Miscellaneous: Teacher John Alejandro Arias

Metacognition and Secondary School Learners

We, teachers, provide the students with different ways to reach one goal. So it depends on them to select the most suitable and comfortable route, considering the knowledge about their own language learning process. The idea is that that they take a way in which they can achieve the objective, but the most important fact is that if they are able to do it, they can feel that they really learn and that they can apply what they have just learnt in another task.

Language awareness

Some of the problems that students may have are linked to their mother tongue because they usually manage their minds as translators, going form L1 to L2. They do not think in the target language to produce the target language. Therefore it is important to show them the differences and similarities between L1 and L2.

Cognitive Awareness

“Just because” or “because my parents want me to learn it” are the most frequent answers you may get when you ask teenagers “Why do they study English?” The word motivation becomes a nightmare for most teachers, then.

Social Awareness

If you are Roger Federer (No. 1) and you never lose, you will not improve your skills. That is the importance of Rafael Nadal (No. 2).

Cultural Awareness

You are NOT alone, you are NOT a legend.

Why Is the Development of Metacognitive Awareness Important?

When students get home, they usually reflect on what they have just learnt and why they learnt it. The frequent answer is “to pass the next exam”. After that, that knowledge becomes futile, and most of them just throw it away.

Metalanguage in Focus on Form in the Communicative Classroom

In my classes, I often put the form-focused instruction at the beginning, because I consider that my students will feel comfortable and confident enough to participate in post-communicative activities realizing of what they say and being able to say what they want to say.

Though focus on form allows students to draw attention to linguistic items that may be problematic to them, we, teachers, must be aware of our students’ shyness since most of the times they just pretend to have understood or deduced the grammar applied.

In my opinion, it goes totally linked to the purpose that students may have to learn the L2, if they have one.