Editorial
Although this article was written with the enthusiasm of both the authors, Barbara Caponsacco’s contribution is particularly evident in parts 3 and the conclusions while Teresa Ting worked Barbara Caponsacco’s contributions into the rest.

A Brain-Aware EFL Teacher: Can’t Be More Humanizing Than That! A Case Study

Y.L. Teresa Ting and Barbara Caponsacco, Italy

Barbara Caponsacco has enjoyed teaching English as a foreign language to Italian students of all ages for the last 20 years. Her eldest son is 28, her middle son is 20 and her youngest daughter is 9, so she unfortunately has not had much time to think about writing articles. However, she has always tried to see her language from the students' perspective and continues to welcome any insight into improving her teaching methods. E-mail: simone.spataro@libero.it

Teresa Ting is a teacher in Calabria, Italy. Before she became an EFL teacher, she worked as a researcher in biomedical-neuroscience for more than 15 years. She is interested in finding ways to help EFL teachers understand how their students’ brains work so they can develop more effective classroom practices. She has written about this with regard to CLIL, another area she enjoys working with. E-mail: yltting1@gmail.com

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Introduction
The case and the context
One brain feature…
Epiphany towards brain-aware teaching
Taking theory into practice
Conclusions
Acknowledgement
References
Appendix

Epiphany: (1) January 6^th commemoration of the coming of the Magi…(2) an intuitive grasp of reality through something (for example an event) usually simple and striking/a usually sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of something.
Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary

Introduction

As teachers, we can’t help noticing the many brain-research reports in the media with amazing brain-images from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies showing how various brain areas light up when volunteers are shown a word in their mother tongue, a foreign language, nonsense syllables etc…: “what happens in the brains of our learners?” Even more exciting for language teachers are studies which tell us that multi/bilingual brains process a variety of information differently from monolingual brains. While some scientists doubt that bilinguals have an edge over monolinguals, most of us who teach foreign languages probably tend to side with those who do believe that multilingualism benefits the brain somehow: if nothing else, the mere capability of sticking to Italian to speak to la Nonna, English to Gramps but Chinese to must surely mean a multi-lingual brain is a more alert and controlled brain. In neurocognitive terms, this ability to use the right language with the right person is called executive control. Its mere name – executive – is indicative of how important neuroscientists think this type of brain processing is. As teachers, we might ask how this control works? When does executive control excel and when does it not work well? And as EFL teachers we may wonder if executive control has anything to do with, among numerous other things, how well learners learn their English, pass their certification exam, and use this foreign language.

As more and more brain images appear in the news, more and more educators are not only becoming fascinated with how the brain works but also wondering whether some neuroscience research findings might not be used to improve what many agree is not a totally functional education system. Given all we know about how the brain processes input, are teachers teaching in the right way? Are education policies coherent with brain development? Are interactive blackboards going to change 21st century education? Is reading off the screen comparable to reading off the page? What are schools doing right? What are textbooks doing wrong? Be it global philosophical pondering or detailed procedural enquiry, the question is, basically, ”is scholastic learning brain-compatible?”

Considering how much resource is poured into education, making learning more brain-compatible will surely make better use of the precious resources of time, money and, most importantly, learning brains. However, to make learning more brain-compatible, teachers need to be given appropriate information regarding how the brain works. Appropriate is the key adjective here since even if an EFL-teacher knows that part-x of the brain is responsible for storing the third person ‘s’, if this teacher cannot poke an electrode into that part of her EFL-students’ brains, what is she to do with this information? In fact, about a decade ago, Bruer, in an article entitled “Brain and education: a bridge too far” (1997) warned educators that brain research findings from experiments which are carried out on immobilized humans doing simple tasks in MRI magnets can only inform education in a very limited way. Learning is, after all, a very complex process, much more than tapping the correct button while lying in a magnetic-tube. In fact, education is a qualitative process which recognizes that individual differences account for unpredictable experimental outcomes. This is in contrast to research in the basic sciences, which adopt quantitative processes so that experimental outcomes are predictive of a generalizable fact: an anti-malarial pill that works for me works for whoever and digital photography works for the islanders of the Seychelles as it does for the nomads of the Sahara.

