Glossary

Learning strategies: The learning strategies refer to the methods that are useful for students to learn and/or acquire knowledge. These may involve the student’s learning or the educator’s teaching.
The learning strategies are employed by students to help them gain, understand and internalize information or knowledge. For example, the reading strategies help students to recognize what a word is, to comprehend what they are reading, to be aware of the structure of a text and also to acquire new vocabulary.

Multiple intelligences: Howard Gardner defines intelligence as “the capacity to solve problems or elaborate products that are valuable in one or more cultures”. With this definition, Gardner widens the field of what the intelligence is and recognizes that academic brightness is not everything. For example, two people may be intelligent but in different fields. Gardner defines intelligence as a capacity, and by doing this, Gardner makes it a skill to be developed. It is true that every person is born with a potential marked by genetics, but that potential will be developed in different ways, depending of the environment, the experiences, education, etc. So far, Howard Gardner and his team have identified 7 different types of intelligence: linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, bodily-kinesthetic, spatial, interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligences.

Learning to learn: Learning to learn is a process that establishes and monitors the learning processes and the outcomes required to facilitate lifelong learning. The Education Council of the European Parliament states that ‘Learning to learn’ is the ability to pursue and persist in learning, to organise one’s own learning, including through effective management of time and information, both individually and in groups.

One of the basic skills to success in the society of knowledge is the ability to learn. Learning to learn includes the awareness of one’s learning process; it means gaining, processing and assimilating new knowledge and skills according to your own capacities to storage this new information properly and permanently.

Conclusions

Teaching adults may seem easier, since they are supposed to understand the importance of learning. But the fact is that belonging to adulthood does not necessarily mean being mature. Besides a teacher must always remember that students are individuals, they don't learn as a group, each one learns in his/her own level and speed. It may be difficult when dealing with large classes, but applying the appropiate techniques and realizing the advantages of it, no class should be impossible to perform.

Classes had to be motivating for the advanced students as well as the intermediate level students; activities had to be challenging for the first group and for the second group the activities had to be a means to facilitate the learning of the foreing language.

To sort difficulties I tried to write down all the situations or words or anything that I came across with in order not to forget them and get over them in a next class. An important tip is to make everyone participate, maybe not in one class, make I always made sure that everyone had to participate at least once. I remember a good example of motivating a student of the class. During one activity, student had to complete a handout that would receive a mark, so it was supposed to be individual. While I was walking around the classroom to check the students' progress I noticed two students copying a classmate's work. I stood close to them, and of course they stopped it. So, I asked 'do you really need to copy? I don't think so, I think you can do it by yourself'. So, I read the first sentence that had to be completed, and asked the students 'well, as you see yo u have to complete these according to the first and second conditionals. Up here you have a box that contains the structure of each, so, in this sentence, as you can see in the box, you have to write the past tense  of this verb, or not?'. The students realized they had a help to complete the sheet, because of course most students dont read a handout completely. I continued explaining, 'so, as you see in the box, what do you have to write here?'. By the end of the worksheet, the students realized they did know the contents, they just were not thinking appropiately. They saw that they could do it, because I told them that, that by only using their minds they could do anything they proposed to.

The motivation of a teacher is an indispensable factor for an effective class and the improvement of them; this motivation has to do with the desire of the teacher to participate in the education process. Motivation is seen as an attitude towards teaching and the progress of the class. One great advice to have into consideration is that in order to have motivated students, they must have a motivated teacher.

Experiences in the school and classroom

I believe that it is worthy to detail the most outstanding experiences I had in the school, whether they were good or bad Anything that occurs inside a school helps to get experience to become a good teacher in every aspect, inside a classroom, the teachers' lounge, and even the school corridors or entrance.

So, I will begin with the first day with my class. I went to the teachers' lounge, I greeted the teachers and my guide teacher. As I arrived 15 minutes before the class started, the teacher and I were talking about what I had to do, and I told that that day I would observe everything in the class so as to realize how the class was used to function, in order not to break their system. By the time we had to go to the classroom I saw a clothes hanger so I asked to my teacher if I could leave my jacket there, and she said 'No problem, leave it there'. Before this practicum, in every school I was used to leave all my things in the teachers' lounge, including my purse, I only took a notebook, a pencil, a marker and maybe my cellphone. In La Araucana, after asking my teacher where to leave my jacket, I asked her where could I put my purse, and in that moment she looked at me, her face changed from smiling to serious and said firmly to me 'Don't you ever leave your purse here, you must have it with you at all times, ok?'. Having witnessed that change in her face and tone of voice I naturally answered almost mechanically 'Yes, Miss'.

