David Little. The essence of learner autonomy

 

The essence of learner autonomy: learning a language from the inside out. It is generally agreed that language learner autonomy is a matter of learner control and self-direction. Most discussion assumes that the crucial distinction is between non-autonomous and autonomous learners, and that the teacher's role is to manage the transition to self-directed learning. My own view is rather different. Although they may be novices in language learning, learners of all ages usually exhibit a high degree of expertise and autonomy in their life outside the classroom. Thus for me the teacher's role is to exploit learners' pre-existing capacity for and experience of autonomous behaviour (their agency) in favour of language learning. The teacher achieves this goal by engaging her learners' sense of identity and the knowledge and experience they have gained outside the classroom: these are the magnets to which the target language attaches itself. Most approaches to language teaching assume that the target language is "out there" and that the most teachers can do is to develop their learners' capacity to communicate as if they were outside the classroom. By contrast, the autonomy classroom focuses on the learners' here and now. Founded on the belief that authentic language use is the only reliable path to success in language learning, it channels learners' agency through the target language. In this sense learning is "from the inside out". My presentation will develop this view of autonomous language learning with particular reference to the findings of neuroscience. (David Little)

Song of Europe

Song of Europe is the statement of freedom to travel and to live however a human being decided. It captures the high quality of live in the european continent but also it reflects the long struggle to become a democracy as it was proclaimed from ancient times by greek thinkers. The author of this video is an absolutely example of the real european who traveled and lived in different parts of Europe. He speaks several european languages from different families as Germanic, Roman and Slavic. He was himself in very early age an political refugee and was not able to see his grandparents before their death because of political borders. This song is the dedication of liberty and dignity in a free Europe.

Five questions for engaged teenager learners

What are we learning? Why are we learning it? How are we learning? How successful is our learning? What are we going to learn next?

Bloom and Vygotsky in my classroom

This is an interesting video because it relates Bloom's taxonomy with the theory of Lev Vigotsky. In my opinion, both are awesome. If you use in correct sense the levels of thinking and the concept of high order thinking skills with the zone proximal development therefore you have an absolutely good recipe for your learning target. I agree with these professors because it is relevant knowing how our students learn and learn better now. That process is different, quite different than when we estudied twenty years ago. Now is time to start to work producing tasks and activities to walk attach our pupils, help them when they need it, in their learning process.

Providing effective scaffolding for the content and the lenguage

There are severals scaffolding strategies to use with our students and it is important the learners: how they learn better and what they know and what they are interesting in learn more. The most important thing we have to know is you have slow down in order to go quickly. Therefore, in CLIL class that is important: we, as teachers, have to break the information / the lesson into pieces in order to the learners grasp it and go on as their own. We recommend the reading of Rebecca Alber's article in Edutopia website. It is a clarifying text about scaffolding strategies and their differences with 'differentiation'.

How children acquire and produce lenguage (BBC), 2001

Dr. Jim Commins talks about proficiency in English

HOTS is important in CLIL

CLIL stands for Content and Lenguage Integrated Learning. It means to learn whatever no-linguistic subject through seconds lenguages, in our case, in English. In CLIL is important how students learn, that is metacognition and then it is also important the process how we learn and overall how we learn the content better because the acquisition of the lenguage is a value-add in the way. Firstly, we have to understand about thinking process. In 50', Dr. Benjamin Bloom gave us a list for identify levels of thinking. Forty years later, it was revised by a former of Bloom, Lorin Anderson, and the research changed verbs into names and gave us a new order of thinking skills. On the top of them, there is the creative level and the evaluation and on the bottom, it is 'remembering', the level of de recall information, describing, finding, listing and naming. Secondly, we should know, also, about a new concept coined by the professor Jim Cummins. The term is CUP. CUP stands for Common Underlying Proficiency. This theory give us a new idea about our linguistic knowledge. This idea refers that we learn linguistic basis through our mother tongue and we won't have to learn them anymore to acquire L2. This theory supports the idea that it becomes easier and easier to learn additional lenguages Finally, we have to talk about methodology and the activities because they are important for teachers to enhance in the levels of thinking skills and simultaneously scaffolding the lenguage as a metaphor of you have to slow down in order to go quickly. In order to learn a second lenguage it is recommended to start with orally skills like listetening and speaking. On the other hand, we should go on with cognitive skills like reading and writing and finally we achieve the higher order of thinking skills (HOTS). http://esl.fis.edu/teachers/support/cummin.htm

DRIP and the data poor

I have just read on the Matt Renwick's blog what DRIP stand for. Data Rich and Poor Information. But in his opinion, nowadays we, as teachers, have poor data about our learning process of our pupils. He says that we need modern information about that and perhaps today we are still using a oldfashion data in order to reach the correct information. It is an interesting article. He invites to participe into a chat about this quiestion. He says: "In tomorrow night’s All Things PLC Twitter chat (follow #atplc), we will pose questions to dig more deeply into what data means in the modern classroom. There are too many ways for learners to show what they know to ignore the potential of connected learning and continuous assessment. Join us at 8 P.M. CST for this discussion". It could be an interesting debate about new forms to understand the modern education system.

Lessons from the learners

I used to receive information and instructions in order to repeat ideas about whatever subject in my degree. But about fifteen year ago, I know that I learn in different way. I pass a lot of time observed and listening, this is my slow thougth. Then I start to relate all new and old things: ideas, processes, informations, suggestions... This is my speed thougth. And then I planning what way is convenient to walk in order to improve knowledge. Allways collective knowledge because it is not finish without sharing knowledge. It is important that new knowledge was transmitted as an output in order to be shared with others: collegues, learners, friends... In sum, my experience as a student is greatful because I need receive a lot of new ideas and information and then I need related all them to produce new ideas or reflection and share them with others.