Community Language Learning Method

 Hello hello! Welcome back!

This is the last entry for period number 2. Today we´re going to talk about learners. In a classroom, we have a wide range of learners and as we´ve been talking so far, to effectively teach, we need to know, what students are good at, their potential and strengths, their learning preferences, and some other aspects that will discuss in a minute.

As educators, we should consider aspects like age, learners' differences, language levels, motivation, and backgrounds.

Age: age is extremely important, we know for sure that kids will love to move around, clay modeling, jump, run, and sing; while teenagers can focus more on analysis activities, grammar, and more complex games. Adults don´t necessarily enjoy moving a lot but they have a lot of life experiences they can learn from and share. Our activities have to be well-targeted according to students´ age. 

Learner´s differences: there are some differences in students' learning process per se, like their types of intelligence, their learning styles, aptitudes, and their attitudes toward learning. Some students have developed an array of characteristics that are considered characteristics of a "good language learner" as listed in  (Lightbown and Spada, cited by Harmer, 2007:87) This includes aspects such as willingness, capacity to identify patterns, IQ, analysis, confidence, and good academic skills overall.

Language level: an English class must take into account language level, according to the Common European Framework (CEF)   A1, A2, students can be classified as basic users; B1, B2, as independent users;  and C1, C2, as proficient users. So a class has to be taught based on that too.

Their motivation and background: Motivation is key for learning, if students have clear ideas on why they are learning, if they have a goal or any intrinsic or extrinsic purpose to learn, then they are more conscious of their learning process and consequently do better. Besides, as proposed by the suggestopedia method, students need to have a good environment for learning to occur, their background is also something important to consider because we are all social beings, and imagine if a student has extreme poverty issues, or if he didn't even have a meal, how is he supposed to focus?  or if they have family issues, work issues, or any other type of condition related to their background, that might show up in their performance. 

Unfortunately, I don´t have any pictures of our class, but I do have a picture of us right after it, which  I think kind of portrays the topic, because we are all different kinds of learners, with different Multiple Intelligences, learning styles, characteristics motivations, and backgrounds. 💫😎💪😆

I hope you had a good time while reading my summary, thank you so very much for being here! Bye-bye! see you around!