When I first entered the classroom there were 24 students and it resembled to me as a university class. These are the reasons: the chairs were similar to the university ones (but better), each one had its table to write on, some of the students were listening to music, drawing on their notebooks, some had a leg over another chair, some were looking outside the window, they didn't have to ask permission to go the bathroom, they could just leave the room without saying why. The system thay have gives too much freedom to students who are not responsible enough yet. Once one student arrived 45 minutes late to the classroom and the teacher said nothing and erased his name from the list of missing people. The students were so immature that they talked loud and sometimes they said bad things or bad jokes about the teacher. It was a very uncomfortable situation when they laughed at her, but if she had stopped them every time they did it, there would have been no time for the classes.

Their behaviour was really bad, maybe they weren't that messy, but if they started laughing or playing jokes it was difficult that they stopped. In my opinion they were given too much freedom to handle their responsabilities. But the thing is, that the fact that most of them were over 18 years old doesn't mean that they are responsible people. As I said, they were given too much responsability and they couldn't handle it.

What's more, people at this young age does not feel really motivated towards learning; I know it because it happened to me, and it happens to most people at that age. Finding a meaningful motivation for these students was not that difficult; all we had to say with the teacher was that without having 4º grade high school you cannot get any job, since even the simplest job requires the completion of shool years. And sometimes simple jobs also require of some further study, so, for this reason many students realize that they had to make the effort to finish the school. The lack of motivation in them was not shown only in English classes, but on every subject; all the teachers mentioned the lack of interest in their classes.

As students acquire new information more easily when it is linked to existing information, I tried to use the fixed expression of the teacher as much as I could, so that the orders or directions to follow were not new. I gave emphasis to the speaking skill, in order to make them communicate their ideas in the foreing language. It was a dicfficult class, because they did not know much about the language, and what they knew they wouldn't use it.The class was very diverse. There were people with different styles, different likes and dislikes, different types of music and most of them were of a high social-economical status. The latter implied many situations, they were often caught using their iPhones or iPods; this is not a bad thing but I was able to realize that they often think that their parents' wealth would pay for everything they needed forever. Of course, no one said this to me, I was able to deduce it by their behaviour and attitudes towards their own classmates. This is why many of them were not interested at all on studying.

Being an adults education center, thay had a different curriculum, since they complete two normal years in one. I always worked with the program, following its suggestions in order to prepare appropiate activities to the students, Generally, the classes were based on the book they used; so they worked a lot with handouts or contents taught in the whiteboard.

Introduction

Trainee: Karina Delgado Muñoz
School: Sociedad Educacional La Araucana
Grade: 2º level (3º and 4º Medio)
Guide teacher: Ms. Silvia Aguilar

During the second semester of 2010 I was sent to the school 'La Araucana'. This school is specialized on teaching adults; it receives students who have not been able to complete their school years' process to finish 2 years in 1. There are 2 levels: the first level is equivalent to 1st and 2nd years of high school, and the second one is equivalent to 3rd and 4th years of high school.

I started my practicum in September, and it lasted until the first week of November. The time was obviously not enough to perform a decent project, but the students did receive a special emphasis in their learning. I decided to have only one observation class, so as no to waste more time with my class.

During this semester in this school I learnt many things; for example, I learnt how to deal with adult students, how to motivate them towards learning english and the subjects in general, I also learnt how to treat them, because the rest of the teachers treated them as grown-up adults when they weren't old enough to handle this responsability.

Throughout this practicum, I learnt not only how to motivate a student, but also how to motivate myself when I realize that my students don't care at all about learning a foreign language.

Cover

Universidad de Magallanes
Facultad de Humanidades, Ciencias Sociales y de la Salud
Departamento de Educación
Pedagogía en Inglés

Practicum VII

Karina Delgado Muñoz