Homework Help: English

Posted by Henry2 on Wednesday, October 12, 2011 at 12:23pm.

Thank you very much. However, my first- and second-year students have both a course and an exercise book (with plenty of activities) to complete.
The lazy and unmotivated students are those from the fourth and fifth year. They are expected to learn literature. They should be able to write three ten-line paragraphs about specific literature topics (using the correct vocabulary and a wide variety of sentence connectors). They'll be tested on literary topics (orally), too.
Howver, they refuse to memorize either the vocabulary or the phrases (collocations) and if I ask them to repeat them, they reply that repetition is useless and mechanical.
Don't you think that repetition is essential when studying a foreign language????

English - Writeacher, Wednesday, October 12, 2011 at 1:00pm
Absolutely essential, yes.

If they flat out refuse, I don't know what you can do about that, but if you engage them with songs, puzzles, podcasts, videos, etc., everything should work better.

Even though there are people who have moved away from this idea (below), I still believe it is at work in human beings everywhere. Generally, I have been taught that most humans learn in predominantly one of three ways:

~ visual learners

~ auditory learners

~ kinesthetic learners

If you Google each one of those terms, you'll find lots of additional ways to engage all learners. I have been told that about 73% of people are visual learners; another 15% are auditory learners; and about 12% are kinesthetic learners. If you are teaching mostly by visual means (books, papers, etc.), you will miss about 27% of your students, and that's enough to drive a teacher nuts!

http://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1GGGE_enUS379US379&gcx=c&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=visual+learners

http://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1GGGE_enUS379US379&gcx=c&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=auditory+learners

http://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1GGGE_enUS379US379&aq=f&gcx=c&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=kinesthetic+learners

Good teachers MUST teach to all students.
English - SraJMcGin, Wednesday, October 12, 2011 at 2:34pm
Aha! Writeteacher and I think alike! :)

In my Level IV and V classes they quickly learned that the mistakes they made came from Level I or II. They need a solid base or "it's like building a wall." If the foundation is not strong, the wall falls down! So we did a lot of review, just because it WAS so important!

Sra

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