Effective Language Learning: Insights and Methods

Posted on Dec 11, 2024 in Language

Describing Learners

How Do Young Children Learn?

They respond to meaning even if they don’t understand individual words.
They often learn indirectly; they take information from all sides. That is to say that they learn from everything around them.
They have a need for individual attention and approval from the teacher.
Their attention is limited; they can easily get bored. That’s why activities must be extremely engaging.
They need to work individually and in groups to develop good relationships.
The classroom must be bright and colorful, with windows so children can see outside.

Learner Styles

Convergers

Are students who are by nature solitary; they prefer to avoid groups.
They are confident and independent in their own abilities.
They tend to be cool and pragmatic.

Motivation

Motivation is essential to success! It is some kind of internal drive which pushes someone to do things to achieve something.

If students were offered the choice of two languages to learn, which one would they choose, and why? Are cultural images associated with English positive or negative?

Significant Other

The attitude to language learning will be affected by the influence of people close to the student.

If parents or peers approve of language learning.
If they think that math is more important.
His/her teacher.
His or her attitude to language and the task of learning is vital.
He/she must show enthusiasm for English learning.

The Method

Both teacher and student must be comfortable with the method being used; they must feel confident with it.

Popular Methodology

The Communicative Approach or CLT (Communicative Language Teaching) puts the emphasis on language functions rather than grammar and vocabulary.

Communicative Activities

Are designed to improve language fluency, students have a desire to communicate something, they are involved in real communication, they simulate situations. For example, an activity can be a role-play. To buy an airline ticket they have to create a scene at the airport.

The use of language is based on content, not form. The teacher doesn’t intervene to stop the activity.

Non-Communicative Activities

Are intended to ensure correctness. Students don’t have a communicative purpose, activities are based on the form, the structure of the language and not content like in communicative activities. Finally, in these activities, the teacher occasionally intervenes.

Mistakes and Feedback: What Is Overgeneralization?

It is when the learner applies a rule in contexts where it shouldn’t be applied.

For instance, in the past tense, the student adds ED (idi) to all the verbs: come, comed; go, goed.

Educational Psychology

Learners with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders by Slavin

Learners with emotional and behavioral disorders are students whose educational performance is affected over a long period of time by some conditions, for example:

The inability to learn; they can’t maintain a good relationship with the teacher and their peers.
Show inappropriate type of behavior.
They suffer from depression and unhappiness.
They have a tendency to develop physical symptoms or pain or fear.

Students with Speech or Language Impairments

Language is the communication of ideas using symbols and includes written language, sign language, gesture, and other modes of communication in addition to oral speech. Speech is the formation and sequencing of sounds. There are many kinds of speech disorders. The most common are articulation (or phonological) disorders, such as omissions, distortions, or substitutions of sounds. For example, some students have difficulty pronouncing r‘s, saying “sowee” for “sorry.”

Language Disorders

Impairments of the ability to understand language or to express ideas in one’s native language.

How Adults Learn

They can engage with abstract thought.
They have expectations about the learning process.
Adults tend to be more disciplined than some teenagers, and they can struggle against boredom.
They also have a clear understanding of why they are learning.
However, adults sometimes can make learning and teaching problematic because they can be critical of teaching methods due to their previous experience.
They also may have experienced failure or criticism at school which makes them under-confident about learning a language.
Finally, they worry that, let’s say, their intellectual powers may be diminishing with age.

Concrete Learners

They are like conformists because they enjoy the social aspects of learning.
They like to learn from direct experience.
They are interested in language use and language as communication rather than language as a system.
Last but not least, they enjoy games and group work in class.

Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation

Intrinsic motivation comes from within the individual. For example, a person might be motivated by the enjoyment of the learning process or a desire to make themselves feel better.

Extrinsic motivation is caused by outside factors. For instance, they need to pass the exam, a future travel.

Define Approach

Refers to theories about the nature of language and language learning.

It describes how language is used and how its constituent parts interlock.

Method

Is the practical realization of an approach, for example, the types of activities, the role of teacher and learners, the kind of material that will be helpful.

Procedure

Is an ordered sequence of techniques. For instance, first, you do this, then you do that.

Technique

Is a single activity, for example, a finger activity or fill in the blanks.

Slips, Errors, Attempts

Slips are mistakes that the student can correct himself.
Errors are mistakes that can’t be corrected by the student because it needs further explanation by the teacher.
Attempts are when the student tries to say something, but he/she doesn’t know the correct way of saying it.

How Do Adolescents Learn?

