describing learners

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1. Bucur Ana Maria 2. Bunea Camelia-Teodora 3. Ciubotariu Corina 4. Deák Márta 5. Olariu Loredana-Éva

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Page 1: Describing learners

1. Bucur Ana Maria2. Bunea Camelia-Teodora3. Ciubotariu Corina4. Deák Márta5. Olariu Loredana-Éva

Page 2: Describing learners

is the major factor in deciding what to teach and how to teach it

different ages have different needs, competences and cognitive skills (for e.g.. Children have facility in pronunciation)

it is admitted that teenagers are often more effective learners (age of 12)

Page 3: Describing learners

Jean Piaget suggested that children have different stages in developing, such as: Sensor-motor stage Intuitive stage Concrete operational stage Formal operational stage

-Leo Vygotski pointed out the so called ZPD (Zone of Proximal Development)

-Erik Erikson and Abraham Maslow saw development as being the child’s confidence and self esteem

-Reuven Feuerstein admitted that children’s cognitive structure can be altered with a modifier

Page 4: Describing learners

Especially 9 and 10 year old children learn differently in the following ways: They respond to meaning even if they do not

understand some words They often learn more indirectly than directly Their understanding comes in several ways: what

they see and what they hear They find abstract concepts and grammar rules

difficult

Page 5: Describing learners

Learning and curiosity Need for individual attention and approval from

the teacher Keen to talk about themselves and respond well

to learning about topics such as their home They have a limited attention span, they can be

bored if the activity is not interesting enough

Page 6: Describing learners

are often seen as problematic students search for identity and self-esteem Herbert Puchta and Michael Schratz see

problems from teenagers as result of teachers failure to build bridges between what they want and have to teach and their students worlds of thoughts and experience

Page 7: Describing learners

we must give them tasks which they are able to do

we are able to discuss abstract issues our aim is to provoke intellectual activity by

helping them to be aware of contrasting ideas , concepts

Page 8: Describing learners

Adult language learners have a great number of special characteristics : They can engage with abstract thought They posses a whole life experience They have expectations about the learning

process More disciplined than other age groups They have a clear understanding of why they

are learning and what they want to get out of it

Able to sustain a high level of motivation

Page 9: Describing learners

On the other hand they have difficulties too: They can be critical with some teaching methods They may have negative experience in learning a

language They might worry that their intellectual powers

may be diminishing with age

Page 10: Describing learners

Linguistic aptitude tests (appeared in 1950s and 1960s) – predict a student’s future progress.

Disadvantages: -they measure the general intellectual ability

more than the linguistic talents; -they were especially suited to people who were

analytic-type learner; -they may discriminate between the most and

the least “intelligent” students and they are less effective distinguishing between the majority of students who fall between these two extremes;

-teachers tend to treat differently those students with high scores from those with low scores.

Page 11: Describing learners

ADVICE! Both teacher and students

should be optimistic about allof the people in the class,although the results of thelinguistic aptitude tests are

goodor not.

Page 12: Describing learners

1. Neil Maimann & his colleagues a good learner has:

a tolerance of ambiguity; positive task orientation; high aspirations; goal orientations; perseverance.

Page 13: Describing learners

2. Joan Rubin & Irene Thompson listed 14 learner characteristics such as:

learning to live with uncertainty; students who can find their own way (no being

guided by the teacher through learning tasks); students who are creative; students who make intelligent guesses; students who make their own opportunity for

practice; students who make errors work for them not

against them ; students who use contextual clues.

Page 14: Describing learners

3. Patsy Lightbown & Nina Spada identify several categories, such as:

motivation; intellectual abilities; learning preferences; personality characteristics ( e.g. “willing

to make mistakes”) 

Page 15: Describing learners

A. All the teachers should: appreciate self-reliant students & promote

learner autonomy as a main goal; encourage students to read texts for general

understanding without stopping to look up all the words they don’t know;

ask students to speak communicatively even though they have difficulty because of the words they don’t know or can’t pronounce;

involve students in creative writing.

