How to Create an Environment For Learning

There are two types of learning environment: natural and prepared.

Natural Environment: Your family and the immediate surroundings are the natural environment. Family members communicate and interact with one another on a daily basis. When a family member leaves the house for work or school, she brings home with her the knowledge from the outside environment. A family grow with this knowledge which interplay with their own learning environment.

Prepared Environment: As the components in the natural environment embrace all information and knowledge from outside, a kind of system develops that need to maintain or sustain the knowledge in the family. This results in the formation of the prepared environment.

Usually the natural environment is richer in culture and practice, and it has greater influence on personal growth and development.

The prepared environment is something like this. You will use it it works for you, but store it somewhere on the shelf at home until it is appropriate for use. use it if it works. For example, the family buy and sell furniture, keep and donate used items, throw or store materials on a regular basis.

Knowledge is the same. For instance, after you have learnt and tried a new recipe, you let the family try it. If they enjoy the meal, you keep it as part of the family favourite recipe. You experiment on the knowledge.

With regard to language, you have to set aside space in the family living environment to combine the foreign with the native. This space need not be physical space. In my case, it is space in time. I choose to read Mandarin books to my daughter, 1 hour day. By physical space, I mean an area in the house where everything is foreign, from books, apparel or even to accessories.

The idea is to maintain a balance between the natural and prepared environment. One cannot influence change outside my natural environment. He also cannot force knowledge he has from a prepared environment upon what is already natural. He has to experiment the choices of components or materials create the learning environment we want.

By Hanifa K. Cook