Language learners as individuals: discovering their needs, wants

and learning styles.

The area of language teaching or learning is not static, as educators we most

provide for a balance between these two if the students are to be motivated to
learn what we offer. What our students need is depended of political situations,
societal demands and the career opportunities that these create. The European
unit/credit system was developed on the basic of as analysis of the linguistic needs
of adults in forty-four occupational categories. In the analysis the actual activities in
which persons of these specific occupations would need to use another language
were studied and estimates made of the degree of proficiency they would in each
of the linguistic skills of understanding, speaking, reading and written, some
materials along national-functional lines have been developed to meet these needs
and more are in production.
The European materials of the council of Europe were developed to meet specific
needs in the European context. They are not necessary transferable to the
American context where needs may be quite different. The closes American
program for adults workers is Occupational English as a Second language, a
component of bilingual/bicultural education which has been part of the training and
technical. What students feel they need from is if their study of a language is to
serve the purpose of developing and understanding of the ways of thinking and
valuing of those of other nations, as well as an appreciation of they achievements,
problems and aspirations. This will be a new and untraveled part for many of pur
language teachers, who will themselves need re-education of they are to be
successful in building cooperative programs in this area. They will need to
seriously study the role of a foreign language as an auxiliary skill, rather than as a
major focus of concentration.
Many students will have other interest than those to the international affairs or even
international trade. Some language teachers will have to abandon the authoritarian
approach of designing program to meet the students needs, as they see them in

favor of discovering first how the students perceive their own needs and then
considering what contributions they can make, as teachers and course designers
to meeting these deeds. We need to know what the students necessities.
Perceptive interpretation of the articulated and implicit massages of students,
parents and community representatives can then be expressed in experimental
course design. The response of students to experimental courses will reveal clearly
enough whether needs are being met and enable them to express more concretely
what they feel is still missing. What all of these motivations require, if the students
are to feel their need are fulfilled, is a solid, flexible basic course on which the
student can become locket into an approach which subsequent language
experience cause them to realize they do not really want.
After the basic course, there should be choice, that is , courses with different
orientations that provide clear-cut options, even of with differing orientations that
provide clear-cut options, even if these options go against the teachers personal
predilections. Even in a one class situation options can be included test can be in
this one hopes.
A truly dismaying number of cognitive activities, or aspects of activities , has been
proposed as basic components to underpin task analysis and learning styles. One
learning style profiles are available, how can they be used to improve instructions?
There are two basic approaches to utilizing the information machine and
remediation. Machine means that instructions is individualized for each student in
such a way that the student hast the opportunity utilizing those cognitive skills in
which he or she is particularly strong.
The other way of the incorporating learning style information into instructions is
remediation, rather than tailor instructions to fit a students particular strengths, the
students is assigned special activities for those aspects of the learning task where
his or her skills are weak. The descriptions of learning problems which they provide
are, in fact, avouched in terms of general cognitive style variables such as field
dependence, impulsiveness, and convergent thinking. A detailed knowledge of

learning styles will, of course, be most valuable when it is possible to individualize

instructions heavily, by the use of strategy- intensive computerized instruction, but
even when such extensive individualizing is not practical it can still valuable to
know the average learning style profile for all the class.