640. They need lights to learn









Here you have some more learning strategies that you teacher of English (or English teacher, if you prefer so) and your students can implement in the class. They have been invented or outfitted from the everyday classes plus trying to adapt activities useful for my students’ needs. Hope some might be useful to you. / Photo from: lighthouse jpcbcn buenblog com






1. Translating sentences by all the students. In their school tests they have translation, both directions.






2. The student makes up a test as though he was the teacher. Just 4 questions.






3. All the class suggest questions of a possible test, which questions the teacher writes on the board. The teacher proposes one question.






4. What do you have to do to study for a test like the ones we do in the school, in an efficient way The teacher helps them.






5. The teacher asks them questions to elicit vocabulary. The words are appearing on the board like a network.






6. Every student writes one sentence with a new word. Better: 2 sentences.






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






8. The students read a specific text, their choice, and the teacher asks them questions in the next class. The teacher tries to convince them of the importance of personal study.






9. The teacher tells the students to study something specific. Later the teacher asks them practical questions to use the verbal tense (if the case). Don’t worry if this activity doesn’t work. Give it a try.






10. The teacher tells them that preparing a test of English is not like History, Biology, Math. So, what seems the best and most efficient way to study for the test of English?






11. Revision.






12. The teacher teaches all he would do to get good grades in a test. All he would do with the unit.






13. Study and write examples. Of a grammar pattern.






14. If not as homework, the student could have a look at the next unit, not begun yet. Or could have a look at what has not studied yet in the unit we are studying in the class.






15. The teacher writes sentences with errors. The students have to correct them. Errors with regard to the grammar they are learning.






16. One student presents the grammar point to the class, in L1.






17. The asks them How they could notice possible errors or mistakes in a given exercise from the textbook. Maybe only the teacher can notice the errors. Anyway, carry on, ask the students if they can find them. The teacher asks Can you learn from the error? How can you do it? How can you avoid it? Let them think and ponder. All these games do have or at least I try to give them aslo a communicative approach.






18. Ask the students how many times we have used one pattern along the class.






19. The students read all the unit, up to the point where we have stopped in the last class. The point is to make them become aware of the unit as a whole, as a whole structured and ordered syllabus of material, within a specific outline. The students may discover the unit and its goals.






20. A person who actually wants to learn a language, and he or she has the firm resolution to do it, will achieve to learn for sure. It’s a mixture of a realistic and firm willing plus affective aspects. You love what you know. You know more and more, and this fact makes you love learning further. 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.






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