Self - direction and its implications in our lessons

The concept of self-direction has really influenced my ELT situation, because I always expect students to be more independent and to develop strategies to learn by themselves. Anyway, this is not very easy to achieve, because there are always some students that need the teacher in order to learn. However, I think that maybe I should help these students develop self-direction, because they might profit of it. The problem is that sometimes I do not know what I have to do to achieve that. In my opinion, it would be desirable to have self-directed students, but maybe if we think about it in the institutional area, these students might feel that they do not need to attend the lesson because they have the ability to learn by themselves, which at the same time could be a constraint for their learning process.

The communicative classroom

These are the reasons given for using pairwork and groupwork in the communicative classroom:

• It motivates students to work in face to face encounters in the classroom
• It increases opportunities for practising the language
• It enables students to take risks with the language and to see if they can negotiate meaning
• It gives students the opportunity to monitor how well they understand and are understood

I absolutely agree with these ideas, because I think that if we want our students to speak we have to give them the opportunity to practise, and only by providing them they will be able to take risks with the language and negotiate meaning. Besides, many students prefer to speak with a partner than with the teacher, because they can feel intimidated by her or him.

In my opinion, the only disadvantage of working in pairs or in small groups is that sometimes teens can become disruptive or can speak in Spanish and about any other topic that the one given by the teacher. As regards this matter, we should pay attention and try to make them carry out the activity correctly.

For pair or goupwork to be successful in the classroom, I think that we need to give clear insructions and interesting activities, so as to get them involved in it. By doing this, they will feel enthusiastic and will do the activity taking advantage of it.