1. General Characteristics of Learners at Secondary School
They are well established at school and comfortable with school routines
_ They begin to take an interest in language as an abstract system
_ Growing awareness of others and their viewpoints
_ They are developing as readers and writers
_ They have a growing awareness of the world around them
_ They begin to show interest in real life issues
_ They tend to be fascinated by extremes and things that are completely outside their
everyday existence.
_ They are also interested in positive human traits, such as, courge, preverence, creativity,
and they look for role models who respresent these things.
Therefore we as teachers should design engaging lessons, using content that would
arouse their curisity and thus help student to broaden their horizons.
2. Learners and Learning
Along our courses of studies we have learnt and read many authors and theory related to
ways of developing learners´s thinking and learning skills (Fisher 2005). In recent years
many researchers suggest that thinking skills are important to effective learning. If thinking
is how children make sense of learning then developing their thinking skill will help them
get more out of learning and life.
Thinking skills are the human capacities to think in conscious ways to achieve certain
purposes, such processes include remembering, questioning, forming concepts and ideas,
planning, reasoning, imaging, solving problems, making desicions and judgments. In other
words, thinking skills are ways in which human exercise the “sapiens” part of being
homosapiens”.
According to “The Bloom´s Taxonomy”; which refers to a classification of different objetives
that us as teachers should include for students., starting from lower cognitive process to
higher ones.
Therefore, considering that the cognitive process of learning throughout which information,
values, etc is assimilated, teachers would have the challenge of developing educational
programmes that allow all students, not just an elite, to become effective thinkers as these
competencies are now required of everyone.
Context is an essential tool to teach a new language. Context means the situations which
causes the language to be used: REAL LIFE. That means that the context itself should
show what language means and how it is used. Besides, there are three main areas to
help us to create context;
physical world around, classroom, the school, the town.
Local or world-wide news and events.
Come specific information our students may be interested in
the words or feelings in songs
According to Scivener (2011) another useful strategy is to organize the classes around a
topic or theme. This would help students to experience an authentic understanding and
using the language, and we could help them by raising their awareness of the context in
which it occurs.
Language awareness allows students to learn rules for themselves rather than learning
them by heart, without really understanding them.
Learners and Learning Styles:
Gradner´s framework for multi-intelligences:
Howard Gardner, an American psychologist, suggests that intelligence had no unitary
character. He suggests seven intellegences: LINGUISTIC, LOGICO-MATHEMATICAL,
MUSICAL, SPATIAL, BODILY
, KINAESTHETIC, IMPERSONAL AND INTRAPERSONAL.
For that reason, we should be aware of this framework and design and use tasks that
combine many of these intellegences as possible. Besides, the description of the
intellegences can be related to LEARNING STYLES (Pinter 2016). Styles may describe
personality typesm such as, more careful and reflective.
3. Classroom dynamics;
Scrivener (2011) argues that teachers require to create the context in which learning could
take place. He says that common classroom management areas include: _activities
_ grouping and seating, _authrities , _ critical moment, _ different tools and techniques
working with people.
It is said that there is no perfect lesson, no single answers but some classes would be
more effective than others., different people would create different situations and different
solutions. Therefore, the basic skills for classroom managments is to focus on the
classroom events as they occur as teachers grow in experience, your awareness of
possible options will grow.
Interaction:
It has to do with classroom interactions, in other words to vary grouping in order to
facilitate students the opportunities to interact with their classmates. It is importance for
students to participate actively in the lessons and get involve in it. Working in different
ways enables a variety of new experiences for learners.
Instructions:
the author explains that instructions should be given when students are paying attention.
what´s more, teacher would use some stategies as gestures,questions, or board drawings
to ensure student´s attention and understanding.
Understanding:
This idea deals with the importance of letting students to develop activities by themselves,
and to respect students´time to understand and do a task. In other words, organisation is
4. essential when explaining different topics, for that reason teachers should consider and
plan the different strategies they would use in the class.
Intuition:
The author describes the intuition as the ability to access the quantity off experience you
have stored inside you to help you interpret what is happening in the present moment.
It helps teacher to act quickly in different situations within the classroom, for example, to
read students´reactions or to determine if they are bored.
Teacher roles: planner, informer, manager, monitor, involver, parent/friend,
diagnostician, resource.
In order to create a pleased environment for our students, we should consider
certain aspects as for example:
Consider different learning styles and the multiple intelligences suggested by Gardner
(2006). He suggests that intellegence had no unitary character. He suggested seven
intelligences; linguistics, bodily-Kinaesthetic, logico-mathematical, musical, spatial,
impersonal and intrapersonal.
Adapt tasks to the different students` abilities, intelligences and learning styles (Moon
2000)
Consider students` beliefs, attitudes, interests, behavior and also needs (Moon 2000) in
our lessons planning and activities.
Create an enjoyable, positive supportive environment for students to learn in an
effective and meaningful way.
Build a positive teacher-student relationship (Moon 2000).
Design and develop classroom management strategies (Roth 1998).
Decide and develop scaffolding strategies appropriate for learners` language level.
Construct a communicative context.
Encourage students to do collaborative work
Provide to our students constructive and positive feedback.
Develop activities regarding to Communicative Approach (Davies & Pearse 2000), as to
promote a communicative classroom also to encourage children to use English.
Enhancing confidence and self-esteem on students.
