Children’s learning theories.
Enviado por Danny Molinar • 1 de Junio de 2016 • Tareas • 2.158 Palabras (9 Páginas) • 144 Visitas
Children’s learning theories.
I. Introduction.
1.Describe your experience in teaching both children and adults.
In my own experience teaching children and adults are two totally different things. Just the task of teaching is a challenge by itself. And now having in consideration my target learners change the whole experience of teaching. In both situations you learn a lot. When you work with children they are wide open waiting for knowledge, they are like a sponge just absorbing everything they can, so you have to be ready to provide them what they need in the best way possible. You need to keep them excited the whole time about learning and what is next. And how you do that? With a good planning that includes a lot of activities, games, drawing, painting, etc.
Learning a foreign language in adulthood presents well known difficulties to those who have had the experience. And when they are not taken into account by one as teacher, the result is frustration and helplessness on the part of all participants in the process. They usually tend to feel “dumb” because they already have knowledge in many areas that sometimes they cannot apply in class. As a teacher you need to be really patient with them, to help them get involve into the language.
2.Based on what you read and your own experience, what’s FOR YOU the most important difference between teaching English to children and to teenagers or adults?
Form me the most important difference would be that as I said Children are like a sponge ready to absorb as much as they can. They vocabulary is smaller so is easier for them learn know vocabulary to communicate. And adults they already have knowledge, a larger vocabulary that produces a crash when they try to communicate in an effective way. Also working with children means to be an instructor for them, and for the adults you need to be more like a facilitator so they can learn by themselves.
3.In your opinion, is it easier to teach children or adults? Why?
That is up to the teacher, and in my case I prefer to work with adults. Because the way I like to work in class, it is easier for me to interact with them, to get involve with them talking about experiences that we can share in common. As well because in a way I can measure the learning the adults have, it is easier to recognize how much they learn. For example I am going to teach a specific tense, I can teach them the structure of the tense, the rules, etc... Then I like to apply activities with common situations so they feel familiar, and we practice in different ways. Most of the time adults are learning because they want to or they need to learn. So they have predisposition about learning.
4.What’s the difference between the learner-centered and learning centered perspectives?
Learner- centered teaching places the emphasis on the person who is doing the learning. Learning-centered teaching focuses on the process of learning.
5.How would you describe your teaching practice? What methods do you use and why? What strategies have worked better for you? What strategies haven’t worked for you? Why do you think this happens?
In my short experience as a teacher, I have got the opportunity to teach in different levels, different kind of students, different places and different situations. Most of the time we have to adapt to our student’s needs, and then with that develop the best strategies.
Class discussion is a method where you can guide your students into certain topic you want and then just let them feel involve in the class. It is very good and effective most of the times since you make your students participate a lot, speak and obtain confidence.
I like working with students presentations because you let your students investigate about something, analyze that topic, work with it and then transmitted to their classmates the best way possible.
As a teacher I feel as a provider, provider of information, of knowledge, of the necessary tools for the students to encourage them into the learning process.
II. Theories.
1.Design a comparative chart where you briefly but completely explain in YOUR OWN WORDS the following theories:
Theories | |
a. Cognitive and developmental theories | |
i.Piaget | Language acquisition is due to biological and non-cultural factors. The human being enters the world with a biological inheritance, which depends intelligence. First, biological structures limit what we can perceive, and otherwise make possible the intellectual progress. According to this theory language acquisition depends on the development of intelligence, ie intelligence is needed to acquire a language. This theory is reflected as cognitive knowledge develops in a person from his early life until it reaches its intellectual maturity. Piaget argues that thought and language are developed separately, since intelligence begins to develop from birth, before the child talk, so that the child learns to speak according to their cognitive development reached the necessary level to it. For him, it is thought that makes it possible to acquire a language, which means that when the human being is born not possess an innate language, but it is gaining slowly as part of cognitive development. Once acquired this in turn will also help the cognitive development language. |
ii.Bruner | Bruner’s focus is to promote skills and abilities for verbal and written expression, imagination, mental representation, problem solving and metal flexibility. Within the proposal made by Bruner, this states that learning should not be confined to a mechanical memorization of information or processes, but must lead the learner to develop their ability to solve problems and think about the situation that is faces. The school must lead to discovering new ways to solve old problems and new chords resolving problems with the current characteristics of society. Some pedagogical implications of the theory of Bruner, lead the teacher to consider factors such as student attitude, support, motivation, practice skills and use of information in problem solving, and the ability to manage and use the information flow in solving problems. |
iii.Gardner | The theory (Multiple Intelligences) is a model proposed by Howard Gardner in which intelligence is seen as unitary, which includes various specific capacities at different levels of generality, but as a set of multiple intelligences, different and independent. In this theory Gardner recognized and analyzed eight intelligence that are: Spatial, Linguistic, Logical-mathematical, Bodily-kinesthetic, Musical, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal, And Naturalistic. |
iv.Caine and Caine | Caine and Caine provided us the “12 Brain/Mind Learning Principles”:
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b.Social learning theory | |
i.Vygotsky | Vygotsky believes that the social environment is crucial for learning, ie the integration of social and personal factors can develop learning. A very important concept for Vygotsky's is the zone of proximal development, which is nothing more than the distance between the actual developmental level and the level of potential development, this process, requires teacher guidance in collaboration with more skilled colleagues. Importantly, cognitive change occurs in the zone of proximal development when the teacher and student share their environment factors. |
ii.Bandura | Considers that external factors are as important as internal and environmental events, personal factors and behaviors interact with the learning process. Assumes personal factors (beliefs, expectations, attitudes and knowledge), the environment (resources, consequences of actions and physical conditions) and behavior (individual actions, choices and oral statements) are mutually influence, which he called reciprocal determinism. |
c.Inquiry learning | |
i.Dewey | Dewey wrote that the child goes to school wing cook, sew, work etc., and through this act theory or definition of learning is applied. Education interpreted as: "It is a constant body or construction experience" He understood that education is the means by which people claim to have a chance to survive. |
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