Reflecting on teaching at Secondary Level….

    Teaching teenagers is probably one of the greatest and most exciting challengues we will have to face as trainee teachers looking forward to becoming professional English teachers. Throughout adolescence stage, students experienced many changes at different levels - physical, cognitive, social,etc - so, to help our students to acquire a professional success in learning a second language and make their experience memorable, we should be aware of how teenagers behave to create a positive, safe and caring environment to promote learning and development.

  We have discussed many topics about teenagers in Didactics III that will be shown in the paragraphs below. However, it is worth to mention that in every classroom- and every student within it- has different needs and interests, or different reasons to attend to English lessons. Therefore, and to help students during their learning process effectively, it is necessary to getting to know them and understand what their interests and needs are in order to build activities which help them to achieve a proficiency level of English, by working on engaging activities for them.

   Following Scrivener´s (2011) philosophy, within a class, teachers may find students that differ not only on their level of English but also in their preferences on learning styles and multiple intelligences (Gardner,1983). In this sense, understanding and accepting such diversity presented inside the classroom are vital if we want to create a solid relationship with our trainees in which trust, mutual respect and confidence are presented as fundamental pillars inside every class.

  A good way to answer to individual´s needs is to adapt our teaching practice in favour of different teaching-learning styles, also by designing different tasks within each of the stages in a lesson to cover all students´ needs and interests. Another important aim teachers should bear in mind is to find the way to maintain students´ motivation during each activity within the lesson.

   Knowing about our students´ interests would certainly help us to adapt the contents and tasks we should teach with the interests / needs our students have. In this sense, students would be more engaged throughout the lesson as well as throughout their learning process.

  According to McDonough (2007), students should also be challenged. As they achieve success in their learning process, students need to be exposed to activities that demand more effort from them, but which are also capable to be performed by them according to their language level. Succeeding at different activities is really important as this is the key to keep the learners motivated to continue learning. Moreover, the use of varying and personalizing resources according to students´ interests and needs that are relevant to their daily lives are important factors that teacher have to bear in mind while designing the lesson tasks. Conversely, according to McDonough, the teacher´s role inside the classroom is to act as a knowledge facilitator, by “providing a supportive and challenging learning environment, but also facilitating the development of the learners’ own motivational thinking”.

   Difficulty as the lesson progresses can be increased by adopting an approach that follows Bloom´s taxonomy. This approach suggest that teachers should set skills that demand students to use, first their lower order thinking skills (such as understanding, remembering, etc), and then more complex tasks that demand students to use their higher order skills (such as evaluating, judging, creating, etc).

   Considering the skills discussed within the approach mentioned, I would certainly say that this approach seems beneficial not only for English teaching, but also to general teaching fields. Last but not less important, autonomy is another aspect we can help our students to develop. According to Smith (2008), learner´s autonomy is the ability to take some control over one´s learning. This is not a skill that live with us since we are babies, nor is every student able to do so. Therefore, the role of the teacher is to develop his/her students´ autonomy by involving them in tasks in which they become active participants of the learning process and inviting them to have voice to share their perspectives regarding a specific topic.

    When teachers delegate autonomy to their students, they are helping them to foster their confidence, responsibility, also their development of critical and thinking skills. One interesting strategy that can be used to promote student´s motivation and autonomy is involving students into their own and / or their peers´ work assessment. (Maximising learning in large classes, British Council, 2006). Self-evaluation (which should follow a previously agreed criteria) and peer feedback allow students not only to get involved within the tasks presented in the class but also to develop the Target Language, as they are encouraged to analyze others’ productions and produce their own samples to provide their feedback.

   To conclude, there are many factors that we need to consider when we are preparing a lesson for teenagers. To help our students with better opportunities to learn English and develop their higher order skills effectively, we need to be ready to adapt our teaching practice to their needs and interests. By doing this, we would be able to create a sabe classroom environment in which our students could feel safe, challenged and motivated.

REFERENCES:

•     Banegas, D. (2020) – Didáctica Específica para el nivel Secundario – Units 1-4.
•     Maximising Learning in large classes (2007) – British Council.
•     McDonough, S (2007) - ELT Journal Volume 61/4 – Oxford University Press.
•   Scrivener, J. (2011). Learning teaching: The essential guide to English language teaching (3rd ed.).
•     Smith, R. (2008) - E LT Journal Volume 62/4 – Oxford University Press.