The most important thing is that if they are engaged, they have a great capacity to learn, a great potential for creativity. That’s why activities and materials must be relevant and involving to provoke student engagement.

They also must be encouraged to respond to text and situations with their own thoughts and experiences.

Moreover, identity has to be forged among classmates and friends. For teenagers, peer approval is very important.

Last but not least, teachers must give them tasks which they are able to do, because if they can’t, they can feel frustration or humiliation.

Conformists

They prefer to emphasize learning about language over learning to use it. They are dependent on authority; they like to work in non-communicative classrooms, doing what they are told. They prefer to see well-organized teachers.

Define Motivation

Motivation is a kind of internal drive that pushes someone to do things in order to achieve something, an objective or a goal.

What Is the Lexical Approach According to Dave Willis?

It is based on the assertion that language is formed by multi-word prefabricated chunks. That is to say that a language is not only formed by traditional grammar and vocabulary. Language is formed by lexical phrases like collocations or fixed-phases. For instance, instead of teaching will for the future, the teacher shows typical utterances such as I’ll be back in a minute, I’ll see what I can do, I’ll be there for you.

L1 Interference

It’s when L1 and English come into contact with each other, and this provokes errors in a learner’s use of English.

First, it can operate at the level of sounds. For example, Arabic speakers confuse /f/ with /v/; they want to say very but they say ferry.

Second, at the level of grammar. For example, Japanese have problems with article usage because they have a different system of reference.

Finally, it can be at the level of word usage, that is to say, words that sound similar but the meaning is different. For instance, false friends or false cognates: embarrassed is similar to embarazada, but of course, the meaning is totally different.

Albert Bandura’s Social Theory of Learning

He felt that much of human learning is not shaped by its consequences but is more efficiently learned directly from a model. Example: A physical education teacher demonstrates jumping jacks, and students imitate. Bandura said that students don’t have to go through a shaping process because they can reproduce the correct response immediately.

Handicap

Is the impact that physical or mental limitations have on daily life activities.

Disability

Describes the person’s limitation.

Describing Learners: Adults

What Characteristics Can Make Learning and Teaching Problematic?

They can be critical of teaching methods due to previous learning experiences.
They may have experienced failure or criticism at school which makes them under-confident about learning a language.
They worry that their intellectual powers may be diminished with age.

Learner Styles: Communicative Learners

They are interested in social interaction with other speakers of the language.
They aren’t interested in how the language works.
They are happy to operate without the guidance of a teacher.
They have a certain degree of confidence and willingness, and they are language-use oriented.

How Can Teachers Increase and Direct Student Motivation?

Goal and Goal Setting

Teachers can help students in the achievement of short-term goals.

Short-term goals are much closer to the student’s day-to-day reality. It’s easier to focus on the end of the week than the end of the year.

Learning Environment

There’s a lot that can be done in the classroom regarding its physical appearance and the emotional atmosphere of the lesson.

Walking into an attractive classroom at the beginning of the course may help to increase motivation.
Also, classrooms can be decorated with visual material to make it more agreeable.
Last but not least, teachers have to be very careful about how they respond to students, especially when giving feedback and correction.

Interesting Classes

Students need to be interested in the subject they are studying and in the activities and topics they are presented with.

The teacher must provide them with a variety of subjects and exercises to keep them engaged.

Popular Methodology (Audiolingualism)

What Is Audiolingualism? What Does It Rely On?

It uses a continuous process of positive reinforcement to engender good habits in language learners.
It relies on drills to form habits.
The drills use substitution so, in small steps, the student is constantly learning.
Avoid the possibility of making mistakes.

Mistakes and Feedback (Feedback during Accuracy Work)

How Can Teachers Show Incorrectness?

Repeating: Ask the student to repeat what they have said.
Echoing: We repeat what the student has said, emphasizing the part which is wrong.
Statement and Question: We say that something is not right or ask the rest if they think it’s correct.
Expression (If you know the class well): You can make a facial expression or a gesture to indicate something is wrong.
Hinting: You can say the word “tense” to make them think about the correct tense.
Reformulation: Is to repeat what the student has said correctly without making a big issue of it.

Educational Psychology (Cognitive Theories of Learning)

Account for Semantic, Procedural, Dual-Code, and Episodic Memory

Episodic Memory: Is our memory of personal experiences, is a mental movie of things we saw or heard.
Semantic Memory: Contains generalized information we know like concepts, principles, or rules.
Procedural Memory: Contains the ability of knowing how to drive, ride a bike.