UNIT 13

 Learner characteristics

    After studying this unit I could recognize the different characteristics that students have. It includes students’ motivation, learning style, learning strategies and maturity. Those factors are the ones that influence their attitude to learning a language.

    Regarding to motivation, it is the desire that every individual has for doing something in this case for learning a foreign language so they give their best until they reach their goals. Another factor involving students’ characteristics is the learning style, these are the ways in which each student learns, process information and remember. In other words those are the skills they have for doing something in an easy way but based on their learning style that can be through listening (auditory), watching (visual) or touching things (kinesthetic). There is also a factor that involves the learning strategies that students choose and use to learn a language. Some students prefer to repeat words in their heads until they remember them, others prefers to ask teachers or their classmates to give them feedback or comments about their language usage in order to see how they are doing, paraphrasing or saying something in their own words is another learning strategy that some students choose to remember what their learnt. Maturity is another factor; it refers to the students’ mental and emotional view towards learning. It varies according to their age so the activities the teacher uses should be according to the group of students the teacher is working with. If the students are children they will surely prefer to do activities on which they can move. However, they pay little attention to the class since aren’t able to control their behavior yet. Now, if the students are teenagers, they concentrate on activities while they are developing them even though they begin learning a language in an abstract way, through thinking as well as experiencing.

   Consequently, I realized that each individual is a single world; they all have specific characteristics that differentiate them from the rest. So, when working as teachers it seems totally required to take into account all those factors in order to successfully guide our students.  There should a variety of activities such as: recitations games, jumble picture activities or touch games, all of them need to be elaborated in order to accurately integrate to all students in the learning process. 

Here I’ve included some pages that contain some extra ideas about activities we can use in class:

•          Vernon (2006), Teaching English games, How to Teach English For Different Learning Styles
  http://www.teachingenglishgames.com/Articles/Learning_Styles.htm
  
  
• Jensen. E. (2005), Learners Analysis: Identifying learners characteristics and needs
• http://www.itma.vt.edu/modules/spring11/efund/lesson3/learneranalysis.pdf