PDF superior Factors that influence the English Language teaching-learning process in Ecuadorian private high schools 2013 - 2014

Richards & Rodgers (2001), mention that, Total Physical Response deals with physical movements and imperative listening. The study implies that for language production is necessary to teach through techniques like games, which involve motion activities that lead the learners to low the degree of stress, under an appropriate environment where the target language can be acquired. Besides, the study states that TPR has to do with the adequate use of imperatives to teach vocabulary and grammar structures. On the other hand, Brown (1994) implies, this method has been known as a psychomotor learning technique which is related to other thoughts, it means when children acquire their native language they learn it by listening to commands before they are able to speak. The study also mentions that this method is valuable only for beginners.

conclusion is that motivation is the main factor that affects the choice of the strategies, followed by experience in studying English, and gender respectively. Moreover, Kirkpatrick and Jianrattanapong (2012) conducted a research in Bangkok. The purpose of the study was to investigate factors contributing to English learning success of Thai students at the leading high schools in Bangkok. The instrument used for collecting data was a questionnaire. This questionnaire consisted of close-ended and open-ended questions using likert scale with 5 = strongly agree, 4 = agree, 3 = neutral, 2 = disagree, 1 = strongly disagree. The questionnaire included general views on: the English teachers, attitudes to English and culture, the use of learning strategies, outsi de class learning activities, students’ backgrou nd, and personality traits . The questionnaire also included respondent’s information such as personal information of gender, type of school, program, practice, skills, experience abroad, effects from the entrance examination, etc. Kirkpatrick and Jianrattanapong ’ conclusion is that the factors leading to success in learning English include teachers, attitudes toward English and its culture, activities outside the classroom, personality traits, and students’ background .

Lightbrown and Spada (2006) summarize the term learning : “it has been used to describe an individual’s natural, habitual, a nd preferred way of absorbing, processing and retaining new information and skills ” (p.59). One of the most popular learning styles is the “kinesthetic” which refers to learning through action. In order to take into account the different learning styles teachers must be flexible and Coleman (2005) consider this by saying that evidence shows that individuals perceive, analyze, organize, and recall information in different and stable ways. They go on and state that conflicting theoretical frameworks and classifications make applying the information practically difficult. As a result of these difficulties, teachers must be aware of the different students learning styles and be flexible in the classroom in order to accommodate these different learning styles. Once the students’ learning style; visual, auditory, tactile or kinesthetic are identified then the teacher can choose the best activities for their lessons.

Amy (2003) states that teachers are coordinators outside and inside the classrooms and at this point their main objective in the classroom instruction is to encourage the students to use the target language with native speakers outside the classroom. Additionally, time is very important in the learning process in order to ensure the students spend only the time needed in each task, in this way the time is not wasted; the teacher should bring an alarm clock to the class to give the students a time limit when they are working on tasks. Furthermore, feedback is very important in the learning process; its main purpose is to achieve the improvement and self- awareness. The teacher has a great responsibility because by providing continuous feedback students will be benefit; for example, they can evaluate their progress and success. There are different forms of feedback such as giving tutorials to the students, extra homework, projects and others.

In content-based classrooms, students are pointed toward matters of intrinsic concern with language taking on its appropriate role as a vehicle for accomplishing a set of content goals. By the same token, I would say that any curriculum content can be taught through tasks, and here I refer to the Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) which is known as a development of the Communicative Language Teaching. However, these approaches do not focus on form or function because they give more importance to process of learning over linguistic content. Nevertheless, East (2012) argued that Task Based Language Teaching combine inductive and deductive teaching because students are involved in comprehending, manipulating, producing or interacting in the target language, while their attention is focused on meaning, use and function.

some students learn fast and easily with games, pictures, films, and so on. These students are called concrete learners. While the analytical students prefer to learn studying grammar, reading newspapers, and studying English books, other students, as communicative learners, like to listen to native speakers, talk to friends, and watch television. Lastly, the authority-oriented prefer the teacher to explain everything. On the basis of the information cited above, in one observed class, the teacher considered the learning styles of the students since she showed her students some slides on Power Point through a projector as a visual and auditory aid, demonstrating the teacher‟s concern about student attention and motivation using something new,

when playing several games. Flashcards were not used in the observed classes neither; nevertheless, they are beneficial in the learning process since they provide a more attractive and colorful scene when teaching new vocabulary, students feel more attracted to them rather than black and white images drawn on the blackboard; they can be prepared by the teacher at his leisure according to the topic and can also be used in a variety of activities and games to reinforce knowledge. Magazine pictures may also be included in the class due to they are also valuable resources for teachers, they are easy to get, accessible to everyone and even cheap, they can also be used in a variety of individual and group work activities. For all of the reasons mentioned above, teachers should implement these resources into their classes as soon as possible.

