37.

Learner differences and learner styles

Any group of learners is made up of individuals and they are all not the same. They have different
personalities, different learning styles and different interests. Also, students with different cultures
and backgrounds, when thrown in the same group, have different expectations, which can sometimes
clash with each other. One of the differences between students is that some have aptitude(the ability
to learn quickly) for learning. Aptitude tests were created to check peoples aptitude, however they
were dismissed as they were inaccurate. Some schools in USA still use Modern Language Aptitude
Test(MLAT). The problem with these test is that they don’t have predictive power about kind of
contact individuals will have with foreign language, the kind of learning experiences they will have etc.
Instead of trying to say if someone could be a good learner, it might be better to describe the
strategies the students use and find out how these influence success. Success is bound up with
learner styles and preferences. According to James Purpura, students employ a range of strategies for
learning. Using metacognitive strategies they mentally regulate actions and behaviours such as
planning, thinking and monitoring their foreign language use. They use social strategies to collaborate
with their fellow students. They use affective strategies, that allows them to adjust their feelings,
beliefs and attitudes. Purpura believes that students use these strategies either
consciously(deliberately) or unconsciously(automatically) to further their processing while learning
SFL(second or foreign language). Purpura suggests that, when these strategies combine with learner’
feelings, motivation and preferences, we end up with learner styles. However, many commentators
disagree with this theory. Marjorie Rosenberg suggests that “Learning styles, when accompanied with
ideas and activities and differentiated according to learner preferences, can be a very supportive
tool.” So, what are some variables that have been suggested?
1. Perceptual preferences. There are visual, auditory, kinaesthetic, olfactory(sense of smell) and
gustatory(sense of taste). Most people use all these systems to experience the world, however they
have one preferred primary system.
2. Personality factors. Some of us are extroverted, the others are introverted. Extroverted students
are more likely to speak out and collaborate, than the introverts.
3. Multiple intelligences. Gardner suggested that, we don’t have just one intelligence, but multiple:
musical/rhythmical, verbal/linguistic, visual/spatial, bodily/kinaesthetic, logical/mathematical,
intrapersonal and interpersonal. All people have all of these intelligences, but in each person one(or
more) of them is pronounced. Later, Gardner added an eighth intelligence, naturalistic intelligence.
This includes the ability to recognize and classify the patterns in nature. Daniel Goleman added ninth
intelligence: emotional intelligence. This includes the ability to empathise, control impulse, self-
motivation.
4. How we process things. There are different ways of how people process information. Rosenberg
makes a difference between “global”(those who perceive material in holistic manner) and
“analytic”(those who tend to remember specifics and like to work alone) learners. Differences have
been suggested also, “field-sensitive”(who prefer to get info in context) and “field-insensitive”(those
who prefer to get info in abstract) learners. There are also “inductive”(those who wants examples
first) and “deductive”(those who learn theory first, then examples) learners.
38. The role of motivation in teaching foreign languages
All teachers know that it is easier to teach students who are motivated. Marion Williams and Robert
Burden suggest that motivation is a “state of cognitive arousal” which provokes a “decision to act”, as
a result there is “sustained intellectual and/or physical effort”, so the person achieves “previously set
goal”. Williams and Burden suggest that the strength of any motivation will depend on how much
value the individual places on the outcome he or she wishes to achieve. However, Jane Arnold
suggested that the student’s self-esteem will have a powerful effect on the depth of their
motivational drive, for “a students who believes he cant learn the language is right. He cant unless he
changes this belief.” If all the students were highly motivated, life would be easier- at least at the start
of a new course. Motivation is not the sole responsibility of the teacher, but it is something the
teachers can have a profound effect upon.
5 A’s rule.
Affect. Feelings and emotions have a lot to do with how motivated or unmotivated a student is. This is
why it is important to help students create the “vision” of their ideal L2 self, and to remind them of
this as often as possible. The really important thing to remember is that if and when our students
become motivated, this feeling does not necessarily last, unless we do our best to maintain it through
activities and encouragement. We should provoke excitement and self-esteem.
Achievement. One of the most important tasks a teacher has is to try to match what the students are
asked to do with the possibility that they can actually achieve it. Goal-setting is a vital skill. It is
complex because doing something which is too easy is not an achievement. Achievement is most
commonly measured through grades of one sort or another, but these can have a harmful effect on
the student’s motivation if they are carelessly awarded, or if the students are frequently failing to
achieve the grades they desire.
Activities. What we actually ask the students to do will have a considerable effect on their intrinsic
motivation. Mostly, the materials and activities that students are asked to be involved in are
unengaging and monotonous. Such type of activities can have a deadening effect on their motivation.
