TEMA 25 Ingles

CUERPO DE MAESTROS-INGLÉS TEMA 25: STUDENT- CENTRED FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNING AND

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THEME 25

IDENTIFYNG MOTIVATION AND ATTITUDES TOWARDS ENGLISH LANGUAGE: PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS.

STUDENT- CENTRED FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING PROCESS: BASES AND APPLICATIONS. IDENTIFYNG MOTIVATION AND ATTITUDES TOWARDS ENGLISH LANGUAGE: PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS.

0. Introduction. 1. Student –centred teaching. 2. Student –centred teaching approaches. 3. Student motivation. www.e-ducalia.com

4. Motivation and efl contexts. 5. Motivation, young learners and classroom activities. 6. Theme overview. 7. Bibliography.

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0. INTRODUCTION Student centred teaching lies at the core of any effective classroom. Any teaching method, any instructional material, and any activity must be evaluated on its use of student centred principles if we want these methods, materials, and activities to teach students effectively. The core principle of our workshop, then, is that every technique we advocate will lead to a more effective student centred environment. We promote authentic instruction, cooperative learning, active learning, and cognitive apprenticeship not only for their instructional benefits, but also for their ability to put students at the centre of their own learning - for their ability to give students effective control.

1. STUDENT-CENTRED TEACHING What is Student-Centred Teaching? In student centred teaching, we as teachers centre our planning, our teaching, and our assessment on the needs and abilities of our students. The main idea behind the practice is that learning is most meaningful when topics are relevant to the students’ lives, needs, and interests and when the students themselves are actively engaged in creating, understanding, and connecting to knowledge (McCombs and Whistler 1997). Students will have a higher motivation to learn when they feel they have a real stake in their own learning. Instead of the teacher being the sole, infallible source of information, then, the teacher shares shares control of the classroom and students are allowed to explore, experiment, and discover on their own. The students are not just memorizing information, but they are allowed to work with and use the information alone or with peers. Their diverse thoughts and perspectives are a necessary input to every class. The students are given choices and are included in the decisionmaking processes of the classroom. cl assroom.

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The focus in these classrooms is on options, rather than uniformity ( Papalia 1996). Essentially, "learners are treated as co-creators in the learning process, as individuals with ideas and issues that deserve attention and consideration" (McCombs and Whistler 1997).

Some reasons to promote student centred teaching. What are its benefits? -Student centred teaching helps us design effective instruction for every member of the classroom, no matter what his or her diverse learning needs. By its nature, student centred teaching is adaptable to meet the needs of every student (Stuart 1997). In order to design any lesson, the teacher must first think of the students, rather than the content, and so we are assured that the students’ needs are being considered. -Student centred teaching has been proven effective in its ability to teach students the material they need to know. McCombs and Whistler (1997), for example, site numerous studies that followed students who were taught in the student centred approach that found that not only does student motivation increase, but actual learning and performance do as well. Students taught in a student centred classroom retain more material for longer periods of time. In order to learn, the brain cannot simply receive information; it must also process the information so that it can be stored and recalled (Silberman 1996). The active nature of the student centred approach helps students actually work with information, and therefore learn it and store it. -For foreign language students, especially, the student-centred method has special benefits. When students use the language, they retain it more than if they would simply hear it. They get practice in actively producing meaningful conversation and they take a more direct route to fluency than they would take, for example, if they filled out worksheets with sentences created by the teacher (Benson and Voller 1997). -The creativity inherent in student-centred activities adds an element of surprise to each class, and foreign language students tend to bore less often. As a result, even through foreign language learning can be frustrating and intimidating the students stay engaged and willing to learn (Tudor 1996). -Even beyond learning what they need to know, students benefit from a less academic side effect of student centred teaching - they learn how to feel good about themselves. As they take on new responsibilities and succeed with these responsibilities, they come to gain confidence in themselves as competent problem-solvers (Aaronsohn 1996). Even more, research shows that students have higher achievement when they have confidence in themselves and when they attribute success to their own abilities and not to luck or help (North Central Regional Educational Laboratory, 2000). In a student centred approach, it is the students themselves who are responsible for the success of a lesson and therefore they tend to feel more responsible for the success of their own learning.

