Offering 0pen and Honest Professional Advice
Quotations - Howards' Book
- hgunn.uk
Deveoping Effective Second Language Teaching and Learning Strategies - Second Edition 2016
Process learning is aimed at fostering the learning qualities which will create applied capabilities, such as the qualities that will need to be developed to enable someone to successfully speak French on a holiday in France.
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When considering how the processes need to be developed, it is important to differentiate between teaming means and learning ends. Although most learners will choose to learn a second language so that they will become able to converse in the second language being learnt in their communitíes, work place or on holidays abroad, this it It does not follow that the most effective means of achieving this applied learning aim will be for learners to constantly engage in everyday speaking , conversations in their learning.
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The fact that any given task is successfully performed in a lesson, private study or in an examination does not necessarily mean that effective learning will have taken place.The concept that unless you use something that you will lose it has validity.
Although information needs to be revisited to be initially learnt it also needs to be periodically revisited over time so it can be refreshed in the memory.
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Learning arbitrary factual Information, such as a vocabulary of words, can be compared to the task of attempting to memorise all the names and numbers in a telephone directory. Although it is possible for the learning emphasis to be placed upon learning facts and rules, high quality learning requires the development of understanding.
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Understanding is an abstract state of mind which cannot be taught directly. Learners cannot be told to understanding anything. Nor can understanding be defined.
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If learners’ learning is to be effective Then they will need to develop a clear notion of what effective learning is.4
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Learning is something that can only be performed by learners. Applying problem solving skills will enable them to achieve more effective learning.
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Learners’ confidence will normally be lower in subjects, such as mathematics, where success and failure is defined in absolute terms, blacks and whites. Basic computations, sums in mathematics, for instance, will have a simple right or wrong answer. Irrespective of whether learners make a trivial or serious error in a computation, the answer will remain the same, wrong.
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Learning an increasing vocabulary of words is fundamental to the successful learning of any language. Words are the building blocks of all languages which need to be cemented together into grammatical structures to generate communicative meaning.
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The limitation
of learning words through listening to them is that spoken language is so
transitory that it is difficult to hear and retain the detail of what is being
sounded
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Written language provides a visual symbolic representation of how words are constructed and need to be sounded. Viewing words in print can provide learners with a clear indication of the structure of word sounds, especially when they read the words that they are listening to, so that they can relate the symbols and their sounds.
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Grammar is the cement that is used to bind the building blocks of language. Words, together to make walls of grammatical meaning. The only purpose of using any language is to communicate, convey information between a sender and receiver, whether it is in aural or ; in any language, then they will need to develop a suitable vocabulary, ad a sufficient awareness and understanding of grammatical forms which will enable them to meaningful receive and successful construct meaningful language.
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Although we all possess a notion of what fluency is which we will recognise when others possess it, what is far less clear to us, is what precisely happens to those who possess it. Fluency is principally associated with the ability to express a language with flow, as opposed to accuracy, but fluent speakers of a language will be able to exercise acceptable levels of accuracy. Those who possess it will be able to apply language to communicate it effectively with others in a wide range of everyday life contexts.
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Fluent language generation is heavily dependent on recoveríng familiar chunks of language, sets of words forms, and adapting them to suit different contexts or meaning.
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Our first language is so fluent, well automated” that we express and receive it without giving a great deal of active thought to it. If someone is saying something nasty about us behind our backs, for instance, we cannot help hearing and interpreting it. The only way to stop hearing it would be to plug our ears. If we pass a sign on the roadside or see a headline on a placard, we cannot stop ourselves reading and absorbing it.
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When learners stop learning a new language their capability will either improve or degrade, it will not remain the same
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One of the most significant problems that learners’ confront when learning the Welsh language because there is an inconsistency in the language, dialects. And there is also inconsistency in how the language is spoken because it is becoming increasingly shortened in applied everyday life usage.
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Learners need opportunities to apply and receive the Welsh language in real everyday life contexts. Obtaining opportunities to actively start applying everyday language is a significant problem that confronts many learners of the Welsh’1anguage, especially when they do not have families or friends who speak the target language.
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Second language teaching should be aimed at fostering applied language capabilities.
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What is taught in any
lesson will not necessarily be instantly or permanently learnt by learners on a
longer term leaning basisis.
