Module 1

DESCRIBING LEARNERS
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Handout 1

REASONS FOR LANGUAGE LEARNING

1. Think of your own language learning experiences. What are your reasons for
language learning? Make a list of these.
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2. In groups, discuss and make a list of main reasons for people world-wide
learning foreign languages
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3. Read the stories of five language learners and match them to the reasons for
foreign language learning categories below
a. School curriculum d. English for specific purposes (ESP)
b. Advancement e. Culture
c. Target language community (TLC) f. Miscellaneous

Learner 1: Lilian Rivera lives in Santiago, the capital ciy of Chile. She has a
bachelor’s degree in business studies from her local university, and she wants to do
a master’s degree overseas. She has applied to universities in Britain, the Unites
States and Australia, and all the universities require her to take an internationally
recognized English test before she is offered a place. That’s why so very many of her
daily waking hours are now spent on the business of improving her English.

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Learner 2: Mike is an Australian, and he has just got married to Junko, a Japanese girl
he met in Sydney where she was following an English language course. Mike has
never been to Japan, and does not speak Japanese at the moment. But both these
things must change. In the summer the two of them plan to visit Junko’s parents in
Kyoto and neither of her parents speaks English. Hence Mike is at present as
intensely engaged in learning Japanese.

Learner 3: Jasmine is an Indian girl. Her native language is Tamil. She lives in Chennai
(formerly Madras), the capital city of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. The foreign
language she is learning is another Indian language, though a very different one from
Tamil. It is Hindi, considered a national language of India. Jasmine wants to continue
living and working in Madras, but the job she has in mind will involve communication
with Indians throughout the subcontinent. This is why she is learning Hindi.

Learner 4: Wai Mun Ching is from Hong Kong and her first language is Cantonese.
Since Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997, she has wanted to learn Standard
Mandarin Chinese (called Putonghua), spoken as a national language throughout
China. The reason she wants to learn this language is so that she will feel more
integrated with the country she is now a part of. She really does regard Mandarin as
opening a window onto a somewhat new and very meaningful culture for her.

Learner 5: Anna Vecsey is a scientist who works for a research institute attached to a
university in Budapest, Hungary. She studied English at school, but her English is poor,
and she is made constantly aware of her need to improve it. This awareness is
particularly strong at the moment because her institute is about to host an
international conference. The delegates will come from all over the world, and the
language of communication will be English. Papers at the conference will be delivered
in English, chat over coffee will be in English, and there is unlikely to be any respite
even over dinner, where English will be spoken. As a consequence, Anna Vecsey has
signed up for a language improvement course at a local private language school.

4. Why do you think teachers need to know learners’ reasons for learning a
language?

Handout 2
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DESCRIBING LEARNERS
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LEARNERS’ AGE AND LEVEL

1. Categorize the following characteristics of language learners into 3 groups

(a) CHILDREN, (b) ADLESCENTS, and (c) ADULTS
1. Respond to meaning
2. Easily prone to humiliation
3. Have a clear reason about why they learn language
4. Great potential for creativity
5. Enthusiastic for learning and curious about the world around
6. Worried about intellectual ability
7. Keen to talk about themselves
8. Critical of the teacher’s teaching methods
9. More disciplined
10. Need to see, hear, touch and interact with things
11. Have great capacity to learn
12. Show great potential for creativity
13. Passionate commitment to interesting things
14. Search for individual identity
15. Learn indirectly rather than directly
16. Often cause discipline problems
17. Be able to engage with abstract thought
18. The span of attention is limited
19. Have a whole range of life experiences to draw on
20. Have expectations about the learning process
21. Seek peer approval
22. Have a rich & wide range of experiences for a wide range of activities
23. Experience learning failure or criticism
24. Need for individual attention and teacher’s approval

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2. Match the type of activities/materials/topics with suitable level. You can

match one level with more than one type of tasks/ materials/topics. Explain
your choices.

Level A. Beginner

B. Pre - Intermediate

C. Upper -intermediate

Activities/materials/topics

1. Repetition drills

2. Authentic reading texts (e.g. extracts from magazines , newspaper..)

3. Writing job application form

4. Graded reading text

5. Writing a summary for a story

5. Grammar practice exercises

6. Groupwork discussion

7. Talking about family/home

8. Talking about environment

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Handout 3

LEARNER’S MOTIVATION

1. Think of a foreign language you have studied. What have motivated you to learn?
What have reduced your motivation in English learning?
Things that motivate you Things that demotivate you
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2. Think of your learners. In groups, discuss what motivates them to learn English?
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Handout 4

LEARNER’S MOTIVATION
Opinion Poll

Work individually first, and then in groups get final agreement for the
statements about their beliefs on motivation.