How can we create student centred teaching? In order to allow students to gain this power in the class, teachers cannot simply lecture and let students take a passive role. They must design activities that let students take initiative and that let students discover meaningful information for their own lives. They must also get to know the kids on an individual basis so that they can better respond to the individual needs and interests of the students. In general, teachers need to focus on the student’s needs, abilities, and interests -they need to "look at how kids learn, rather than at what there is to teach" (Aaronsohn 1996).


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2. STUDENT-CENTRED TEACHING APPROACHES There are four main approaches which are representative of the student-centred methodology: Authentic Learning, Active Learning, Cooperative Learning and Cognitive Apprenticeship.

How do Authentic Learning, Active Learning, Cooperative Learning and Cognitive Apprenticeship promote a Student-Centred environment? These approaches all, in one way or another, let the students’ needs and interests determine what they will learn. Even more, these approaches let the students themselves decide how they will learn this material. -Cooperative learning lets kids work off of each other’s abilities and knowledge. Here, the emphasis is placed on the kids rather than on the teacher. -Active learning hinges on the student’s participation in the learning process in order for it to be effective. -Authentic learning ensures that lessons are directly applicable to the students’ own lives -- to their needs and their desires. -Cognitive apprenticeship puts students in control of the direction of their learning. They are guided by a coach who can help them meet their own goals.

STUDENTS BEING RESPONSIBLE OF THEIR OWN LEARNING Because learning in schools is traditionally dominated and controlled by adults, students seldom make decisions about their own learning (Goodlad, 1984). Even though different philosophies of education purport to graduating students who are responsible citizens capable of participating thoughtfully in a democracy, our educational practices have a tendency to foster dependence, passivity and a "tell me what to do and t hink" attitude. A touchstone of effective learning is that students are in charge of their own learning; essentially, they direct their own learning processes. In a discussion of indicators of engaged, effective learning, Jones, Valdez, Nowakowski , and Rasmussen (1995) describe characteristics of students who are responsible for their own learning.

One characteristic is a student's ability to shape and manage change, in other words, selfdirected. Covey (1989) recognizes the importance of self-directedness, which he calls pro-activity, by including it as one of the habits characterizing highly-effective individuals: "It means more than merely taking initiative. It means that as human beings, we are responsible for our own lives. Our behaviour is a function of our decisions, not our conditions. We can subordinate feelings to values. We have the initiative and the responsibility to make things happen" Research (Perkins, 1992; Pressley, 1992) indicates that there are many strategies that all of us as learners can use while engaged in thinking through complex problems: (1) talking ourselves through problems; (2) asking what we know and need to find out;


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(3) posing questions; (4) visualizing relationships with existing knowledge; and (5) drawing our own conclusions.

2.1 THE THEMATIC INSTRUCTION STUDENT CENTRED APPROACH What is Thematic Instruction? Thematic Instruction organizes a curriculum around "themes" that connect standards-based materials to authentic learning contexts. A theme may be something as specific as "Golf" or as general as "Wealth." It may be as obvious as "Law" or as ambiguous as "What is Justice?" Instruction is focused on and explicitly connected to the theme. A thematic unit is a directed effort, not a grab bag of loosely connected concepts.

How is Thematic Instruction utilized? Themes may be developed for individual classrooms in specific domains, such as a "Golf" themed unit in a foreign language class, or they may be integrated across domains, such as an interdisciplinary unit on "Wealth" that is explored across foreign language, English, and social studies. The inherent flexibility of a thematic unit allows it to be modified to support any instruction across multiple domains.