One of the ways to sustaining student motivation is to give them interesting and relevant materials
and activities.
Attitude. However “nice” teachers are, the students are unlikely to follow them willingly unless they
have confidence in their professional abilities. Students need to believe that we(teachers) know what
we are doing. When students have confidence in the teacher, they are likely to remain engaged with
what is going on. If they lose that confidence, it becomes difficult for them to sustain the motivation
they might have started with.
Agency. Agency describes our ability to have control in our lives and to effect the change in the way
we live. A lot of the time students have thing done to them. We should be equally interested in thing
done by the students. When students have agency, they get to make decisions about what is going on
and they take some responsibility for their learning. Basically, give students choice.
39. Types of motivation
Writers on motivation make a difference between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. Extrinsic
motivation comes from the outside the learners themselves and may, for example, be provoked by
the need- or the desire- to pass an exam, or by the fact that the learner has a trip to a foreign country.
Intrinsic motivation is described as “passion for learning” and a “sense of competence while
performing challenging tasks”, Students who are intrinsically motivated are driven by a desire to
succeed in class and by what happens in the lesson. Teachers have more power to influence intrinsic
motivation than extrinsic. It is also thought that motivation can either be instrumental(we are
learning because we think it will have instrumental benefit- we will find a new job, for example) or
integrative(we believe that the language speaking community who speak the language we are
learning have qualities which we would also like to have and be a part of). Gardner believed that
integrative motivation is a far more greater motivator that instrumental. Zoltan Dornyei suggests that
motivation is provoked by 1) an ideal L2 self: the person that the learner would like to be in the
language they are learning. The gap between this and their actual self is something students want to
close. 2) an Ought-to L2: these are the attributes that learners believe they ought to possess to avoid
any negative outcomes. 3) the L2 learning experience: this is the result of the learning environment
and is affected by the impact of success and failure, for example.
40. Factors that affect motivation
Students’ attitudes are influenced by a number of people and places. Most important of these for
younger learners, perhaps, are their families’ attitudes to the learning of foreign languages. If such
learning is seen as priority in the household, then the student is likely to reflect these attitudes. But if
the language learning is uninteresting to the family, then the student will need to have their own
strong feelings in order to counter this. The students’ peers will also affect their feelings. If language
learning is seen as an important and prestigious activity by the other students around them, then it
will affect them positively. For older students, the influence of family is, perhaps, less likely to affect
their feelings.But the attitude of those around them will have a strong bearing on how they feel.
Societies where foreign languages are irrelevant can have a negative effect on any individual’s desire
to learn. Younger learners have natural curiosity , and this can greatly affect their initial motivation.
But as we get older, previous learning experiences can have a strong impact on how motivated we are
likely to be. “Unmotivation” can have something to do with issues such as class size, the compulsory
nature of the learning, and the attitude of the school or university they are studying in.
41. Language levels
It is not difficult to see and hear the difference between a student who is a complete beginner, and
one who is more advanced. When people talk about beginners, they frequently make a distinction
between “real” and ”false” beginners. The former are those who have absolutely no knowledge of
English at all, whereas “false beginners” know something, but not enough to really say something.
Students who start as beginners progress to the elementary level, and then to intermediate before
they make it all the way to advanced. However, intermediate is usually subdivided into lower- and
upper-intermediate. Coursebook publishers and schools often say that it will take students
somewhere between 90 and 120 hours to complete a level and move on to new one. The problem
with this way of describing student levels is that the terms are inaccurate. What “intermediate”
means to one school may be somewhat different to the definition of intermediate somewhere else.
The CEFR levels. The Common European Framework of Reference proposes a six-level frame of
reference to describe what students at the different levels are able to do. The CEFR has become
widely referenced in many different parts of the world. The six levels of the CEFR are A1(beginner),
A2(elementary), B1(intermediate), B2(upper-intermediate), C1(advanced), C2(proficiency). What
makes CEFR special is that it is described not in terms of linguistic abilities, but instead in terms of of
“can do” statements, which describe what people are able to do with the language. A1 can introduce
him/herself, share personal details etc. B1 students can deal with most situations likely to arise while
travelling to the are where the language is spoken. C1 students can express ideas fluently and
spontaneously without searching for expressions.
The GSE level. The Global Scale of English has many more levels that the CEFR, It recognizes the
importance of age and context, It uses 90-point scale.