This generalizability is not true for education. All teachers know that no two learners are alike and two lessons given by the same teacher are neither identical nor give the same results. That is why we need to be wary of people who claim to use neuroscience knowledge to “direct” how we teach. For example, “right-brain/left-brain” definitely has a neuro-clinical base since damage to the left-hemisphere region controlling motor movements will cause paralysis in the right half of the patient’s body and certain cognitive processing seems to be undertaken in specific parts of the right or left hemispheres. However, efforts to oversimplify the complex process of learning into a two-modality “right-brain/left-brain” issue have only hindered teachers’ progress (see special issue of Cortex regarding the use of neuroscience findings to inform education practice). Any effort to use brain research findings to formulate prescriptives for how teachers should teach should be scrutinized through a critical and informed lens. Likewise, with the increasing popularity of neuroscience and its pretty images, we should be careful how the affix “neuro” is used since some have shown that it is easy to become a victim of “neuro-seduction” whereby the mere affixing of “neuro” onto anything makes even the most incorrect and illogical statements seem acceptable and scientifically valid (Skolnick Weinberg et al, 2008).

Having said that, there is little doubt that teachers who know a little more about how the brain processes information and learns will probably be more effective teachers. What is encouraging is that even neuroscientists are increasingly more interested in making their expertise knowledge accessible to teachers. For example, the International Mind, Brain and Education Society has launched the eponymous Journal under the most respectable of circumstances: “on April 2nd, 2007, Wiley-Blackwell celebrated the premiere issue of Mind, Brain, and Education with a reception at the Harvard Faculty Club in Cambridge, Massachusetts” (IMBES Journal). Less than two years later, the scientific brain research journal Cortex dedicated a forum to debating how and how not to link “neuroscience and education”. That neuroscientists are interested in making their work accessible to teachers is not at all surprising since good teachers are the heart and soul of socioeconomic progress and even the best neuroscientists hope their children have good teachers! This is the spirit with which we would like to present a case-study which clearly demonstrates that brain-aware EFL teachers are more effective EFL teachers.

The case and the context

As EFL teachers in the Science Faculty of the University of Calabria (Southern Italy), we (Barbara and Teresa) usually spend our staff-meetings discussing classroom management, student management, exam management and those routine professional issues which are essential to keep the EFL programme moving but which do not give us much opportunity to exchange knowledge and cultivate “new ways of being”, what Denzin (1989) calls, moments of epiphany. Overwhelmed by daily routine, teachers don’t often have these moments of “hey! I think I like that way of doing, being, thinking…” which could jump-start them into a fresh unit in their professional lives. Teachers, no matter how humanistic and non-attention-getting they try to be, are always on stage, if not acting, then orchestrating, both of which take a lot of energy: teachers may often feel stagnant if not downright worn out and worn down (Okazaki and Rinvolucri, 2005). Thus the value of teacher-training. Be it big or small, boring or exciting, all opportunities for teachers to sit back and learn rather than teach, give teachers a time to absorb new information and maybe process it into an intuitively useful way of teaching.

It was therefore with great pleasure we received the news that the core EFL faculty of our university had organized an International Conference on Creativity and Innovation in Language Studies right in our own back yard! The topic per se, was not directly related to what we do in the Science Faculty, but it was nonetheless an occasion to absorb new knowledge and learn. Teresa saw it as an added opportunity to merge the knowledge gained from 15-plus years in neuroscience research with her new knowledge in EFL teaching, giving a presentation entitled “Into the business brains of learners: fundamental findings from neuroscience research which can guide the development of learning materials”. As we are still not permitted to implant electrodes in (for example, the third-person ‘s’ part of) students’ brains, Teresa was not going to speak about her experience with rats but with human brains, discussing how EFL materials can be developed using information from her experience as a teacher of Functional Human Neuroanatomy courses for medical students: the kind of knowledge doctors need to locate lesions caused by a stroke and the kind of information needed to read brain images.

One may wonder why someone with a PhD in neurobiology is teaching English in Italy but that makes for a long story (Ting, 2005). Suffice it to say, it is actually an exceptionally interesting professional niche. As Eric Kandel, the 2000 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine noted, “language is the most elaborate cognitive behavior” (Kandel & Schwartz, 1985 p. 2). Few would argue against this. Being that the case, foreign language teachers thus witness, first-hand and regularly, the amazing cognitive behavior of foreign language learning! In fact, what our students do with the FL we are teaching them and how well, or not, they are doing it, is a revelation of amazingly complex cognitive processes: as EFL teachers, we are in a privileged position to observe how “the most elaborate cognitive behavior” behaves in a foreign language. So, while the road had been quite long and winding, Teresa feels privileged to be teaching EFL to Italian brains.

