Basing on your cultural, linguistic, personal interests and family background, are you experiencing any problem with the classroom components? If yes, state them and how you think they can be rectified.
What are your strengths and weaknesses?
This tool shall be used in the form of a questionnaire that will be issued out to the prospective students to be filled in. The students will be allowed to attend classes for sometime (about two or three weeks) before being issued with the questionnaire to fill in. This questionnaire is a comprehensive tool that summarizes most of the learner’s concerns and tends to address the most critical areas that needs attention.
For instance, the first question links the cultural, linguistic, personal interests and the family background with the English language. The information provided under that section would clearly show whether the learner is having problems because of his or her accent. Therefore, the feedback obtained can then be used in designing a better approach that suits the learner’s state. In addition to that, the feedback obtained gives the trainer a clue of the learner’s attitude towards the kind of material given to him or her in class and what she thinks can be done to make the delivery of the class content even more suitable (Graves, 2000).
The second question reveals the learner’s weaknesses and key areas of strength to help the trainer understand the areas that require a lot of emphasis. This information is very important given that there exists diversity from one learner to the other. The trainer will therefore be able to design a teaching program that would meet most of the leaner’s requirements. It is therefore very evident that this tool provides vital information to the trainer who then devises a suitable program that would address the interests of the students.
Therefore, both the trainer and the learner will benefit after careful implementation of this tool. It helps meet most of the learning objectives by ensuring that the curriculum is tailored to address the needs of each learner hence cater for most of their expectations. It also appreciates the diversity, which exists among the different learners and provides feedback that is critical to the harmonization of all the learner’s needs.
The only limitation with this tool is that it largely depends on the learners’ feedback which might not turn out to be accurate due to personal bias hence the resultant implementation might not address the actual needs of the learners. However, this has been dealt with by issuing out the questionnaires after only two weeks of learning to avoid personal prejudice and bias.
When I applied this tool to the second language students, the assessment was a great success. The feedback obtained revealed that most students were finding it hard learning the English language due to their accents. Most of them showed their discontent in the classroom component, which generalized all the students and assumed that all the learners, faced the same challenges. Given these students came from different backgrounds; each had his or her own concerns that needed attention. There was a remarkable variation in the strengths and weaknesses of these students.
Therefore, as a trainer, I learned that every student has his or her own weakness and strengths hence the issues of generalization tend not to address the learner’s needs but rather isolates some and makes them feel unattended to. I therefore recommended grouping of learners who tend to have same weaknesses and challenges together so that their issues are addressed appropriately. I also recommended personal interaction between the students and the trainer to ensure every student is attended to more effectively. Diversity exists among learners hence generalization is not a solution towards solving the learner’s needs.
References
Graves, K. (2000). Designing Language Courses: A Guide for Teachers. Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle.