Taken from http://designpublic.in/blogs/how-classrooms-can-become-more-learner-focused/
Learners Unit 1 of Harmer’s (2007) book, How to Teach English By Kristell Gutiérrez-Durán Pre-Service Teacher, School of English Faculty of Social Sciences Universidad Latina de Costa Rica Wednesday, March 2, 2016 Post 225
What does learner mean? The concept refers to someone who learns, and that is trying to gain knowledge or a skill in something, by practicing, and being taught by someone else, so let’s call this someone, the teacher, and the learner, the student. Harmer’s (2007) Chapter 1 of his book is called “Learners.” The author establishes several and different reasons for what people decide or do not decide to learn. He investigated about learning contexts, classroom sizes, virtual learning, ages of students and learning styles, levels, cultural backgrounds and how teachers can motivate students, and the responsibility for students’ own learning. The unit in Harmer’s book is a guidance for teachers; it is very important to determine for which reason a student decides to learn. I totally agree on the fact, that if a student does not have motivation, on the process of learning, the result is
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going to be negative. It is true that the teacher also can help sustain that motivation, but this does not depend 100 percent on the teacher. Depending on the school, where a teacher has to teach, and the number of students that teacher is going to have, all the teaching history is going to change. If you work in a private institution in which the resources are complete, where you have technological aids, which can help you in the process of teaching; you -as teacherwill have extra support that sometimes you will not find in a public institution (like the ones we have in Costa Rica). I also agree with the fact that it is very successful to work in pairs or in groups, to make the students interact among themselves. Paying attention to the student’s background is the most important detail teachers have to take into account; it is not the same to work in “La Carpio” (one of the most dangerous and poorest slum in San José) than in “Escazú or Rohmouser” (where people with well-off economical resources live). And what about the students’ religion? That will also affect directly on your teaching and how supportive their parents are on the academic life of their children. On the other hand, I am totally opposed to virtual learning. Here students can attend classes when they want, which helps them avoid responsibility, attendance and punctuality. For instance, they can start missing classes without any negative result. I’ve never believed in the range of levels to determine how much English a student knows, either. As a conclusion, the hard work in a school learning setting is for both teachers and students. Teachers have to know how to instruct learners, how to apply different activities according to different learning styles, and they can help students to keep their motivation up. However, motivation depends 90 % on the student. And the responsibility of learning depends also on the student, with the teacher’s guidance.
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Reference Harmer, J. (2007). “Learners.” How to teach English. Essex: Pearson