Who decides what themes are appropriate? As a requirement, the theme must be flexible enough to accommodate the process skills and content knowledge necessary to meet state standards of accountability. Beyond this important feature, what the theme is and who decides it is quite open. There are several options, and each has its positive and negative aspects. Two extreme positions are: 1. The teacher (or group of teachers across disciplines) selects a theme and assembles appropriate lesson plans and materials to complete the unit. 2. Students brainstorm ideas to create a list of possible themes, and then vote on which theme to explore as a class. Students also decide key materials for the unit, such as novels and portfolio projects, and may help plan lessons as well. The difference between these two approaches is monumental. As teachers move towards the student-centred ideology of the second approach, they must be willing to gradually relinquish control of the traditional classroom structure, to trust students with increased responsibility, and to lead students through the process of learning the new performance skills needed to succeed in a more democratic environment.

How is Thematic Instruction designed? 1. Choosing the theme: selected by students, teachers, or both (see above). 2. Designing the (integrated) curriculum: Instruction in one domain, or across domains, must incorporate the state or national standards for that domain. For example, the foreign language curriculum should elaborate on student objectives and goals towards proficiency in listening,


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speaking, reading and writing, according to the National Standards on Foreign Language Education. 3. Designing the instruction: This includes selection of materials that are appropriate to both the theme and standards, assessment procedures that are authentic and student-centred, a timeline for the completion of the thematic unit, and how outside resources such as field trips and guest speakers will be incorporated into the unit. 4. Symposium: Ideally, an authentic student-centred assessment of the unit includes collaborative projects through which the students work together to present thematically relevant ideas and explorations to the whole class. This last burst of peer tutoring at the end of the unit demonstrates how knowledge can be circulated in authentic ways.

What standards should be incorporated into a thematic unit? Incorporating subject content in early language programs puts language into a larger, more meaningful context and provides situations that require real language use. Most scholars proposed five goal areas that reflect a rationale for foreign language teaching, known as the 5 C’s: • • • • •

Communication — oral and written Cultures — practices, products, and perspectives Connections — transfer knowledge across cultures, different viewpoints Comparisons — nature of languages, concepts of culture Communities — build lifelong contacts among lifelong learners

Sample Thematic Web Design

An example of thematic instruction student centred approach: We start any unit by asking the students what they want to learn about in that unit. If they want to learn about golf, for example, we would create a foreign language unit based on the various aspects of golf. We would take their suggestions about the different vocabulary they think they would need to know, and we would also let them do a lot of the work in planning how they Tels.: Mañana: 610 900 111 Tarde: 610 888 870

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want to learn in the unit (if they want to be responsible for presenting information, for example, or if they want to take a field trip to a golf course). Within the unit, we will also be sure to incorporate all of the material that we must cover according to state and district standards (we can include "-er" verb conjugations in a French class, for example, when we study the verbs that we need to use when playing golf). The kids, in this unit, will be learning the material they need to know in a way that is relevant to their own interests. Even more, they are motivated to learn because they have a stake in designing and planning their own learning.

2. 2 THE COOPERATIVE LEARNING APPROACH What is cooperative learning? Cooperative learning, also called collaborative learning, occurs whenever students interact in pairs or groups to share knowledge and experiences. All activities in which students work together towards a common goal, from interacting with daily partners to completing long term projects with learning communities, are cooperative learning activities

How does cooperative learning fit in with other elements of an effective classroom? -Student-Centred: Cooperative activities pair students together or place them within groups, allowing each individual student more time and opportunities to participate in the classroom discourse. -Thematic Instruction: Students’ interests are addressed through thematic planning, especially if they have a voice in deciding the theme, and further participate in the design of cooperative activities around the theme that allow them to co-construct knowledge in a social environment. -Active Learning: Cooperative activities naturally get students up and interacting with their environment. -Cognitive Apprenticeship: Paired and group activities offer excellent opportunities for teachers to model specific methods or behaviours for their students. -Authentic Learning: Students who engage in cooperative learning practice social skills that will help them to succeed in real-life situations that require group collaboration.

