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.

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.  

What is Reflective Teaching?

Thank you Erin Lowry for the information you shared with us in Lima.She is an English language specialist from the United States.

Reflective Teaching is looking at what you do in the classroom, thinking about why you do it and if it works and it is a process of self-observation and self-evaluation

“It is a response to a past experience and involves conscious recall and examination of the experience as a basis for evaluation and decision making and as a source for planning and action “(Farrell 1995).

Reflection Sequence

n  Noticing a concern

n  Clarification or expression of the concern in some form

n  Response to the concern

n  (Explicit relation of the concern to other experiences or input)

n  (Collecting other responses or information)

n  Processing the response as a whole

n  Acting on the insights gained

Reflect on Your Role as a Teacher

n  “You have a set of beliefs about how the people of this world should behave toward one another.  You have convictions about the quality of life, the shape of liberty, and the pursuit of happiness…

We are not merely a language teacher who goes into the classroom and start teaching without thinking about the results of our lessons.                                      

We are  agents for change in a world in desperate need of change: change from competition to cooperation, from conflict to resolution,  from prejudice to understanding.”   

What do I do?   How do I do it?  Two questions that every teacher need to answer in order to reflect on his job.

How to set your goals:

1. Identify personal areas for improvement

2. Brainstorm with colleagues:            

- strategies to be implemented

- a method for evaluating whether or not goals have been achieved