Wide-Angle or Telephoto?

The above image is from Douglas Brown's Strategies for Success. What do you see? It is quite easy to read, right? I guess this makes you at least partly "wide-angle" or right-brained...
Do you follow guidelines rather than rules? Do you do things in ways that are more intuitive, flexible, and spontaneous than logical, systematic and planned?

When I show this on a PPT slide in Taiwan, most viewers see only the black shapes, not the white letters F-L-Y. This would explain why it is so difficult for teachers to understand that the goverment guidelines for teaching English are ONLY GUIDELINES, not rules written in stone! There is no right and wrong way... Can you believe that I even receive phone calls asking about such small details as why we use "police officer" rather than "policeman" (as in the government books)? Using gender-neutral language is less of a priority than teaching the word that will appear on the exam.

This month, there are many presentations coming up and I am busy preparing my PPTs. Most attendees of presentations are there because they are being forced to attend.... or because they are hoping to receive some concrete materials to use. However, the problem with giving matierlas is that if it isn't perfectly suited, many teachers don't know how to adapt it.

Is it a little messianic to want to adjust not only the materials, but also the way in which teaching is regarded? I am wondering if I am not as bad as that a certain dance teacher in Taipei who insists that his students listen to "Attitude is Everything". I inflict the quizzes in Strategies for Success on the teachers! They are designed to help the quiz-taker find out if they are left or right brained, reflective or impulsive learners, and which of Gardner's multiple intelligences they are stronger in. I also have a number of books on Psychological testing (such as Myers-Briggs and other Personality/values/IQ etc tests)... and I even have books on Eastern/Western methods of Astrology/Fortune telling which I am not shy to whip out and use (for controversy's sake). I think these quizzes help show how materials and methods can be adjusted to suit needs.

My last presentations focused on VAK learner models (to show how our books can be used with all 3 types of learners)... and on right and left-brain processing (to show how activating the right brain is important, even though education here is based on getting good test results). The new methods of testing are requiring more and more inductive and deductive logic skills, as opposed to grammar mastery.

Recently, someone made me aware a different application of the VAK models: How they can be applied to the building of interpersonal relationships... If you are primarily a Visual learner, with some Kinaesthetic tendencies and few to no Auditory ones... How can you adjust to communicate/interrelate with a primarily Auditory person? If you can answer this, then you will be giving me good advice on how to solve problems with my roommate.

If you can find a new "angle" for my presentations (one that I can relate to problems in education in Taiwan), I will buy you lunch.