What are the benefits of cooperative learning? Students who have mastered some aspect of cooperative learning and are comfortable working with their peers experience the following benefits: o o o

Higher retention and achievement Development of interpersonal skills and responsibility Heightened self-esteem and creativity

Furthermore, cooperative activities place students in roles where they must learn effective communication strategies to succeed as a group. Such roles include: Gatekeeper / Monitor - Cheerleader / Encourager - Taskmaster / Supervisor Secretary / Recorder - Checker / Explainer - Quiet Captain / Group Control


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Students in cooperative learning groups acquire the skills necessary to interact successfully with peers in an environment that rewards respectful collaboration among students of all ability levels.

How are cooperative activities designed? Teachers should be addressing the following issues when designing an activity: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

What is the source (materials, objectives) of the cooperative activity? What elements of the target language will be needed to complete the activity? How will students be guided towards obtaining these elements? How will the students know how to take turns? How will students self-monitor the activity? How will the teacher follow up on the activity in a communicative way?

Some examples of cooperative learning activities -Peer tutoring: Students quickly learn and teach each other simple concepts -Think-pair-share: The teacher poses a question • Students take time to think of a response • Students share responses with a peer • Students share responses as a whole group -Jigsaw: Separate groups of students learn various concepts, and then groups are reassembled so each new member is an "expert" of a different concept -Information-gap activities: One student has information the other does not but needs - they swap what they know -Problem solving: Group members share knowledge to solve a problem. -Storytelling: Students retell a familiar story or create a new one. -Cooperative projects: Students are free to decide and design a group project — excellent opportunity for creative students -Movement activities: Students mingle with each other to obtain information -Paired interviews: Students interview each other and share with the class -Conversation cards: Students interact according to the cues on their cards -Role-plays: Students act out situations (spontaneously or pre-planned) -Open-ended free conversations : Students discuss topics of interest

3. STUDENT MOTIVATION What is student motivation? Student motivation naturally has to do with students' desire to participate in the learning process. But it also concerns the reasons or goals that underlie their involvement or non-involvement


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in academic activities. Although students may be equally motivated to perform a task, the sources of their motivation may differ. A student who is INTRINSICALLY motivated undertakes an activity "for its own sake, for the enjoyment it provides, the learning it permits, or the feelings of accomplishment it evokes" (Mark Lepper 1988). An EXTRINSICALLY motivated student performs "IN ORDER TO obtain some reward or avoid some punishment external to the activity itself," such as grades, stickers, or teacher approval (Lepper). The term MOTIVATION TO LEARN has a slightly different meaning. It is defined by one author as "the meaningfulness, value, and benefits of academic tasks to the learner -regardless of whether or not they are intrinsically interesting" (Hermine Marshall 1987). Another notes that motivation to learn is characterized by long-term, quality involvement in learning and commitment to the process of learning (Carole Ames 1990).

What factors influence the development of students' motivation? According to Brophy (1987), motivation to learn is a competence acquired "through general experience but stimulated most directly through modelling, communication of expectations, and direct instruction or socialization by significant others (especially parents and teachers)."

Children's home environment shapes the initial constellation of attitudes they develop toward learning. When parents nurture their children's natural curiosity about the world by welcoming their questions, encouraging exploration, and familiarizing them with resources that can enlarge their world, they are giving their children the message that learning is worthwhile and frequently fun and satisfying. When children are raised in a home that nurtures a sense of self-worth, competence, autonomy, and self-efficacy, they will be more apt to accept the risks inherent in learning. Conversely, when children do not view themselves as basically competent and able, their freedom to engage in academically challenging pursuits and capacity to tolerate and cope with failure are greatly diminished. Once children start school, they begin forming beliefs about their school-related successes and failures. The sources to which children attribute their successes (commonly effort, ability, luck, or level of task difficulty) and failures (often lack of ability or lack of effort) have important implications for how they approach and cope with learning situations. The beliefs teachers themselves have about teaching and learning and the nature of the expectations they hold for students also exert a powerful influence (Raffini). As D. Stipek (1988) notes, "To a very large degree, students expect to learn if t heir teachers expect them to learn."

