Abstract:
English is part of the curriculum to be taught in most of the institutions in South America because of its application in different fields, personal and professional life for each citizen, necessity that has been growing up in the last decade and government and private establishments are permanently looking for the implementation of different changes in order to improve their quality to teach as well as to prepare their students to face different situations in the future which has become into a competition.
Among one of these changes there is the one that is focused on teaching some subjects in English like Social Studies but it is taught using international materials which are designed accordance with the country they are published, place that is totally different from the place where the students are learning the new subject.
It would be easier and more motivated if students can learn accordance their own environment in order to get up their enthusiasm and interest to learn because they can relate the contents they are learning with their real lives, inclusive situations they have already lived or experienced. The most rewarding issue is to engage students to continue learning the new language.
Keywords: institutions, students, environment, changes
Traditionally, English has been taught for decades in Latin American countries using conventional systems because many years ago people could not imagine how helpful it would be in the future. Some people learned English because they liked it, for travelling purposes, or because they had the opportunity to study abroad or simply because they enjoyed it but not because it was necessary for their jobs or studies.
The materials to teach English were imported from native speakers Nations as The United States or England and applied accordance with their contents, the information contained in the books was of the American and British society, which includes their lifestyles, food, sports, music, traditions and so on. Most of this information is completely new and different from the places where students were learning the language.
In the past, people learned only following the same structures and teachers taught with the same methods and techniques, consequently learners only acquired rules and applied processes following the same patterns. It was difficult to measure If they were able to apply the knowledge in their real life or in front of spontaneous situations.
Children started learning by repeating words orally and written, moreover the meanings were given in their native language. For teenagers it was a repetitive methodology and contents, they were able to structure short sentences and dialogues and for superior education English was not part of their studies, except if it was included in their curriculum.
Up to this date people learn English with materials from countries which are totally different and difficult to compare with their reality. It is impossible to associate the names of important places, names of cities, streets, and inclusive the types of food they eat, the kind of clothes they wear, the dates for different celebrations all the information becomes new for our learners who have the obligation to learn it because it is part of their program. The most difficult skill for the students is the pronunciation of some words that have to be memorized even if they do not know where the places are, what they mean because it is the first time they see them, even though these words will not be used in the future.
Sometimes this difference of contextual material could be a benefit for the learners because they can acquire new knowledge about new cultures, history, traditions, beliefs which belong to the country mentioned in the content of the book, another advantage is that this information is learned as general culture.
On the other hand, it could be a big problem to learn vocabulary and names very different from the ones used in our native countries, which are not going to be applied or used anymore, they learned at the moment they needed but they are not going to use it in their future personal and professional lives, because one student in a group of one thousand will have the opportunity to travel to a native speaker country, the others will stay in their native countries where English is applied in the places they work or in their studies and for many of them English will not be applied anymore.
Materials that are going to be used by the content-teacher are hard to find. The content teacher in a clil-classroom is looking for (text) materials that serve two purposes. On the one hand he needs materials that enable him to work on the curriculum aims for his subject as prescribed within his national school-programme. On the other hand he wants to use texts and other materials that can provide adequate language input for his learners. The latter implying that the material should not be too easy or too difficult, Using authentic materials often don’t meet these two demands and therefore the materials need to be adapted.
{Antonio Piedra – 2012}
It is well-known that teachers must adequate the resources to teach accordance with the students’s necessities and this should include the books which are the principal base to structure and plan the different courses to teach, otherwise the learning process will become into an obligation for our students.
If students learn English in accordance with their reality they would have more opportunities to use it in their future lives because they would learn how to explain their own history, traditional places, culture, music, beliefs, food and so on to foreigner people who visit our country and only speak English and they want to know more about our country. Another important application is when the learners travel to a native speaker country they would be able to explain about our country in English.
The students and their environment:
“Equipped with his five senses, Man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science”.
{Edwin Powell Hubble – 2009}
In Accordance with Edwin Powell the most useful tools for the human beings are their senses that will help to start the missions to explore everything around them. The man start their investigations about what he can see and does not understand and tries to find an answer, about what he can listen beautiful, ugly, surprising, natural or unnatural, about he can taste natural or artificial, about what he can smell even it is normal or it is invented by another human being about what he can touch and can be mixed to get a different material.
Learning through our reality would be easier for students at the moment of the application of the information they have acquired in English because they can relate the history, places, food, traditions they have already seen or studied in their native language, considering that those facts make sense with their own environment, the words are easy and common, the information comes to their minds spontaneously which becomes a big advantage for the learners and this will weak up the students’ motivation to learn more and continue with the process of learning English. The relation between what they know and what they are learning in another language will give a great satisfaction to the learners because it will be easy and pleasant for them.
The most interesting stage during the learning process is the application of what we are learning, the more we apply; the more we will remember, because when we learn something which will not be used continuously it will be difficult to recall it in the future, so it is necessary the constant application of the information that we learn in our daily lives.
Conclusion:
Teaching is an art for each teacher, who is always looking for the best alternative to improve the most difficult mission as it is to transmit knowledge to another human being, considering all the different factors that this process involves for the institution, the teacher, the student and inclusive the student.
It is not easy to meet the student who is totally committed to learn a new language and it will become harder when this student has to learn a lot of stuffs completely different from the real environment he or she has been living since they were born, that is why sometimes some students prefer to give up learning a new language because this difficulty becomes into a traumatic situation considering the unknown places, situations, sports, traditions weird and challenging to learn.
Situation that can be changed with the teaching of places, situations, sports, traditions and more accordance with the places where the students live which will engage and stimulate them to continue learning the new language because they will find it easier to relate with their own experiences as well as with their personal situations, including the socialization between students, which will help to develop their fluency to express ideas, interchange information and discuss their points of view which is satisfactory to demonstrate oneself how you can communicate and this will be the most important clue for students to continue learning the new language.
by: Jacqueline López de Campoverde
Datos para citar este artículo:
Jacqueline Elizabeth López López. (2015). Is students’ environment a real lab to learn English?. Revista Vinculando, 13(1). https://vinculando.org/en/students-environment-real-lab-learn-english.html
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