189. Pulling down obstacles for learning



Here I have copied and pasted something I wrote May 4, 2009. I have made some minor stylistic changes.


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


The point is that one person learns/acquires a language for communication. And communication is between two persons. One person helps, serves the other one. Always the other.

www elmundo es. Berlin Wall, around 1989.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

1930. The necessity of compromise

Image
We have freedom, tentatively, and by principle. First premise.  However if I skip any compromise, I can't use my freedom.  If I compromise with someone about something I must fulfill it, right?  Albeit some people think that getting married for example doesn't entail to live with your spouse for the rest of your life, I'd say that compromise is for all the lifetime of one of the spouses however. I do know many marriages that have lived together until death of one of the spouses. / Photo from: compromise-settling-our-differences-in-agreement-thumb. howtodateinlv wordpress com
Read more

3710. What Can You Do when Your Students Know Nothing or Nearly So? Some Try

  You know what? Like one month ago I finished to teach English to a nice class of adults, 0 beginners, or better said, false beginners, for they had some knowledge of English.  And over all the school year I have been struggling to actually teach them, and striving also for them to learn something, you know, like the basics. I don’t usually encounter such a group, beginners I mean. It was a nice fight to really make good use of time – tell me, what can you do when the students know close to nothing, and they’ve got few communicative competences?  As I said, it was a nice group, and the ones who persevered along the school year, well, you know, they did have a real interest to learn – so nice people they were.  I’ve been screwing my brain to learn what to do with such people; even I consulted the Internet to learn about such a group. Plus the group was not very much settled, and only a small group stayed with us until the end of the year – I mean us because we were ...
Read more

157. Speeches, debates, promises, promises, promises

Image
NB.- I just realized the attached picture might someway mean something pejorative about those gentlemen. Nothing this sort I meant. Furthermore, i do not know them. Just i liked the photograph, an interesting one if you have a peek at it. Let's carry over it: The teaching coach told old Shean, "I was thinking of telling you, of giving you some brief clues so as you may have a view of higher-level, heavy tasks for your students. First, you all will have to carry out a search of terminology. Second, they implement the task, you know. From a more simple contest between two students giving speeches as each has been proposed as the principal of the school, and she, or he presents the new schedule, rules, recess-periods, new technology, whether uniform or not (in Spain some students don't like wearing uniforms of the school at all; as soon as they arrive home, they change), and so on. Or a candidate for the primaries. Or proposals to end up out the world economic crisis. Pros a...
Read more

3125. Working as a Team in the Classroom

Image
  We teachers should be updated about education trends or research trends, more if they seem okay. What I mean is that quite many teachers are trying the following working scheme. The class plus the teacher would be a working team. Anyway this does not mean the teacher is secondary or minor role, or he cannot present topics, like for example grammar patterns. The point is roping the class into a process of learning: the students also are the main characters at this play. The teacher would boost their learning, for example by making them participate more, and also by doing everything that would put them as protagonists of the lesson, together with their teacher. In other words the teacher would foster and boost his students’ creativity. In the lesson there would be the teacher’s creativity plus the students’ creativity too. The class with their teacher is like a work-team or group. The trend is creating thinking classes, thinking individuals. / Photo from: arion2render...
Read more

3709. How to Be an Authority in Class?

  We well may be finishing one more school year – if you are for example a committed teacher, like most of you are. And we want our dear students would learn a lot, as well as they would be happy.  I was wondering what an ideal teacher should be like. One of the main premises is he or she must be an authority in class. Are you one? Am I one? I guess an authority teacher is the one who achieves their students would actually learn.  I don’t mean those teachers ought to be like a sheer guard in front of a gang of convicts. So let me show you what I’ve seen in some classrooms, and which accounts for being a real authority.  You know, that teacher must treat his or her students in an exquisite way. I mean, they should respect those students in class – I’ve seen it and I’m now thinking of a teacher I had at high school who was an authentic authority – he treated his students – us! – in a tactful way – he never humiliated a kid at all in class. And when he met us out of the...
Read more