Sunday, November 6, 2011

Pros and cons of assessing for learning skills

'If you can teach a student a lesson for a day; but if you can teach him to learn by creating curiosity, he will continue the learning process as long as he lives.' Chinese proverb

Pros and cons of assessing for learning skills

Understanding students’ learning styles can make easy the learning process but it does not guarantee less teacher’s work and 100% of success in learning. Keeping in mind individuals learn differently can facilitate the teachers’ selection of procedures but it demands special design and analysis; after identifying their learners’ preferences and ways to learn teachers need expertise to plan tasks according to them and take advantage of time, materials and resources. Through this journey of diversity learners can explore and discover more ways to become skilled at language learning; instructors cannot assume all of students know what their learning skills are, some even adults are not aware of their inclinations to learn, some require direction to do so. Although teachers are not able to make a complete and detailed revision of learning styles he/she can eventually illustrate or provide insights to help learners notice their strengthens and weaknesses.
In my opinion teachers should start any course by having an idea about whether learners distinguish their own tendencies to be taught, if not it is imperative to include short surveys or interviews to determine preferred learning styles, it does not mean teachers will apply singular exercises all the time but that data will be helpful to keep motivation and engage Ss in their learning process, especially with the ones with difficulties and low performance. If time does not help, teachers should use the class tasks themselves to establish that information and make sure students obtain it as feedback. When learners realize there are more “effective” ways to learn specific things, they apply these methods to improve the abilities they have already acknowledged and expand their learning skills with the new methods.
In short, I think teachers should be familiarized with students’ learning styles but considering there are factors that obstruct or even impede taking into account the variety of learning styles. It is difficult to identify every learner style and adjust every single activity according to students’ particular likes or abilities; sometimes the number of students in a group does not help, the time of lessons is not enough: time to create tasks, to evaluate data, to achieve every style, etc. In conclusion, teachers should know and respect learners’ learning styles and their decision-making throughout learning but it is a fact that is hard to personalize every lesson.

No comments:

Post a Comment