As a world language teacher, my ultimate
goal is to see my students able to understand the target language, grasp its
profound components, and produce it accurately. I order to achieve this target;
we both (teacher and learners) have to effectively contribute.
The acquisition of a foreign language is a learning process in which all
the components of the cognitive learning are pertinent. I encourage my students
to actively
participate in the learning process and also to keenly use different strategies
to process information in order to construct
their personal understanding of the content to which they are exposed in L2
class.
Furthermore, knowing the key role of memory in cognitive learning
and the importance of its three
processes namely: storage,
encoding, and retrieval; I encourage my students to actively use their memories
to grasp the target language. However, they are constantly reminded to resort
to additional cognitive processes such as reasoning, abstract thinking, and
decision making.
It goes without saying that teacher has a crucial role to play in facilitating
the students’ cognitive process by providing opportunities where they are actively involved and fully developing their abilities to analyze the language all
through meaningful tasks and engaging activities.
CSEL
intervention case study:
In real life it has been proven that Idleness is the root
of all evil.
In a classroom setting when students are not active they become inattentive thus
they shut their learning exertion and/or misbehave.
In high
school, students have different interests and get easily distracted; sometimes
learning it is not a top priority to them.
An effective teacher must find the tools
to actively involve these learners in their own learning process, where their
undivided attention is geared toward knowledge or skills acquisition. Teacher
should favor meaningful learning over rote learning as the learning theories
have proven its efficiency.
The need
to organize and structure meaningful
learning activities is obvious to keep learners interested and engaged. They
have to be physically and mentally involved so the learning keeps flowing
smoothly.
Teacher
has to enhance the meaningfulness of new material to increase the chances of
its being anchored to what is already known. In addition, this material must be
organized to be easily relatable to what is already known and appropriately
sequenced to facilitate integration.
Effective classroom
strategies have to be carefully formulated then implemented to maximize chances
of success.
I really like your view of classroom together-ness. It seems to me that the atmosphere in your classroom helps students to feel that they can speak freely and not be judged. That is wonderful for your students and also for you.
ReplyDeleteI know that when I took Spanish at UTK I really enjoyed it because of the many activities that the class participated in. Many of the activities helped us to think deeply about how to produce the language and in what situations the language would be beneficial to us. The activities included, asking students in the class basic questions about themselves, such as: their name, how many people are in their families, where they grew up, what their favorite color is, etc. These questions are basic but are questions we ask more than we think we do.
Another activity that I thoroughly enjoyed was acting as if a group of students were going on vacation. We, as a group, had to think of where we wanted to go, what we were going to bring, how we were going to travel, who was going to go, what we were going to do during vacation, etc. This activity definitely involved deeply thinking about how to use Spanish and was very beneficial to me understanding the language.
I truly enjoyed these activities because they were real life situations and because they involved cognitive process' where I had to remember what I studied before coming to class. These suggestions might work in your classroom and may help students to get a better understanding of the language and of the culture of the language because they involve deep cognitive processes.
Definitely, a world language teacher has a lot of tools and opportunities to involve the students in class activities to engage them and, as you said, maximize chances of success. As a second language speaker, I totally agree with you, when you said the acquisition of a foreign language is a learning process, same as learn math, or English, or any other subject area. However, I think in the learning process of a second language, memorization plays a very important role on success. Develop students’ storage, encoding, and retrieval skills are crucial in you class, because in many cases there is not reasoning that you can make in order to remember a specific word or grammar rule. On the other hand, in math, reasoning, abstract thinking, and decision making are more crucial than memorization.
ReplyDeleteWhen talking about focus students’ attention, I think these is common ground for every high school teacher, since teenager get really easy out of focus, losing their attention, therefore losing all concentration and interest on the learning subject. How to get students’ attention at high levels during every class is what I most struggle daily, so I would like any suggestion if you have one.
I really like your approach to learning foreign language, as requiring equal contribution from the students and the teacher. You also pointed out that it is the teacher's responsibility to provide the students with opportunities to engage their cognitive processes. I never liked either of my foreign language classes in high school. I some how managed to get a good grade in the courses, though learned absolutely nothing about either language. I elected latin and spanish as the two courses to fulfill my foreign language requirement. Neither teacher provided opportunities for understanding, much less development. There most certainly was not any form of equal contribution in either classroom. The only activity we every participated in was completing worksheets. It was more or less a waste of time. If I would have had a teacher like you, I may have taken more interest in learning the spanish language. I know that I would love to learn it now, though because of my past experiences, it overwhelms me.
ReplyDeleteThank you ladies for your kind words.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the acquisition of a foreign, although the memorization plays an important role as a cognitive tool, it's not the exclusive. Critical thinking is a crucial means in grasping a language. Most of the grammar concepts exhibit an obvious logic, which learners a called to master in order to understand these concepts.
Concerning the ways to keep students engaged, I believe there are so many ways; motivation, reward, encouragement, and praise are some among so many others