Promote an active learning, in which learners would be able to play an active role in the
teaching-learning process.
Encourage students to develop their creativity, expression, interaction and other skills.
Promote exposure by providing meaningful and significant learning experiences to
learners
Make use of interesting and stimulating learning materials and resources in our planning
lessons (stories, songs, games, audio-visual resources, etc.).
Teacher should use students` active participation to acquire knowledge related to
shapes as to build a train, also to maintain students` motivation and creativity through the
activity development. Also the activity`s main purpose should be related to communicative
5. approach, as students use English language to communicate with the teacher and also
with their classmates.
Physical activities such as making things, action songs, games, rhymes and drama
provide excellent contexts for language learning. As using this teaching strategies, the
language is closely related to what is happening in a certain situation, and so students can
get clues about the meaning from the activity which accompanies the language (as they
acquire knowledge through developing certain TPR activities-they learn through doing.
Promoting this type of activities is useful as it shows them a clear and meaningful purpose
of using the language).
MOTIVATION AND AUTONOMY
Teacher should promote the psychological attributes and practical abilities involved in
learners autonomy and in engaging students existing autonomy within classroom practice.
In that way, we could define learner autonomy as: “ a capacity and willingness to act
independently and in cooperation with others as, a social, responsible person” (Dan etal
1990,102).
As Scrivener says, many learners have strong external reasons why they want to study,
this is called external motivation. There are others who may be studing just for rewards
within the work itself, often referred to as internal motivation.
In Gardner´s approach strength of motivation is typically estimated on from attitude
questionairs and thoughts of a hidden psychologic trait.
Croak and Schmidt´s (1991) “New Research Agenda” incorporated developments in
general educational studies into the narrower field of language learner motivation. This
focused on induviduals, the context of learning, the strategies learners might adapt, and
the observable behavior of class members. Learners who develop effective motivational
thinking, capitalize on success, and minimaze the effects of failure will depend less on
externally imposed stuctures and strategies than on their own resources.
Finally, teacher's role in all of this is central, and though. It goes far beyond the provision of
reward. It involves providing a supportive and challenging learning environment, but also
facilitating the development of learners´own motivational thinking, beyond simply
identifying their original orientation. Possibly, the most difficult aspect is not doing anything
to de-motivate students.
6. ELT Approaches and Methods:
Scrivener (ch1) states that a method is a way of teaching and the method you use within
the class will depend mainly on the approach used. Activities need to be designed with
learners in mind, that is that the approach you decide to use will depend on you, your
students, the context, the resources available and the characteristics of your learners.
In this chapter he mentions some well-known Methods,and approaches such as The
Grammar-Translation Method, The Audio-Lingual Method, TPR, CLL, The Natural
approach, TBL, The Silent Way, Person-Centered Approaches, Lexical Approaches, and
Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) or Communicative Approach (CA), this latter is
the one I chose and the one I will explain in detail.
So, for example, according to Scrivener, when a lesson plan follows the CLIL - CLT. The
teacher provides a context and there is a link with the previous lesson plan. Invites the
students to rethink what they have learned before.
Jonathan Newton - ICLT (Interculturality) students are also going to talk about other
cultures. The students will also know beforehand what to expect.
The activities will be learner centred as most of them turn to students to express their
feelings and opinions representing meaningful exchanges which are the core of CLT.
In the grammar section learners should be exposed to authentic samples of language as
suggested by David Nunan that when teachers give opportunities to learners to develop
their own understanding of grammatical principles, instructions will be more effective.
7. Following his theories activities will follow a linear approach to language since learners
will acquire one grammatical item at a time.
Learners will be provided with “safe” conditions to use the language first and then they are
exposed to use the language in more demanding contexts as suggested by Scrivener in
chapter 7. So in this way, there will be an inductive learning of grammar or as Scrivener
calls a guided discovery.
Assessment
Assesment means judging leaner´s performance by collecting information about it. We
assess learners for different reasons, using different kinds of tests to do so. Assessment
tasks are methods we use for assessing learners. We can assess learners informally or
formally. Informal assessment is when we observe learners to see how well they are doing
something and then give them comments on their performance. Formal accessment is
when we assess learners thorough tests or exams and give their work a mark or a grade.
(Didáctica III)
There are several reasons you can think for assessing learners,
Diagnostic Tests: at the beginning of the course.
Placement tests: to know what level the learner are, in order to decide what level of class
the learners should go into.
Formative assessment: after finished teaching a part of a course we may want to find out
how well learners have learnt it. We use the information from formative assessment to
decide if we need to continue teaching this area or not, and to give learners feedback on
their strengths and difficulties in learning in this areas.
Achievements assessment: at the end of a term or course we may assess learners to see
how well they have learnt the contents of the whole course. Learners usually receive a
score or mark from this kind of testing and sometimes feedback on their performance.
Proficiency assessment: to test how good they are at language.
There are many different assessment tasks, suc as, gap-fill, multiple-choices questions,
true/false questions, etc. Some assessment tasks are easy to write and to mark. But do
they reflect what we are teaching and what the learners need to use the language for? We
should not use a particular testing method just because it is easy to use and easy to mark.
Besides, to really reflect the level of learner´s learningm the content and the methods of
progress and achievement tests should reflect the contect and methods of our teaching.
Feedback to learners on what they got right or wrong, their strengths and weaknesses and
what they can do to improve is essential. Through feedback, assessment helps learning.
