Learning Strategy
Vocabulary building in young learners
(933 Words)
For this writing task, I was asked to give my response to 5 statements about how young learners can help build their vocabulary. I will answer true or false statements 1- 5 and explain why.
1. In a young child, a single word may constitute a considerable degree of meaning.
Is this True or False?
2. Words categories and concepts normally exist in isolation from each other.
Is this True or False?
3. Vocabulary development comprises at least three stages.
Is this True or False?
4. All languages have the same relationship between time and tense.
Is this True or False?
5. Where possible we should draw upon as many of the senses as possible when teaching vocabulary.
Is this True or False?
1. In a young child, a single word may constitute a considerable degree of meaning. T/F
This is true. The ability to use words is partly tied to the young child’s ongoing cognitive development, so the use of words will have a degree of meaning. Thus, for a child, a word stands for a concept, but that concept is open to interpretation in that they select a category of relatively similar objects and apply the lexical item throughout. A child can learn the word dog or as a young child puts it ‘doggy’. This refers to a four-legged animal. This word can exist for any type of dog either big or small or type of breed. For example, a dog may refer to beagles and scotties, but not to poodles. This aspect of children’s thought associates a word with an object, but they may then, in the future, use that word to describe a number of other similar objects in their environment. The child can also use the word ‘doggy to mean ‘there is a dog’ Notwithstanding, it can mean ‘come here’ said with a rising tone. Young children tend to utilise rising intonation to signal yes-no questions.
2. Words categories and concepts normally exist in isolation from each other. T/F
This is false. Words do not live in isolation, individual words can be categorised in many ways that remove the word from the original meaning or at least a child’s only idea of the meaning. The word ‘game’ can be attached to words such as card (game), ball (game), Olympic (games), and also football (game). As such the Olympic Games conjure up thoughts of many competitors from around the world competing together, although a ball game can involve one person banging a ball against a wall. This looks at two ends of the game spectrum. Winning the Olympic Games has men and women getting gold medals; the ball game respectively has no winner or loser. Furthermore, the game of poker has skills of a different kind compared to kicking a football around the football pitch as well as less physical energy.
3. Vocabulary development comprises of at least three stages. T/F
This is true. Word learning is the product of a set of cognitive and linguistic stages that include the ability to acquire concepts, an appreciation of syntactic cues to meaning, and a rich understanding of the mental states of other people. These capacities are powerful and early emerging. Firstly the child must make sense of new vocabulary. When words are first met by young learners, there are concepts that are given labels in English and may be new to the child, or only partially developed. The teacher or parent may not be merely teaching vocabulary, but teaching concepts. The labels and concepts need to be incorporated into schemas that already exist. The child has to learn this new vocabulary. Learning and retaining new vocabulary is made easier by grouping words together into families. While learning all this new vocabulary the child has to retain and recall this vocabulary for the various situation they will find themselves in. The single most effective way of helping students build vocabulary is by increasing the amount that they read. The child revisits the groups of words; adding to them and reorganising them provide ways of giving learners both the repetition and the development that is needed as they grow into English through the primary years and stages.
4. All languages have the same relationship between time and tense. T/F
This is false. Various countries of different lexis in different parts of the world that have relatively little contact with each other, will have experienced a different environment. Each country will invent words for the things in its environment that matter to it, and naturally, they find words for different things in their country. England has four seasons, other countries have three. Some countries are dark for many months. Learners from different countries don’t have some words in their vocabulary because they have never encountered such aspects of life. Basically, the learners have to develop categories and concepts for the new words they encounter. For this situation, when children encounter new words teachers need to provide support for understanding. New vocabulary needs to be presented in a context that helps the child understand the meanings and associations that help explain time and tense.
5. Where possible we should draw upon as many of the senses as possible when teaching vocabulary. T/F
This is true. Children learn words by seeing, feeling, tasting, listening, enjoying, and experiencing. These various means at a teacher’s disposal bring the reality of words to the fore. For example, a child can know the word ‘apple’ but this does not show the learner every aspect of the object. They can learn that it is a fruit and other fruits are in the same family. They can see pictures of apples so they see the shapes and colours. They can eat an apple then they know the taste and feel. Is it soft? Is it hard? It can be shown that the apple starts going rotten after a while, but it is also good for your health before going rotten. An apple pie can be cooked for the child to show how apples can be used. Granny Smith apples come from England. Other apples come from other countries. They can go on a field trip and see apples growing. The child realizes they grow in trees. They can go shopping at a supermarket and buy apples. They can be shown they are bought in weight.