42. Learner autonomy
One of the goals that many teachers would aspire to is that their students should become
autonomous learners. Depending on your point of view, this would mean that they could take either
some or all of the responsibility for what they do, both inside and outside classroom. The ultimate
goal of language teaching, perhaps, is that the student should no longer need a teacher to improve
and perfect their language ability, but instead should be able to do all this on their own. Some have
argued that promoting learner autonomy is very culturally motivated and is unattractive in some
cultures. However, autonomy is a universal capacity, Graham Hall suggests. In learning, some people
are more capable of being autonomous than others. We can do our best to make it easier for those
who wish to take control of their own learning and language development. The strategies that
students use to help them learn and remember may have a significant impact on their success or lack
of it. We should show our students what good strategies are like and then help them to use them. For
example, learner journals. Reflection is a key component in learner and strategy training and having
students write journals is one way to provoke such reflection. Strategy training. We can offer our
students different learning strategies to help them become better learners. Goals and processes.
Students need to plan their own learning goals and work out how to implement them. They need to
think of ways to reach their goals.
One way of allowing students to rely on their own resources and learning potential is by setting tasks
which ask them to take responsibility for their own learning.One answer to the question of how to
encourage learner autonomy is simply to give them tasks that they really want to do. We can get our
students to learn by themselves through “open learning”. They give the learners some degree of
choice in what, when, where, how and with whom they learn. Self-access centres. These are places
where students can go study on their own. SACs have lots of materials such as computers, books,
audio etc. Student helpers. This is an “expert’s corner” where different students(not teachers) giver
advice about writing and reading tasks. This is useful for shy and reluctant students.
If students are always doing what they are told to, then there is a little chance for them to truly
become autonomous. Give students agency. Let them decide if they want to be corrected during an
activity, for example. Just because our students are not in classroom, it doesn’t mean that they cant
go on learning on their own- the whole point of learner autonomy. We can show them how to
continue working and studying on their own by suggesting a number of techniques. The students who
lack the strong self-motivation, should be constantly reminded of things they can do and places where
they can interact with the language by us. It will be a lot more effective if we give time for them to
bring what they have learnt to our lessons. One of the most common types of “outside-the-class”
activity is homework. Many teachers think it is a good idea because it gives the students a chance to
do more study and practice. Homework can give students opportunities to revise classwork, practise
language items, prepare for the next lesson, etc. Try selecting engaging homework tasks. Make these
tasks high-quality, but not too many homework. Compliance measures. One of the ways to be sure
that students do their homework is to ask them to keep a homework record. Different responses.
Sometimes grading all the tasks after the long day of work is hard, we shouldn’t “burn the midnight
oil”. We can ask the students to grade each other’s work.
43. Key elements of successful large class teaching
Many commentators talk about large classes as a problem, and it is certainly true that they present
challenges that smaller classes don’t. How can we give the students personal attention? How can we
get them to interact with each other? What can we do to make organisation smooth and effective?
There are a number of key elements in successful large-class teaching:
1. Be organised. The bigger the group, the more organised we need to be. We need to know what we
are we going to do before the lesson starts. One aspect of organisation that is especially appropriate
for large-class teaching is telling the students what is going to happen in a lesson and summarising
what has happened when it has ended. We can do this by showing a board plan of the lesson to come
and ticking off the different stages as they are achieved.
2. Establish and use routines. The daily management of a large class will be even better if we
establish routines that we and our students recognise straightaway. This will make jobs like taking the
register, setting and collecting the homework, getting into pairs and groups etc. a lot easier. Various
common classroom tasks can be dealt with in this way. A major issue when dealing with large classes
is how to attract the students’ attention and quieten everyone down. It is important that they should
recognise the “quiet now” sign we give them.
3. Use a different pace for different activities. In small classes it is not hard to vary the pace of what
we do. However, this is far more difficult in large groups and, as result, we will need to be more
careful about how we organise different activities for them.
4. Maximize individual work. The more we give students individual work, the more we can mitigate
the effects of always working with a large group “as a whole”.
5. Use the students. We can give students a number of different responsibilities in the class. For
example, some collect homework, some hand out sheets, some take register etc. We can ask some of
our students to teach the others. We need to choose our “leaders’’ deliberately
6. Use worksheets. One of the solution is to hand out worksheets that they can do in pairs or groups.
7. Use pairwork and groupwork. Pairwork an groupwork play an important part since they maximise
student participation.
8. Use choral repetition. Having the students repeat or speak in chorus can boost shy students’
confidence. This is especially true in large classes, where the learners may feel uncomfortable
speaking individually.
9. Use the room. Big classes often take place in big rooms. In big rooms, we should make sure that
what we speak and what we write can be seen and heard.
10. Use the size of the class to your advantage. Big classes have disadvantages, but they also have
one main advantage- they are bigger. The jokes are funnier, drama is more and the atmosphere in
class is warm.We should never shy away from big classes potential.