2011年12月15日星期四 06:18
Inner language think aloud and integrated cognitive competence
(内部语言有声思维与综合认知能力)
Before I fell asleep last night, I thought of our problems and difficulties in our research on the development of the integrated cognitive competence with my reflection on the nature of the integrated cognitive competence.
I found the integrated cognitive competence is complicated, implicit, intangible and unobservable. It is even more so than both linguistic competence and communicative competence.
After I woke up this morning, I resumed my thinking of the same issue and discover the connection between my current understanding of the nature of the integrated cognitive competence and my preceding practice of inner language think aloud started from November 6, 2006.
The combination goes like this:
Problem statement:
The integrated cognitive competence is complicated, implicit, intangible and unobservable. So it is very difficult to approach it. It is even more difficult to approach the development of the integrated cognitive competence.
Solution perspective:
In order to make our inquiry into the development of the integrated cognitive competence, we need to make the implicit, intangible and unobservable integrated cognitive competence explicit, tangible and observable.
Now our solution perspective is to focus on the following question:
How can we make the implicit, intangible and unobservable integrated cognitive competence explicit, tangible and observable?
Solution approach:
With the above question in mind, I resort to my previous practice of inner language think aloud, that is, we can use our own inner language think aloud to make the functioning of the implicit, intangible and unobservable integrated cognitive competence explicit, tangible and observable.
***
This has a wide significance in the exploration of the integrated cognitive competence in that think is implicit, intangible and unobservable and we need to use our language to make it explicit, tangible and observable and ‘inner language think aloud can be powerful means for us to achieve the objective of making our thinking explicit, tangible and observable. When we do this in English, we are developing our English language skills in making our thinking explicit, tangible and observable.