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.Teachers must also avoid the trap of viewíng their success in terms of the achievements of their highest achievers. It is very easy to be a good teacher when teaching those of higher learning potential because they will have the intelligence to understand the limitations of their teaching approach, and to view this as a reiable indication of their teaching success.
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The purpose of direct teaching can only be to foster learning. This can only be achieved if learners are encouraged to think about and absorb what they say. Then they will need to fluently understand 95% of the words being used to teach them. Unless these f1uency levels are to then receivers of the target language will have difficulty in interpreting and understanding what is being said and taught to them.
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It could be
argued that the concept of language fluency which has been outlined in this
book relates to an over simplification of the complexity of the human
‘interaction. Not everyone that applies second languages fluently will be able
to apply them to a standard of native-speakers. There are workers in the
United Kingdom, such nurses, for instance, who are actively using English as a
second language to standard that will allow them communicate sufficiently well
to do their jobs, but will find it difficult in únderstanding higher order
reasoning in the language.
A New Applied Perspective on Language Teaching and Learning: First and Second Language including Working Memory. (2017)
Our everyday life
experiences must be drawn upon when we use any language. Applied native like
language fluency cannot be fostered unless learners become engaged in everyday
language use with native their everyday lives.
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Learners who develop a language from birth will have developed a very firm foundation to their natural first language. It will have come because they will have been more conducive to learning it. A second language can only be grown from the roots of a native language, adapting the language processes of it.
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Learning a second language provides leaners with a more secure insight into their first language, which will equip them to apply it with greater grammatical accuracy, Unless children are introduced to a second language phonology and grammar to enable the cognitive roots to be grown in early childhood then this will make later language learning more difficult to achieve. They will be veo’ unlikely to develop native fluency.
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It could be argued that learning a second language in raw terms requires them to pronounce and spell initially up to 2,000 words. Word meanings need to pronounce and spell initially. Children struggle to bring in to active fluent usage the 90 numbers of their multiplication tables, which are facts that need to be remembered. This illustrates how difficult it is to learn a second language that is not all-around learners
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Learning a second language should be enabling in allowing learners to progress on to ever increasingly levels of language It will take thousands of hours of practice to achieve anything resembling native language fluency, It will be difficult to achieve in countries like the United Kingdom where second languages are not all around learners
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Music
Rote teaching methods still prevail in instrumental teaching, which reflect the fact well developed teaching skills needed to teach it effectively, which most private tutors do not have. It is one of the most difficult subjects, skills to teach effectively
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The climate of music teaching, instrumental learning, must change. Leaming to play a musical instrument requires a lot of dedicated time to practice and established musical fluency in. The experience should amount to much more than mechanically learning to perform specific piece of music. There is scope for improvements in classroom music teaching also.
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Is music a language? The evidence is that it is, but what is important to recognise is that musical capabilities needs to be fostered like language.
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There appears to be some scope in improving mathematical learning, but it must be accepted that that it is always going to be a difficult for subject for children of lower learning potential. It is known that intelligent people learning of the subject.
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General
The individual leaming potential of children is and will never be equal. This must be respected. Enabling learners to reach their full learning potential will have an impact upon their future lives, but what they are expected to learn must be realistically achievable, as Cockcroft (1982) contended. We must get away from a reward and punishment of education.
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Children need to be offered tangible achievable learning goals must that will offer them ever secure avenues of ever increasing leaning success. They are not empty buckets where education can be simply into them. Learning is neurological process of physical growth that needs to built up secure roots and trunks of learning that will develop out into subsidiary branches, when children are ready to grow them.
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There are and there will never simple answers to how to teach and educate learners effectively. Learning is a process of growth and maturation. The evidence suggests that on the whole the significant findings for the future development of teaching and learning, including what neuro-science can inform upon practice have been basically established. There must limits to what can be known about learning. Much of what is being discovered reflects the proven practices, but it allows educators to become more certain about what is known.
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Point of Interest
Dylan Wiliam, who is world authority on education, who is Welshman now living in the United States, contends there remains a great deal of scope for teachers to learn. We know how children lean. In cognitive terms learning is similar to digestion.
There is no simple answer is how to provide children with a such a large learning meal in a palatable form in a constantly changing environment.
This book includes proposals that could result in radical reform of the school curriculum that could improve school practice, but he has no interest in placing his findings in the public domain currently.