“Key challenges for us are to move away from teaching
according to our own learning styles and to enable
learners to gain a better understanding of their own
preferences.”
The first issue for any teacher is to
understand each student's motivations and
priorities, past learning experiences (both
positive and negative) and optimal learning
styles. If you can't understand why a student
is in your classroom, what they most want
(and need) to learn and how they can most
effectively go about this, you are never going
to fully satisfy your students' needs, or your
own. This is why both initial and on-going
needs analyses are so important. Otherwise
the only information you will have is the
language level based on whatever placement
testing your school carries out (and we all
know how reliable these results can be!), the
ages and nationalities of your students.
16