How Important is it to Know
your Students in Order to Promote Learning?
As mentioned in a previous blog entry,
in terms of lesson planning, learning is fully linked to a guided set of steps
outlined and devised by a teacher. But does planning in itself guarantee the
triggering of knowledge gaining (learning) among students? Well, a resounding “no”
needs to be uttered since planning does not guarantee learning. For this
reasion, knowing who is sitting down in class is a must: what s/he likes, what
his/her learning styles are, how s/he feels about learning the target language,
etc.
Human beings are very complex when
learning comes around; there are certain activities during class time that we
enjoy or that we simply do not like. A teacher should get to know –based on
student behavior in class- what is liked and/or disliked by learners. The activities
connected to the teacher’s learning goals can be “successful”
or not if students’ attitudes are known beforehand. Though we teachers cannot
please a whole class with tasks they fully enjoy, we can plan activities aiming
at satisfying student learning preferences up to certain extend.
Part of knowing who is sitting in one’s
class is connected to finding out what student learning
preferences are. Even when students are not certain whay they do to
prompt his or learning, the language teacher (or any teacher) has to be
equipped with some sort of “simple” questionnaire to find out a bit more about
the students’ learning styles. If this data become available, an instructor can
plan learning experiences (as part of his/her lesson plan) whose outcome are
grounded on Bloom’s Taxonomy (and its hierarchical thinking extension).
In addition to student learning preferences,
getting to know how learners feel about the target
language is tremendously important. In a university language teaching
setting, students may walk into one’s classroom with no solid interest in the
target language since English, i.e., is simply another subject they need to
pass to fulfill his/her academic responisibilities for graduation. And perhaps
the same teaching scenario is present in public high schools. Language schools,
on the other hand, can have students whose motivation can be linked to work readiness or working position demands. By simply asking them why they want to
learn the target language, teachers can get valuable information that can
trigger student learning easily, moving them to achieve course learning goals
and lesson learning objectives.
? To
fully comprehend the scope of this teaching reflections, it is highly advisable
that the following topics must be expanded further:
·
Effective lesson planning in ELT
·
Student learning preferences
·
Bloom’s Taxonomy in ELT lesson planning
·
Learners’ feelings towards the target
language
Professor
Jonathan Acuña-Solano
ELT
Trainer, Instructor & Curriculum Developer based in Costa Rica
Contact
Information:
Email:
jonacuso@gmail.com
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Pronunciation
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Reading Skills
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Curated Topics
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Article
published on Sunday, April 13, 2014
How
to quote this blog entry:
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Acuña, J. (2014, April 13).
How Important is to Know your Students in Order to Promote Learning? Retrieved
from Reflective Online Teaching Website: http://reflective-online-teaching.blogspot.com/2014/04/how-important-is-it-to-know-your.html
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Sunday, April 13, 2014
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