July 9, 2004, by Teaching at Nottingham

Using aims at the beginning of a session to aid learning

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Do Coyle: “I think it’s really important that at the beginning of any session, with any learners, that there’s clarification around where we’re going in a particular session.

“I would expect them to do that with, say, pupils in school. I would expect the most erudite of professors to do that with their own learners, at whatever level because I think that’s another principle of learning – that you need to alert learners to where they’re going.”

Slide

Self as learner – learning styles

Aims
1. To raise awareness of the complexity of individual difference with particular reference to learning styles.
2. To position self as learner.
3. To consider implications for above for optimising classroom teaching and learning.

Interview

Do: “So it is around clarity, so that at the end of the time allocated, both learners and teachers have a view on how far that process has happened, and what needs to happen in terms of remedial work if it isn’t successful – what needs to be done then either by the teacher or by the learner.

“So again, it’s about articulating the learning process.”

Extract from a lecture

“When you compared, did you do as well as or better than, the person sitting by you? What are we doing with our students when we ask them to learn decontextulatised vocabulary, for example? These are all the sort of issues that I want to raise with you today.

“So if you look very quickly at the board (displaying the slide of Aims we saw earlier) there are our aims for this session.

“What I want to do with you is to raise an awareness of the complexity of individual difference – it is very, very complex. And in particular I want to look at individual learning styles.

“I want to position you as a learner, and yourself as a learner within a whole range of ways of approaching your work, which is why I asked you to bring along the reflective piece on how you learned languages.

“And I want to consider the implications of what all this means for us as teachers.”

Do Coyle
School of Education

Do is teaching PGCE students in the Dearing building on Jubilee campus. The students are learning to become qualified language teachers. Produced July 2004.
This video was originally published as part of PESL’s Teaching at Nottingham collection.

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