INDIVIDUAL FACTORS IN THE LEARNER’S DEVELOPMENT

2. - I’m only interested in Grammar. I don’t like pair and group work activities. It’s just a waste of time

This learner could be seen as field independent, under the category of “Not so socially” aware. Also he could be Analytic. I can say that this learner appears to be Authority-orientated learning style. He likes to be told what to do and how to do it. This learner seems to lack Social strategies.

3. - Reading short novels helped me get real daily life English.

The learner is really interested in learning a new language under the category of using Cognitive strategy. Field dependent seems to be his cognitive style. He/she is not influenced by the existing structure and wants to discover real language used in English spoken countries. Also this learner follows the Out-of-class learning strategy.

INDIVIDUAL FACTORS IN THE LEARNER’S DEVELOPMENT

Learning involves more than being in a classroom and in front of a teacher. Whatever their reasons for learning they have, it is sometimes tempting to see all students as being more or less the same. Yet there are marked differences, not only in terms of their age and level, but also in terms of different individual abilities, knowledge and preferences.         

I will try to explain what aspects of their learning the following learners attend to.

1. - I think one problem for me and perhaps everyone else learning a language is you have to be stimulated to learn.

Lack of motivation is what this student has. Various studies have found that motivation is very strongly to achievement in language learning (e.g. Gardner and Lamber, 1972; Garner, 1980). this comes from different sides, influenced by a number of external factors outside the classroom such us the attitude of society, family and peers or by a number of internal factors inside the classroom – this is the kind of motivation students bring to class and is activated by the teacher’s methods, activities, etc. H. Douglas Brown says motivation is something that can, like self- esteem, be global, situational, or task-oriented.

Syllabus

Types of syllabi

1. Grammatical: a list of structures such as the present tense, comparison of adjectives, relative clauses. These are divided into sections graded according to difficulty/importance.
2. Lexical: list of vocabulary items (words and their different associations + idioms).
3. Grammatical-lexical: very common. Both structures and vocabulary are listed (together or in separate lists).
4. Situational: it teaches the language needed for each situation; headings refer to situations or locations such as ‘at the restaurant’ ‘at the shop’.
5. Topic-based: headings are topic-based, e.g. pollution, marriage, food.
6. Notional: general notions (number, time, place, colour) and specific notions (man, woman, afternoon à like voc. items).
7. Functional- Notional: giving orders, asking, requesting, giving directions, promising. Purely functional syllabi are not quite common, that’s why the functions are combined with notions.
8. Mixed or multi-strand: modern syllabi combine different aspects including specifications of topics, tasks, functions and notions along with structures and lexis.