ICELT

2014 2015
Villahermosa, Tabasco

Methodology Assignment 4:
Learners and Learning

Name: Melina San Miguel Garca

Candidate number: 011
Centre number: MX005
Date of submission: June 11th, 2015

2 Methodology Assignment 4: Learners and Learning

Assignment 4: Learners and learning
Length: 1,000-1,500 words
Assignment outline
With reference to a lesson you have taught, describe an evaluate differences in learner
response and consider ways in which the quality of learning can be improved.
Guidelines
1 Consider the different ways in which your learners responded to a lesson you have
taught. Try to describe and account for any differences in how they responded and in what
they achieved. Your comments should include reference to some (BUT NOT ALL) of the
following:
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
f.
g.
h.
i.

Ability
personality
attitude
motivation
gender
age
level
social and cultural background
language and behaviour of the teacher

In this section you should try to link your specific comments about the lesson and your
learners with ideas about learners and learning which you have met on the ICELT course
and in the reading which you have done for this assignment.
2 Outline any ideas you have for ways in which you can improve the quality of learning
achieved by your learners in future lessons. Where it is appropriate, you should include
ideas which will help your learners to perform successfully in a forthcoming test or
examination.
In this section you should link ideas for improvement with the discussion in Section 1.
3 Describe how you would know this improvement had taken place.
Notes
a) Each section of the assignment should be roughly of the same length.
b) Candidates may choose whether they focus on all the learners in the class or on a
small group of them; they must not, however, deal with only one learner.
c) Candidates may choose whether they deal with the whole lesson or with only part
of the lesson.
d) Candidates may work on what they remember of the lesson or may use an audio or
video recording, and/or an observer.
e) Candidates should focus on one lesson, but this lesson may be one of a series in
which individual differences among learners have been notes.
f) The full lesson plan should be attached as an appendix.

INTRODUCTION
For the purpose of this assignment, I was instructed to analyse one of the lessons I
had taught in order to describe the learners different responses to some of the
main activities presented during the lesson and to evaluate these in terms of ways
in which the quality of the learning process could be improved.

THE LESSON AND THE LEARNERS

The students in this lower intermediate class are all teenagers between 14
and 15 years old. One important aspect to consider is that these are highly
motivated students as they have all passed the PET; consequently they have been
divided from the rest of the class who did not achieved a passing grade.
Nevertheless, there are 3 students who have a lower level compared with the rest
of the class.
The main objective of the class was to practice listening for gist, i.e. attitude,
opinion, purpose, feeling, main points and details through five, short, related
monologues of approximately 30 seconds each. Moreover, the final activity was
intended to arise students awareness on specific exam issues, which might be
problematic to them.

WAYS IN WHICH LEARNERS RESPONDED TO THE LESSON / RESPONSES

OF THE LEARNERS TO THE LESSON
During the introductory activity questions related to the topic were prompted
and some learners were reluctant to participate. As it has already been mentioned
in the learners profile (See Appendix #), there are two or three students who have

4 Methodology Assignment 4: Learners and Learning

a lower level, as a result they feel anxious when they have to speak in the class.
According to Lightbown and Spada (2006, p. 61) learner anxiety feelings of
worry, nervousness, and stress that many students experience when learning a
second language-. can play an important role in second language learning if it
interferes with the learning process.
Nevertheless, when the questions were related to personal issues, their
attitude changed and they were motivated to share their thoughts with the class. As
it has already been mentioned in the lesson plan (See Appendix #), these are
young learners who enjoy speaking activities, but only when these ones are related
to topics that are interesting for them.
In the course of a different stage, I was conducting a vocabulary activity to
review words which might have been problematic for them. When prompting
answers from the learners, I noticed that most of them were giving mistaken
answers and were not able to produce correct examples of synonyms and
antonyms of the words under consideration. The tasks in which learners make
decisions about words (Thornbury, 2002) are more cognitively demanding and due
to the fact that the prevailing English level of the students is B1, this exercise was
not completely adequate to their context. In addition, these particular learners (See
Appendix #) obtained very low grades in the category that assessed their
understanding of words meaning in the General Learning Skills Test (See
Appendix #) conducted by HabilMind, which is an applied technology enterprise
and an active collaborator of the school. It is worth to mention that the test was
taken in their L1 and this leads to the analysis that the learners already have a

conceptual system of words, coding and its complex network associations

(Thornbury, 2002). This L1 mental lexicon will determine their proficiency
Later on, in the process of listening to the recording for the activity I
observed that three out of the four boys of the classroom were not listening to the
recording.