Describing Learning and Teaching
How humans learn another
language
By María José Mesén-Molina
Pre-Service Teacher, School of English
Faculty of Social Sciences
Universidad Latina de Costa Rica
Sunday, March 27, 2016
Post 243
Learning
can vary in level of difficulty especially when it comes to learning in
different stages of our lives, and as teachers we must keep in mind that the
same teaching method used on children cannot be used on adults.
The
gist of this chapter from Harmer’s (2007) book is not so much a gist since so
far this has been the best part I have come across in this book. The chapter
mentions why when children are young they can acquire a language easily
compared to when they are in school and become older they have to learn a
language; no longer acquiring it. Because of these two ways of obtaining new
knowledge, there have been numerous amounts of methodologies that try to reach
the final objective of obtaining knowledge of a new language. Some of the
methods mentioned were the grammar-translation, audio-lingualism, PPP, communicative
language teaching, and task-based learning. Because there have been so many
different types of teaching methods, which all contain their good and bad there
has been a recent tendency to use customize teaching methods by using bits and
parts from the methodologies mentioned earlier.
The
best part of this chapter was that it reopened my mind to the great mysteries
of how humans learn a new language. The fact that there is no one way to teach
a language and how the different teaching methods have evolved over time made
me realize that English education is still in its first stages. It is a field
that will forever keep evolving day after day. I particularly liked that Harmer
(2007) did not point out the best or worst method; he instead focused on the
fact that all methods can be used as long as 3 main elements are incorporated
in the lesson plan: study, engage and activate. Not only did he free me from
the thought that teachers must use only one methodology but he also opened up
my mind to consider that those 3 latter elements mentioned do not particularly
have to be in a specific order. It all depends on the students I have and their
level of the language.
For
the first time I do not have any “cons” in a chapter written by Jeremy Harmer.
He did a great job at describing learning and teaching and everything in
between.
To
summarize such a well-written chapter, “Describing Learning and Teaching”
mentions how children acquire language through exposure and rough-tuning and
how older students learn a language through the three elements that need to be
incorporated in a lesson plan which are study, engage and activate in no
particular order. A great chapter which sparked the flame
of my dying curiosity for education.
Bibliography
Harmer, J. (2007). "Describing Learning and
Teaching." How to Teach English. Essex: Pearson.
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