DIDACTICA ESPECIAL Y RESIDENCIA II – FadeL UNCo

HOMEWORK GUIDE Nº 8 A

How are you doing? We know you’ve been working hard to finish tasks related to the
previous contents and we hope you are ready to continue with the next topic in the
unit. But before that…our traditional…

The last guide focused on two main topics:

- students’ demotivation and amotivation and their possible causes and

- teacher motivation and sources of teacher motivational crisis
Dörnyei and Ushioda (and many authors cited in the material) helped us see that
teachers have a crucial role to play in generating and maintain students’ motivation
to learn. In the same way, we can also become the main reason why a student may
not be willing to take a subject or even go to school. It’s not easy to deal with micro and macro contextual factors in
our daily professional lives and also be able to foster our students’ motivation. Anyway, we know that we are the
only ones that can help our learners and if we can work with other colleagues or the head teachers in charge of the
institution, that task may become easier and our own motivation will not be in so much danger.

The next contents are closely related to our students’ motivation to learn and have to do with the development of
their autonomy. So, the next steps in our road will take us towards “Promoting individualisation: learning to learn -
Identification and development of language learning strategies”. We are going to talk about what learning
strategies are, how we can teach them and the benefits they are going to have for our students.

In order to work with this guide you will need to read the following material already available at PEDCO:
- Brewster, J., G. Ellis and D. Girard. 2007. The Primary English Teacher’s Guide. Penguin. Part 2 – Section 5.
- Harmer, J. 2007. The Practice of English Language Teaching. Pearson Longman. Ch.23. 394-409
- Oxford, R. 2011. Teaching and Researching Language Learning Strategies. UK:Pearson. Ch 1.

On Tuesday 26th May, we are going to see each other at 8 am. Before that meeting I need you to do something
simple but it will take you some time because you need to reflect upon your own ways of learning. So, make sure
you solve this task in advance!

Diagnostic activities1
If we are interested in helping our students become more autonomous, a good starting point is to find out which
learning strategies they are already familiar with and usually apply when they have to study. Even when students
don’t know what learning strategies are, they already make use of some strategies that they have learned
unconsciously. This is a special type of knowledge that is automatic and usually difficult to put into words.

The questionnaire on the following pages can help teachers of 1 st year, or at beginner levels, to identify their
students’ learning strategies. If you are going to use a similar data collection method you must remember that your
students should be cognitively ready to think about their own learning process (which can be rather abstract for
young kids). The results of this activity will give you, and your learners, information as to which strategies they have
not developed, yet.

WHAT YOU MUST DO BEFORE TUESDAY IS THIS: Solve the diagnostic activities on the following pages so as to get
to know your learning strategy profile and see if there are certain aspects of your autonomy that can be improved.
The questionnaire is in Spanish. This is so because we wanted to show you how to proceed with beginner students.
We will discuss the results you got when we get together.

1
Tresca, M. “¿Cuándo, qué y cómo estudio?” Ediciones Novedades Educativas – Buenos Aires - Mexico
What about the results? Have they surprised you or do they match your perception of your autonomy? Are there
any areas you would like to work on? Well, if you do…you will help yourself to become more effective in your
learning tasks!

Before starting with more theoretical notions, let’s concentrate on your background knowledge and preliminary
ideas in relation to what we are going to discuss…

AUTONOMY AND LEARNING (Adapted from: Parrott, M. 1993. Tasks for Language Teachers. Cambridge)

It is often argued that among the attributes of a ‘good’ language learner is the ability and willingness to take
responsibility for learning, to initiate and to take risks. So, a ‘good’ learner is someone who:
 takes decisions with regard to:
areas of language to focus on
activities to facilitate learning
strategies to apply in learning, and
 actively seeks:
information
opportunities for practice
assistance from proficient language users and general resources (dictionaries, reference
grammars, etc.)

To what extent does your own experience of learning and teaching validate this argument?

To what extent do the following classroom activities encourage the development of the qualities above?

a. The teacher ‘presents’ some vocabulary using pictures, mime, explanation or translation.

b. The teacher asks the class to research a topic and (using a bilingual dictionary) to look up six words of key
relevance to the topic that they know in their own language but whose meaning they are unable to express in
English. In the next lesson she asks the students to pool the information that they’ve acquired through this.

c. The teacher asks the class to ‘prepare’ a reading passage by looking up unfamiliar words at home before it is
studied in class.

d. The teacher distributes a reading passage to the class. After a set period of time she asks individual students
questions about the information contained in the text. She expands and corrects the answers elicited.

e. Students are appointed to find passages for the class to study. The teacher devises comprehension tasks. Working
in groups, students choose tasks and collaborate in answering them.

f. Students visit the school library in class time and select books to read. Time for reading is provided in class and
ultimately class time is also devoted to discussion of what students have read.

g. Time in class is devoted to ‘competition’ activities in which students answer questions about grammar and
vocabulary by locating and reading the relevant information in reference grammars or dictionaries.

h. Grammar exercises are set for homework and the teacher subsequently goes over these in class.

i. Students are asked to write a composition at home after the language and the topic have been prepared in class.

j. The teacher decides to abandon the course materials for a period of time. Instead the class is engaged in working
on a project to produce a series of handouts presenting information about their town in English. She provides
models for the class to read (from tourist brochures), and audios of native speakers discussing problems they may
have finding things to do during their holidays in town.

In what way do you or might you develop learner autonomy in your own classes?
DEVELOPING AUTONOMY THROUGH THE TEACHING OF LEARNING STRATEGIES

First Video: “Learning Strategies 1”

The video includes a Power Point presentation accompanied by audio. This material includes all
the information you need to get to know what learning strategies are, which approaches you can
follow in order to teach them in different contexts and how to analyse coursebook activities that
include learning strategies in their design. Watch it carefully and take down notes. For that
purpose, the following tasks may be of great help (you can add more information from the video in
the format you prefer):

A) It is said that we learn…

10% of what we hear

15% of what we see
20% of what we hear and see
40% of what we talk about
80% of what we do and experience directly
90% when we try to teach what we have learnt

What’s the implication of this generalisation?

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What’s the relationship between teaching learning strategies and the development of autonomy?

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B) Oxford’s Classification of learning strategies

1) Direct learning strategies

These strategies have to do with the direct learning and use of the subject matter. They imply working with the L2 in
diverse ways and situations. Oxford subdivides this group into three categories:

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2) Indirect learning strategies

These strategies have to do with the general management of learning. They are subdivided into:

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C) Approaches to instruction in learning strategies:

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It focuses only on learning strategy instruction. It is integrated with classroom instruction in the
Students focus all their attention on developing language or content subject, so they learn how to
strategic skills. use them in context and they can see their
immediate applicability.

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Students are informed of the value and purpose Students are presented with activities and
of strategy training. They are also taught how to materials structured to elicit the use of strategies
regulate and monitor strategy use. being taught but are not informed of the reasons
why this approach to teaching is being adopted.

Which is the best combination of approaches for the following contexts? Why?

PRIMARY SCHOOL:…..………………………………………………………………………………………………...…………………………………………………
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SECONDARY SCHOOL:…..…………………………………………………………………………………………...…………………………………………………
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D) Activities from textbooks: Classify the following activities on learning strategies according to Oxford´s typology.

1) Open Doors
2) Open Doors

3) Open Doors

5) Open Doors

4) Discoveries
6) Cambridge English for Schools
IN HOMEWORK GUIDE 8 B YOU HAVE EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO WATCH THE
SECOND VIDEO AND THE INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE TASK YOU MUST HAND IN…