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Reflective paper During many years schooling was based on theory and research, on human learning, development and motivation. Advances in our understanding of thinking, memory, cognitive and motivational process could contribute directly to improvements in teaching, learning and the whole enterprise of schooling. At the same time, educators are concerned with the problems of school dropout, low levels of academic achievements and other indicators of school failure. They are arguing for more learner- centered models of schooling. Such models attend to the diversity among students. The use of the diversity enriches learning and produces results within the context of schooling.
Many excellent programs that use learner-centered models are found in many todays schools. They comprise not only systematical research and involving learner centered principles that can lead to effective schooling; but also principles that can lead to positive mental health and productivity of our children and teachers. During the recent years, the amounts of students who learn English as a second language has increased greatly. The students are referred as literacy students or ESL.
There is a special attitude to these students while teaching them at schools. In our days many teachers agree that literacy students can get new experience in content area courses. It is necessary to understand that very often ESL students speak English very fluently, but they can confuse while face academic English at school. A teacher should take into account this peculiarity and teach literacy students in a linguistic and cultural friendly environment. The process of teaching pupils is very important and is constantly changing. A great number of factors should be taken into consideration while teaching and communicating with literacy students.
There are some strategies which many teachers follow in their work. Strategies differ in the number of steps between the first and the last question and by the level of specificity of the questions. Many educators believe that the first and last question in any method should be the same: How did the children do on this task and in light of the results, what am I going to do? I. e.
a students success must be the goal of any teacher. Learners perceive goals of various kinds. On the one hand, a wish to get a better job in future or communicate with a target language community members. On the other hand to pass an end -of -semester test or even to leave school. To achieve these goals teachers must create a positive attitude toward the language and its speakers. It is very important that the students do not get ready - made recipes, rather search for answers in the text books.
The main responsibility of the teacher is to act as mediator between the learners and the textbook, and control the process. A teacher must believe in a students progress. One should bear in mind that - all students want to succeed and that all students want to feel like a part of the overall community. If the teacher is aware of students current needs and background, he or she selects or adapts tasks that help them to practice the four main skills simultaneously.
Having examined several schools, lets take for example some lessons which have been conducted by experienced teachers on elementary level, intermediate and on advanced level and analyze the strategies that they used to promote and support the objectives during the lessons. The topic of one of the lessons was devoted to food and drinks. The objectives of it were to show the students the importance and possibility of skill integration and its implication in the above-mentioned topic and to teach the students to use new lexis conveying opinions; to select information needed, to do multiply choice, exercises and to understand listening text. During the lesson the pupils were involved in some activities.
The teacher made some steps for it. Step one was that the students sang the song Peace Pudding Hot. Step two: they listened to the story and said how many food words they had heard. The words proposed by the students were written down on the blackboard. Step three: the students read and acted shopping dialogue, worked in pairs, matched the pictures and the words.
They said what and where they could buy food and drinks. Step four: the students made up sentences using some models connected with the topic and wrote a shopping list for a small birthday party. Step five: the students looked at the pictures and said what they would like to buy. Step six: they drew a picture of food they would be able to buy at grocers (bakers, butchers and sweet) shops. During the lesson the students were interested in what they were doing. They did the activities with enthusiasm and the teacher tried to promote and support the objectives.
The other lesson was devoted to project work. It usually consists of three parts: beginning, middle and end. The teacher has chosen different goals: the first - to educate the students; the second to train arrange of real skills, and to encourage personal and emotional development during preparatory work; the third to help students to observe the material learned and implement their knowledge in the project; the fourth to integrate language knowledge and to develop students creativity; the last to encourage them to make group or individual projects and prove their knowledge. Before teaching students to do project work the teacher made good preparation.
She checked what was needed before the lesson. She did training before carrying out project work. She planned everything beforehand: the time, stages, reference materials-books, encyclopedias and other resources. She collected magazine and newspaper material. The outcome was done in the form of presentation and display. The role of the teacher was to guide the process and tolerantly evaluate the work.
There were quite different tasks before a teacher while conducting a lesson on advanced level. There were several topics to choose for project work such as: sports activities, in-service activity with old people, joining youth club, taking music lessons. The project work served the goal to prevent young people from turning to crime and to provide unemployed young people with things to do in their free time. Experienced teachers of today considered proverbs to be of special interest to students learning language and culture. The body of proverbs reveals both language development and historical experience of the people, customs and traditions, the way people act and behave in real life situations. One sample lesson plan Integrating four main skills based on proverbs can serve as an illustration to the above mentioned statement.
It served a double aim: on the one hand the teacher wanted to introduce completely new language material step by step and, on the other hand she wanted to make the students work more effectively and use the already obtained knowledge in their every day conversation. So, the objectives of the lesson were: to integrate four main skills based on proverbs; to identify special details about proverbs dealing with certain feelings; to use proverbs in free communication and design stories based on them. Step-by step the teacher involved the students to the different kind of activities. They responded well to them and felt more confident.
