Autonomous Learning: The Key for SLA Success

After I have read the articles about SLA and the way learners could achieve great goals, I can say that learners' autonomy is the first important factor that determines the students' success in SLA.

For me, the best way to encourage the students to be autonomous learners is through motivating them, especially intrinsically. Intrinsic motivation that arises from the learners' own desire to learn is the best way to make them autonomous. This can be achieved through giving the students information about the importance of learning the language. Teachers can provide examples for their own success in learning languages because of their own desire to do so, and encourage students to develop their own skills in learning.  Teachers and instructors, also, have to make a close relationship with learners so as to be aware about the reasons they are learning the language and their questions and concerns.

 

Another way through which we can make autonomous learners is through acceptance of their own opinions. We have to give students full chances to discuss and share their views about learning, and give them a wide space for accepting their understanding for everything. This can be done through open discussions that comprehend sharing their own interests and concerns. Paying attention to the students’ different learning styles and strategies can help a lot in this issue.  Whenever the teacher is aware about his/her students learning styles, the materials he/she will provide have to be suitable for all the needs and requirements of the learners. In addition, I think that using the ABCD model is a very successful way in building learners autonomy for it gives them full details about what they are learning and the way for assessment.

Furthermore, using technology can also play a facilitative role in building autonomous learners. In my opinion, the best way in this situation is using blogs in which students can reflect freely on what they are learning, and if they are satisfied with what they have learnt. It is also important as students can share them together and help each other collaboratively. Rubrics as well are very effective in developing learning autonomy, because it gives the students enough details about what to do and justifies the grades for each assessment. However, giving the students hand in fixing and constructing the rubrics and grades for themselves is a brilliant idea that enables them figure out what was important to be assessed in their courses and how much grades should be assigned for each part. 

Khadija Muhammad Abdussalam

U of K

Khartoum, Sudan

khadijam.989@gmail.com

 

Interactive PowerPoint: A Magical Teaching Tool

I do Love PowerPoint. I use it frequently in my classes and it shows very successful results. But, talking about making these PPTs interactive sounds amazing! It is the first time for me to experience creating an Interactive PPT, it is really a very interesting chance.

After reading several articles about interactive PPT, I noticed the big difference between this later and the standard PPT that I used to apply in my classes before. Although the standard ones tend to be useful with some activities, but the interactive ones have much more utilities and advantages. The Interactive PPT is more advanced and supplies the students with more challenging skills, and activities, for it doesn’t follow a linear direction in presentation. It takes the attention from one slide to a previous one or even to the very first slides that seem relevant. This non-linear ability enriches the classes with more refreshment and interaction.  They seem helpful in my classes when reviewing knowledge, for it increases the interactive drill and practice.

For my classes, I think the interactive PPTs are very helpful. They get the students attention all the time and make them more engaged to the lectures. They function as magic, for me, as they enable both control and entertainment at the same time. They increase the tendency of the students to be more active and respond to the questions immediately.

PowerPoint presentation can be made more interactive by applying so many tools and methods, like clip arts, animations, quizzes, true or false questions, action buttons, and even video clips and sound tracks. Nevertheless, before determining the tool used to make PPTs more interactive, teachers have to think about the students’ levels and abilities, as well as the nature of the classes and the condition under which they are teaching. However, handouts tend to be so important for reinforcing the presentations. They give the students more information about what is presented, and give them the chance not only to be attached to what is provided in the PPT slides but also to the material under study.

Thus, using interactive PowerPoint is more professional and practical and brings a lot of fun to the classes.  But teachers have to be aware of the best ways to practice using them and what should they avoid during the presentations.

By: Khadija Muhammad Abdussalam

English Language Teacher

U of K

Sudan, Khartoum

khadijam.989@gmail.com

Amazing Body Language Tips for a Successful Interview

Facts Teachers Must Know about Kinesthetic Learners

 Kinesthetic learners are tactile learners who learn better through moving, doing, acting out and touching. they are the "hands-on learners" or the "doers" who actually concentrate better and learn more easily when movement is involved. The following characteristics are often associated with kinesthetic learners.

1. Kinesthetic learners often wiggle, tap their feet, or move their legs when they sit.

2. Kinesthetic learners were often labeled "hyperactive" as children.

3. Because they learn through movement, kinesthetic learners often do well as performers: athletes, actors, or dancers.

4. Kinesthetic learners work well with their hands. They may be good at repairing work, sculpting, art, or working with various tools.

5. Kinesthetic learners are often well coordinated and have a strong sense of timing and body movement.

6. Projects that are hands-on in nature are best for kinesthetic learners.

7. Kinesthetic learners tend to become frustrated when they must sit for long periods of time. They enjoy conducting experiments, exploring and performing tasks.

8. · Practicing a technique, demonstrating a principle or creating a model.

