Teaching course

Introduction

HOW CAN ‘LEARNING’ REACH OUR STUDENTS?

There are two ways on how learning can reach our students:

+ In an informal process: picking up words from books, friends, internet, magazines, TV etc;
+ In a formal process: attending lessons, taking part in classroom activities, self-study etc.

HOWEVER…

Learning may also happen without the learners being aware of it.

+ They copy expressions and phrases from other people;
+ They analyze how language is used.

|Activity 1 |
|Think about your experience of learning English. How did you learn? What effect did your English teachers and the way they |
|taught have on you? Have your experiences as a language learner affected your teaching? If so, in what way? |

KINDS OF LEARNERS

Learners can be Active or Passive.

Active Learners
They develop positive habits that allow them to learn more quickly and efficiently.

Passive Learners
They like to be in their own world. They do not speak much and participate in the class.

TEACHING

The teacher’s job is to help learners learn. This relates both to the formal classroom process and learning outside the classroom.

Teachers are responsible for a large amount of what happens in the classroom. Moreover, the relation between learning and teaching is complicated and often not direct. Learners often don’t learn what we teach and equally often learn what we don’t teach. One way to help overcome this problem is to create a positive relationship between yourself and learners.

One of the ways in which teachers can help learners is by providing carefully structured support. This support is sometimes described as scaffolding: the teacher supports the efforts of the learner, guiding them in the right direction, until the knowledge and understanding they have built is strong enough for the ‘scaffolding’ to