ADVICE!

Page 16: Describing learners

B. Our students can be successful even if they donot have all the characteristics we considerimportant for a good learner. Just believe in themand help them to be good language learners!

ADVICE!

Page 17: Describing learners

I. Tony Wright- 4 different styles of learners in a group:

 1. The ‘enthusiast’-looks at the teacher as a

point of reference and is concerned with the goals of the learning group;

2. The ‘oracular’ –also focuses on the teacher, but is more oriented towards the satisfaction of personal goals;

3. The ‘participator’ –tends to concentrate on group goals and group solidarity;

4. The ‘rebel’ –is mainly concentrated with the satisfaction of his or her own goals.

Page 18: Describing learners

II. Keith Willing suggested 4 learner categories:

1. Convergers - solitary students who prefer to avoid groups;

- independent and confident in their own abilities;

- analytic students who can impose their own structures of learning;

- tend to be cool and pragmatic.

2. Conformists -students who prefer to emphasise learning ‘about language’ over learning to use it;

- tend to be dependent on those in authority;- happy to work in non-communicative

classrooms, doing what they are told;- prefer to see well-organized teachers.

Page 19: Describing learners

3. Concrete learners -enjoy social aspects of learning; -like to learn from direct experience;-interested in language use and language

as communication rather in language as a system.

 4. Communicative learners -language use oriented;-much more interested in social interaction

with other speakers of the language;-happy to operate without the guidance of a

teacher.

Page 20: Describing learners

There are also many other categorizations and it is very difficult to find the best one, so we should do as much as we can in order to understand the individual differences within a group because every group is different and has its own needs.

Page 21: Describing learners

There are two models which have tried to explain the individual variations and which can be useful for teacher in order to use them for the benefit of their learners:

  Neuro- Linguistic Programming (NLP) Multiple Intelligences Theory (MI

Theory)

Page 22: Describing learners

According to its practitioners, we use a number of ‘primary representational systems’ to experience the world, described as VAKOG:

Visual- we look & see; Auditory- we hear & listen; Kinaesthetic-we feel externally, internally

or through movements; Olfactory- we smell; Gustatory- we taste things.

Page 23: Describing learners

People use all these systems but every person has a ‘preferred primary system’- some are stimulated by music (their preferred primary system is Auditory), others, whose primary preferred system is Visual respond most powerfully to images. Things become more complicated when a person ‘sees’ the music or has a strong sense of different colours for different sounds.

Page 24: Describing learners

-teacher can offer students activities which suit their primary preferred systems;

-teacher and students can see things from other people’s points of view so they can be more effective communicators and they can understand each other better.

Page 25: Describing learners

MI stands for Multiple Intelligences , a concept introduced by Harvard Psychologist HOWARD GARDNER .

in his book , Frames of Mind, he suggested that we do not possess a single intelligence , but a range of intelligences such as :

*Musical/rhythmical *Visual/spatial *Verbal/linguistic*Bodily *Logical/mathematical * Intrapersonal *Interpersonal

Page 26: Describing learners

-every person has all of these intelligences, but one of them is more pronounced

- if we accept this , we also have to accept the fact that same learning task may not be appropriate for ALL of our students

Page 27: Describing learners

We can simply observe them or, more effectively, we can establish from the beginning WHO the different students are and HOW are they different, using some formal devices such as tests or questionnaires.

Page 28: Describing learners

*When studying for a project, you feel more comfortable and secure when

a. you work aloneb. you work in groupsc. you work with another student This kind of questionnaires helps us to

build a picture of the best kind of activity for the mix of individuals in a particular class. (the feedback enables us, over time, to respond to our students with an appropriate blend of tasks and exercises; but it doesn’t mean that we can make everyone happy , at least not all the time)

Page 29: Describing learners

Students are generally described in three levels:

Beginner Intermediate Advanced•these are further qualified by

talking about real and fals beginners

•between beginner and intermediate we class student as elementary

•intermediate level is sub-divided into lower and upper even mid-intermediate

Page 30: Describing learners

The Council of Europe and the Association of Language Testers in Europe (ALTE) heve been working to define language competency levels for learners of a number of different languages.

