CHAPTERS 4, 14, AND 15 OF THE BOOK “LEARNING TEACHING BY JIM SCRIVENER”
How can we raise student awareness about how students can best learn and help them find more ways of learning English more effectively and productively?
The teachers
know what the students need to study but sometimes the learner genuinely
doesn't know what he wants or need. Many students may have spent their whole
educational career being told what to do all the time. They may never have
stopped to realize that what they learn and how they do it involves their own
personal choice, and that it is their own time and energy they are investing
when they start to wonder what their needs are. And it is when students can do
any decision about their own future. It is important to encourage the learner
to realize and raise awareness that learning is not another product that one
buys ready-made off the shelf, but is something that has to be adjusted and
remade every time. It is a "living" thing, not a piece of dead meat. But
we don't always manage to persuade every learner, but it is worth trying.
It is
important to know about the motivation of each student because they are in the
same room at the same time but they have different motivations. Learners have
strong external reasons why they want to study and the teachers need tools,
procedures and materials used for finding out about learner needs.
the teacher
also need the information about where learners are starting from their present
language level, what learners would like to learn, how they want to study it
and it is important to know the students'
need to learning English more effectively and productively.
Some key
tools would be: writing, speaking and observation for help students
Writing:
the learner writes comments, information, answers to questions, etc.
Speaking:
the learner speaks with us or with other students.
Observing:
we observe the learner at work in class.
These tools
helps to the teachers to teach English in an effectively and productively way.
How would you deal with error correction in your classroom (s)?
All the
time, we commit errors because we are humans and when we are teaching English,
the errors often show us that a student is experimenting with language, trying
out ideas, taking risks, attempting to communicate, and making progress. The
teacher has to look for correction techniques to help them to make their own
corrections. This may raise their own awareness about the language they are
using.
The teacher
can deal with the errors in the classroom when working with oral errors for
example: who will correct? Teacher? Student self-correction? Other students? The objective is accuracy.
One
strategy used by many teachers during fluency activities is to listen in
secretly and collect a list of overheard errors. Later on, you can use this
list to provide sentences to discuss, to set an exercise, to plan the next
lesson.
There are different
kinds of techniques to correct errors: the first one can be self-correction
when the students think what the mistake is and then they correct it. Students-students
when the students work in couple and then they correct each other. Teachers-
students, it is when the teachers correct the students. the students can be work in small group, all
class and then correct each other and the last one a reference book where the
students can correct the errors with it, but the most important, it is that the
students learn of it and at the same time the teachers, too.
What seems to be more difficult: Teaching teens or teaching large classes? Create a Venn Diagram as well.
Both are
difficult because teens pass for a difficult period of life, they are not sure
about themselves; they have stronger emotion like sexual or romantic feeling
may alter the working of some activities.
The
teenagers get bored quickly and they change all the time their interests and
their motivation can be low, especially if they feel that they have been forced
to attend something they don't want to do. So it is not easy to work with teens
and other problem that it is important in the class is discipline because teens
feel particularly annoying with things that they imposed on them but when they
want, teens can bring a strong enthusiasm for topics they are interested and
they often respond well to work. When we
work with teenagers, we have to use specific techniques to teach and we can feel
that teenager classes are interesting and exciting and we feel comfortable with
them.
Teaching
large classes is difficult, too. But It is no impossible to teach. some teacher
have the opportunity to teach 10 or 15 students and other teachers teach 80 or
100 students and it is not the same that we have a big class than an small
class when the teachers have a big class, they have a lot of problem for
example the students can't move easily and the teacher, too. The teacher can't
give attention equally to all students and discipline can be a problem.
It is
different when the teacher has a small group with 10 or 15 students the class
is a little more personalized and the students have more possibilities for to
learn and the teacher can give attention equally to all but it is not possible
to teach large class because the teacher has to apply different methods for
teach. For example the teachers can move
to a different classroom, the teacher can negotiate a contract: quiet movement
in exchange for more variety of activities or the teacher can divide the class
into smaller classes or teachers have to work together with students for to
find a solution and the students can have a good learning in the classroom.
