Teaching And Learning Approaches Used In Own Area Of Specialism

1 Analyse the effectiveness of teaching and learning approaches used in own area of specialism in relation to meeting the individual needs of learners.

In this section I will analyse the effectiveness of teaching and learning approaches used in my own area of specialism (ESOL) in relation to meeting the individual needs of learners.

Teachers must incorporate a large “variety of learning approaches” into their lessons in order to cater towards the individual needs of their learners (Barron 2020c: Paragraph 1). My area of specialism is ESOL.

One of the approaches used in ESOL teaching and learning is the ‘student-centred approach’. This approach “encourages and enables students to be more engaged in and take more responsibility for their education”

Verbal communication is a good way of communicating with learners as it is “good for providing feedback as it is instant” (Barron 2020a: Paragraph 1). It is quick and easy to use to explain instructions and covey information to students. Furthermore, as my area of specialism is ESOL, verbal communication is a good way of improving students listening skills. However, using verbal communication in an ESOL classroom setting does have some limitations. Learners who have hearing issues may find it difficult to understand what the teacher is saying (Barron 2020a). In addition to this, “teachers must be careful when providing verbal feedback as both positive and negative feedback can embarrass students when they are with their peers” (Barron 2020a: Paragraph 1). Furthermore, ESOL teachers must avoid giving students tremendous amounts of information in a short amount of time as the information will be “difficult to absorb” (Barron 2020a: Paragraph 1). Teachers also need to ensure that they speak loudly and clearly, and they must ensure that they use a good pace when speaking as this is not learners first language. ESOL learners have different levels of understanding English, so teachers should speak to students according to their level. With my Entry 1 learners I try to use very simple language as their level of English is very low and they have a very limited

Initially I was going to give students a vocabulary worksheet and have them write the words next to the pictures. However, as I had quite a lot of vocabulary to cover I decided to incorporate different methods of teaching vocabulary into my lesson. First, I put some pictures on my PowerPoint presentation and elicited vocabulary from the students, I then used the reveal tool to show the word on the board and have students write the words down. Next I cut up some pictures, words and definitions and made them do a group matching task. I think this was an excellent way of encouraging collaborative learning amongst the students. I then gave them a matching worksheet at the end to complete individually to consolidate learning. I think these different approaches of individual and collaborative learning were excellent ways of meeting individual needs as they catered towards different leaning