HOW CAN WE USE METHODS AND APPROACHES EFFECTIVELY?
What Is The Relationship Between Feelings For The Teacher And The Learning Process?
Four group of students are reached according to a report(Exploratory Practice) which shows the relationship between feelings for the teacher and the learning process.Essays,diaries and observation tecniques are used while making the research.According to this research,effective education is found when the learner is regarded as a person to be respected,nurtured,strengthened,and stimulated,rather than as an intellect to be trained.
For the 1st group:The learners have positive feelings for the teacher because of his/her relationship with the learners(interest in learners’progress,encouraging,supporting)character(enthusiastic, helpful, interesting and teaching abilities.All these properties affect their learning process;they study harder and become more successful not only for themselves but also for their teacher.Their success level rises when they have positive feelings towards the teacher.
For the 2nd group:These learners have positive feelings for the teacher like the 1st group learners.However,they are unsuccessful.The reason is their lack of knowledge,but this reason doesn’t stop them.They willingly study,because they like their teacher and want to be succcessful.So,we may think that positive feelings towards the teacher provide high willingness to study,ambition and determination to get high marks.According to this result,their feelings for the teacher affect their learning process positively.
For the 3th group:These learners have negative feelings for the teacher,i.e.his/her character,teaching abilities and relationship with the learners..However they are successful.The reasons lie behind these: 1)they have to be successful in order to reach their aims,2)they are clever enough,and 3)they have the capacity to understand the lesson although they do not like the teacher.So, it may be seen that negative feelings of this group do not affect their personality.But they feel themselves anxious,nervous and unhappy in the lesson.As a result,feelings affect their learning process.
For the 4th group:These learners have negative feelings for the teacher like the 3rd group learners,but the difference is they are also unsuccessful.According to their writings the reasons of their unsuccessfulness are unwillingness to study the lesson because of the negative things that they feel towards the teacher also lack of knowledge.So,there is a correlation between the feelings for the teacher and their learning process.
Finally,the results of the essays reveal that there are 4 different groups,and so there are 4 different types of relationship between the feelings for the teacher and the learning process.
THE INFLUENCES THAT SHAPE TEACHERS ATTITUDES TOWARD TEACHING AND LEARNING
There are many positive and negative effects that shape teachers’ attitudes toward teaching and learning. Some of these effects are:
The Usual Classroom Setting:Many teachers use one method or one book in their lessons.The belief in a particular method or sequencing of materials most often grows out of experience with large number of students in each class,large numbers of classes,and lack of time.Under the pressure of the typical load(of more than 100 students each day),discipline or motivation problems tahat are probably almost beyond control.The teacher may barely have time to be aware of what is happening in individual learners and may feel unable to give up the center stage of continous control over each and every classroom activity.So,the teacher becomes unseccessful in the face of so many obstacles.
The Limiting Effect of Tests:Students everywhere spend years studying a language,trying to get good marks on vocabulary,pronunciation,and grammar,in a multiple -choice tests by learning this item and that item.Their motivation,whatever it may have been in the begining,is soon warped towards getting good marks.The joy of communicating in the new language,experiencing what it is like to master a new kind of behavior,feeling the inner power that permits continued growing mastery is a goal that all too few learners reach.
The Teacher’s Own Experiences In Language Learning:Most of teachers have had language learning experiences that they recall with pleasure or distaste.From these impressions,they may have shaped some of their teaching concepts.Without having specifically concentrated on method or style of interaction in the language class,teachers are not likely to have a more dependable interpretation.As candidate teachers dealing in the changing and expanding aspects of students’lives,we should be open to new learning experiences,new methods and informtions.Thus,our beneficiency will increase towards our students.
THEORIES OF LANGUAGE LEARNINGToday there are two main approaches in Teaching English as a foreign Language: the structural approach and the communicative approach.
•
Structural Approach1)This approach assumes a way of teaching in which the teacher always acts the role of the questioner, initiator, teacher and formal instructor (teacher-directed).
2)Language learning is habit formation.
3)There are repetition drills
4)Learner acts the role of the listener, respondent, or formal class student.
•Communicative Approach
1)It does focus not only on the grammatical competence, but also communicative competence.
2)Meaning is important.
3)Learner-centered
4) It is used activities and given tasks with each activity, not only the grammatical rules are given.
5) Interaction between SS-SS, SS-T.
CURRENT TEACHING PRACTISES
Structurally Based Teaching
Before the structural approach, teachers used classroom techniques, i.e GTM, reading methods, vocabulary-based methods, and direct method.Teachers’ preferences of techniques was subjective.There was little systematic us of teaching and the lesson was just ‘CHALK AND TALK’ .
With the introduction of structural approach, many new techniques appeared.The teachers,even the less qualified ones, were able to handle their jobs more easily.Since almost all the teachers are non-native speakers, they benefited from the tape-recorded materials of native speakers’.The students were able to use English inside and outside the classroom.
However, in the classroom, teachers don’t use only one approach all the time.Naturally, there are times when students will be engaged in learning new words or grammatical items; but there are other times when students will be engaged in role-playing,dialogue,acting scenes...As a result :
Major items of Structurally Based Teaching :
1)Situational Teaching:
-Language learning is habit formation
-Mistakes are bad and should be avoided
-Language skills are learned more effectively if they are presented orally first, then in
written form.
- Analogy (making comparisons) is a better foundation for language learning than analysis
-The meanings of words can be learned only in a linguistic and cultural context.