School wide goals, policies, and procedures also interact with classroom climate and practices to affirm or alter students' increasingly complex learning-related attitudes and beliefs. And developmental changes comprise one more strand of the motivational web. For example, although young children tend to maintain high expectations for success even in the face of repeated failure, older students do not. And although younger children tend to see effort as uniformly positive, older children view it as a "double-edged sword" (Ames). To them, failure following high effort appears to carry more negative implications -especially for their self-concept of ability -than failure that results from minimal or no effort.


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How can motivation to learn be fostered in the school setting? Although students' motivational histories accompany them into each new classroom setting, it is essential for teachers to view themselves as "ACTIVE SOCIALIZATION AGENTS capable of stimulating...student motivation to learn" (Brophy 1987). Classroom climate is important. If students experience the classroom as a caring, supportive place where there is a sense of belonging and everyone is valued and respected, they will tend to participate more fully in the process of learning. Various task dimensions can also foster motivation to learn. Ideally, tasks should be challenging but achievable. Relevance also promotes motivation, as does "contextualizing" learning that is, helping students to see how skills can be applied in the real world (Lepper). Tasks that involve "a moderate amount of discrepancy or incongruity" are beneficial because they stimulate students' curiosity, an intrinsic motivator (Lepper). In addition, defining tasks in terms of specific, short-term goals can assist students to associate effort with success (Stipek ). ‘Verbally noting the purposes of specific tasks when introducing them to students is also beneficial’ (Brophy 1986). Extrinsic rewards, on the other hand, should be used with caution, for they have the potential for decreasing existing intrinsic motivation. What takes place in the classroom is critical, but "the classroom is not an island" (M. Maehr and C. Midgley 1991). Depending on their degree of congruence with classroom goals and practices, school wide goals either dilute or enhance classroom efforts. To support motivation to learn, school-level policies and practices should stress "learning, task mastery and effort" (Maehr and Midgley) rather than relative performance and competition. To create an effective learning situation in the classroom, Combs (1976) says that three characteristics are needed: 1.

2.

3.

The atmosphere should facilitate the exploration of meaning. Learners must feel safe and accepted. They need to understand both the risks and rewards of seeking new knowledge and understanding. The classroom must provide for involvement, interaction, and socialization, along with a business-like approach to getting the job done. Learners must be given frequent opportunities to confront new information and experiences in the search for meaning. However, these opportunities need to be provided in ways that allow students to do more than just receive information. Students must be allowed to confront new challenges using their past experience without the dominance of a teacher/giver of information. New meaning should be acquired through a process of personal discovery. The methods used to encourage such personal discovery must be highly individualized and adapted to the learner's own style and pace for learning.

Problem-based learning is the type of classroom organization needed to support a constructivist approach to teaching and learning. Savoie and Hughes (1994), writing about a process that they used to design a problem-based learning experience for their students, describe the following actions for creating such a process: •

Identify a problem suitable for the students.


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•

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Connect the problem with the context of the students' world so that it presents authentic opportunities. Organize the subject matter around the problem, not the discipline. Give students responsibility for defining their learning experience and planning to solve he problem. Encourage collaboration by creating learning teams. Expect all students to demonstrate the results of their learning through a product or performance.

In A Different Kind of Classroom (1992), R. Marzano makes six assumptions about creating a learningcentred classroom: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Instruction must reflect the best of what we know about how learning occurs. Learning involves a complex system of interactive processes that includes five types of thinking - the five dimensions of learning. What we know about learning indicates that instruction focusing on large, interdisciplinary curricular themes is the most effective way to promote learning. The curriculum should include explicit teaching of higher-level attitudes and perceptions and mental habits that facilitate learning. A comprehensive approach to instruction includes at least two distinct types of instruction: teacher-directed and student-directed. Assessment should focus on students' use of knowledge and complex reasoning rather than their recall of low-level information.

