Students Pursuing Mastery Goals vs Those Pursuing Performance Goals

There is a hypothesis that students pursuing mastery goals favor instructors who stimulate and challenge them intellectually, whereas those pursuing performance goals favor instructors who present material clearly and provide clear cues about how to succeed. Senko, Belmonte and Yakhkind (2012) tested this hypothesis and found that students’ achievement goals corresponded to their views about the most essential instructor qualities. Mastery goals predicted greater demand for professors who intellectually challenged students and possessed topic expertise, whereas performance goals predicted high demand for professors who presented material clearly and provided cues about how to succeed in the course.

Traditional vs Learning-Style Instructional Methods

The first research that reported the effectiveness of the multisensory Instructional Packages (MIP) as compared with traditional instruction methods in a study was done by Farkas (2003) who examined the effects of teaching through traditional versus learning-style instructional methods on students' achievement. The researcher suggested that students, who received lessons with multisensory instructional methods, evidenced greater achievement gains than did students who received the same content via a traditional approach.

Peer checking as part of feedback

One method that I learned and used to apply when I was teaching in Bangkok and Abu Dhabi is peer checking. Peer checking is part of feedback that should take place before the teacher checks individual learners’ work. This method lets students have the opportunity to learn from each other, cooperate in one activity, urge them to brainstorm and exchange ideas to solve problem. It also relieves the teacher dominance in the classroom and helps students feel more active and independent. However, the teacher still has a big role during peer checking which is monitoring. The teacher should observe what learners do and help them when possible. Then eventually the teacher can give a whole-class feedback so that all of learners know the best answers. This way the instructions would take three directions: first, from the teacher to the students, this is when he gives them the questions and the instructions. Second, from a student to another, while peer checking. Third, from the students to the teacher when they give him the answers. There could also be a fourth direction from the teacher to all students if he/she corrects or modifies students’ answers. Peer checking increases the number of directions between the teacher and the students and among learners themselves; thus it boosts classroom interaction and communication. 

Matching instructors' teaching styles with students' learning styles

One approach that has been highly considered by teachers, administrators and researchers is matching instructors’ teaching styles with student’s learning styles. Charkins, O'Toole, and Wetzel (1985) studied approximately six hundred students and twenty teachers at Purdue University in the spring of 1982 in order to investigate link between teaching styles and learning styles and, if so, to determine the effect of that link on student learning on one hand and how it also affects learners’ attitude from the other. In their study, they suggested several major conclusions concerning course outputs and the divergence between learning style and teaching style. The larger the divergence between teaching style and learning style, the lower the student's gain in achievement. They also postulated that that the greater the divergence between teaching style and learning style, the less positive the student's attitude toward what the learners were studying. 

ICQs?

In addition to comprehension checking questions, CCQs, that a teacher uses to check whether learners understood what he/she said, a teacher can also use instruction checking questions, ICQs, to check if students understood instruction so that they do not ask instruction questions when they do the task. ICQs are typically three short questions: the first is a wh-word question such as what will you do? Or how will you do it? Or it could even be how much time do you have? The second is a yes/no question whose answer is “no” such as will you work alone? Or will you meet only one person? Then the third question whose answer should be "yes" could be will you mingle and meet different classmates? or Will you take notes while talking to peers?

Using ICQs, on one hand, helps to reduce the confusion that learners have about what to do with the task at hand and decreases the number of questions that some learners may ask during the task which distract other learners. ICQs, on the other hand, help the teacher better monitor the learners while they are doing the activity. 

Multiple Intelligences

One of the most important issues, which language teachers should keep in mind when teaching, is multiple intelligences which in turn refers to the different learning styles of language learners. Therefore, when teaching, language instructors should use different teaching styles to address different personalities that could be intrapersonal, interpersonal, kinesthetic, aural or tactile. Using all intelligences at a time is something ideal, but the more intelligences the instructor can address, the more different personalities can learn.    

Suggestopedia

Suggestopedia one of the teaching methods developed by the Bulgarian psychotherapist Georgi Lozanov in the 1970s. It is used in different fields, but mostly in the field of foreign language learning. Lozanov has claimed that by using this method students can learn a language approximately three to five times as quickly as through conventional teaching methods.

