Possessing common sense is harder than it sounds. Despite it being so very common by even its definition, it suffers from the fate of the familiar. It too suffers contempt. It can even sound boring. Actually, it has a very significant role to play, because it is so very common. That gives it a strength that the other kind of our sense lacks. Some times in life, there is a call for common sense. Sometimes in life, there is a call for specialized sense, like in the race to space in the 1960s. Sometimes there is a call for common sense and specialized sense together Altogether we call common sense and specialized sense expertise. I want to talk about my expertise in the area of communication surrounding one very special tool.
But let's talk a little history, so we know why Americans make so much noise about common sense, but get so little of it. It played such a big role in the American Revolution. Without Thomas Paine's famous book, Common Sense, it could be argued that there would not have been an American Revolution. It belongs in that set of important documents including the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers, and the Bill of Rights (attached usually to the Constitution).
In communication, common sense is also very important, because there have to be things we all share for us to be able to share information, etc. with one another. What is shocking is that most of what is written on communication today is running along a line perpendicular to common sense. I call it specialized sense. Technology developments during the 20th ct. and their use in war, have driven us to also highly prize specialized knowledge. Some of us possess both kinds of sense, but we usually are not self-aware of when we switch from one to another.
So I want to use a specialty that I know well to illustrate the difference between common sense and specialized sense. Because I am a former athlete (somewhat) , former referee, former coach, and former athletic director; therefore I ought to possess a special sense of what is going on in sports. It goes beyond just common sense. It is the knowledge that is as unique as each sport is unique. Knowing how to coach football, cross country, men's basketball, women's basketball, baseball, and track did not automatically equip me to coach soccer. There is specialized knowledge for each sport that is unique to that sport. Even officiating, I could not easily cross from one sport to the other. There are specialized rules for each type of game.
What did allow me though to understand every sport more quickly is the use of my common sense. That is why, when I was offered a position as a college soccer coach without any previous soccer coaching experience, I knew I did not need to turn it down entirely. What I did need to turn down was the idea that I could be as good as someone with previous coaching experience in that sport. So I asked to be last on their list. I lucked out and they found someone. But I was prepared to add another person's specialized knowledge to my common sense coaching experience if called upon. Specialized knowledge did matter, even if common sense matters even more.
So what I need to point out to people is that when I speak of common sense communication, I am speaking of only one major part of communication. Specialized communication matters too as the lesser behind the greater. But the ideal or greatest is a communicator who possesses both common sense first and specialized sense second altogether.
I say all of that as a long introduction to what my common sense and my specialized sense are that I try to contribute to communication. First, people must understand that I use both common sense and specialized sense when I approach even the basics of communication. For me, the basic level must start out by acknowledging that the best communicators possess both common sense about communication and specialized sense about communication. This brings me now to a very specific tool that I regard as the key to effective basic communication. But let's clear up one thing right here. Without both my common sense and my specialized training, I have no right to say what I am about to say. I get my training for each from different sources.
I get common sense from the common people, who I know that are not linguistic experts. I like to say that they keep me grounded. My dad always taught me to respect their insight as to what is common and what is not. My danger as a specialist would be to not respect their expertise on common sense communication. I get my specialized sense from lots of scholars in the areas of linguistics and biblical interpretation. But if I am forced to choose one among them to play a role like my father, I would have to say it was Dr. William A. Smalley, who I studied under at Bethel College (now University) in St. Paul, MN. He acquainted me with all the big experts in linguistics from Chomsky to Brewster and all persons in between. My danger as a local vocal from Northern Wisconsin would be that I did not respect their expertise on specialized communication.