Barbara is likewise very happy to be doing the same although she is (was) not into brains and her road into the EFL profession was less winding, coming to Southern Italy from Chicago and gradually getting absorbed into the world of EFL-teaching. What was at first “something to do” that many native speakers “just do” (Ferguson & Donno, 2003) became involving, motivating her to pursue a degree in the teaching of English as a foreign language. That she did this despite all of life’s obligations of family and economy reveals her awareness that just because she spoke English, it did not automatically make her an effective EFL teacher. This might be taken as a first indication that Barbara has the makings of a professional EFL-teacher – reflective self-awareness of where she can “improve her practice”.

The conference therefore gave both Barbara and Teresa the chance to learn from others but, more importantly, an opportunity to interact with each other in a novel context where a different type of knowledge was shared, first from Teresa to Barbara, in the form of a conference presentation and then later from Barbara to Teresa, in the form of an insightful EFL teacher’s “narrative inquiry” into her own professional development. This is a case-study which demonstrates that when teachers are more aware of how the brain processes information, they are empowered to move forward by developing pragmatically useful tools and insights which can then be used to improve their classroom practice.

One brain feature…

For the conference, Teresa had 20 minutes for her talk and her purpose was to demonstrate to the audience that effective learning happens when the learning process is coherent with how the brain processes information. There are obviously numerous ways in which the brain receives, perceives, processes, remembers, discards and even concocts information and almost all learning undoubtedly takes place through a complex mix and match of these and other yet-to-be-identified neurocognitive processes. While no neurobiologist or educator in their right mind would profess that any single form of information-processing is necessary for learning, what we can do is consider whether how the brain processes certain information may have implications for learning. The neurocognitive processing Teresa chose to present was “N-400”.

N-400 is, very simplistically put, the neurocognitive brain signal of semantic-incongruency, i.e. “that makes no sense!”. Neurobiologists identify and study this brain signal through electrodes placed on the scalp of volunteers (see photograph) while showing statements such as “for breakfast I have milk with cement”. Such a statement elicits a massive negative (N) electrical signal which is recorded on the lateral side of the left hemisphere 400 milliseconds (400) after the incongruent word (e.g. “cement”) is presented (e.g. Van Petten & Luka, 2006; Kemmerer et al., 2007). In fact, the less likely a word is to be found in a given position (i.e. low “cloze probability”), the larger the amplitude of the N400. In the above example, “cement” would therefore elicit a larger N400 than “a candy-bar”. N400 is therefore a “highly sensitive measure of the difficulty of semantic integration process” (ibid p. 239). This means that the brain is electrically active and alerted when words are not making sense.

What does this mean for teaching? One basic question for an EFL teacher might be “is an English-only classroom always good for our learners? i.e., With what level of English competence is an English-only classroom more conducive than destructive, to learning?” Basically, might there be so much N-400 going on in a low-competence English-learning brain that potentially understandable information is lost in the chaos?

While maximizing learners’ exposure to English, authentic or not, is a good rule of thumb, we may need to go one step further and consider the how and when of such exposure so that it is more optimized than maximized. For example, studies have shown that, in competent bilinguals, N-400 is not elicited when there is code-switching between languages, such as “for breakfast, I have coffee with pane e marmellata”: substituting “bread and jam” with the Italian equivalent may not elicit an N-400 because “pane e marmellata” makes sense – it is semantically congruent. The astute reader will realize that while code-switching must activate other parts of the brain, and it does, N-400 would not be activated when the recipient is competent in both codes. For an EFL teacher, the question may be, again, is it useful to use English with all students at all times for all purposes? Might it be more efficient and brain-friendly to just go ahead and explain the use of the English present simple vs. progressive in the L1? For example, for Italians, this distinction in English-tense usage is already very different from how these tenses are used in Italian, and thus by itself is already a complex concept to handle - explaining the English distinction in English may be presenting less competent learners a cognitive input which is quite heavy to process.