•ALTE standards are just one way to measure proficiency•the level students have reached has often effect on their motivation•sometimes students who arrive at, say an intermediate level tend to suffer from the so-called ”plateau effect” so teachers need to be sensitive by taking special measures to counteract it.•such efforts may include setting achievement goals or other variations in level dependent teacher behaviorist important in methodology and in kind of language.

Page 31: Describing learners

•some techniques and activities are suitable for some levels, we should take our student’s level into consideration while choosing techniques and activities

•we will give student’s more support when they are at beginners or intermediate levels, than we need to do when they are more advanced

Page 32: Describing learners

•students acquire language partly as a result of the comprehensible input they receive especially from teachers

•teachers should adjust their language according to their student’s level

Page 33: Describing learners

•at the most basic level ,motivation is some kind of internal drive which pushes someone to do things in order to achieve something.

Motivation can be: •extrinsic: caused by some outside

factors(passing an exam, having financial reward)

•intrinsec: comes from within the individual(enjoyment of the learning process itself, desire to make yourself better)

•researchers and methodologists came to the view that intrinsic motivation produces better results than extrinsic

Page 34: Describing learners

•The goal: one of the strongest outside sources of motivation, which students perceive themselves to be learning for.

•The society we live in: the attitudes to language learning and the English language in particular

•The people around us: the influence of people who are close to students(family member ,friends)

•Curiosity: initial motivation, such as interest to see what it is like

The motivation angel: needs to be built in the solid base of the extrinsic motivation which the students bring with them to class.

We need to build our own “motivation angel” to keep students engaged and involved as lesson succeeds lesson, as week succeeds week

Page 35: Describing learners

Affect:•Concerned with student’s feelings, when

teachers are caring and helpful•Student’s stay motivated and self-esteem is

likely to be nurturedAchievement:•student’s real sense of achievement.Teachers job’s are to set an appropriate level

of challenge for student’s and guide them toward success, by setting tests that are not too difficult or too easy. and involving students in learning task they can succeed in.

Page 36: Describing learners

AttitudeStudents need to be confident in the teacher’s abilities.

No matter how nice teachers are students are not willing to follow them without this confidence.

Our appearance, the way we walk and the way we stand are also important for the student to be comfortable with us

Students need to know that we know about the subject we teach

They need to feel that we are prepared to teach English and that we are prepared to teach a lesson in particular

Page 37: Describing learners

ActivitiesThe motivation of the students is more likely to

remain healthy if they receive tasks they enjoy doing or if they see a reason behind an activity that is asked of them

We have to adapt our activity types to all of our students: some like game-like communication and interactive tasks, to write songs and poems while others would be more motivated by concentrated language study and reading texts

Page 38: Describing learners

Agency – term borrowed from social sciences*here it has a close meaning to that of an

agent of a passive sentence; the person or thing ‘that does’

sometimes students are passive recipients to things that are handed down (‘done to them’) by us , but we should be equally interested in things that they do

When students have agency they are somewhat responsible for what they learn, because they take part in the decision making process

For example JJ Wilson thought that students should be allowed to make decisions, give them ownership of class materials, write on the board while Lesley Painter was allowing students to choose their own homework

Page 39: Describing learners

Real agency occurs when students take responsibility for their own learning we can help them by teaching them to use dictionaries

effectively, do research We should not let the students have complete control

over the lesson, but the more we empower them, the more they will remain motivated.

Page 40: Describing learners

motivation may not be the same for all students in all countries

research shows that in Chinese student are more motivated by memorization and how much information students can remember for an exam while in Taiwan students promoted the ‘memorize a dictionary’ strategy (some students even get new idioms sent to their mobile phones)

Page 41: Describing learners