Teaching a Language: Goals

Reflections

When the language learning year starts I always make my students reflect on the reasons why they are learning English, devise goals and make commitments to fulfill those goals. This year, I'm planning to use Wallwisher to carry out these tasks as I expect the novelty would be highly encouraging for my students.

Students' and Teachers' Goals

Students' goals can be classified into short-term ones such as learning the structures and the vocabulary that are part of their curriculum and into long-term ones like being able to comunícate fluently or to get a better job.

We, teachers, also set short-term and long-term goals. Among my short terms goals, I can mention to give students the tools to make them develop reading, speaking, listening and writing strategies. Many times, teachers’ long term goals are achieved at the end of the learning year when students have their final exams and are assessed at the language school or by international examination boards. However, our major goal, the ultimate goal, as teachers should be to help our students become independent learners. Learning a language is a never-ending process and once a student reaches a high level, it is necessary for them to continue in contact with the language. Technology is a practical tool to continue practising the language outside the classroom and so I have created a Wiki space which I share with all the students I have at present and also with the students I have had for them to go on with their learning process. My Wiki space is: Linguistic Consultancy .Thanks to Twitter (I’m @Mtranslator) and to my PLN I can upload interesting material into this Wiki space.

Thanks!

I would like to thank all the members of my PLN for sharing insightful links and for their support. A special thanks to Shelly Terrell, who also gave me the opportunity of contributing a post in her Teacher Reboot Camp. In this post I have written about the use of technology in education in my country: To Use Edtech or Not: That is the Question.