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13THE INFLUENCE OF LEARNER CHARACTERISTICS ON LEARNING
NEW LANGUAGE
Kipchakova Sanobar
teacher of Samarkand institute of economics and service
Annotation. This article discusses the influence of learner characteristics on learning new language and provides some tips for improving the educational process. Also, it describes the effectiveness of language learning styles and strategies for supporting the improvement of English classes.
Key words. Learning styles, learning strategy, visual, auditory, individual, concentrate, process, cognitive styles, mistakes, methods, motivation, successful learning style.
What are learner characteristics?
Learner characteristics include a learner's motivation, learning style, learning strategies, maturity and past language learning experience. They are factors which influence learners' attitude to learning a language, how they learn it. how they respond to different teaching styles and approaches in the classroom, and how successful they are at learning a language. How might your motivation, past learning experience and age influence how you learn a new language?
Learning styles. Learning styles are the ways in which a learner naturally prefers to take in, process and remember information and skills. Our learning style influences how we like to learn and how we learn best. Experiences have suggested several different ways of classifying learning styles. They relate to the physical sense we prefer to use to learn, our way of interacting with other people and our style of thinking.
Here are some commonly mentioned learning styles:
S Visual: the learner learns best through watching and looking;
S Auditory: the learner learns best through listening and hearing;
S Kinaesthetic: the learner learns best through being physical, while moving or touching things;
S Group: the learner learns best through working with others;
S Individual: the learner learns best through working alone;
S Reflective: the learner learns best when given time to consider choice;
S Analytic: the learner learns best when given the opportunity to analyse things;
S Autonomous: the learner likes to decide what he/she learn and how to learn.
You can see from these descriptions how learners with different learning styles learn in different ways, and need to be taught in different ways. We must remember, though, that learners may not fall exactly into any one category of learning style as they may have several styles. It's also true that different cultures may use some learning styles more than others and learners may change or develop their learning styles.
Learning strategies. Learning strategies are the ways that learners choose and use to learn language. They include ways to help themselves identify what they need to learn, process, remember, and use new language. Using the right strategy at the right time can help us learn the language better, and help to make us more able to learn without depending on the teacher, for example to become more independent or autonomous learners.
Some examples of learning strategies are:
❖ repeating new words in your head until you remember them.
❖ experimenting / taking risks by using just-learnt language in conversations.
❖ asking the teacher or others to give you feedback on your language use.
❖ deciding to use the foreign language as much as possible.
❖ recording yourself speaking, then judging and correcting your pronunciation.
❖ asking a speaker to repeat what he/she has said.
❖ thinking about how to memorise (remember) all the new words you meet in each lesson.
❖ deciding to write each new vocabulary item on a separate card and display it.
❖ paraphrasing.
Different learners use different strategies. Experts think that the strategies that learners use most successfully depend on their character and learning style. This means there are no best strategies. But research shows that using strategies definitely makes learning more successful and that learners can be trained to use strategies.
Maturity: Maturity involves becoming grown up physically, mentally and emotionally. Children, teenagers and adults have different levels of maturity, which means they learn in different ways. Here are some of the main differences in maturity that influence language learning.
❖ Learning through experience and doing
❖ Beginning to learn in abstract ways, for example through thinking, as well as experiencing
❖ Learners are not very able to control and plan their own behaviour. Beginning to control and plan their own behaviour
❖ Usually able to control and plan their own behaviour
❖ Are not afraid of making mistakes or taking risks
❖ May worry about what others think of them
❖ May not be so willing to make mistakes or take risks
❖ Are not aware of themselves and/or their actions
❖ Sometimes uncomfortably aware of themselves and/or their actions
❖ Aware of themselves and/or their actions
❖ Can pay attention to form and meaning in language.
❖ Have limited experience of life.
❖ Beginning to increase their experience of life.
❖ Developing cognitive skills. Cognitive skills generally believed to be developed at around age 15.