1. Motivation is more important for success in language learning than the natural
language aptitude.
2. Learners’ motivation is strongly related to their achievement in language
learning.
3. Most students want to learn English for practical things (i.e. finding a good job,
getting onto a course of study, good marks..)
4. Learners’ motivation for language learning is influenced by the environment
they are in (i.e. parents’ attitude, social needs..)
5. Tests can be used to motivate learners
6. Teachers cannot change or influence learners’ motivation.
7. All learners can be motivated using the same strategies.
8. Teachers play a crucial role in sustaining learner’s motivation in language
learning.
9. Students are more motivated when they work with material that is a little bit
higher than their level.
10. Teacher feedback and error correction has a positive effect on learner
motivation.

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Handout 5

LEARNER’S MOTIVATION

Look at these descriptions of three learners. Think of things you should do to keep
them engaged in their language learning. You can think of these in terms of short-
term measures (i.e. within individual lessons) and long- term measures (i.e. over a
term, year or course)

Name Pablo Pelin Chen

Nationality Mexican Turkish Chinese
Age 8 11 19
Personality Quiet, thinker Sociable, risk- Confident,
taking practical;
Reason for learning Loves English Not much Wants and needs
English cartoons, wants to interested in English for his
travel to USA English, likes future teaching job
history and biology
Past experience of None Four years at Fourteen years at
learning English primary school school. Learnt lot of
learning songs, grammar
listening to stories
and playing games

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Handout 6

MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES

MIs Ability Skills included

Verbal/Linguistic to think in words and to use Listening, speaking, writing, story telling, explaining, teaching,
Intelligence language to express meanings using humor, understanding the meaning of words, remember
both orally and in writing. information, and can convince someone to see their point of view.
Logical- to use reason, logic (common Problem solving, classifying and categorizing information, working
Mathematical sense) and numbers effectively, it to figure out the relationship of objects to each other, doing
Intelligence also includes the use of logic and controlled experiments, questioning and wondering about natural
analysis in the sense of logically events, performing complex mathematical calculations, working
organizing an essay. with geometric shapes
Spatial/Visual to recognise and manipulate form, Puzzle building, reading, writing, understanding charts and graphs,
Intelligence space, colour, line, shape, and to a good sense of direction, sketching, painting, manipulating
graphically represent visual and images, constructing, fixing, designing practical objects,
spatial ideas in order to solve interpreting visual images.
problems
Bodily-Kinaesthetic to use the body effectively express Dancing, sports, hands on experimentation, using body language,
Intelligence ideas and feelings and to solve crafts, acting, miming, using their hands to create or build,
problems expressing emotions through the body
Musical Intelligence to recognise rhythm, pitch and Singing, whistling, playing musical instruments, recognizing tonal
melody; it allows people to create, patterns, composing music, remembering melodies, understanding
communicate and understand the structure and rhythm of music
meanings made out of sound.
Interpersonal to understand another person’s Recognizing their own strengths and weaknesses, reflecting on
Intelligence feelings, motivations and and studying themselves, have awareness of their feelings, desires
intentions, and to respond and dreams, evaluate their thinking patterns, understanding their
effectively. role in relationship to others
Intrapersonal to know about and understand Seeing things from other perspectives, listening, understanding
Intelligence oneself and recognise one’s other people's moods and feelings, counseling, cooperating with
similarities to and differences from groups, communicating both verbally and non-verbally, building
others. trust, conflict resolution, create good relationships with others.

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Handout 7

MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES

Watch the 3 extracts from classroom around the world and answer the questions:

1. What is the aim of the activity?

………………………………………………………………………………………

2. What type of multiple intelligences is involved?

………………………………………………………………………………………

3. List the teaching techniques the teacher uses to develop the children’s multiple

intelligences

Extract 1

Extract 2

Extract 3

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Handout 8

MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES
Have you ever thought about why your students react in different ways to the activities you do
in the class? Or even why different groups react differently to the same activity?