Content-based instruction is also based on the theory that language proficiency derives from integrating the four language skills: reading, writing, speaking and listening. During a CBI lesson students for example read articles, communicate with each other, write about their findings, listen to others and take notes, thereby using all of the four language skills together. According to Nunan (2003), “this reflects what happens in the real world, where interactions involve multiple skills simultaneously”. Language proficiency involves both social and grammatical understanding; people need to be able to modify their language from formal to informal, oral to written depending on what is required in different situations. It is important that the content be interesting and relevant to the students (Nunan, 2003), because they will enjoy lessons more this way and become more motivated. Language is learned most effectively when it is used as a way to pass on information of interest to the students (Larsen-Freeman, 2000). While they learn about a certain issue in a specific language, they also learn practical use of the language. It is easier for language learners to acquire new vocabulary when there are contextual clues to help convey meaning (Larsen- Freeman, 2000). Experts agree that students learn a foreign language better when focusing on specific material instead of continually focusing on the structure of the language itself. However, it might be useful to do so from time to time, building on students' background knowledge of their first language (Larsen-Freeman, 2000). The aim is for students to be able to use and understand the target language without needing to translate everything from, and into, their first language.

It could be said that nowadays teaching is focused on the communication and interaction as a main activity in the learning process and in its later phase, it appears the grammatical rules and translation exercises. First listening and speaking and then reading and writing take place. It is easy to understand this choice because young students prefer to interact with each other through activities such as games and conversations even though some of them are not prepared to hold a conversation. Both enthusiasm and energy of students should be used by teachers to connect them with the text to teach on any given day.

Language aptitude is a factor that may influence the teaching-learning process because as Brown (2007, p. 106) says, “Anecdotal eviden ce would suggest that, for a variety of casual factors, some people are indeed able to learn languages faster and more efficiently than others”. Therefore, this author explains that historical research on language aptitude has suggested that eventual language learners need to demonstrate or posses certain kind of characteristics such as discriminating sounds, identifying spelling signs, internalizing meanings, etc. According to the author, aptitude tests applied by institutions are not quite effective and they tend to place students under the wrong categories. Instead, it is recommendable to monitor students and identify the type of strategies and styles they show progress in language learning.

Finally, Richards and Rodgers (2005, p. 219, 220) describe the Content-Based Instruction as an approach “in which teaching is organized around the contents or information that students will acquire, rather than around a linguistic or other type of syll abus.” The authors make allusion to a statement given by Krahnke (1987: 65) who points that CBI presents unlimited occasions for teachers coordinate the interests and needs of students with interesting and meaningful contents; also CBI gives practical advantages for teachers and course designers. Therefore, the authors mention to Brinton (1989:2) who observes that CBI uses activities in class that are equipped to stimulate students to think and learn through the objective language, moreover the learners have to study and learn several skills which prepare them for academic activities.

Other very important factor in the quality of teaching is how the class is arranged because it influences the discipline. Classroom Space and Setting Arrangement is very important too. For instance, if students work alone convenient configuration could be Rows and Columns, so there will not be any distraction; in the same manner , the chairs in circle is also a good tactic to focus attention and it is very important that students can see the blackboard . All these factors are important in order to strengthen the learning activities and that the teacher may facility to control the group and give instructions directly.

whiteboard or magnetized boards. They use many types of rods; picture packs; the music tape / the CD player; and of course they have a huge variety of textbooks. This is considered by many professionals as the most obvious and most common form of material support for language instruction. But there are also audiovisual aids, videos on DVD format with documentaries on special topics, specific ESL instructional modules; there are others such as audio-visual aids; realia, that consist of objects-food items, cosmetics, tools, and other materials that always add some significant reality to the classroom. Computer assisted language learning (CALL): Commercial textbook come with audio-visual and CD ROM plus the computer equipment existing in all institutions are valuable resources for language classrooms, among others. To sum up there are a lot of materials teachers can use in classes. However, the most important thing about resources is that how effectively teachers are able to use them to increase students’ abilities in EFL.

