at that moment of time.
The humour, the drama, the fear, the extent of helplessness, the vastness of the devastation, etc. all such emotions should be put to use. They will understand the extent which you want to deliver. They will empathise with the situation and remember the lesson.
That is what the ultimate goal is.
Logos-The logical reasoning behind the concepts taught.
Yes, all the academic concepts are related and assembled together because they are logical. There is a reason why we teach these concepts to the students.
One of my students put up a question to me on ‘Instagram’.
The student asked, “Respected Madam. When a teacher cannot teach all the subjects why are the students expected to study each one of them?”
Oh! But true.
My Reply, “Education aims to expose you to different concepts and subjects. It wants you to taste everything and finally decide which subject you want to specialize in.”
In response to this, I received a smiley.
So, the logical reasoning part can be taught by including statistics, graphs, calculations, and some live examples to prove the point.
This is the best way to include LOGOS in your speech to persuade the students.
This technique comes in handy while you are trying to teach Social Science. The students feel this subject as boring which it is absolutely not.
When you deliver certain facts by stating statistics, percentages, numbers, graphs, etc. the students remember the information. Because they get captured by the numbers fairly quickly. Even better than a well dramatized story.
I conclude with the lines taken from an article from the blog Farnam Street-
Ethos is about establishing your authority to speak on the subject, logos is your logical argument for your point and pathos is your attempt to sway an audience emotionally.
Link for the article-
https://fs.blog/ethos-logos-pathos/
So, learn the Art of Persuasion and go on and teach well.
Follow my blog for more insights into the world of teaching.
DISCLAIMER: The author has no intention of using a copyrighted image. It will be removed if the publisher has an objection. Due credits have been mentioned on my blog.
No comments:
Post a Comment