Optimizing English Language Acquisition: Learner Focus

Posted on Jul 30, 2025 in Other civil servant exams

The Process of Foreign Language Teaching and Learning

This essay aims to study the use of learner-centered teaching and learning. To do so, the first part will concentrate on the definition, reasons, advantages, psychological principles, methodology, and evaluation of the learner-centered curriculum. The second part will examine motivations and attitudes towards English and its applications. Finally, I will compile the main conclusions and the bibliography used to develop this topic.

As far as foreign language learning is concerned, the legal framework includes the Organic Law 2/2006 of Education, 3^rd May, modified by the Organic Law for the Improvement in Educational Quality, 8/2013, 9^th December. One of the most relevant aspects of the Organic Law for the Improvement in Educational Quality is related to Order ECD/65/2015, 21^st of January, which establishes the relation among key competences, contents, and evaluation criteria in Primary Education. On the other hand, the Royal Decree 126/2014, 28^th of February, establishes the Minimum Teaching Requirement for Primary Education and states in Article 7, “to acquire basic communicative competence, in at least, one foreign language to enable expression and comprehension of simple messages and survive in everyday situations.” In addition, Order EDU/519/2014, 17^th of June, modified by Order EDU 278/2016, 8^th of April, establishes the minimum contents for Primary Education in the Autonomous Community of Castilla y Leon.

1. The Learner-Centered Approach in Foreign Language Teaching

The development of learner-centeredness is a move away from the Behaviorist Approach to language learning. Language learning is a process that involves active mental processes. It is a creative process because it generates completely novel sentences. Moreover, language learning is a meaningful process, as it connects new knowledge to knowledge that learners have acquired previously. And it is an active process because learners also have an active role in the process of learning. Therefore, the teacher must help students to learn how to learn. When learning is a strategic process, the teacher must lead pupils to a conscious development of their own learning strategies, so that they become autonomous learners. All these factors should be centered on the students’ needs and interests.

1.1. Applications of Learner-Centered Teaching

Teachers must show their students how to learn using the following techniques:

Syllabus Design: Involve students in decisions on their study program. Negotiation allows learners to personalize the study program based on their experience.
Pair and Group Work: Can cater for fluency and communicative practice. These groupings encourage student cooperation and learning autonomy. For these groupings to be effective, the specific aims of the activity must be clear, defined, and discussed with the learners.
Language Awareness: Aims at developing students’ sensibility towards language and learning, allowing students to understand the learning goals.
Project Work: A useful activity for integrating skills. Projects involve learning strategies, allowing students to use the target language purposefully and in context, so students assume responsibility for their own learning.
Learning Strategies: Teachers should encourage students to develop these. This includes teaching them to organize books, training in using reference books, encouraging them to use English outside the classroom, and giving them management responsibilities in class.
Differentiated Tasks: When different students work on different tasks, the advantages include increased learner autonomy and a heightened sense of responsibility. It caters for individual needs and interests, and the teacher can help weaker students while others are working on their own.
Self-Assessment: Refers to the students’ ability to monitor their linguistic and communicative skills, which arises out of their awareness of language and of their learning goals. Students can develop this through a diary.

2. Identifying Motivation and Attitude Towards English

The identification of learners’ variables will influence teachers’ planning decisions. There are many variables affecting second language learning.

2.1. Variables Affecting Second Language Learning

These variables include age, aptitude, learning style, attitudes, motivation, personality, and the learner’s mother tongue level. For example, children are better at learning a second language than adults because of their spontaneity. The aptitude variable will make teachers plan different teaching for learners with different types of aptitude and respect children’s learning rhythms.

On the other hand, people learn in different ways, since they have different personalities, preferences, and abilities. So the teacher should cater for different types of learners by trying to introduce variety in terms of the approach to learning activities. In addition, students’ attitude towards learning, the class, the teacher, the language, or the target culture will affect motivation and, therefore, second language learning. The teacher should analyze the cause, showing more interest towards the learners and planning activities that are as interesting as possible. It is also essential that the teacher recognizes the variety and nature of motivations, so they will try to work with students’ motivation in materials and content. However, an outgoing and sociable person learns a second language better than a shy student, and this can affect methodological processes. Moreover, children who are more advanced in their mother tongue are better at their second language learning.

2.2. Motivation: Types and Importance

Motivation is the most important factor that affects students’ success in their learning. There are two types:

Extrinsic Motivation: Concerned with factors outside the classroom, such as identification with the target language or job prospects.
Intrinsic Motivation: Concerned with factors inside the classroom, such as physical conditions of the classroom, the teacher, success in learning tasks, and psychological characteristics of pupils.

2.3. Practical Applications to Motivate Students

Here are practical applications to motivate students and create positive attitudes:

Raise Awareness of the Importance of English: The teacher can plan activities which enable students to be aware of how much English there is around them, such as listing their favorite English singers or making posters with labels from English food packets.
Create an English Environment: It is important to create an English environment with areas such as a book corner with comics, books, or magazines, and make displays about famous English people’s pictures and maps of English-speaking countries.
Create a Pleasant Classroom Atmosphere: It is essential to create an interesting and friendly classroom atmosphere when teaching English. The teacher must encourage cooperation, tolerance, and mutual support for students to have a sense of group cohesion with activities like having a class contract which promotes a sense of class identity or providing opportunities to get to know each other through changing groups.
Make Lessons Enjoyable: Teachers should make lessons enjoyable by choosing topics close to the students’ interests. Activities must have the right level of challenge, be varied and familiar to the children, and raise students’ expectations. It is important to use varied materials (visual, auditory, and new technologies) because learners’ motivation rises significantly when using them.
Cope with Different Levels: The teacher has to cope not only with different levels of linguistic knowledge but also with different levels of aptitude, learning style, speed, and motivation. To ensure that all students are involved in the lesson, it is essential to know some useful practical techniques such as grading tasks, proposing different pupils work on different tasks, completing diaries, projects, or doing a role-play; dealing with different learning speeds (fast finishers can help other students or do extra activities while slower pupils should be given the opportunity to finish an activity); or encouraging pupils’ participation through the preparation of working groups.

3. Conclusion

Our current foreign language methodology has turned its attention not just to the teaching of the language but also to training students to be good learners. The main goal is to encourage students to take on more responsibility for their own learning. Therefore, teachers’ teaching must aim at developing learning strategies, considering learners as individuals with different learning styles, aptitudes, and motivation—factors that will affect the design of the program.

Bibliography

COUNCIL OF EUROPE. (2003). Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.
EMMER, E.T. & GERWELS, M.C. (2002). Cooperative Learning in elementary classrooms: Teaching practices and lesson characteristics. The Elementary School Journal.
GARDNER, H. (2001). Reformulated Intelligence. Multiple Intelligences in XXI Century. Buenos Aires: Paidós.
HARMER, J. (2008). The Practice of English Language Teaching (4th ed.). London: Longman.
NUNAN, D. (2010). Language Teaching Methodology. University Press.