Why do some students really enjoy working in groups whilst others are much more productive
working alone? Why do some learners draw pictures in their vocabulary books while others
seem to need to just hear a word to be able to use it themselves?

Types of intelligence
American psychologist, Howard Gardner developed a theory of Multiple Intelligences (1983)
which can go some way towards explaining different learner styles. According to Gardner
there are eight different types of intelligences.

The eight intelligences are:

• Linguistic - The word player

• Logical / Mathematical - The questioner
• Visual / Spatial - The visualiser
• Musical - The music lover
• Bodily / Kinaesthetic - The mover
• Interpersonal - The socialiser
• Intrapersonal - The loner
• Naturalistic - The nature lover (added by Gardner at a later date)

Finding your strengths

Everyone has some of each of all the intelligences, but in different people one (or more) is
more pronounced. There are questionnaires that help you to work out which of the
intelligences is the most prominent one.

• If you are interested to find out your own there are several websites and you or your
students can do the test online. In my opinion, one of the best ones is:
http://www.bgfl.org/bgfl/custom/resources_ftp/client_ftp/ks3/ict/multiple_int/index.htm

The test takes five minutes to complete and then provides you with a pie chart to show how
your intelligence types are distributed.

In the classroom
Now you may be wondering what all this has got to do with your classes, well, although not
impossible, it would be quite a real undertaking to give all your students a test to see which of
the intelligences is most prominent, and then tailor-make each of your classes to suit every
individual student!

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• If you want to go some way towards achieving this and it is a viable option for you
there are some examples of tests in Jane Revell and Susan Norman's books 'In your
hands' and 'Handing Over' (Saffire press).
• If time, or other factors make it impossible to do individual tests for your students, you
could just try to make sure that you vary the tasks and use a range of activities so that
you touch upon all the types of intelligences now and again.
• By observing your students and making notes on how they react to different activities
you may well discover, for example, that you have a class with a majority of visual
learners so you may try to use more flash cards or improve your board work.

Linking learners to activity types

Below is a table of learner types and some suggested activities for each type. It is adapted
from Jeremy Harmer's book The Practice of English Language Teaching but was originally
taken from 'How to use Gardner's intelligences in a class program' by M Loon for the
University of Canberra.

Learner type Is good at Learns best by Activities

Memory games
Reading, writing and Saying, hearing and
Linguistic Trivia quizzes
stories seeing words
Stories.

Solving puzzles, exploring Asking questions,

Logical / Puzzles
patterns, reasoning and categorising and
mathematical Problem solving.
logic working with patterns

Flashcards
Colours
Drawing, building, arts Visualising, using the
Visual / Spatial Pictures
and crafts mind's eye
Drawing
Project work.

Using songs
Singing, listening to music Using rhythm, with
Musical Chants
and playing instruments music on
Drilling.

TPR activities
Action songs
Bodily / Moving around, touching Moving, touching and
Running dictations
Kinaesthetic things and body language doing
Miming
Realia.

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Mixing with others, Mingle activities
Co-operating,
leading groups, Group work
Interpersonal working in groups
understanding others and Debates
and sharing
mediating Discussions.

Working individually
Working alone and
Intrapersonal Working alone on personalised
pursuing own interests
projects

Working outside and Environmental

Naturalistic Nature
observing nature projects.

Conclusion
Although you can't please all the students all the time, it's just good to bear in mind that there
are many different ways of learning.

• If you try an activity with one group and it falls flat, it may well be worth trying it again
as it may work really well with another set of students.
• If you can identify the loner of the class or the one who is always up and out of his
seat, try and put activities into your lesson plan that you think will suit them from time
to time.
• Finding out my own intelligence type has helped me to better understand how I learn. I
now sit in my Catalan class and as we get told to copy lists of random vocabulary off
the board I think to myself, 'This won't work for me - I don't learn like this. I need to see
some pictures of these things, I'm a visual learner!

Further reading
The Practice of English Language Teaching by Jeremy Harmer
How to use Gardner's intelligences in a class program by M Loon
http://www.bgfl.org/bgfl/custom/resources_ftp/client_ftp/ks3/ict/multiple_int/index.htm This site
gives a clear introduction to MI theory from the Birmingham Grid For Learning group.

Jo Budden, British Council, Barcelona

(From http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/multiple-intelligences)

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Handout 9

HOW DO WE LEARN?
1. Do all people learn in the same way?