4. MOTIVATION AND EFL CONTEXTS Why i s mot ivati on so important in EFL? The issue of motivation, particularly in EFL settings, is so important that other considerations about teaching methodology seem to pale in comparison. It is important to think about motivation as the essence of language teaching because of the stark realities of learning English for most of our students. All of the conditions that we know contribute to successful second language acquisition are lacking in most EFL contexts: there just isn’t enough English input in the environment, there probably aren’t enough opportunities for interaction with English speakers, there usually aren’t enough strong role models promoting the learning of English, and there may not be widespread enough social acceptance for the idea of becoming proficient in English. Because of these adverse conditions, a learner has to have extraordinary motivation in order to succeed at learning English

What does the research on motivation tell us? The research on motivation defines motivation as an orientation toward a goal. (This orientation may be positive, negative, or ambivalent.) Motivation provides a source of energy that is responsible for why learners decide to make an effort, how long they are willing to sustain an activity, how hard they are going to pursue it, and how connected they feel to the activity. Because igniting and sustaining a source of positive energy is so vital to ultimate success, everything the teacher does in the language classroom has two goals. One is, of course, to further language development, and the other is to generate motivation for continued learning. Much of the research on motivation has confirmed the fundamental principle of causality: motivation affects effort, effort affects results, and positive results lead to an increase in ability. What this suggests, of course, is that by improving students’ motivation we are actually amplifying their ability in the language and fueling their ability to learn.


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Connecting to learning activities Connecting refers to the engagement of intention, attention, and memory in the activity itself. All teachers want their students to connect with the learning activities we prepare, yet we often fail to take concrete steps that will lead to better connection. Here are a few “connecting principles”: •

•

•

•

•

Use personalized warm ups to lead into an activity. This creates relevance — an essential condition for memory to work effectively. Aim to get all students involved in the warm up. Make each learning activity as vivid and tangible as possible. Use provocative topics. Include visual aids (pictures, charts) and tangible references (games, boards, index cards) to engage students’ attention. Provide variety in your learning activities so that students can try out different learning styles (interpersonal, kinaesthetic, musical, etc.). Make sure that each learner is involved, and everyone has an intention in every activity. Assign roles in pair and group activities. Monitor as closely as you can to be sure that each student, especially the shyer and weaker ones, remains active. It’s important to have everyone on board. Include inductive learning in your lesson. Be sure that students have an opportunity to discover things on their own — grammar points, pragmatic patterns, and new vocabulary. Give students a chance to reflect. It’s always easier to teach deductively through direct presentations, but discovery learning is more meaningful and more permanent. Provide feedback on all levels of language progress. Progress in language involves more than just gradual mastery of grammar and vocabulary. Give feedback on elements of performance that affect students’ motivation: their success in an activity and their level of engagement.

5.

MOTIVATION, YOUNG LEARNERS AND CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES

As M. Nakamura suggests, the most practical way to look at motivation is to divide it into three categories: intrinsic value, attainment value and utility value. What does each term mean in the context of English learning? Intrinsic Value: The pure interest in and joy of learning the language. When students find an activity fun and exciting, they quite naturally put a lot of effort into it. We can see the signs when students smile, laugh, and work hard in class. It is particularly important to nurture this type of motivation in Spanish students, who do not have the immediate necessity to use English in their daily lives. Attainment Value: The value of obtaining achievement. When our students achieve the goal of a lesson, this experience gives them the strength to explore the world of English further. To make this happen in every lesson, we need to set a clear goal, and divide it into sub-goals which young learners can achieve through fun activities. We as teachers should take notice of each child’s strengths, and praise their effort and progress whenever possible. They also want to be recognized by their classmates and parents. For this reason, we need to make the recognition as visible and tangible as possible, for example, by decorating a classroom wall with the students’ work and by sending positive notes to their parents when they learn new skills. •

•

•

Utility Value: Rewards such as stickers, sweets, and prizes.

