What is the role of students in your teaching process? Do they just formally sit in your lessons as an impersonal group of people or do they take part in your exercises with their own experience? Do we use our students` experience as a motivation source for learning?
When speaking or writing activities are connected with students` life it motivates them to express themselves because they share personality-relevant information. What do our students do with more interest? Would they prefer telling us about a character he or she has just read or telling us about information which he or she has just found out from his or her partner?
My observation of this process helps me to say that when students use their own experience it:
- Teaches them how to express their thoughts and ideas in English.
- Makes them more self-confident.
- Helps them to memorize the vocabulary which is important for them.
When we want our students tell us about their life we should keep in mind that there are always things that students don`t want to discuss in the classroom. That is why it is necessary to include such kind of experience which can`t interfere with the private life of students.
- Irina Lebedeva's blog
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Comments
Hello there,
I'm trying to picture what students as 'an impersonal group' means. I suppose you mean 'an impersonal group' in the mind's eye of the teacher - a group of individuals cannot be an impersonal group - just treated as such. I think a lesson can be personal (you respond to individual personalities) yet maintain a kind of non-personal focus in terms of content.
Students will always have to rely on their own experience when taking part in some kind of language learning activity - again, it all depends to what extent they are invited or expected to do so. As you say, there are people who are happy just to stay on the edges - they don't feel that an English classroom is the place to reveal too much of themselves, but can happily take part in a learning process that they see is relevant and beneficial. This while aspect is particularly relevant in the teaching situation I am describing in my blog - English lessons for Inmates. In these lessons we can hardly make things too 'personal' in terms of content. They really don't want to talk about their day-to-day lives too much (I can't start lessons with small talk: 'Did you have a good weekend?', 'Doing anything interesting today?) and I don't want any more personal background than my students are prepared to give. If I find out why a student is here in the first place I might not like him so much and not be able to get on with doing the best job I can. I think a classroom can be good neutral territory and where 'learner reality' can take precedence over what we often think of as 'being real'.
Hi, Irina
Today we had a lesson with 10th class students and the topic was "have you got any neighbours in your apartment building who are noisy?
they really had many experiences and shared their ideas during the lesson.
You are right about your post. thanks...