2. Do we process information in one way or in a mixture of ways?

3. Why is it important to know how your students like to learn?

Read the article and check your answers to the questions above.

Variety is the spice of life

It has been known for a words, people have different a) read the manual

long time that people learn learning styles and need to do b) ask your friend who has

how to do things in things and see information as the same phone

different ways. For many well as hear it. c) work it out yourself by

years in the world of One way of defining learning pressing the button

education, the teacher style is:

talked and the students • Visual ( to do with

listened for hours and seeing)

hours. In some places this • Auditory (to do with

still happens. But many hearing)

teachers are realizing that • Kinaesthetic ( to do

when we just tell young with boy – touching,

students things (‘chalk and feeling and doing)

talk’ lecturing), many The words describe ways that

students are not listening. we process new information

People are intelligent in Let’s think about getting a new

different ways and mobile phone. You need to find

therefore they learn things out how to work it. What do

in different ways. In other you do?

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If you answered a) then you are choosing to get the answer VISUAL, by looking at
the words on the topic of the manual.

If you answered b) you got the information in an AUDITORY (MUSICAL) way, by

listening to what your friend has to say.

If you chose c) you are behaving in a KINAESTHETIC way, using your fingers to
fiddle with the buttons and see what happens.

Most people use a mixture of ways to process information, even if they have a
preference. For example, although some individual learners may prefer to see things,
they can also learn by listening and doing. What you need to do as a teacher is to
make sure that you present language and information to your students in a way that
they can understand easily and include activities that appeal to different learning
styles.

Think about different learning styles when you are planning your lessons. There is
never just one way to do something. To reach all your students you need to make
sure they can see the language, hear the language and also have a chance to use it.

Adapted from www.go4english.com/tp

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Handout 10

1. Read what three students say about their English teacher, Miss Kris, and
answer the questions
1. Which learner enjoys Miss Kris’s classes the most?
2. Which learner style does each student have?
3. What learning style do you think Miss Kris has?

Student A
I like it when we use pictures or games with bits of information on card or
something in classes. Colour makes them even nicer, you see? But Miss Kris
loves talking. I hate that class, but luckily I love reading so I go home and read
about what we took instead. And even when she gives us instructions, she
thinks that once she has said them then that’s okay and everyone knows what
to do. I have to ask my friends to go through them again.

Student B
Oh, I love Miss Kris’s class! She explains everything so clearly. Some of my
friends say that she is a terrible teacher but I don’t know what they are talking
about! I love the discussions – she’s got such a nice voice. I like it when we
read aloud too.

Student C
Miss Kris’s class is so boring! Talk! Talk! Talk! I mean, I’m surprised no-one
falls asleep in her class. And she always shouts at me to sit still, not to swing
my legs. She keeps taking my pencils away when I tap them. Sometimes she
asks us to read aloud but she doesn’t like me to use my finger to follow the
lines!

Adapted from Link www.go4english.com/tp

(From British Council – TeachingEnglish - English for Teaching 2)

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2. Look at these brief profiles of three learners of English. What kinds of

learners are they? Match the activities with the learning styles they are most
suitable for

Hello. My name’s Raquel. I’m from Portugal and I’m 6.

I love sports and playing with my friends. I don’t like
reading. It’s really hard.

Learner A

Hi. I’m Mahmoud and I’m from Egypt. I’m 16 and I’ve been learning
English for 10 years. I like studying hard and learning rules. Maths
and physics are my favorite subjects. I don’t like learning English
much, as all we do is chat – that’s not serious learning.

Learner B

Nice to meet you. My name’s Xiu Xiu and I’m from Shanghai. I’m 26 and
I’m about to start a new job as a sales representative in an international
firm. I speak a little English, because I learnt lots of words and lots of
grammar rules. That was good, but now I need to speak to customers.
Fortunately, I’m a very sociable person.

Learner C

a. Giving learners lots of thinking time to answer questions

b. Touching objects with your eyes closed to describe them
c. Solving problems with others
d. Looking at sentences containing the second conditional, and working out how to
form this tense.
e. Listening to songs and stories
f. Asking learners to decide on their own homework.
g. Asking learners to brainstorm answers in one minute
h. Doing a role-play activity
i. Asking learners to imagine a scene and describe it to you.
j. Asking learner to label a picture.

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