They like:

· Engaging in a hands-on activity
· Studying in a position that is comfortable, even if it is not a tradition
desk/table or chair setup.
· Taking a field trip
· Working on drills or memory exercises while walking or exercising
· Miming or acting out key points for memory reinforcement
· Rather than placing your book on a table when reading, try holding it in
your hands instead
· When giving an explanation of something, try standing up.
· Jot down notes while you are reading
· Use beats or rhythm to explain information or memorize information
· Sit near the front of the classroom in order to avoid becoming distracted
during lectures
· Make models that demonstrate the primary concept of the material you
are studying in order to reinforce the material
· Record class lectures and then listen to them while you are working out or
Walking

Best test type for kinesthetic learners are fill in the blank and multiple choice questions.
Worst test type for kinesthetic learners-long essay tests.

Interactive Lectures...

What is Interactive Lectures?

Interactive lectures are classes in which the instructor incorporates engagement triggers and breaks the lecture at least once per class to have students participate in an activity that lets them work directly with the material. The engagement triggers capture and maintain student attention and the interactive lecture techniques allow students to apply what they have learned or give them a context for upcoming lecture material.

The Basic Structure of Interactive Lecture

 The goal of interactive lecture is to engage students by finding ways for them to interact with the content, the instructor, and their classmates. Accordingly, interactive lectures include segments of lecture combined with segments where students interact. 

One of the things that makes the lecture interactive is the ability of the instructor to choose the content of the lecture segments based on the students' needs. If students have difficulty answering a question, or an activity goes astray in many or most student groups, it's time to find a new and better way to deal with the material.

Instructors can also think of the value of format change during a class period in two ways.

1. Format change is valuable in its own right for recapturing attention and engaging students.
2. Also, the new format is often a better way to teach a topic or get a point across.

All of the activities used to make lectures interactive involve a learning curve for both instructors and students. Instructors must learn how to develop good questions, analyze the student responses, and incorporate that information into the following lecture segment or the next class period.

As with many active-learning techniques, interactive lectures may take longer to cover any given topic than non-interactive ones. Mazur (1997) recommends that the lecturer save time by only going over more difficult and important material rather than duplicating the coverage of the textbook.



Resource:  link

Tips Teachers Must Know about Visual Learners

-  Visual students are the ones who learn through what they are able to see with their own eyes. 

-  They are those students who jockey for the positions at the front of the class, must have front row theater seats and love to be right up front for sporting events in order to obtain the best view.

 

-  Visual learners have a tendency to describe everything that they see in terms of

appearances. 

-  These learners love visual aids such as photos, diagrams, maps and graphs. 

-  Visual learners frequently are good writers and will commonly perform quite well on written assignments.

-  They always:  

 

· Ask for written directions

· Utilize diagrams and flow charts for note taking

· Color code notes

· Visualize spelling of words or facts that must be memorized

· Write down key points

· Copy what is on the board

· Sit near the front of the classroom

· Watch videos

· Use highlighters to mark important points in notes

· Use graph paper in order to make diagrams and charts for key points

· Utilize illustrations to remember important material

· Utilize visual metaphors to associate relevant content

· Write down explanations for points that are difficult

Lesson Plan for Class Journals

Aims
• To set up a class journal with a group
• To build the writing habit, by doing several journal writing activities during the class
• To read what other students have written in response to the tasks set
• To reflect on learning and to discuss this in class
• To discuss class attitudes to error and correction, and establish the correction guidelines for the teacher

Age group
Secondary, adult

Level
A2 and above

Time
1.5 hours approx.

Materials
1. Lesson plan
2. Class set of blank journals

Introduction
The following lesson plan suggests how a ‘first lesson’ with class journals might be set up, in
order to introduce students to the idea, and to get them working with journals from the beginning
of a course or period of study.

The kind of class journal in this lesson plan is designed to get the students writing freely in a
range of different ways. The emphasis is on fluency, as opposed to any kind of genre writing, and
could be compared to the kind of oral fluency activities that we do with students. Rather than
focusing on accuracy, or a particular style, we want students to use their language resource to
express their ideas in any way that seems best to them; in this way, we will help them to build a
writing habit, and to write more confidently. For more background about using class journals,
please see the Teaching English article that links to this lesson plan.

Lesson plan

Procedure

1. Creating a front cover

• Use the journals that students have brought with them, or give the
students journals that you have brought, which could be made by
stapling a number of A4 sheets together, preferably with a colourful card
cover.

• On the front cover, students draw a ‘shield’ and, in each quadrant of the
shield, they draw images of things that they identify with in some way.
The first quadrant might represent their neighbourhood/home. The
second one could be their hobbies. The third one a place that they have
visited / like very much and the fourth one could represent a favourite
person/ pet / belonging.

• Once they have finished, they swap journals, and describe their shields
to their partners.

2. First page of the journal

• Set students a personalised writing task. If you often start a course by
writing a personal letter to the students, they could read your letter at
this point, and write a reply to it in their journal. You can ask them to
include similar information to you.