The communicative approach to integrating four main skills based on proverbs was a student centered, but not teacher centered. The teacher was given the possibility to enhance the students creativity. As have been said above, the teacher used the communicative approach. This approach appeared in the early 1970 s and became the most demanding of all language teaching activities that encourages communication. It is based on cognitive code theory: learning is not simply the learning of habits but an active mental process. The main goals of this approach are: communicative competence, social appropriate and acceptability.
For achieving the main goal in teaching and learning, we are to follow the principles that activity should be: creative, interesting, fluency focused, task based, for problem-solving focused, humanistic and learning centered. Learner-centered teaching leads to perfect learning process. Clifford Prater in his article Development of a Manipulation Scale (Prater, 36) suggests that there are four major phases in the language learning process: the completely manipulative phase, the predominantly manipulative phase, the predominantly communicative phase and the completely communicative phase. During the lessons the teacher used a variety of instructional teaching.
The teachers guided students through individual, small group and whole class activities. With the purpose to build listening and responding skills, while introducing new vocabulary, was better to work with the whole class. With the purpose to improve their language, the students worked in small groups. Individual was used when the teachers wanted to ensure that all students were working at the lesson at their own rate of learning. So, we see, teachers play a major interactive role with the learner and the learning environment, cultural or group influences on students. They can impact many educationally relevant variables, such as motivation, orientation to world learning, and ways of thinking.
Technologies and instructional practices must be appropriate for learners level of prior knowledge, cognitive abilities, and their learning and thinking strategies. What and how much is learned is influenced by the learners motivation. Motivation to learn, intern, is influenced by the individuals emotional states, beliefs, interests and goals, and habits of thinking. Many educators considered that motivation is what makes the students want to converse.
Wilga Rivers in her article Talking of the tops of their heads sums up the aspect of motivation: Students cannot be set down, in groups, or sent off in pairs, and told to interact in the foreign language but mostly it will need to be fostered by the intrinsic interest of the task proposed for the students concerned. (Rivers, 53) Pair and group work discussions need to be well practices. Id like to say that communicative approach has both the advantages and disadvantages. As for the lessons the advantages of them were that students talking time rapidly increased but they made much noise while relaying. The teachers could not easily control all the groups or pairs.
On the one hand students were more confident and independent (though for shy and weak students it is hard to become comfortable in smaller groups). It was easier for anyone in the group to switch on the subject and feel support from other participants of the group. On the other hand, errors and mistakes were rarely corrected during the activity (it depended on the focus of activity, accuracy or fluency). And the modes of interaction took a lot of time. These are only some advantages and disadvantages of the lessons.
But the most important thing is that the more students are trained to work in groups the better practice they will get. The more skillfully the situation is created by the teacher the better will be the results. One day someone asked Picasso how long he had taken to complete a painting. He replied: Seventy years and twenty minutes. This statement can prove the fact that a teacher should be in professional development and it cannot be limited in time or age.
Nowadays a teacher is confronted with an array of approaches and methods, teaching material and so on. Student-centered teaching changes the teachers role in the process of learning. He / she is no more the controller who stands at the front of the class controlling everything, trying to overview and analyze all the communication done by the students. The most important and difficult role the teacher has to play is that of the organizer. The success of teaching depends on the way the teacher organizes this process so that the students know exactly what they are to do. A good teacher is constantly improving his teaching technique.
They must be able to analyze data in a series of simple steps, and organize them in a user-friendly format. Teachers also need to understand the "technology of teaching. They can speak a common language to discuss data and its relationship to instruction. Teachers should carefully introduce new instructional practices and take into account their effect on student learning.
It is especially important to continuously assess new teaching practices. Teachers practices should be examined in four areas of instruction. First of all it is the roles that teachers and students play in learning activities. The role of a teacher should always be many sided. He should be an observer and a leader, at some moments he should help, in other cases should not interfere. So the very important role of the teacher is being a participant an equal member of the activity.
He / she is to have a personal interest in the students as human beings because inside they are persons with their problems and feelings. A good personal relation is to be the first thing the students and teachers should try to achieve. It is an indispensable basis for a good professional relation, founded on understanding and esteem. The teacher has to interest the students in what he or she teaches.
I m sure the more the teacher uses a variety of teaching techniques, experiment and adopt them the better results he / she can gain. Bibliography: Addison, Wesley. The multicultural Classroom & Reading for Content Area Teachers. New York, 1992.
Clifford, Prater. Development of a Manipulation Scale. A course in Language Teaching. Cambridge University Press, p. 36, 1997.
Peregoy, S. Boyle. Writing and learning in ESL. Pearson Education. New York, 2005. Susan, L Go lbeck.
Instructional Models for Early Childhood Education. ERIC Digest, 2002. Wilga, Rivers. Talking of the tops of their heads. A course in Language Teaching.
Cambridge University Press, p. 53, 1997.
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