Teaching and Learning a Second Language

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Teaching and learning a second language By Juliana Montilla Comenius, who has been consider as the founder of the language teaching study, has written a document (Didáctica magna) where he states why we should learn other languages, which ones, how, and he also talks about the use of material. For him, languages should be learned according to the needs, age, by levels, and in the practice. From the 17 century with Comenius we can follow the evolution in the conception of teaching and learning languages; new points of view, theories, researches, and so on have taken place through all this time. However, it seems some people ignore all this facts causing frustration in the learning process. Studies from different disciplines that are related to language acquisition such as: psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, pedagogy, etc. have contributed to understand it better. Being aware of all this advances is imperative because as Kumaravadivelu states, we as teachers must to have a holistic understanding of what happens in the classroom. It means systematically observe our teaching, interpret our classroom events, identify problems, find solutions, and see what works and what doesn’t. From Comenius, the teacher role has evolved. At that time the teacher was a person who could make somebody else learns what he already knows. Today, in addition, he must also be an observer and researcher of his classroom and depends on the method used could be seen as a guide, a learning model, director, adviser, etc. This vision of the teacher role is directly linked with the vision that has been conceived of the learner role; learners can be autonomous, to solve problems, to take the initiative in some cases and so on. And now that teaching is more and more centered in students, something that is very important is to take into account that not all of them learn in the same way.
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