Taken from http://www.tbo.com/pinellas-county/pinellas-county-to-discuss-policy-for-english-languagelearners-20140811/
Learners Unit 1 of Harmer’s (2007) book, How to Teach English Understanding what we can find within our classrooms By Melissa Cortés-Ramírez Pre-Service Teacher, School of English Faculty of Social Sciences Universidad Latina de Costa Rica Thursday, March 3, 2016 Post 227
The first chapter of Harmer’s (2007) book describes the big amount of different learners that we, as future teachers, might encounter in the classrooms. We can have EFL, ESL, or ESOL students. EFL students are the ones who learn the language because they need it for travelling or because they want to communicate with other people. ESL students, refers to the people who learn the language because they are living in an English speaking country. And ESOL students are a combination of EFL and ESOL students. The main idea of the chapter is to recognize the different types of learners and how teachers can deal successfully with all of them at once. In a classroom, we can find people of different ages, learning styles, levels of knowledge, different
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backgrounds, personalities, and reasons to learn. As teachers, we need to take into consideration all these details so that we can create a good learning environment for all of our students. By doing this, we can assure that our students are going to be able to learn and to feel motivated to do it. The advantages of taking into consideration the different types of learners we might have before we create a lesson plan can make a huge difference in our students. First, if we think in the age of the students; we can create activities that are suitable for them because a child can enjoy and learn by performing a game, while a teenager would prefer to listen to a song; and that would increase the student’s interest in the topic. Second, we should create activities and tasks that involve different learning styles, for example one day we can use pictures, then audios, and then they can create something; in that way students use their abilities and feel motivated by seeing the results. And if we take into account their level, we can make activities that they would understand and would not make them feel frustrated. So, if we have students’ interest, motivation, and encouragement, they are going to learn successfully and would even want to learn more. As a result for all these differences among students, there can be consequences, too. One can be that there are students who do not like to participate, even if the activity is appropriate for all of them. Another one is that there are students who do not have a reason for learning the language, so they are not attracted to the topics. Also, having so many different types of students in such big groups can be very challenging for the teacher when creating the activities for the class. Besides, for the teacher can be very hard to know the different characteristics of each student and fit the lesson to each of their necessities when the groups are so numerous.
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As a conclusion, we can say that it is very important to consider all the different aspects of our student’s personality or background before we create a lesson plan. By doing this, we can be sure that our classes are going to be dynamic, fun, interesting, and motivating for our students. This would lead our students to be successful learners and that can even lead them to be autonomous and learn for their own. It is our job as teachers to make the learning process enjoyable for our students so we better do it right.
Reference Harmer, J. (2007). “Learners.” How to teach English. Essex: Pearson