Suggestopedia has been called a pseudoscience. It strongly depends on the trust that students develop towards the method by simply believing that it works.

However, as the method improved, it has focused more on “desuggestive learning” and now is often called “desuggestopedia.” Suggestopedia is a portmanteau of the words “suggestion” and “pedagogy". A common misconception is to link "suggestion" to "hypnosis". 

Learning Styles and Performance in Second Language Tasks

Learning Styles and Performance in Second Language Tasks

       Andreou (2008) examined associations between students’ learning styles and their academic discipline (science vs. arts) in connection with performance on different second language (L2) verbal fluency tasks, English phonological, syntactic, and semantic tasks.

       The results of his study were the following: First, discipline differences, Arts students displayed a tendency to emphasize a more divergent and assimilative learning preference than science students, who displayed a preference for convergent learning style and had systematically lower scores on phonology and semantics. Second, gender differences, males had a systematically more convergent learning style than females. This study has many implications; first, it suggests that L2 teachers should strive for a balanced teaching style that does not excessively favor any one learning style; rather, one that tries to accommodate multiple learning styles. Second, performance on syntax can be predicted by the use of learning preferences that favor active experimentation and concrete experience such as problem-solving activities and practical experimentation. Third, L2 teachers should be more willing to involve learners in planning lessons and tasks and give them more control over their own learning.

i + 1

Input hypothesis is one of the most well known theories developed by Krashen. He simply stated that L2s are acquired by understanding messages or by receiving comprehensible input (Krashen, 1985). He defined comprehensible input as a bit of language that is read or heard and that is slightly ahead of a learner’s current state of grammatical knowledge. He referred to this current state of knowledge as i and the next stage as i + 1. This principle is very important when it comes to teaching a second language. Teachers should keep in mind that the target language that they want their students to learn should be slightly ahead of the student’s current knowledge. In other words, what teachers want students to learn should not be much difficult than what they already know or what they have learned.

Learning Styles

        With respect to the relationship between learning styles and strategy preferences, motivation, personality type, academic discipline, and learning environment research has explored several hypotheses. First, when comparing more and less effective learners, what was found is that there were differences between the overall learning style of more effective and less effective learners; that is, the dominant style of the more effective language learners was communicative whereas that of the less effective language learners was authority-oriented. Second, learners with different perceptual learning style preferences demonstrated different lexical inferencing ability; learners with certain perceptual learning style preferences benefited more from the explicit instruction. Third, with respect to academic discipline, Art students displayed a tendency to emphasize a more divergent and assimilative learning preference than science students, who displayed a preference for convergent learning style and had systematically lower scores on phonology and semantics. Fourth, as for the learning environment, Blumberg and Auld (2010) found that 73% of learners preferred to take traditional learning courses, while only 25% preferred hybrid and 2% preferred online courses. Fifth, there were significant relationships between language learning strategy and the introverted/extroverted personality type; extroverted students used compensation, cognitive, memory, affective, and social strategies more than did introverted students

           A successful teacher functions a variety of teaching styles and strategies when teaching. This was not always the case when I learned English as a foreign language. Teachers were traditional and tended to feed the learners with forms and structures rather than eliciting the target language. The teaching methods also were conventional as teachers preferred talking almost all the time. This approach diminished the student’s talking time compared to the teacher’s talking time. The curricula, in turn, focused more on the structure than on conversation and speaking tasks; the textbooks never had an audio CD. That traditional teaching environment did not help me learn the language effectively because I was an audio and a visual learner. I could have learned more effectively and successfully through conversational interactions and watching visual target language than from a textbook. However, I was intrinsically motivated and I knew very well that the classroom should not be the only means of learning the language. Therefore, I tried learning the language through a diversity of resources, especially these that suit my learning style such as reading books in the target language, watching movies and listening to the news. I managed to learn the language as a result of motivation and attitude.  It is vital that the teachers use a diversity of teaching styles so that learners with different learning styles and strategies have the opportunity to learn more effectively.