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? Exemplify this through the lens of a student and prospective ELT practitioner.
Well, as a student I think that in order to
increase my awareness I need to have clear my personal goals, be conscious
about my weaknesses and my strengths; also I need to know my learning style
because everybody is different, and everyone learn in different way. So I
shouldn’t worry about my mistakes; however, I have to pull my energy and effort
in improving every day. On the other hand I’m a practitioner in a school, and
every day I have to do my best, I apply my lesson class in order all of them
achieve the learning because all of them have different learning styles, and I encourage
them to have clear goals about what they want, what they want to be, or what to
do in the future, and some of them really want to improve their skills in English
and are conscious about the needed of learning English, in addition I try to
know their needs, and according to their
needs I plan the activities. Every time I tell them that I know how they
feel when they make a mistake, errors, homework assignments because also I’m a
student but I encourage that all of that its essential in the learning process,
and the key of be success in life is to be conscious about our weaknesses; moreover,
do everything necessary to improve.
How would you deal with error correction in your classroom?
I think error
correction should be immediately, for example when I’m teaching, and they are
repeated after me, I hear that some students are pronouncing so different; whereas,
others just don’t repeat because they feel afraid to make mistakes, and the
rest laugh about them; herefore, I tell them that all of them have to repeat,
and if someone make a mistake, it doesn’t matter because is the way to learn. What
I make is to write on the board the words that are difficult to pronounce for
them, and at the end of a dialogue, or the lecture we repeat that words much
times until they pronounce well, first of all as a group and then one by
one.
What seems to be more difficult: teaching teens or teaching large classes?
Well in my point of view, teaching large classes as well
teaching teenagers is difficult because if you are teaching large classes you’ll
have a lot problems like the space, the attention at the back, goals
achievement, deep learning ,and not enough time; although you can face with all of these problems applying different
techniques, methods, or approaches. For instance set rules at the very beginning, increase
their motivation, sitting arrangement. On the contrary teaching teens also is
difficult because they are at that important stage between childhood and
adulthood, so they have to face with many problems, and changes. They are
complicated, shy, and unrespecfull; therefore, they are in conflicts almost all
the time; However, we can use also different techniques in order to maintain the
discipline, such as set rules at the very begining, create interesting activities relate to their interestings, projects about music,
sport, fashion, or celebrities. They want to be treated responsibly, but they
still enjoy having fun during the class, keep the activities varied, don’t
spend too long time on any one thing. Teaching to teenagers, or large classes
can be great fun, but only if we take into account the right way to do it.
TEACHING TENEEGERS VRS TEACHING LARGE CLASSES
