Friday, April 1, 2011

Survey of students opinions

I asked some friends and classmates to answer this survey, which has the following questions:
1. It is important for a teacher to dress nicely and look good
 2. it is important for a teacher to care a lot about his/her teaching
 3. a good teacher controls the class firmly
 4. A good teacher treats his/her students with fairness and respect
 5. a good teacher is warm and friendly towards students
 6. a good teacher knows and uses students names 
7. a good teacher is interested  in each student as a person
 8. a good teacher will change the lesson plan and do something else if that is what the students want 
9. a good teacher let students mark their own tests
 10. I like it when the students take over and run the lesson
 11. a good teacher makes sure students have fun in lesson
 12. a good teacher gets students to work hard
 13. I prefer working in groups or individually to having a teacher-dominated lesson
 14. I like it when the teacher asks me my opinion in class
 15. a good teacher always gives interesting lessons
 16. a good teacher use corporal pusnishment occasionally
 17. if we need help the good teacher finds time to talk outside the classroom


This questions are answered on a scale (very much agree, agree, undecided, disagree, totally disagree) like the next bar chart shows:


Some questions are based on different context, long time ago teachers used punishment to control their students (for example, question number 16). Basing on appearance, knowledge, student's treatment and confidence of the teacher (questions 1-7) most of the people answered 'very much agree' and 'agree' so is very important to leave a good impression in students and they respect their teacher because they realize that she/he has confidence in theirselves and they project that feeling. Questions 8-10 talk about students taking control of the class, it shouldn't be that way because they lose respect for teachers. The final questions are about methods, some of them are effective but there's one that everybody were disagree and it's correct because as a teacher in the future we have to use other methods to teach students.


Actually, I think teachers and students should have respect for each other and that is possible with effort and everyone has to earn it.

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Learner differences CHECK THIS ENTRY PLEASE

 A course in language teaching, Page 288
1. How important do you think motivation is for success in language learning,
compared to, for example, language aptitude?
 Is easier to understand motivation in terms of 'motivated' learner: one who is willing or even eager to invest effort in learning activities and to progress, language aptitude refers to the potential that a person has for learning languages. So knowing this concepts I can say that motivation is way more important than language aptitude because, for example, if someone has less language aptitude than motivation the only way to understand, study and practice a foreign language is motivation. In every difficult situation motivation becomes a very useful tool that comes of ourselves and that is, in my opinion, more satisfying than learning aptitude, being this something that we acquire.  


2. How important is people's past success in language learning for their motivation
to learn in the present and future?
In this case past succes in language learning would be a base I mean knowledge that we already know and handle. For future learning, that base give us confidence to keep learning and acquiring knowledge always.