Unit 13

LEARNER CHARACTERISTICS

Motivation, learning styles, learning strategies, maturity and experience are the main factors that motivate learners to learn a language. There are a lot of learning styles as visual, kinesthetic, reflective, and individual and so on, that influence the way learners learn and the way they need to be taught. The way learner learn the language is based in learning strategies this strategies let students remember, use and process the language in order to achieve their goals a good example of this is to record yourself speaking, then listen to your pronunciation and mistakes  and correct them. Maturity involves becoming mature physically, mentally and emotionality to acquire in a better way the language taking in care the age and their needs.

It is essential to know the learning strategies of our students some of them will find learning a language easy but few of them could find it hard, for that it will be a good idea to take them a test to know their learning styles, but I don’t think is a good idea to teach them about learning strategies because I think that is something we born with or just develop during our growth. For that teachers have to let learners be more comfortable and confident in class by using activities as mingle, communicative activities or any other group work that help students to develop the language. 

Here you can find some characteristics and strategies for adult learners:

• YouTube, (2014). 10 Characteristics of Adult Learners. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1OSh6vN-6E [Accessed 3 Dec. 2014].
• Yates, B. (2014). Characteristics of Adult Learners. [online] Assetproject.info. Available at: http://www.assetproject.info/learner_methodologies/before/characteristics.htm [Accessed 3 Dec. 2014].

For further information you can visit:

• Unco.edu, (2014). Learner Characteristics. [online] Available at: http://www.unco.edu/cebs/psychology/kevinpugh/5-7320/ITcomponents/learner.html [Accessed 3 Dec. 2014].
• Carla.umn.edu, (2014). The Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (CARLA). [online] Available at: http://www.carla.umn.edu/learnerlanguage/ind_diff.html [Accessed 3 Dec. 2014].