Let´s reflect on what teaching means to us.

You can teach a student a lesson for a day; but if you can teach him to learn by creating curiosity, he will continue the learning process as long as he lives.  ~Clay P. Bedford

Get over the idea that only children should spend their time in study.  Be a student so long as you still have something to learn, and this will mean all your life.  ~Henry L. Doherty

I am learning all the time.  The tombstone will be my diploma.  ~Eartha Kitt

A single conversation with a wise man is better than ten years of study.  ~Chinese Proverb

When the student is ready, the master appears.  ~Buddhist Proverb

Give me a fruitful error any time, full of seeds, bursting with its own corrections.  You can keep your sterile truth for yourself.  ~Vilfredo Pareto

It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it.  ~Jacob Bronowski

Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.  ~Mark Twain

Individual Factors in the Learner´s development

6.-In that class we laughed and joked in English. We made friends. They didn’t care about the mistakes I made.

The learner is clearly affected by the Affective strategy. Self-reinforcement and positive self-talk can be part of it. Also she/he says they laugh and joke in class, it means their anxiety is low enough to practice the new language and they don’t care about their mistakes. This learner follows the Social and Affective strategies. There is an expression of personal control in the learning process. Therefore, he/she is motivated from internal and external  sources.

7.-I felt I was losing my English. I found I could only use simple words.

The learner seems to lack some Cognitive strategies. The type of motivation I can say is Intrinsic since he/she realizes that something done is not satisfactory to his/her interests and the leaner needs to be adapted to reality. Field independence in that the learner is aware of his/her level which could be a sign of a fairly autonomous learner.

4.- …there are some words that appear again and again in the reading passage. I generally take them down and try to remember them.

This student is typically problem-oriented. He employs learning strategies when he faces some problems and he can explain how they tried and learned something. Another strategy is the memory strategy; techniques that help learners store and, when necessary, retrieve the stored information.

5. - I want to learn English because I want to know more about the English- speaking world-

The learner is clearly Field dependent; he/she wants to learn material with social content best. He/she follows the cognitive strategy because he/she wants to analyze the new language. Intrinsic motivation is another influence he/she uses to be engaged in the learning process. He/she displays Integrative motivation and has the desire to identify with and integrate into the target language culture.