CREATING A LANGUAGE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT FOR ADOLESCENT LEARNERS
Introduce language concepts by making meaningful connections to learners’ lives.
Whenever possible, introduce new concepts through a variety of prompts, resources, and
activities that connect lesson topics and skills with learners’ multifaceted lives. All learners
have some personal knowledge to relate to what is being taught.
Use movement and peer interactions. Increase each individual learner’s focus on learning
with a variety of interactions. Consider what you are observing about trends in learner
engagement and your learners’ preferred learning styles.
Take time to identify and then articulate to learners the “whys” for language learning in
each of the major concepts and skills you will need to teach. Despite the emphasis on
assessment and testing, most adolescents are not genuinely impressed by hearing they are
required to learn certain things. It is your responsibility to help learners understand how
smaller bits of information connect to larger, enduring subject matter concepts, essential
questions and applications, and how this information is connected to their lives.
View your classroom as a place to establish a different community of peers. Consider how
your language lessons and the resources you use encourage all your learners in some way or
the other to view themselves as readers or seekers of information. Uplifting or thought-
provoking pictures on your walls depicting people from the same sociocultural backgrounds
as your learners help to make them feel connected to the learning environment.
Respond and/or give corrective feedback to learner work as soon as possible. Provide and
carefully work through components of rubrics and expectations linked to major assignments,
and perhaps even expectations for behaviour and productive participation. Engage learners
in assessing their current strengths and learning needs related to these productive
behaviours.
BELIEFS AND THOUGHTS ABOUT WHAT IS IMPORTANT IN TEACHING AND LEARNING HOME
LANGUAGE IN ADOLESCENT LEARNERS.
When I think about my role as a teacher, the one thing that I constantly have focused on is the
relationships that I have built with my learners. I enjoy having conversations with them on subjects
and issues that are important to them, and learn how they are feeling about and experiencing the
world and the material that we are studying in class. I want my own classroom to be less of a class
and more of a community, where we are all sharing ideas and communicating and learning from one
another at the same time.
I believe that a good relationship between a teacher and learners is built on a strong foundation of
mutual understanding, respect, and trust. In order to effectively assess learner’s wants and needs,
the teacher must first understand her students and where they’re coming from. The teacher must be
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