At the conference, Teresa’s goal was to illustrate that if we prepare materials with the N-400 in mind, learning can take place quite easily and even unconsciously, be it about a FL or anything else: our teaching is only as efficient as it is brain-friendly. To provide an example of what might be a brain-friendly approach to learning which can also take place unconsciously, Teresa designed a set of activities (see Appendix A) to “teach” the conference participants a core Economics concept, how opportunity costs determine the production-possibility frontier (see the Appendix)

The activities were disguised under the EFL skill of “effective writing”. Therefore, participants’ attention was overtly drawn to concepts which are familiar to FL teachers, e.g. how main ideas are developed through cohesion and coherence, how redundant and inconsequential phrases make writing less powerful and how re-echo techniques provide the cognitive link between one sentence and the next. Throughout the activities, there was never direct reference to the economics concept that was actually the covert learning-aim of the activity. In the end, to test whether the participants had indeed learnt the economics concept, they were asked to decide which commentaries of a production-possibility frontier graph were correct and to choose a suitable summary of the economics concept of opportunity costs (see part 4 and box in Appendix). Basically, while participants were busy working through overt activities designed to teach “effective writing skills” with which they were familiar, they had acquired, unwittingly and totally unconsciously, knowledge about production-possibility frontier and opportunity costs. It is difficult to delineate the exact process by which the participants, who were FL experts and not economists, were able to reach an understanding of these economics concept in 5 minutes under conference conditions since it required a complex interplay between pair-work using the handout and guided group-work of the entire audience, led by Teresa in the role of “economics EFL teacher”. What was noteworthy was that, by drawing participants’ attention to language work which they could do, participants acquired knowledge of an unfamiliar topic in economics. That they did this unconsciously was possible because the material used was semantically and conceptually familiar – “reduced N-400 material”.

If we consider that traditional economics lessons probably start with “today we will speak about production-possibility frontier and opportunity cost” much like chemists start with “today, we will look at heat-capacity” or maybe EFL-grammar-translation fans “today, the present perfect progressive”, what we have in a terminology-first approach to novel concept is that the lessons start with lots of N-400, alerting the brain that “difficulties lay ahead!”. How different is “for breakfast I have milk and cement” from “if you want to talk about an action you started doing in the past and are still doing, use the present perfect continuous” ? Like “cement”, wouldn’t all that “present perfect continuous” in the FL also trigger an N-400, as input which is just downright difficult to process? Again, is there a lot of N-400 going on when we explain L2 grammar in L2, especially when L2 competence is low? These is a question we might ask ourselves as EFL teachers.

Epiphany towards brain-aware teaching

While this would also be interesting an question for neuroscientists, what is interesting for us is the experiment that Barbara did once she had absorbed and processed the neuroscience information into her own teaching context. In line with the belief that teachers’ narrative inquiry and reflective practice can contribute significantly to empowering teachers as teacher-researchers undertaking small-scale research to improve their professional lives (Goodson & Sikes 2001; Ting, 2005), Barbara’s step towards using neuroscience to inform her practice is now presented in first person.

“Looking back on Teresa’s presentation, the first exercise was actually very simple and I thought, “What’s the big deal?” Actually, I was working with a very advanced EFL teacher and we had no problems but we realized that even other not so advanced EFL teachers would have gotten the right answer because they could use the grammar which they did know to get the exercise right. Gradually, however, the exercises got more difficult but we were still able to choose the correct answer because Teresa had drawn our attention to how the sentences were linked through echo-words – text cohesion. Likewise, some words were synonyms and that helped us choose the correct answers. So we were using what we did know – the language – to do the exercises on economics…And we were able to understand the economics concept without problems – at the end we knew what the right answer was! It was surprising that we had learnt this concept which had to do with economics…something I knew nothing about.

“What also surprised me was that I understood what Teresa was going on about when she talked about the brain… the brain finds it easier to deal with information when it’s given in a certain way and not another…we see this all the time in students but knowing there is a brain process behind their “not understanding” makes me feel like it’s a concrete problem so probably I can think of a concrete solution…”

This second statement is a clear demonstration that when neuroscience information is presented such that it is scientifically valid YET accessible to teachers, teachers feel empowered by the fact that they 1) understand something “scientific” and 2) are dealing with a “concrete problem which begs a concrete solution”.

The next day, Barbara had a group of Biotechnology Masters students that she is preparing for B1-certification. The participants, age-range 30-42, are currently at level A2 and not very confident or competent English-users. The group was practicing a part of the reading/writing component of a certification exam where candidates must determine the exact message of common public signs, and was not doing very well. Barbara remembers: “I asked them, “maybe you don’t know what these words mean?”” and said, when discussing with Teresa, “I thought to myself, “these are smart people, they should not be getting these things wrong!”” This statement alone demonstrates the quality of teacher Barbara already was, with or without lessons about the brain. However, she continues, “..and then suddenly, the seminar clicked into my brain and I remembered what we had done…milk and cement…the brain has to click and theirs wasn’t clicking… They had to do something they could do…So I told them to just skim for key words and then decide which was the correct answer…and they got them all right!!!...but what was strange was that they did the exercises quickly!”

