LEARNING TO TEACH ADULTS

How will I attend to the individual learning style needs of the students, both instructionally and personally? 

Since every student has a different learning style, teachers must first recognize which they are. After doing so, teachers will be aware and able to attend to the individual learning style needs of the students in a better way. Teachers can do this by creating group or individual activities in which the students learning styles are met. But for these activities to turn out fine, teachers must create a good classroom atmosphere for students to feel confident and willing to participate in such activities. Teachers should also give feedback not only to a certain group or student but to all of the students.

How will I see growth in the learners according to their stated needs/goals, as well as my course goals?

 To see growth in the learners according to their stated needs, teachers must first ask         the students directly or indirectly what their goals or expectations are. Depending on that, teachers should make the LESSON PLAN which should have as an objective the accomplishment of their students’ expectations, being this is the main objective. After doing so, teachers have to work hard on such objective. Teachers have also to accept their students’ recommendations or evaluation on the course so that the course better and students and teachers accomplish their goals.

How do I use the learner’s experiences within the instruction?

Learners’ experiences are very important within the instruction as teachers can take advantage of it. Teachers can use that experience to base their course on. For instance, learners have been in a classroom where they had no time to express their ideas freely; based on this experience, you have to do the opposite. Maybe the adult learner is facing a situation in which he/she has to use authentic/real language; teachers can help him/her through contextualizing the language in their classroom.

To my mind, Danah Zohar calls dialogue a quantum process since as far as I know, in a quantum process all parts, no matter how small they are, they play an important role in such a process. The same happens in “dialogue”; you cannot exclude any of the twelve principles to mantain and nurture the dialogue since they are related one to the other. If you exclude any of these principles, you will be in a pickle since adult learning is best achieved in dialogue which includes these twelve principles:

1.      Needs assessment

2.      Safety in the environment and the process

3.      Sound relationships between teacher and learner and among learners

4.      Sequence of content and reinforcement

5.      Praxis

6.      Respect for learners as decision makers

7.      Ideas, feelings, and actions

8.      Immediacy of the learning

9.      Clear roles and role development

10.  Team work and use of small groups

11.  Engagement of the learners in what they are learning

12.  Accountability

All of these principles make your teaching better when teaching adult learners.

Setting and keeping order-Strategies-based instruction

How is order set up and kept in learning environments?

The most important thing for a teacher to have a good classroom management is to show confidence, to show that he/she knows what he/she does in the classroom. What is more, teachers have to  an excellent classroom atmosphere by making their students fell relax, important as persons, and willing to participate in class. Teachers also have to create a community in which everybody helps one another. Having accomplished these important factors, teachers can keep that nice classroom management or order by having their students motivated on what they are doing. Besides, teachers have to create interaction in the classroom trough activities (pair work, group work, whole class work, etc.) that are appealing and significant for them.   

What is the impact of strategies-based instructions on teaching English as a foreign language?

SBI is that important since teachers must know how to help their students become self-driven independent learners beyond the classroom. Students must be fully aware of their own strengths, weaknesses, preferences, and styles so that they can become good language learners, and a good language learning process takes place. Knowing this, Teachers should create an atmosphere in their classrooms in which students feel comfortable and are encouraged to develop their own strategies for learning better which is what SBI is all about.