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“The better the learning strategy adapted the better will the outcome be” – the contrast of strategies used by the good learners and poor learners
Explaining this concept by contrasting the strategies used by the good learners and poor learners
There are many factors involved in a learner succeeding in a language. Above all, the student has to have a learning strategy and an efficient one that suits his or her strengths which will help him or her succeed even better. Strategies are tools for the self-directed involvement necessary for developing communicative ability. Active learners will succeed better than passive students and become more autonomous. In this essay, I will talk about the good learner contrasting with the poor learner who both have their own ways which are for better or worse. One major factor is of teacher-dependence and towards an assumption of greater responsibility for and control of their learning. Students need the enthusiasm to learn, they can get bored very quickly. Students need to install in themselves that the learning is done for a reason. In this essay, I will discuss the factors that help students develop a good language learning strategy while contrasting them with the ambivalence of some students may have about learning a new language. This is notwithstanding that on the whole learning a new language is not easy even though it can be made to be more difficult.
To begin with, I must mention motivation. Motivation involves people learning a language for many reasons. Good learners can see an end result so they cannot be motivated to learn. It is beneficial for the learner to have goals. Those can be goals for each class as well as the term. Good learners will not be disheartened if they do not succeed one time. There must be a sense of self-reinforcement. Good learners will give themselves rewards for success. Good learners are aware of their learning strategy and if it is working. Their meta-cognitive awareness allows them to re-evaluate, focus, and arrange their learning. They will have a learning strategy that suits them. They will read up or ask the teacher questions referring to the topic in hand. This then refers to the student being able to ask questions not feeling shy to try. Weinstein and Mayer (1986) defined learning strategies (LS) broadly as “behaviours and thoughts that a learner engages in during learning” which are “intended to influence the learner’s encoding process” (p. 315). Of course, poor students just take it that the learning process is too hard. Poor students will tell themselves that this is too difficult and not relate their level of language with their actual stage of learning. A good learner can control their feelings and attitudes. A poor learner will turn up to the lesson without preparation. Above all, it is easy to think you should be better at a language without realising that the learning process will take time. The poor learner can not see the future for his or her language.
Literacy Review – Formative Assessment
Inside the Black Box: Raising Standards Through Classroom Assessment By Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam
(535 words)
Giving an overall picture to the students’ learning, and them understanding clearly the subject matter and material in the lesson as an ongoing process, led me to focus on formative assessment for professional development, and subsequently on a small book called Inside ‘the Black Box: Raising Standards Through Classroom Assessment by Paul Black and Dylan William’ (1998).
The first main focus of this book was that outside of the classroom there are many factors/forces that push the teacher to do a proficient job. However, Black and Wiliam state that ‘learning is driven by what teachers and pupils do in classrooms’ (Black and Wiliam, 1998: 1). This highlights the classroom as the Black Box and what goes on inside is as important if not more than outside assessment. The teacher is the one who has that direct relationship with the students and that helps deal with progression within this sphere. The teacher is really the only one that can see what is happening on a day to day basis. For example, Black and Wiliam suggest ‘how can anyone be sure that a particular set of new inputs will produce better outputs if we don’t at least study what happens inside?’ Black and Wiliam (1998: 2). Teachers are always looking for ways to improve and formative assessment of the students’ on-going study means that the teacher can change factors to help suit the needs of the students.
Furthermore, the fact that students have tests at the end of their learning makes room for more formative assessment that can help highlight issues along the path of their learning actively helping them and adjusting their learning. Black and Wiliam state that ‘the practice of formative assessment produce significant and often substantial learning gains’ (Black and Wiliam, 1998: 1). There is a need for the students to be actively involved and the process of letting the students just complete work and then mark it reinforces underachievement. Students should be allowed to assess their on-going learning as well as the teacher. Black and Wiliam highlight this, as improved formative assessment helps low achievers more than other students and so reduces the range of achievement while raising achievement overall (Black and Wiliam, 1998: 4). Thus the teacher can adapt their teaching to fit the needs of the students. This gets away from summative assessment as the vital part of the learning process where the final result is more important than the path getting there. Black and Willams show that ‘the giving of marks and the grading function is overemphasized, while the giving of useful advice and the learning function are underemphasized (Black and Wiliam, 1998: 5). This then gets away from the students competing and puts focus on them actually looking at their personal improvement. It could be said to be true that ‘when the classroom culture focuses on rewards, gold stars, grades, or class ranking, then pupils look for ways to obtain the best marks rather than to improve their learning. (Black and Wiliam, 1998: 7). This puts the focus back on the students to change the culture into one where all the students involved can progress and achieve. The students can understand the main focus of being in the classroom.
Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (1998b). Inside the black box: Raising standards through classroom
The Teaching of Melody
I feel aspects of melody in language are important to me in teaching English, as this is one of the issues that have been salient in teaching. By melody, I mean the fluency of your speech highlighting that transformation of the quality of the teacher’s voice adding grace to the student’s self-expression, thus helping them to convey meaning on a higher plane. This upholds a belief of mine because I feel as though making your voice clear and giving your voice that purposeful sound and intonation makes your expressions interesting to listen to. I think that these clear utterances add to your lesson and bring the students more in touch with you.
For the students, I think melody is one of the hardest aspects to grasp that incorporates intonation, stress, and rhythm. As a teacher, you and the students have to be aware that the improvement of their expressions is the result of endeavored attempts at a likeness to natural English. I relate to this because in one post-lesson reflection I recognised that I was modeling, and a model for, the English language for the students. Now, if that melody is lost, as I reflected upon, trying to give clear instructions slowly and with unconnected speech, the students will end up speaking the same slow way which is not the melody of English. It is not only the fact of having a natural voice in class, but also that melody can be achieved by incorporating into one’s teaching precise techniques designed to facilitate learning of melody of the target language creatively.
There are implications for the students, which is what the main point of this reflective writing, and that is the students come to the teacher already being equipped with the capacity to work on themselves. You could say they are like a sponge soaking up all that you say and if you are the teacher they will follow you. This is where your teaching direction is so important and that is to teach them the correct and normal melody of speech. They will change their utterance to your melody because you are teaching them.
To conclude with something I have learned from this reflection is that you are an advert for the promotion of English language. Learners are looking at you to better their language and this means using the right tone, stress, intonation and rhythm. This melody your students will be using in the outside world, and you as the teacher certainly wouldn’t like your students to be misunderstood and frowned upon.
(425 Words)
Process Learning in Language Teaching and Acquisition
(words 660)
My first thoughts are to say that Process Teaching seems a more relaxed attitude to teaching. It is encouraging that with this teaching method, a material light approach is advocated. From my own point of view, I try to be a proficient teacher and have worksheets to help the students as well as use material to stimulate the students throughout a lesson. The materials-free approach goes against what is seen day in day out in the staff room (there is always a cue at the photocopier) and classrooms although the opportunities are there to create better learning.
The Process Teaching method of learning English, although being competent and wanting to do their best, teachers can feel more relaxed and appreciate more clearly that it is the students who are the ones who should be speaking and helping each other. The teacher acts as a facilitator. Thus, it makes teachers take a look at themselves; standing in front of the whiteboard, projecting grammar, and doing lots of writing (using handouts) albeit in their own way teaching proficiently. However, this being said, any teacher still can think that for two and half hours the students have got have a chance to freely talk and have an attitude that they are as much a part of the class as the teacher. I sometimes find that for some students, it is hard to get them to talk, especially where some foreign language systems of learning English do not facilitate the conversational aspect of learning such that Process Learning could fall short of achieving its aim.
As for my classroom performances, I try to put various processes into practice (helped by the Dogme teaching book). For example, one lesson was a Task-Based exercise where I tried to bring in elements of Process Learning where the students would ask me questions or sometimes just say one word during the task. I would try and use this as a building block for more language. I think teachers should provide the scaffolding for the students to build their language and even if they say one word it has to be remembered that any word has a thought behind it that can be expanded.
Referring more to my lesson, I set up the students with some pictures of people doing sports. I asked some focus questions for each sport. I got the students to write the questions on the whiteboard and elicited the answers. The students gave me the answers and showed they were capable of answering the questions. I then gave each group a set of seven pictures showing sports. There were two groups and I sat between them. I let them answer the questions for each of their sports. Now some students did not know the answers to the questions and as a helper/facilitator, I encouraged them to ask me questions and to use their language by any means possible. Thus, Process Learning was being used. As such the students seemed at ease to speak even if it was one or two words. As previously mentioned, I said before sometimes that one word was enough to get some students started. The whole group joined in, this was great as I felt they were trying to use their language.
Once they had answered every question about the sports, I then had a competition where one team explains a sport and the other has to guess what it is. Again, looking at Process Learning, the stage was set and they knew what to do. For myself, I sat in between them and just facilitated the process, encouraging them to open up. This exercise went on for more than an hour. I think the students enjoyed it.
To finish this reflection on Process Learning, I think this method has been beneficial and can be used in lessons even though using it completely would be a wide-ranging change that many students would need a bit of time to get used to.