Feedback is often given soon after the teacher finishes their class. It can be oral or written, individual or a form of a group discussion. It is used to recognize the students’ strengths and weakness and is open to suggestions for any improvement. Most teachers write down points that they want to refer to later; some like to use charts or other forms of categorization to help them do this. For example, the teacher should give an assessment of an activity, ask the students to explain what they found easiest or most difficult, or what they can remember about the problem and then whether they can put it right. Teachers can also write correct and incorrect words, phrases or sentences on the board and ask the students to decide which is which.

corresponds to the 87% the teachers, considered that the appropriate number to teach English is 16 – 25, because it is easier to work, they can have more control of the class, English language can be taught more personal, and the teacher can realize the progress of the student, they can see students´ needs and give them all the necessary feedback to improve knowledge. In the same way, Davies & Pearse (2011) state that the basic principles of teaching English are the same for groups of fourteen, forty, fifty, or sixty learners. But it is obviously more difficult to achieve good results in very large groups. Some of the problems can be observed in communication since the learner may not be able to see or hear the teacher well, and the teacher may want to see or hear all the learners well. Besides, it is very hard to know all the learners and their names, the learners do not make individual practice, there are too many pairs or groups to monitor, it would become very difficult to give learners individual feedback on written work.

On the other hand, Harmer, J. (1998) mentioned that there are many forms of arranging the class, these are: circles, separate tables, orderly row, and groupings. The first, circles, a circle of desks puts every student in the front row. Second, orderly row imply teachers working with the whole class. Some activities are especially designed to this kind of organization: explaining a grammar point, watching a video, using the board, demonstrating text organization on an overhead transparency which shows a paragraph, for example. It is also useful when students are involved in certain kinds of language practice. If all the students are focused on a task, the whole class gets the same messages. Third, grouping mean putting desks in small groups so that students face each other. This is ideal for group activities. Groups can be dynamic, changing based on the activity, or constant. Form groups carefully by mixing students with differing strengths and weaknesses, genders and skill levels. It is occasionally beneficial to form skill groups with students of similar abilities.

Another study conducted by Alsayed (2003) aimed to examine some factors and determine their correlation with success in second language learning: attitude, instrumental and intrinsic motivation, social background, early first language acquisition and early exposure to the second language. Researchers picked up 50 subjects from the British Council Records on the basis of their IELTS test scores. 25 subjects have gotten mark seven out of nine or above on the exam, and 25 have gotten five and below in the IELTS during the years 2000/2001. The main research tool in the present study was a semi- structured interview that was held with each participant. The interviews lasted almost 10 minutes each. To prevent any inhibition, the researcher took notes and interviewees were encouraged to talk spontaneously. Results were analyzed using statistics to find out the correlation between each variable and the four skills (reading, writing, listening and speaking).

The last study was created by Tong (2010). The objective of the study was to identify when junior secondary students are reticent and the why? Also, it searched the situations when students are participatory and the reasons, as well. The researcher adopted a longitudinal qualitative research. The participants were Hong Kong junior secondary English students whose attitudes were observed and recorder at different points of time. Also, they were interviewed and were part in conversations in order to infer their attitudes and thinking. The conclusions were that students at the beginning seemed to be passive and quiet due to the factors such as lack of confidence. However, they started being interested in improving their listening and speaking skills. Thus, the researcher found out that the student behavior is influenced by different factors.

Abu-Rabia (1996) conducted other a research to determine how students’ attitudes and cultural backgrounds affect their reading comprehension of familiar and unfamiliar information in their first and second language. Eighty three students from two intermediate schools in southern Israel participated in the study. Most of the participants in both schools were from families of low socioeconomic status, and they studied English 5 hours a week. The method used was quantitative. Data was collected through reading tests and questionnaires. During the research process, the participants completed a 15-rain pretest about the stories they were to read in the investigation. A week after the pretest, the participants were administered a 20-rain questionnaire to assess their attitudes toward learning English. The reading tests were administered 2 days later; each group of participants received one story a day for 3 days.

Despite the fact that some methodologies suggest the translation as a strategy to teach something students find difficult to understand, teachers must speak most of the time English. If students don`t understand a word they must find the way to teach them, maybe using pictures, or mime, or real objects, or an English-English dictionary, but never translating, in this way students learn the language in a better way. As Brown (2000) reports about the Total Physical Response method, children acquire their mother tongue listening to the people around them and speaking when ready, that is why students should be taught in the target language.