VIDEO TASK: “Shaping the way we teach English, learning strategies”

At the beginning of this interesting video is said that the good language learners select the strategies according to the task they have to do. They know how to adapt themselves to the learning situation and use the technique they think it will be more helpful. 
Students who have the skill to do this, needed the help of the adult in their early years, but gradually they learnt how to identify their learning strategies. So, the adult in these first years is too valuable.

Although the strategies are important during the language learning process, the protagonist is the student and some of them are good language learners, who, as the video rightly says, are motivated to communicate something, who have no fear to make a mistake and who take risks. They also recognize language and communication patterns, they correct their own speeches and they practice the language every time they can.

After this short theory part, it begins a real case of language learning strategies in a young adult’s class in Africa, where the second language is English. The teacher they have starts explaining that these students have some problems with the fact of thinking in English and so, writing in it. She adds that they lose the meaning of what they are writing and they tend to repeat themselves.

Although this lack in writing, they have some knowledge in the speaking skill. The teacher points that one of the reasons of this lack is due to they have gone to the school in a interrupted way.

It’s not an easy class, but the teacher does a good job because, as she says, she focuses in what they already know; it’s a way to motivate them. Another thing that keeps my attention is that they work some biology in the L2 to support the lessons of this subjects which some of them have problems with.

To motivate them, they use what the students know, but also, she put into practice some strategies as the language skills strategy (reading, writing, speaking, etc) the cognitive and metacognitive (among others, the transfer of knowledge and the refection) and the affective ones (motivation, trusting and confidence atmosphere).

I work as English teacher in the pre-primary years and I can apply some of the strategies the teacher uses with her pupils.

With the boys and girls I work with I apply some specific skills like the listening when we listen each unit story (with the visual support of big flashcards), or we play a game in which they have to point the word they listen. This year I could work more the speaking part because we have, once a week, the help of a conversation assistant and in little groups we practice some simple expressions.

Another strategy I apply is the cognitive one, because the students learn a lot of vocabulary, there’s a transfer of knowledge. The motivation and the confidence are present in my sessions because they have a good time in each one and they know that I trust in their capacities to learn English.

My students are small, so they don’t know which strategies are better for them, but working in the classrooms with different ones and with my help, they will discover it.

Some of the first words listened in the video is that the goal to teach strategies is to make our students autonomous, and there’s no better way to do it than knowing and helping them. That’s what this terrific teacher does and what I try to do every day at my work.