WEEK 9

This week has been dedicated to learning styles and strategies. There are very different kinds of learners, and teachers are meant to think of every learning style. Students have to strenghthen their skills by observing the kind of lessons they are attending, to later make decisions that help them study more effectively. That is what Richard M. Felder's article about learning styles and strategies (http://www4.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/users/f/felder/public/ILSdir/styles.htm) says. And I totally agree with him. Each student will have to approach self-study at home in a different way depending on the kind of lesson he or she goes to. The common ground for either teachers and learners is the need of the language as a means of communication and successful teaching or/and comprehension. Learners make connections between concepts to comprehend knowledge by means of language, so the main learning styles which will be addressed in lessons will be verbal and visual.

Technology turns very useful when the teacher wants to address different learning styles. Thanks to tools like Padlet, Quizlet, Nicenet, Vocaroo, etc., the teacher can be more and more creative each day. Technology gives the teacher the opportunity of bringing authenticity and real practice into the classroom. The Web is full of different tools which help visual and verbal learners improve their skills in the foreign language; but teachers may also make use of technology in creative ways to cater for every learning style in the classroom. Thanks to the Internet, it is very easy to include music, kinesthetic activities or to use natural contexts to present language in the lessons nowadays.

I handed in my final Project Plan last Friday; I am quite happy, because this week I have realized how much I have learnt, and how useful these tools are going to be in my future practice. Up to now, I have to say that most of those tools were buzzwords in my head. I had tried very few of them, and I think the implementation in my lessons was not very good; probably because my didactic goals were lost half way through the end of the activity. After this course, I do have a clear idea about how to address different types of activities with different web tools, in order to work different learning styles.

Last part of the week I read and watched some articles and screencasts about ANVILL. It is a different and useful platform, since it is a speech-based toolbox for language teachers. I think it can be a great aid for me, because it focuses on oral and aural language. And that's what my students demand the most.

The end of the course is near! See you next week.



Begoña

Spain