Interaction in the English Learning Classroom

Communication is a human need, and so is a growing way. As we all know, languages emerged  as the necessary ways to communicate. It is known that oral was first than written. And even though, making the graphical representations of these early codes may not have been an easy matter, it was surely a challenge for the early men to use the script. 

 TYPES OF INTERACTIONS WITHIN THE CLASSROOM AND THEIR IMPORTANCE.

According to Holmberg (2005) there are 3 principal types:

 ✅Student-content interaction: The first kind of interaction is the one that is established between the student and the content of the subject matter. This is a characteristic of education. Without it there can be no education, since it is the process of interacting intellectually with the content, which produces the change in the understanding and perspective of the student, that is, in the cognitive structures of his mind. This seems to be the type of interaction, at least partially, that Holmberg (2005) refers to as “internal didactic conversation”, when students “talk to themselves” about the information and ideas they find in a text, a TV show, a master class and others.

✅Student-instructor / teacher interaction: The second type of interaction is that between the student and the expert who prepared and explained the material or some other expert who functions as an instructor. In this case the expert is the teacher. In this interaction, teachers try to achieve specific goals. Once they are assigned a curriculum or content program, they try to stimulate or maintain student interest and motivate them to learn. They review what their previous knowledge is, through different techniques and strategies; this with the purpose of knowing the starting point of the students. The teacher must make his students aware of the different ways of learning and must be able to enhance their skills. And as teachers, we have never to forget that we are all the time, learning from our students, too, and so, from the teaching practice.

✅Student-student interaction: student-student interaction is sometimes a very valuable resource for learning, and even essential, based on the fact that group work is essential to function in modern society, especially in business, teachers they teach students to work effectively in groups. Student-student is an especially valuable example of group interaction. Here we can mention teamwork, role play, group conversations, dialogues and their shared experiences.

HOLMBERG,  B.  (2005)  “Status  and  trends  of  distance  education  research”.  The Pennsylvania  StateUniversity. 

7 tips to increase interactions in the English classroom and that will help your students' learning:

1. Speak English as long as possible during classes

2. Apply positive reinforcement, sometimes a phrase of recognition is enough: "How well you are doing!"

3. Support communication, visually and gesturally

4. Generate opportunities to communicate in English: send a text message in English, say hello, ask ...

5. Promote spontaneous interactions with the teacher and between students.

6. Track progress.

7. See that everyone maintains an attitude of respect.

How much English is enough? 

The English language can be over 100,000 words long, so teaching and learning new lexical items can seem quite overwhelming. Fortunately, the number of words that students need to have a fairly acceptable knowledge of this language is much less extensive.

Professor Jack C. Richards affirms that "3,000 or 4,000 are enough for learners up to intermediate levels; college-level students need between 8,000 and 10,000 words. Almost all of the classes I have taught were beginner or intermediate-level, and that is probably true for the vast majority of EFL instructors”, Zimmermann, S. (2018).

How many languages are there in the world?

There are about 7,097 different languages in the world, according to the magazine 'Ethnologue'. The language with 'official language' status in the most countries is English (59 countries), followed by French (29), Arabic (27), Spanish (20) and Portuguese (10).

Read more: https://www.europapress.es/sociedad/noticia-idiomas-cifras-cuantas-lenguas-hay-mundo-20190221115202.html

Humans can only see themselves through others and humanity is so diverse that we can guess that it is this need which has made us understand the importance of languages and their expansion throughout the world to facilitate communication. Being able to communicate with the people around us is an extraordinary achievement in linguistic history, but doing so in a second language is, in my opinion, almost magical.

We all can learn another language!!

 

When we learn another language, we not only learn words and structures (vocabulary and grammar), but we also learn another culture.

Learning from the context of the target language helps us understand the real meaning of the own language (meaningful learning). For this learning to be achieved, as teachers we must strive to help our students develop the four basic skills in acquiring a language: writing, reading, listening and speaking.

 Recently, the Common European Languages Framework (CEFR) has become a guide for language levels all over the world in EFL. On the CEFR scale, B2 is considered upper intermediate, and a profound knowledge of approximately 4,000 words is required. Vocabulary knowledge is often viewed as a very needed requirement and tool for second language learners because a limited vocabulary in a second language impedes successful communication. 

Learning English has many advantages in this, our age, the information age. Thus, as in the beginning, Latin was a predominant language, today, English is considered the most important language because it is the one most used in commercial relations and therefore, it provides better employment horizons; academic and scientific articles are published in English; it is the tourist language by excellence, etc.

If you are a teacher, be prepared to teach in the best way; If you are a student, commit yourself to learn as much and as well as possible. THANK YOU 🙏😊

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