For example: The teacher brings some materials to classromm such as books,cups,eggs, pens, keys….Then S/he demonstrates them like ‘ This is a book’ and ‘That is a pen’ using objects near to him and far away from him.When the objects finish, s/he begins to use pictures…....
2)Contextual Teaching:
-teaching directly related to the life experiences
-problem-based: Lesson can start with a real problem.Students use critical thinking skills
-project-based learning
-learning with groups
-self-regulated learning:Students must become lifelong learners. Lifelong learners are able to seek out, analyze.
For CT (Contextual Teaching) to be effective, all strategies must be present in the teaching/learning experience. Implementation of CT may not require drastic changes in practice for all educators. It may require enhancement of practice in one characteristic and not another. Continual use and reflection on CT processes broadens and deepens educators’ knowledge and ability to facilitate learning.
MOTIVATION AND LEARNING
1) Needs and Expectations
Teacher intervention:
-identify, assess and translate learner’s needs into skills to be developed in
order to meet his expectations
-help students be aware of the nature and their needs
2) Motivation
(desire to act, a psychological state which is seen in learner’s attitude towards the learning process)
Teacher intervention:
-Create a motivating atmosphere making the learner aware of communicative
needs and real-life situations
THE EFFECTIVE SIDE OF LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING
To understand our role as teacher’s we must look at an aspect of our students that we seldom consider,although everything else is dependent upon it.This is the effective side of language learning in adult students: how our students feel about themselves ,about the target language and culture,and about their teacher as representative of both determines how well they can learn.
The Articulate Non-native Speaker:
We all know nonnative spekers who are more fluent in English than the vast majority of native speakers.Many have exposed to two (or more)languages early in life,often from childhood.Possibly for that reason,they assume that learning a language is natural an deven easy.They also tend to be secure and self confident,individuals who can afford to be flexible who dont feel threatened by either the language or the culture it represents.Their bilingual-bicultural backrounds,realistic expectations,and feelings of security seem to promoto good attidutes toward language learning.
What We Learn From Childeren:
Childeren are great learners;we also know that they aren’t always capable of adapting or adjusting in short learning especially in classroom.Some childeren for example,called as ‘slow’.Usually they live up to their label.And correcting teaching doesn’t help them unless they develop feelings of confidence,both in their teacher’s trust and,consequently in their own ability.
Professionel Adult Students In The Classroom:
Teachers sometimes fail to see adult students as as whole persons ,would compare them openly to small childeren,treating them like small childeren by not trusting them with the responsibility for their own learning and using materials at an intellectually juvenile level.Our trust must be genuine;our attidutes and the way we treat our students in the classroom is a vital factor in their adjustment to the learning situation.
The Expectations We Unwittingly Communicate
The expectations we communicate to our students are a product of our views on language learning and their abilities as students.These three factors influence our behaviour in the classroom in crucial ways that determine whether we make it difficult or bring out the learning of a foreign language so differant from he continuos process of learning our native language ,or do we teachers make it differant?By what we do or not do in the class we influence our students learning behaviour;This influence may be negative if we are not mindful of the following:
• We should not define the English narrowly as a subject.
• We should not treat language as a mechanical skill or a habit structure.
• We should not mention to our students about the difficulty of learning a language.
• We should not mention about the age and learning relation
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHANGING BEHAVİOUR:FLEXIBILITY
It is difficult to change behavior.Not because people are in the habit of doing things as a certain way,but because their behavior fits into a whole pattern of thinking of self and the world, a pattern according to which that behavior is logical and reasonable.Changing ones behavior involves changing ones’ pattern of thinking.Extremelly authoritarian family ,educational,social,or political structures sometimes produce personalities that do not readily adapt to new or differant learning approaches.So flexibility in teaching without forcing to change his or her learning pattern is the best way in teaching process.
The Role Of Awareness:
The new challenge of classes indeed gives us reason to take heed,to expand our awareness.True security in the classroom comes not from simply repeating techniques that have been succesfull in the past,but from a coherent or developing theory of how language learning ,works and what the nature of language communication is.This means widening our awareness and attampting to answer all the nagging doubts.
Asking Ourselves The Wrong Questions:
We can call it also fallacy.Let’s try to explain fallacy:
Teachers and students alike objects sometimes to having the students hear each other’s errors:they belive this reinforces the errors.On the contrary ıt is not true.Students come to class motivated to attain a certain level of proficiency.they are intelligent.They know where to look for improvement.Even within the classroom ,the teacher can provide contact with good language models in many ways,without saying a word.The collective and cooperative effort of the entire class to express themselves beter only if they are given the chance to express themselves.
Security or stagnation:
We teachers must feel secure in our classroom.We must also be aware of the difference between security and stagnation.The little questions teachers have-the doubts about why this student didn’t learn and that student didn’t do as well as she should have,why they tried and true method isn’t working as well as before,or why the explanation that seemed so clear last time didn’t work so well this time- all these questions should not be pushed aside.let’s each define our problems:
Teachers’ preoccupation with what they themselves are doing prevents them from seeing what their students are doin.or are not doing.We need distance and time to observe.We need to ask questions not so much about the learning process.The psychology of learning is well within the scope of our profession.
Our Students’ Language-Learning Behavior:
Almost all of the prblems in students are caused by inflexibility and lack of awareness,and both of these have to do with self-image and security.
The Limits Of Awareness:
It is about the students’ knowing and being aware of , in which level he is,what he knows and what he should learn in the language learning process; these are all related with the limits of awareness.
Prepared by
Fatma ÇALIŞKAN
Zehra DEMiR
Ali SUCU
