E1T2

In the Philippines, we threw around acronyms. “U.S.” (You Ess) instead of the United States was common; “YM/WCA” was never The Young Men’s/Women’s Christian Association. It was simply the “Y”!

PK was “Pastor’s kid” to those of us who grew up in a parsonage, until I heard one in China litter his discourse with “pk.” He was unable to explain it fully upon inquiry. It turned out it meant like “vs,” the “point kick” when football teams settle a tie!

So I coined E1T2 for “Each One Teach Two,” a slogan in my Oral English classes that I coined from Rutgers University literacy teacher Lucille Chagnon’s book, Each of you, Teach Two. She improves on Frank Laubach’s “each one teach one” literacy method. (Google TeachTwo for a methods’ conversation.)

Most of my generation remembers C-3PO (See-three-Pee-Oh), a droid programmed for etiquette and protocol in the movie series Star Wars built by the character Jedi Anakin Skywalker to accompany astromech R2-D2. Today, G3 smartphones are in everyone’s hand.

Droids and androids are no longer foreign to many of us, Droid being a font in the smartphone OS (operating system) Android that Samsung uses to compete with the iPhone. I am a dinosaur among the techy crowd, having forsaken TV and the phone on Saipan where their use was irrelevant and a nuisance. With technology replacing human physiology, however, we can’t afford to discard knowledge of how humans “naturally” behave as many of our functions are increasingly getting automated.

I am an oldie. I still remember Harrison Ford’s swagger, Mark Hamill’s live juvenile innocence, with Carrie Fisher tugging at our testosterone in the first Star Wars, but I did not come out a sci-fi groupie. The artform, however, was appropriated by overzealous religious nuts to promote their favored metaphysical themes. We went into time travel, back to the future, or are constantly time travelling!

The term E1T2 is handy but only for ease of memory rather than adding to the long list of shortened long names and phrases. I’ve written enough of the methodology behind TeachTwo, Imaginal Education and Training to say that nothing is esoteric about it.

It follows the standard grasp of the way humans learn and express in words and numbers ideas and thoughts, often not naturally followed in our haste to arrive and promote “meaningful” cultural way of “knowing.” Pedagogy tends to short-circuit the process by hurrying to the cognitive level (significance) without bothering to clarify indicative and subjunctive levels. It stops at meaning (ah, but the cognition is ever rich and alluring) without pushing for the “so what?” that invites imperative action.

OK. I lost you there. Briefly, our brains iteratively start at sense experience (see, hear, smell, taste, touch), to emotional response (feelings), then intellectual ideas (thoughts and categories) resulting in behavioral pattern (acts and deeds). The English language labels moods in the indicative, subjunctive, and imperative. I include cognitive as a third one before the imperative, to differentiate emotion and intellect. Others use ORID: the objective, the reflective, the interpretive and the decisional. These four main categories are basic and indisputable, though one understands that they are about one thing regardless of their iteration in their expression, e.g. one can begin with the emotive but ensures that the experience is clear so that meaning and subsequent deeds are understood.

We all share in the academic bias of listening to an expert “who knows more than we do,” and we in turn act the same to others. Expertise is measured by onionskins, selfhood on the thickness of wallet, but the truth that journeys our existence is determined by awake individual and not by passing standard tests. In fact, my pedagogical circle does not codify wisdom encrusted in time-honored categories but rather teach others to teach themselves, effectively and efficiently together.

That’s the gift of Chagnon and E1T2. The method teaches a pair or trio to be self-taught by knowing how one learns, getting one to be aware of it, and have the confidence to employ it. “Self-consciousness” and the skill of “consciousness of consciousness” are the fancy names but we will stick with “learning how to learn” and “knowing what we know.”

For two hours on Monday and Thursday evenings, I converse with those who wish to finesse their oral English around the Ocean View room of the Bass Bar in my neighborhood. Our talk is heavy on “listen and repeat.” I ask them to mimic an English song they like and get them to echo the singer’s pronunciation and not worry about meaning. We ground them at the five-sense experience level.

I meet administrative personnel at the “One Capitol” Hui Land Corporation (owned by Jardine of Hong Kong so staff welcomes English tutorials) on Saturday afternoons to do the same.

I dream methods and enjoin others in the dreaming. Achievement is in the actual doing. E1T2 is easy. Try it, you’ll like it.