Motivation to learn language. Motivation varies considerably and may not be fixed or may be absent. Motivation often conscious and controlled. Of course, every learner is different, so any one learner may not fit exactly into these descriptions. The descriptions are generalizations that show likely, but not fixed, characteristics. But from looking at these differences we can see that each age group generally needs to be taught in different ways.
Past language learning experience. Teenage and adult learners may have learnt English before. They may be used to learning in a particular way and have definite ideas about how to learn best. For example, an adult may have learnt English at school through learning lots of grammar and may have been successful in learning this way. If he then finds himself in a class where the teaching is done only through communicative activities (i.c. activities where learners communicate with each other in speaking or writing), he may feel he is not learning. But, he may, of course, prefer it. Another adult may have learnt by using translation at school and then come to a class in which translation is never used. He may or may not like this change. Teachers of adults (and sometimes teachers of teenagers) need to be aware of how their learners have learnt previously and how they want to learn now. The learners may welcome a change in method, but they may want to learn in the same way as they learnt before.
Other learner characteristics which can vary from learner to learner are their level of language, their motivation (see Unit 9), and their general personality. Are they, for example, shy, outgoing, patient, curious, sensitive, etc.?
All these qualities will affect how and how much each learner engages in different kinds of activities in the classroom.
Tips for improving language teaching.
• It can be useful for teachers to become aware of their own learning styles, past learning experience and learning strategies, and to compare these with how they teach. Teachers sometimes teach in the same style in which they themselves like to learn. This is unlikely to be the same style as all their learners prefer.
• Some learner characteristics, such as past language learning experience and learning strategies, are more relevant to teaching teenagers and adults than to teaching children.
• We can find out what our learners' characteristics are by e.g. asking them, observing them, giving them questionnaires, asking at the end of a lesson whether they liked the activities done in class and why, and in what different ways they might like to work.
• We can train learners to become aware of and use different learning strategies. This is part of learner training. We can, for example, give learners a list of strategies for remembering words and ask them which they prefer and why; or we can ask them how they arrived at a solution to a problem to raise their awareness of useful learning strategies.
• Teachers may need to discuss their methods with learners who are unhappy with new methods. They may need to introduce the new methods gradually and
explain the reasons for them. This is also part of learner training, eg. helping learners adapt their own ways of learning. Teachers may also need to change their teaching to make the learners more comfortable and confident in their learning, if they see that learners can't or won't change their learning style.
• Teachers can build into their lessons activities which match different learning styles, eg. a listening activity followed by a reading activity followed by group work followed by a m i n g l e (an activity which involves learners walking round the class talking to other students), followed by an exercise.
• When teachers consider their learners' maturity it will strongly influence their lesson planning and what they do in the classroom, e.g. how many activities they do in a lesson, the length of activities, how abstract the activities are, how much the activities involve experiencing and doing, how much to focus on meaning rather than form, what features of motivation to work with, how much they ask students to talk in front of others.
• It is not possible for the teacher to match the learner characteristics of each learner all the time. Across a number of lessons teachers can try to vary how they teach so that they can match the learner characteristics of a range of learners.
References
1. http://www.eltforum. com
2. http://www.onestopenglish.com
3. http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk
4. Anna Brusser. Methodical recommendations and practical tasks for young teachers. Moscow 2008.
5. Mary Spratt, Alan Pulverness, Melanie Williams "English for speakers of other languages"
6. B. F. Skinner, Using New Technologies in the Classroom. 1997.
7. Clifford, George P. "Issues and trends leading us into the twenty-first century." 1994.
8. Farrington, Gregory S. New Technologies and the Future of Undergraduate Education. 1999.
9. David Myers. Social Psychology. 5th int. edition. St. Petersburg - 2000.
10. Маттиев И. Б. Культура здорового образа жизни: взгляды прошлых цивилизаций (на примере Узбекистана) //Педагогика: традиции и инновации. -2011. - С. 49-51.