It was while I was studying under Dr. Smalley that I was first introduced to a tool from Wycliffe Bible Translators called the TEAR method. It did not catch on with me immediately and it actually took some 10 years later for it to finally begin to really become something that I used fairly frequently. The problem under Dr. Smalley was that I turned down a summer opportunity to work with the TEAR method as a teacher at SIL-Toronto (no longer in existence sadly). So I instead learned how to use it primarily from Dr. P. Daniel Shaw at Fuller Theological Seminary, when I again to a number of linguistic classes. Once I learned how to use the tool, I realized more its value. But it was not until another 10 years after that, where I was forced to use it due to my desire to teach the Bible to the common members of a church on a level they could grasp and use themselves at home. Until that point, I had largely relied on a teaching method from Dr. Daniel P. Fuller, Dr. John S. Piper, and Tom Stellar. But I now had a great group of students who gave me adequate feedback to show I need to change my ways.
So I did. I switched over to TEAR. I thought surely they could grasp this much easier tool and I also realized that this tool also gave me a larger outlook. Using it I could fit Dr. Daniel P. Fuller's arcing method into it rather than outside of it. I had a ready-made full size tool box for all my tools. One little problem. The common person in a Sunday School class could not grasp it.
As I explored its failure to connect with the common level of knowledge through direct feedback from students in classes, I realized I had to simplify TEAR. TEAR is an acronym for classes of words. The classes were THINGS, EVENTS, ATTRIBUTES, AND RELATIONS. All but THINGS were too complex at a common sense level. So I eventually re-worked each class until I had in a new order AMOUNTS, RELATIONSHIPS, WHOLES, ACTIONS, and THINGS. This many years later I started calling the ARWAT method pronounced like, "Are what?".
This method I tested in a lot of classrooms at the private and public school level with great responses. Students who grasped it called it things like "Cool". You don't hear that from students too often at the high school level. The students really loved it and they realized there was something special about the method, though they and I would have had a hard time expressing its main benefit. Even as this continued to develop, I was unable to have the kind of long term success from it that I expected.
So I took another step. I re-entered seminary, but this time at the post-graduate level at Nashotah House Seminary near Delafield, WI. Here, as part of my research for my final paper in the S.T.M. program, I discovered a lot more about the origins of the TEAR method as well as modifications that had been made to it by people associated with Wycliffe Bible Translators and by SIL.
It is at this point that I became more aware of the role of Eugene A. Nida in the advancement of this method and also of the latest developments by him and others with using new terminology. What is interesting is that while I went the direction of what I call the common sense approach along a vertical axis, SIL and others were advancing instead along a more horizontal axis that took the tool to new levels in terms of scholarship. So TEAR continues to advance in two directions, but now under different names on the scholarly level.
As I have used this method over the years and starting in 2004, I really began to understand just how powerful the tool could be with modifications made based on the common sense level of language. That does not mean it does not have a scholarly role as well, but that the really exciting development is if it can be used by all those who have a conscious level of common sense. This is where I think I am beginning to see the future of Christian communication skills advancing the most. It is making the Bible more accessible to the ordinary common sense level reader or listener.
What is exciting for me right now is to realize that what I have developed is supported at the most common sense level, where words that are very common support it more than any other level of language. But it also continues to advance on the technical side with greater and greater precision for scholarly use as well. That to me, suggests it has the highest capability of being useful because it stands not only on a foundation of common sense, but also it continues to advance to deeper and deeper levels of scholarship when it comes to communication. I also have found it is a tremendous tool for time management as well as other applications.
So, I am convinced that what is needed now is a larger text written, as part of my upcoming book or as a separate book, so that people can see its power more thoroughly. While this blog helps with getting the news out, it is hardly the place to make a longer statement that proves its superiority over other techniques like that of Dr. Fuller's arcing, not because those methods are not valuable, but rather because their value falls under this method's larger umbrella.
If you really want to understand what I am saying, then you really have to learn the method and actually learn to use it as I use it That is when its power becomes most evident. Like any tool, it is in using it that you really learn to use the tool's power and leverage over other tools.
If I have whet your appetite enough, please let me know and I will gladly go long distances even to teach you and others how to use it. It comes with my "unconditional guarantee". Like the old Life commercial, if Mikey likes it, then everyone will like it. It has changed my outlook on many things in school from I don't like it to I do like it. Maybe that is its greatest advantage! God bless.
Sincerely,
Jon
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