Acting on what she had learnt about the fact that the brain can learn unconsciously by working through something it can do, Barbara came up with a pragmatic tip for her learners. Interestingly, Barbara also assumed a role of teacher-researcher and asked her students “what did you notice after underlining key words…you got them all correct, why?” The students’ answers were basically that, in doing what Barbara had suggested, they were able to clearly identify which key words in the otherwise confusing options were directly linked to the signs. She reports that she did not continue asking them questions because she “did not want them to feel like guinea pigs, and that I was doing an experiment on them…”, again an indication of her very humanistic approach to her learners.

The first time Barbara told Teresa that she had “used the brain-information” she had first heard about from Teresa, she reported it with a countenance of wonderment, “I couldn’t believe it…it still gives me goose-bumps when I think about it.” What is important here is the fact that Barbara was sensitized to the fact that learners use brains, and their brains process information, and how this information is packaged for input, determines how efficiently it will be processed. This was the moment of epiphany when Barbara became a teacher who is sensitive to whether her students’ brains are working under optimal conditions. “Exceptional teachers are born (gifted). However good teachers can come about through training” (Malikow, 2005-2006, p1). From exceptional teacher, Barbara became an exceptionally brain-compatible teacher.

Taking theory into practice

What Barbara actually did was much more than just tell students to notice key words as this is something all certification-preparation teachers suggest at some point or another. What she probably cannot verbalize is how she went about giving this suggestion since the how of her good teaching probably forms the “tacit professional knowledge” (Freeman & Richards, 1993; Burbach & Duke, 2007) which can only be drawn out through systematic teacher-training (Golombek, 1998), which is not the case here.

Being the effective teacher she is, Barbara is certainly aware that students have brains. However, what makes an already good teacher even more effective is the realization that how the brain is working depends on how we teachers are presenting the information. When she saw that her smart learners were making not-so-smart choices, she realized there was something wrong with how their brains were perceiving and processing the information. What Barbara did was use the information Teresa had introduced her to and turn it into a tip that helped her students. In doing so, Barbara also further reinforced her sense of self-worth as an EFL teacher who can use neuroscience information to give concrete help to her learners.

It should be noted that the final tip Barbara gave her students had, per se, nothing directly to do with what Teresa had said about milk and cement or unconscious information processing. Barbara had taken these neuroscience findings many steps further by recognizing that her students’ brains were probably not working under ideal conditions, that there may have been some N-400 going around, probably along with other brain processes which establish less-than-ideal conditions for learning. This is the value of sensitizing teachers to the fact that learning can be optimized if input is brain-compatible.

In addition, that Barbara was able to take milk and cement one step further from “neuroscience finding” to “EFL-classroom tip” reflects deep-level teacher-learning: presented facts, Barbara used her professional experience to transform the neuroscience information into something relevant for her own teaching context. Information about how the brain perceives information was transformed, through a teacher’s professional tacit knowledge, into a pragmatically useful piece of information to guide her teaching practice, developing, for example, a tip for her students. Teachers have the amazing knack of transforming theoretical notions into pragmatic applications. Might we consider this case one solid brick towards the construction of a Neuroscience-Foreign Language Education Bridge?

Conclusions

What Barbara actually did was much more than just tell students to notice key words as this is something all certification-preparation teachers suggest at some point or another. What she probably cannot verbalize is how she went about giving this suggestion since the how of her good teaching probably forms the “tacit professional knowledge” (Freeman & Richards, 1993; Burbach & Duke, 2007) which can only be drawn out through systematic teacher-training (Golombek, 1998), which is not the case here.

Being the effective teacher she is, Barbara is certainly aware that students have brains. However, what makes an already good teacher even more effective is the realization that how the brain is working depends on how we teachers are presenting the information. When she saw that her smart learners were making not-so-smart choices, she realized there was something wrong with how their brains were perceiving and processing the information. What Barbara did was use the information Teresa had introduced her to and turn it into a tip that helped her students. In doing so, Barbara also further reinforced her sense of self-worth as an EFL teacher who can use neuroscience information to give concrete help to her learners.

It should be noted that the final tip Barbara gave her students had, per se, nothing directly to do with what Teresa had said about milk and cement or unconscious information processing. Barbara had taken these neuroscience findings many steps further by recognizing that her students’ brains were probably not working under ideal conditions, that there may have been some N-400 going around, probably along with other brain processes which establish less-than-ideal conditions for learning. This is the value of sensitizing teachers to the fact that learning can be optimized if input is brain-compatible.

