Diary: Session 4

Hello, and thanks God that I am alive!!!!!! It was a terrible week , too many books, too many chapters and lack of enough time. But the professor tried to somehow help us and guide us. But I am sure that I can not use her guidelines , because I know myself and of course my teacher!!!!! She is a BIG SHE…

Ok, but tomorrow is another day, isn't it??????!



This session first of all we discussed about syllabus. It is a kind of pre-specification of everything the teacher should do to meet the course destination. There are 2 approaches to syllabus design:

1) synthetic syllabus: it treats language as a collection of discreet items to be learnt one by one. The elements one by one should be mastered and at the end we hope that by learning each element separately, they can go back together and learn the tolality.

2) analytic syllabus: believes that language elements are not separable and it should be presented to students as a whole.

In lightwood and spade we have 5 main categories that can make a difference in the outcome of learning or different learners:

1)motivation:

It's definition depends on different schools of thought. But all of them are common in one definition, that is the inner drive to push u forward. But the source of this inner drive can be different.

2)aptitude:

It is the "knack" , u have to acquire faster. in terms of language , we can hear the sounds better, we can imitate, discover the rules better… a person with high aptitude can recognize hidden rules, identify them and keep them in mind longer than the people without aptitude.

3)personality :

It is related to self-esteem, self-concept, anxiety…

Children in comparison to adults use too different strategies for learning. They have their own interlanguage in which they imitate the surface structures, not the deep structures.

About error correction, some methodologies believe on " recast ", that is repeating errors and let the learner correct himself.

It is mentioned that those with high IQs are better language learners. But they should have high interpersonal relationship too. We can see peoples with most complicated types of IQs, but they are not successful, because they don't know the principles of social life perhaps.

4)intelligence:

It equals with understanding, knowing, being perfect in something and going deep inside something…

Goleman believes that there is one kind of intelligent which overrides all kinds of intelligences , that is EQ or Emotional Quotion: if you can manage your emotions, you can be successful in everything .but it is true just about inter and intra personal intelligences. All of us are dealing with people in different areas and to be successful we should find a way to go into heart of people.

5)learner's purpose





PSYCHOLOGY FOR LANGUAGE TEACHER

Chapter 5



In past the methods and the equipments for measuring learner's differences can not be validated and they couldn't measure all differences.

The other problem is the selection, for example about motivation: it isn't a single trait, its source can be many things, your family, your society, your mood…

Third, we don't have a theoretical base for that. So it takes us to the point that whatever we have studied so far, actually didn't differentiate among individuals as individuals. What they did was just categorizing individuals into categories. But they don't pay attention to each individuals internally. So we need a theory of touching individual characteristics of each learner. So

-we should start from a theory of learning

-it should enable us to focus upon the uniqueness of individuals as well as helping us to see what they have in common

-it should be a theory of how people change

-it should give rise to implications for actions and interventions

-it should enable us to support individuals in taking personal control of their own learning. Individuals are responsible for learning

-in doing so, it must be connected to individual's view of themselves as learners.



Constructivist view point

It is an alternative approach. it believes that every learner will bring a different set of knowledge and experiences to the learning process and will " construct " their own set of situation with which they are faced. it means trying to be self-content.

Self-content is a global term referring to the amalgamation of all of our perceptions and conceptions about ourselves which give rise to our sense of personal identity.

Aspects of self-concept:

1)self-image

2)self-esteem

3)self-efficacy

There are 3 theories concerned with self-concept:

1)social comparison theory ( looking glass-self ):

It believes that part of self content is made due to our social relationships. We all are predisposed to compare ourselves with others and to develop our self concept as a result. it looks at individuals in relationship with others in the society.



2)locus of control:

It is a person's beliefs about control over life event. This theory categorize people in 2 groups:

1)internalisers: people who feel personally responsible for everything that happens to them in their lives.

2)externalisers: people who feel that events in their lives are all determined by forces beyond their control.

The question here is whether there is a way to help people to get better and adapt themselves with situations? By using ALEM( Adaptive Learning Environment Mode ). This model trains to be more responsible for what you do. It is provided with opportunity to practice self-management techniques.



3)attribution theory



Its main concern is that it is not the event that makes differences, but how people " perceive " events and how that perception affects the individuals behavior.

Here we have 4 attributes: ability, effort, task difficulty and luck, which can be investigated from 2 perspectives: 1)locus of causality 2)stability

The 3rd factor is controllability. For example effort is controllable, but ability is uncontrollable.

Chapter 6 : motivation



Behaviorists viewpoint:

Motivation is an external force, i.e. what specific condition give rise to what kind of behavior and how the consequences of that behavior affect whether it is more or less likely to happen again.



Cognitivists viewpoint:

The central factor is "choice ": people have choice over the ways in which they behave and have control over their actions. Motivation is rooted in our needs: 1)our need to affiliate with other people.

2)our need to dominate each other

3)our need to understand and make sense of others

4)our basic biological needs



A socio-educational model of language learning:

It is presented by Gardner and includes 4 factors:

1)cultural beliefs

2)attitudes towards the learning situation

3)integrativeness

4)motivation

For Gardner motivation is a combination of efforts plus desire to achieve the goal of learning the language plus favorable attitudes towards learning the language. And the 2nd important factor for him is attitudes toward the learning situation. It is the attitude that can shape motivation.



From the SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVIST perspective:

Motivation is constructed as a state of cognitive and emotional arousal, which leads to a conscious decision to act and which gives rise to a period of sustained intellectual and/or physical effort in order to attain a previously set goals.

Push-pull theory

Some believe that learning is something internal and it is completely under the control of the learners, but this theory says that there is something that is completely out of the control of learner, but not internal. For example: environment.



Chapter 7

The new issue in this chapter is STRATEGIC TEACHING MODEL, which means that if you want your students to learn about different sources of strategies, we should have a model for teaching and your model should have 5 elements:

1)assess strategy use with:

-think aloud

-interviews

-Questionnaire

2)explain strategy by:

-naming it

-telling how to use it, step by step

3)model strategy by:

-Demonstrating it

-verbalising own thought processes while doing task

4)scsffold instruction by:

-providing support while students practice

-adjusting support to student need

-phrasing out support to encourage autonomous strategy use

5)develop motivation by:

-providing successful experiences

-relating strategy use to improve performance