315. More weapons



Some learning/teaching strategies I have learned from my work with my kids. I gave you some of them a few posts below.


Begun on April 2, 2009



Translating sentences by all. In their tests they have translations.


The student makes up a test as though he was the teacher. Just 4 questions. It is the “opposite side” of their desks – they are now the “teacher”. And they make some metacognitive learning: they see what someone may expect from their learning.


All the class makes up a test on the WB. The teacher proposes one question.


What do you have to study to prepare a test? The teacher helps him. And the How do you study the test.


The teacher asks them questions to elicit vocabulary. Or grammar.


The student writes one sentence with a new word, in a practical use. Better: 2 sentences.


The student adds one more sentence, similar to the ones of a given exercise.


The student reads a specific text, not set as hw, and the teacher asks him question. In this way, the teacher may convince him of the importance of personal study.


The teacher tells the student to study sth specific. Later the teacher asks him practical questions (authentic and realistic ones) to use the specific verbal tense.


The teacher tells him that preparing a test of English is not like preparing a more theoretical or abstract one of another subject. The subject of English serves the goal of communication between people. So, how the student will study the test, the exam. The test or exam must be mainly practical and communicative, in my opinion.


Just Revision. Revision and practice make effective learning. The skeleton of learning a language are grammar and vocab.


The teacher teaches all what he would do to get good grades in a test. All he would do with the unit of the coursebook of English.


Study and write examples.


If not homework one day, the student can have the initiative to have a look at the next unit. Or will have a look at what was not studied yet in the unit he is learning: upcoming pages and exercises and texts.


The teacher writes sentences with errors. The student has to correct them. Errors with regard to the grammar he is learning.


The student presents the grammar point to the class-group, in L1. Or in L2!


How can you notice possible errors or mistakes in that exercise? (I mean, how the student can). Maybe only the teacher can notice the error. Anyway, ask the student if he can find it. Can you learn from the error? How can you do this? How can you avoid errors/mistakes? Maybe by making sentences.


Ask the students how many times we may have used one grammar pattern along the class-period; for example we may have said and heard past simple without realizing that fact.


The students read all the unit, up to the point where we have stopped. The point is to get aware of the unit as a whole, as a whole structured and ordered into a specific outline. The students may discover the unit and its goals.


A person who wants to learn a language, and he has the firm resolution to do it, will learn, for sure. It’s a mixture of effective willing plus affective motivation. You love what you know. You know more and more, and this fact makes you love learning, love carrying on learning. You are continuously learning, from there, from here. All the time. Every day. You pick up one word here, one other word there. That’s the person who actually learns.


upload wikimedia org, thank you for the photo (Invalides cannons).

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