• If you are introducing the journals later in the course, you could set up a
personalised task like this:

Write the list below on the board.

3 things that you enjoy doing
3 people that are important to you
3 places that you’ve been to / would like to go to
3 things you did last weekend
3 things you own which are important to you
3 items of clothing that you like – what is their ‘history’?
3 films / books / TV programmes that you like, and why you like them.

• Ask students to choose 1, 2 or 3 categories to include on the first page
of their journals. They should write as much information as they can in
about 10 minutes. Play some background music while students are
writing.

• After 10 minutes, students swap their journals and read someone else’s.
They should try to find at least one thing in common with their partner.

3.Learning questionnaire:

second page of the journal

• Students turn to page 2 of the journal. Dictate the following sentence
stems to the students. They have to write the sentences and complete
them, so that they are true for themselves.

I think that learning English is…
The most difficult to me about English is…
The easiest thing is...
The best way to remember vocabulary is...
I will get better at speaking if I...
One way for me to improve my English at home is to...
I want to speak English in order to...

• Once they have finished, set up a pyramid discussion as below:
Firstly, students compare their ideas in pairs, and add new ones to the
list if they want. Secondly, the pairs join up to make groups of four.
Finally, conduct feedback as a whole class.

4. Character writing

• Show the students the following YouTube clip. Students watch the clip
and discuss the following: What is being advertised? Is it being done
effectively?

The Power of Words:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hzgzim5m7oU&feature=youtu.be

• Divide the class into 2 groups. One group is the blind man and the
other is the woman who helps.

• Each student writes about 100 words about the event from their own
perspective - What happened? How did they feel? What did they think
of the other character?

• After 10 minutes, students swap their journals, and read what the other
person has written. They then write a comment to their partner at the
end of the paragraph, e.g. I like your description / what do you mean
by…? / You explain your ideas very well etc.

• Another good ‘character writing’ activity could be based on fairy stories.
For example, tell students the story of Little Red Riding Hood (if they
don’t already know it).

• Students adopt different characters (the wolf, Little Red Riding Hood,
the grandmother) and write the story from their perspective. When they
finish, students swap journals to read each other’s stories.

5. Follow-up discussion and error correction

• Draw the students’ attention to the way that they rounded off the
previous activity. Did they enjoy reading their partners’ text? Did they
enjoy reading the comments in response? Why / why not?

• Explain that the teacher can respond to their journals by writing an
evaluative comment, and/or by correcting the language errors.

• Ask students to work in groups of 3 for 5 minutes, to discuss the
advantages & disadvantages of:

a) Writing evaluative comments (no error correction)
b) Correcting errors (no other comments)

• Then carry out open class feedback, to find out their views.

• Explain that you may not be able to correct every single error in their
journal, but that you can adapt your correction to their preferences. Ask
each student to write a brief comment about how they would like their
journal writing to be corrected, in the back cover of the journal.

• If you decide to use a correction code with your class, this would be a
good moment to introduce the code, and to get students to write the
symbols at the back of their journal, for future reference.

* A good idea is to show them some examples of previous journals that
you’ve marked.
6. Final feedback

• Ask students to discuss the following in groups, with regard to their
attitudes towards writing in English and carry out open class feedback
at the end. Hopefully students will recognise that, although they may
feel initially reluctant about writing activities, these activities can be
very powerful tools in helping them to improve their level of English.

- Do you enjoy writing in your own language? Why / why not?
- Do you enjoy writing in English? Why / why not?
- Do writing activities in English help you to learn the language? Why
/ why not?
- Do you like to discuss learning habits in English?
- Do you think you can become a better learner if you think about the
way that you learn?

Follow-up activities

Once journals have been introduced into the class, they can form a regular part
of the lesson. They can be used at different moments in the class, with or
without background music. Students can also be encouraged to write in them
at home, describing the events of their week.
Some suggested follow up activities:

1. Media diary

Students write about the different ‘media’ that they have been watching or
reading. This could include TV programmes, films at the cinema or on DVD,
websites that they have been looking at, magazines, books, etc.

2. Learning styles

Students can do a learning styles questionnaire, and write up their findings in
their journal. They can swap journals to find out about other students’ learning
styles.

3. Track your happiness!
Students can draw a chart with the days of the past week, and a face that
represents their attitude on those days, e.g. a happy face if it was a good day/
cross face if they got annoyed/worried face if they had a test, etc. Then
students write a short description of their week & their feelings about it.

4. Vocabulary stories
For this activity, students choose a number of different words that have come
up in the class. These could come from a class ‘word bag’. They talk to a
partner about how they can link as many of the words as possible into a story,
and both partners write the story in their journals. Students can then read out
the story, or swap journals. In the next class, students can then reflect on the
activity itself.


Resource: Click here

By: Khadija Muhammad