TEACHERS' STYLE OF DELIVERY

While there are different student's learning styles, teachers have also different teaching styles that portrait their beliefs about teaching a new language. There are different teaching styles:

Formal authority: this style is teacher-centered. And it has been predominant among teachers who provide all the knowledge to students who having a passive role, receive it.

Demonstrator: This teaching style is teacher-centered as well. In this case, the teacher demonstrate the steps to follow in order to develop a certain activity. Then students, having mastered certain skills, perform a task or solve a problem. 

Facilitator: This is a student-centered style. Teachers provide a wide variety of activities that require students to activily participate. This teaching style provides students with opportunities to develop their thinking skills and  collaborative learning.

Delegator: This style is student-centered. Teachers assigned more responsability to students, therefore, students develop independent work habits and cooperative learninig takes place.

I believe I am a facilitator and a delegator. I like to bring my students many activities that trigger them to participate and improve their skills. I also like to assing my students projects and assingments that develop their independent work habits.

CONVERGENT AND DIVERGENT QUESTIONS

"Questioning helps students develop critical thinking and regards reasoning as an active process," therefore, there are two different types of thinking respectively:

Convergent questioning: (also called closed questioning) involves recalling information, given materials or previous experience, thus limiting responses. Students do not necesary analize their answers; instead, students make inferences from previous experiences.

Examples of convergent questioning:

• Who is the writer of Goldengrove?
• What does CBL stand for?

Divergent questioning: There is not one "correct answer" for this type of questioning; and asnwers are more open. Students have to solve problems and analize deeply before answer a divergent question. As a matter of fact, divergent questions greatly develop students' thinking skills.

 Examples of divergent questioning:

•  How can CBL be implemented in a basic level class?
•  How would you change the end of Goldengrove?

CLASSROOM DESIGN

Classroom desings have experienced a so great change over the past 20 years. Just remember the time in which classes were teacher- centered and desks were arranged in rows; it is totally different now isn't it?

The first change is undoutedly the desks arrangement. Nowadays teachers can arrange the desks depending on the activity they are going to develop or the kind of classroom they work in; they can even go outside the classroom to use a variaty of innovating techniques that have revolutionized the world of teaching English.

The second and most significant change deals with the fact the instruction is changing from teacher- centered to student-centered; students are not passive recipients of information anymore, instead, students are involved in the class and have an active role because they can give their opinions on certain topics. So now, the instruction is student- centered.

COMPREHENSION

"Comprehension is the action to understand something." 

There are three types of comprehension in the learning process: LITERAL COMPREHENSION,  APPLIED COMPREHENSION, and IMPLIED COMPREHENSION.

Literal Comprehension is fact-based evidence. Teachers must provide students activities that involves all the senses. This kind of comprehension deals with kinesthetic students.

Applied Comprehension is a comparison and contrast comprehension. It resuts from students own experiences and the interactions with a text. It deals with visual students.

Implied Comprehension is based on context or ilustrative material that involves oral, visual, tactil and kinesthetic activities.

Understanding the different kind of comprehension in our students gives us the opportunity to understand their different learning styles.