David Paul wrote in his book, Teaching English to Children ‘Rewards tend to encourage children to learn in order to get the rewards, not to achieve internal goals, so rewards may have an adverse effect on motivation’. The best reward for them is the progress they make in learning, and the joy that brings.

Picture book activities: one example of enjoyable activity for young learners Tels.: Mañana: 610 900 111 Tarde: 610 888 870

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It is vital that we teachers design activities that are enjoyable for young learners if we want them to participate in class actively. One way of doing this is to use picture books, which can play an important role in motivating young learners. Attractive illustrations grab their attention, easy-to-follow story lines keep their attention level high, and language presented in meaningful contexts helps student retention. We present one picture book activity that has been proven to be popular among primary students.

Activity: • • •

Level and age: Basic level students, ages from 5 to 9. Material: A picture book with simple and repetitive language. Procedure: After reading the story, teach a miming gesture for each scene. Read the story again, letting students join in with mimes and speech. For a large class, you could divide the class into as many parts as there are characters in the story.

Here is an example taken from Not now, Bernard (Mckee, 1990): ‘Hello, monster,’ he said to the monster. (Students say, ‘Hello, monster’, waving and smiling.) ‘The monster ate Bernard up, every bit.’ (Students say, ‘Yum!’, rubbing their tummies.)‘Then the monster went indoors.’ (Students say, ‘Thump! Thump! Thump!’ swaggering like a monster.) What are the benefits of this activity? • Young learners can join in the story at their own level, e.g., only with gestures, thus making the activity motivating for all the students. • Miming a story together unites the class, creating a safe environment for young learners to explore the world of English. • The teacher can assess students’ listening ability without it being obvious to the students that the teacher is monitoring.

6. THEME OVERVIEW One of the main reasons to use Student-Centred teaching is because it helps us design effective instruction for every member of the classroom, no matter what his or her diverse learning needs. By its nature, student centred teaching is adaptable to meet the needs of every student (Stuart 1997). In order to design any lesson, the teacher must first think of the students, rather than the content, and so we are assured that the students’ needs are being considered.

Learning is also contextualized in through any of the several student-centred approaches. Context has been proven to be critical for understanding and thus for learning. Contextualizing knowledge also makes for an easier transfer of knowledge and skills. Berryman points out that it is only in context that most students will learn when, where, and how knowledge applies to other situations. Because learning of these cognitive skills is contextualized students see the need and purpose for learning, which in turn may also increase motivation. Finally, we should remember that it is vital that we teachers design activities that are enjoyable for young learners if we want them to participate in class actively.


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BIBLIOGRAPHY

- BENSON, P. and VOLLER. P. (1997). The learner-Centred Classroom and school: Strategies for increasing Student Motivation and achievement. Josey-Bass Publishers. - PAPALIA, A. (1976). Language-Centred Language Teaching: Methods and Materials. Newbury House. - SILBERMAN, M. (1996). Active Learning . Allyn & Bacon.

- SECULES, COTTOM, BRAY, MILLER. (1997). Creating Schools for Thought. Educational Leadership. - SHRUM, J., EILEEN, G. (2000). Teacher’s Handbook: Contextualized Language Instruction. Heinle & Heinle. - KOHN, A. (1996). What to Look for in a Classroom. Educational Leadership. - ASHER, JAMES J.(1988). Brainswitching: st A skill for the 21 Century. Sky Oaks Productions. 1 - BROWN, H. D. (1994). Principles of Language Learning and Teaching . Prentice Hall Regents. - GARDNER, R. C., and WALLACE L. (1972). Attitudes and Motivation in Second Language Learning . Newbury House. - LITTLEWOOD, WILLIAM. (1982). Foreign and Second Language Learning . Cambridge University Press.


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TEMA 25 Ingles

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