Unit 13 Learner characteristics

       Nowadays, it's really important to know what the learner characteristics are. Those characteristics include a learner's motivation learning style, learning strategies, maturity and past language learning experience. All of them are factors which are going to influence of how successful they are at learning a language. First, Learning styles are the ways in which a learner naturally prefers to take in, process and skills. The learning style influence how we like to learn the language, this involves our way of interacting and learning new things. Here we have some of them: Visual ,auditory, kinaesthetic and autonomous. Second, Learning strategies, are the ways learners choose and use to learn language. If the strategy is correctly applied at the right time, it could help us to be more autonomous. For example, asking for feedback to the teacher and classmates, thinking about how to memorize and paraphrasing the meaning of the words. Third, maturity involves becoming grown up, physically, mentally and emotionally. There are different ways in which children, teenagers and adults prefer to learn. For example, children need to move, they have short attention span, teenagers begin to learn in abstract ways and adults, are able to keep more concentration and are able to control themselves. The strategies I could use in my classroom could be: to train learners to become aware of and use of learning strategies, I could use and activity which is called mingle and I could ask them about the methods that I use to teach a second language in order to introduce new methods and ask them for some ideas. I think this could raise their motivation to learn. As a conclusion, we need to be aware of the correct strategies we can us to make our students to want to learn the language according to their learning styles and characteristics.

For more information:

·        Learning Styles: Concepts and Evidence Pashler, H., McDaniel, M., Rohrer, D., & Bjork, R. (2009). Learning Styles: Concepts and Evidence. Psychological Science In The Public Interest, 9(3), 105-119. doi:10.1111/j.1539-6053.2009.01038.x

·        Center for Research on Learning Ku-crl.org,. (2014). Center for Research on Learning . Retrieved 3 December 2014, from http://www.ku-crl.org/sim/strategies.shtml