1. Escuela de lenguas
Final Project Essay
“Silence screams”
3er semester
Perla Lucero Delgado
04/12/2013
2. Introduction
A few years ago most of people thoughtthat the best way of learning was by using
the behavioral approach, and this makes them stay stuck in old teaching method. It
is not good because it does not put much emphasis on mental activities, it uses
more stimulus-response(this occurs when a natural reflex responds to a stimulus),
also we can say that use the behaviorism learning in a process of acquiring a
second language is not good because in it you don’t get the attention of your
students and it makes that they get bored and when the learners are bored, angry,
frustrated, unmotivated or stressed made that they may be unsuccessful at
learning a second language, so we can say that they have lower their affective
filter.
This made that we have a lot of questions in our head like, Are language learners
bored, angry, and stressed because they are unsuccessful? Or Are language
learners unsuccessful because they are unmotivated?, but if our society will use
others methods or use more the technology, all ideas about it will change because
exit other methods like constructivism in which the learners construct their own
knowledge from their experiences, also we all construct our own understanding of
the world we live in and it makes more interaction between the teacher and his/her
students.
Body
In the play “Silence screams” we can observe a lot of troubles that an adolescent
can face in this stage of the life.
The play is about adolescent who suffer bullying by his classmates and his teacher
because he is American, this get that Waldo does not have motivation to go to the
school, it is a problem related with the teacher centered because it is generally
associated with traditional approaches to language learning, also in the
activitiesthe teacher decides what is to be learned, what is to be tested, and how
the class is to be run. Often the teacher is the center of the classroom.
3. The teacher decides the goals of the class based on some outside criteria, and the
teacher is the only instructor, so it made that the students lost their motivation
because it is based only in repetition, and the students only learned what the
teacher say and also everything the teacher say is what is done, they don’t have
the opportunity of express their ideas, the students only respond to stimuli. Other
thing about it is that the classroom remains orderly (the students are quiet, and the
teacher retains full control of the classroom).
Other aspects that affect Waldo is that his teacher is traditionalist so it makes that
she does not accept any comments or ideas of her students because she thinks
that all she says is right, that she is the only one who has the right to says
something, she only thinks about herself and she does not care about how her
students feel.
This leads to Waldo invent someone imaginary with whom he can talk (here apply
the imaginary audience refers to an egocentric state where a teenager imagines
and believes that multitudes of people are enthusiastically listening to or watching
him or he, this is reality common on adolescents), in this case it would be his
conscience.
But
his
conscience
does
not
help
much
because
it
is
egocentric(egocentrism is an attitude of considering oneself the center of the
universe) and told him that he is the best and because of that his class partners
hate him.
Finally to safe this problem the mom go to a TVs show in which a judge asks for an
opinion of an expert, and he tell that the teacher needs to change her methods, so
here we can apply the constructivismbecause it is a construction that will be
possible from consideration of previous knowledge and social interaction with
peers and teachers.
Here the teacher is as facilitator, moderator and mediator between the child and
knowledge, also it produce a meaningful learning because it makes the
learnerhave their own knowledge because here they want to learn and they are
4. interest, so here we can apply the learning strategies because these are ways in
which the learner choose to learn.
The learning strategies are used by students to help them understand information
and solve some problems, here most of the time the students ask for feedback,
use the foreign language as much as possible, also this characteristic focuses on
making the students more active learners by teaching them how to learn and how
to use what they have learned to solve problems and be successful.
Conclusion
Bullying is a phenomenon that is present in our society, identify and recognize are
important tools to preventdestroying self-esteem and confidence in teens.One of
the most important aspects to be taken into account on the issue is the
environment in which young people develop, since under negative influences and
lack of understanding they can find an excuse to destroy themselves.
So we as teachers have to take into account that we need to change teaching
methods, take in mind that in order for students to have better learning , they need
to feel understood, they need to feel trust between teacher and student, that if they
made a mistake it is okay, they can find the solution to such a problems.
We need to implement the constructivist method because this is based on the
experiences in which students lived, another thing that could help us is the
interaction hypothesis because it arises when a learner is trying to negotiate a
conversation in the language goal, realizes the errors that exist in their skills
(pronunciation, syntax, grammar, vocabulary).
References:
http://web.cortland.edu/andersmd/beh/behavior.html
http://www.psychlotron.org.uk/newResources/approaches/AS_AQB_approaches_B
ehaviourismBasics.pdf
