Daily Archives: December 10, 2012

The role of the adult educator becomes essentially central and fundamental, complicated and different from this one of the traditional or conventional EFL teacher. This role is directly determined by the adult learners’ profile and automatically entails the respect to the adulthood of all the participants in the learning process (Κόκκος, 1999˙ Rogers, 2002).

The main purpose of this paper is to define the EFL educator’s role in adult learning discussing briefly first the main aspects of the EFL adults’ profile (Rogers, 2002˙ Jarvis, 2004). Continue reading →

From my own experience, too much error correction could frustrate EFL learners and even overwhelm their motivation and interest in EFL learning. Therefore, it is really necessary for teachers to consider the practical situation of learners and teachers’ own linguistic background, and then conduct the correction in ‘good timing’ using ‘appropriate’ correction strategies and adjusting their lesson planning accordingly. In other words, there are obvious advantages for EFL teachers in conducting their own error analysis research (Richards, 1974): they can find out why their learners are making errors and then plan appropriate remedial lessons. Continue reading →

To ‘learn’ means, above all, to react to stimuli and instructions provided by the main actor in the classroom, the teacher (Littlewood, 1984:1). Here, a distinction is obviously drawn between “learning” and “teaching” which constitute two central processes of the general educational procedure. The former is carried out by the learner and the latter by the teacher. Another distinction is often made between ‘foreign’ and ‘second’ language learning.

More specifically, a ‘second’ language has social functions within the community where it is learnt, while a ‘foreign’ language is learnt primarily for contact outside one’s community. However, there are no considerable differences in the whole learning process. Usually, both terms (second and foreign language) are used interchangeably and have to do with the communicative use of the other language in context.

But what is the nature of second language and foreign language development? In the following paragraphs we attempt to briefly present the internal processes in second language and foreign language learning which may influence one’s approach to EFL teaching. Continue reading →

The label ‘self instruction’ is used to refer to situations in which a learner, with others, or alone, is working without the direct control of a teacher (Dickinson, 1987). By self-instruction priority is given to the learner-centered approach in foreign language learning, by which responsibility is placed on the learner. In order to achieve self-instruction, learners must ‘learn how to learn’ or must be appropriately guided. That is, in the classroom, or outside it, learners must become more self-conscious about their own learning successes in reading, writing, speaking and listening. The purpose of the present paper is to define self-instruction in the EFL (English as a Foreign Language) context by focusing on the main learning strategies it includes, by specifying who the self-directed learner is and by pinpointing the emphasis it lays on learner typology which helps to solve practical problems due to learners’ individual differences. Continue reading →