Discourse Analysis One

Discourse Analysis One

Thacker, Donna.  “What impact does hands-on-learning have on kids?”  eHow Contributor (NA). Tuesday. 22 February. 2011.

http://www.ehow.com/way_5815129_impact-hands_on-learning-kids_.html

            The author’s goal in writing this paper is to show that hands-on-learning is a good alternative to the traditional style of learning (sitting at a desk and listening to your teacher explain what you are supposed to be learning). In this article, the author tries to explain how hands-on-learning helps students stay more involved and entertained while learning new material. As I read, I began to find that the author of this article has good information backing up why she thinks that hands-on-learning is a much better learning technique for students, that will keep them interested and help them gather the information being thrown at them in a better way. By stating her thoughts on this subject, I think that she is showing that if teachers lean towards this style of learning, it will allow their students to become more productive in the learning atmosphere. So given that, her research question is…

1.      What impact does hands-on-learning have on kids? Haha. (Hint the title)

As the author states early in her writing, learning hands-on is something that children learn to do a very early age. As kids are just babies, their parents teach them certain feelings, which they do my allowing their child to touch the objects they are trying to teach them what they are touching and what it feels like. So, I think that in this part of the author’s writing she is just trying to show that kids learn using the hands-on technique which is easy for young children to pick up on, simply because it is something that they can figure out, whereas if their parents tried the traditional style of writing their kids would have no idea what was going on and what their were supposed to be learning. So, this just shows that hands-on-learning is a very important to all ages, because it is a style of teaching that allows kids to learn in a way that keeps them involved and interested. From my own experience, I would have to agree that learning hands-on personally helps me with staying focused and interesting in the subject I was being taught. As you keep reading this article, I think that the author does a good job giving other examples, and explains how learning hands-on is a good alternative to the “traditional” teaching style that goes on in most classrooms.

            Based off of the research the author did, in order to provide all the information and reasoning behind it all, to me was very logical and seemed to be true. But, this is could also just be assumptions that everyone learns better when they are hands-on, which in some cases this may not be true and some kids might learn better the tradition way. So, I think that the author had good information and all, but what she was saying may not be true to everyone, it just depends on the person and what they adapt to and learn better from. So, with this argument, this article could create some disagreements, just depending on who is reading it and what their learning styles are and what works best for them.