Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
Phuket, Thailand
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Focus on the Learners
Part A
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Sheerin says that educators must recognize and provide for
differences in students’ psychology, personality, and purposes for
learning. I believe, the teacher must and remedy problems according to
the need(s) of the student(s).
The day one assignment to observe students doing pairwork
resulted in the following observations:
• Weaker students grouped together for mutual support.
• Stronger students cancelled-out one another in conversation.
• Quiet students write more, and need to talk more.
• Witty answers imply a higher target language knowledge.
• Nearly all want to improve speaking ability.
As well, these students need help with article usage (“a”/”the”),
and sentence formation, as well pronunciation. And, as David Smyth
stated in “Thai Speakers” this group has problems “articulating certain
final consonants and consonant clusters.” Smyth also stated:
“Essentially, there are no punctuation marks in Thai . This apparent, I
assume the lack of punctuation marks in written Thai carries over into
spoken Thai: evidenced by Lek, who finds it difficult to “intonate”
despite drilling efforts by teachers.
Ellis (1998) wrote that mistakes help the learner identify what he /
she needs to know. Since this group understands directions and
completes tasks easily, I observe their strengths to be listening and
speaking (while most students insist both are their weakness). This
group’s two weaknesses are word order (verb/adjective placement) and
grammar (tense structure).
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Part B
Activities to Help Student Learning
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According to Harmer, a good lesson plan needs a blend of “ . . .
coherence and variety . . . “ and students need to see “a logical pattern to
the lesson.” He says, a good lesson plan should “allow the student to do
different things.”
Fulcher describes tense errors as “. . . low gravity . . .” having ittle
impact on “ . . . the listener’s ability to understand what the speaker
means.” Yet, in prescribing “tense” work for this Learning Group, we
consider that most of these learners study English for business purposes:
greater accuracy means higher financial returns for the Learner. Lek, for
example, does phone surveys for a Time-Share operation. Incorrect
“tense” usage may result in false survey results.
This group needs to use Explicit (learned rules) knowledge to
develop Implicit (instinctive) output (Ellis): “Good language learners
seem to pay conscious attention to grammar and to learn a large number
of rules . . . New rules are internalized subconsciously when learners
comprehend input.”
I will conclude by saying that in accordance with Howard
Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences Theory - cited in the XXXXXXXXX
Course Book - that learners have a number of intelligences, and people do
function more or less efficiently in these different spheres. The Course
Textbook used to teach this Learning Group, Straightforward, by Phillip
Kerr and Ceri Jones, allows a multi-level approach to teaching and
learning, incorporating reading (Visual intelligence), Listening (Audio
and Musical skills), writing and problem-solving (using special, artistic
and mathematical skills) that should allow each student to be reached at
his / her optimum level of learning. Based on motivation of learners and
teachers, I think this will be a successful English Class.
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Works Cited