In addition, that Barbara was able to take milk and cement one step further from “neuroscience finding” to “EFL-classroom tip” reflects deep-level teacher-learning: presented facts, Barbara used her professional experience to transform the neuroscience information into something relevant for her own teaching context. Information about how the brain perceives information was transformed, through a teacher’s professional tacit knowledge, into a pragmatically useful piece of information to guide her teaching practice, developing, for example, a tip for her students. Teachers have the amazing knack of transforming theoretical notions into pragmatic applications. Might we consider this case one solid brick towards the construction of a Neuroscience-Foreign Language Education Bridge?

Acknowledgement

The validity of the scientific information one learns through this set of activities was confirmed by Economists. Teresa would also like to thank Nadia Serràgo for her, as always, invaluable feedback on the activities, without which, it would have not been possible for participants to have learnt “in 5 minutes”. We would both like to thank Cheryl Chapman for her encouragement and invaluable feedback which greatly improved this paper.

References

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Denzin, N.K. 1989. The Research Act. (3rd ed.) Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

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Ferguson, G. & Donno, S. 2003. One-month teacher training courses: time for a change? English language Teaching Journal, 57(1), 26-33.

Freeman, D. & Richards, J.C. 1994. Conceptions of Teaching and the Education of Second Language Teachers. TESOL Quarterly, 27 (2): pp. 193-216.

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Goodson, I. & Sikes, P. 2001. Life History Research in Educational Settings: Learning from Lives. Buckingham: Open University Press.

Kandel, E.R. and Schwartz, J.H. Principles of Neural Science. Elsevier: New York.

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Malikow, M. 2005-2006. Are teachers born or made? The necessity of teacher training programs. National Forum of Teacher Education Journal-Electronic, 16(3E).

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Appendix

A. EFFECTIVE WRITING: Transition Economies: can we be “Jack of all trades”? (or would that make us “a master of none”?)

Part 2. Continuing on… eliminate three… (look at slide)

1. … Sometimes, a nation may consider a potential opportunity, and must therefore choose whether to improve the old” or “develop the new”… It is therefore important to examine the production-possibility frontier of food production vs. computer production.
2. … Sometimes, a nation may consider a potential opportunity, and must therefore choose whether to improve the old” or “develop the new”… In fact, even if an agricultural country has sufficient monetary resources to expand into the computer industry, it must consider whether manufacturing computers would actually be economically beneficial since its human capital i.e. expertise, must be re-trained for computer production.
3. … Sometimes, a nation may consider a potential opportunity, and must therefore choose whether to improve the old” or “develop the new”… Before such opportunities, a nation must decide between improving an old product or developing a new product.
4. … Sometimes, a nation may consider a potential opportunity, and must therefore choose whether to improve the old” or “develop the new”… This is very important and must be carried out carefully.
5. … Sometimes, a nation may consider a potential opportunity, and must therefore choose whether to improve the old” or “develop the new”… For example, the choice could be if the national budget continues to provide farmers loans so they can improve upon an old but productive food industry or if the budget should develop high-tech computer-production initiatives which would, however, be a new item on the country’s product profile.

Part 3. Now, decide which of these two combinations works best:

1. Sometimes, a nation may consider a potential opportunity, and must therefore choose whether to improve the old” or “develop the new”… In fact, even if an agricultural country has sufficient monetary resources to expand into the computer industry, it must consider whether manufacturing computers would actually be economically beneficial since its human capital i.e. expertise, must be re-trained for computer production.
2. Sometimes, a nation may consider a potential opportunity, and must therefore choose whether to improve the old” or “develop the new”…For example, the choice could be if the national budget continues to provide farmers loans so they can improve upon an old but productive food industry or if the budget should develop high-tech computer-production initiatives which would, however, be a new item on the country’s product profile.

Part 4. Look at the graph: True/False

1. The opportunity cost involved in producing one unit of computer when producing [6 computers instead of 5] is one food unit.
2. The opportunity cost involved in producing one unit of computer when producing [10 computers instead of 9] is two food units.
3. The opportunity cost of [6-5 computers] is three times less than the opportunity cost of [10-9 computers].
4. An increase in computer production by one unit, from 9 to 10 units, sacrifices 3 units of food production while increasing computer production by one unit, from 5 to 6 units, sacrifices only 1 unit of food production.

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