jueves, 6 de mayo de 2010

A Happy Place

This drawing (tries to) represent an adolescent’s motivation to learn English outside the classroom. I imagined the teacher had helped him see how useful and fun learning can be; and that making it so only depends on himself not on somebody else. What does depend on the teacher is the teaching environment inside the school. I thought of a perfect atmosphere that welcomes each student to the classroom and makes them feel proud of their own production for instance by exposing their own work on the walls. The perfect place could be represented in a thousand different ways because we all have different learning styles, ways of processing the intake, learning strategies, etc. But the important thing is for a teacher to acknowledge these differences and try to use them as tools to plan their lessons, for example asking sts to practise different skills and appeal to a variety of intelligences.

I believe that motivation and a welcoming environment are two key elements to encourage students to learn a foreign language. We teachers are in charge of guiding them on how to get enthusiastic about English and of creating a nice atmosphere for them to learn.