Opening a classroom door

Opening a classroom door

   As a preservice teacher, I have had many experiences in which I have seen different methodologies that teachers use at the moment of teaching. Some of them were focused on form, which are the ones that are related to the traditional way of teaching, while others were focused on meaning, which is related to the meaningful learning process.

  The classes that were focused on form, presented a lack of dynamic activities, therefore students didn´t participate that much of the class. They seemed to be bored because they didn’t feel encouraged to learn English. The regular activities were dictation, translation and memorization so there were no chances of practicing communicational skills.

  On the contrary, the classes that were focused on meaning gave students the chance of learning through a variety of experiences that were led by the teacher since he/she was a facilitator of new learnings. 

   All the activities were previously presented by inductive exercises that encouraged students to participate in the lesson by talking with other classmates or just by doing the activities that were told to do, as they were dynamic and easy to follow. Some of them were: conversation practice, grammar games, mimics, follow the song, picture strip story and guess the animal.

  For me, traditional classes were less effective than the dynamic ones, hence they were focused on grammatical aspects that would be no longer remember. In contrast, dynamic lessons were strongly effective, as their activities were adapted to students’ necessities and related to personal experiences to make them more meaningful for students learning process.