How do students learn?* [Essay]

When we talk about learning process we must have in mind different aspects, like the age of the students,  their interests, their reasons to study, the subject we teachers are trying to teach, and of course,  the motivation that our students have.

Learning is a wide field in education, because it has a lot of aspects, actors and characteristics that related each other can improve or make worse the education. Learning has also a lot of troubles and a lot of people trying to find an effective solution for each one of them. One of those troubles is that in the different levels of education, children, teenagers and even adults do not want to learn anymore and seem to care about nothing that happens around them.

Because of that, the present essay aspires to answer the following question: How do students learn? First by exposing the trouble about the students that nowadays are not interested in acquire knowledge; second by explaining some important aspects about some  learning theories; and third by presenting a personal point of view about how education should be and also making some suggestions.

By way of introduction, let me start by saying that the present essay is focused in the learning of a second language (English) in the High Schools of Mexico.  The learning of any subject, but in this case of a second language (English) requires interest, disposition and motivation by those who are interested in learn it, but also requires to take advantage as much as we can of the age of students, because it will be easier for them if they start the acquisition of a second language at an early age.

 Krashen´s theory talks about the existence of "different periods for acquire a second language. He says that it is easier to a child to acquire a foreign language since his birth until the age of 13 to 15 years, after this period, people will have more troubles for speak and develop a foreign language(Schütz, 2007, S.K)".

But in Mexico we have a serious problem, we do not take advantage of the age of the children , because the teaching of English begins at age of 11 or 12 year old, when students are about to finish their rank of age for learning in an easy way a foreign language, so we are wasting all the childhood of our students.

On the other hand, we have a second trouble, when students start the study of English they are teenagers, and they are crossing for a phase in their lives in which they don´t know who they are or what they want, so they have personal identity issues and they are not interested in acquiring any kind of knowledge, including English.

So, when we have these important troubles, what we teachers must do for our students learn?

I consider  that the communicative approach for the teaching of a foreign language is pretty good, because it reflects the real interest of students when they are learning a second language, this real interest is communication, when someone is learning English he or she wants to communicate, wants to be understood and wants to be able to understand the other person who is talking to, so grammar rules get less important when the main function of knowing a second language is communication.

By other side, "knowledge is built when persons interact each other" (Meece, 2002, p.35)this means that any kind of knowledge will be easily acquired when people are talking to each other, when they are exchanging ideas, because when students work inside a team, they will help each other and they will correct their own mistakes.

But also it is very important that students reflect about their own knowledge, that they find their own problems and figure out how to solve them, that they become the main subjects of their learning process, by making their own analysis, reflections and conclusions

So, what I mean with this three aspects is that for a student learn English it is necessary in first place that they find it useful for they can communicate with other persons, so if they follow this way, they will practice and will improve their language; in second place, it is important that they get  in touch with other students who have the same interests, purposes and objectives, for they can work together in order to help each other; and in third place, it is important that the teacher does not give them the way in which language works, but they should discover it by themselves by reflecting, analyzing, and finding the resolution to their own troubles.

However there is another important element in the process of learning a foreign language. This is motivation, and most of this motivation should be promoted by teachers, because we should find the way to encourage our students to learn, we must elaborate strategies in order to they get involved with the topic, and they feel motivated to learn, because without motivation, students will not care about learning.

So, as we see, most of the work of student´s learning is responsibility of the teacher, because he or she must create all the necessary conditions for  students learn, it is not just about exposing a topic to them, it is about encouraging them to reflection and use of language, to practice and interaction with their classmates.

However, despite all the elements before are necessary for students to learn, at the end of the day I can say that  for achieve a real learning of the students we must make deeper changes in the Mexican system of education, because all the good ideas and theories that must be applied can be really useful if they  are applied in the right way, the Mexican system of education is not just about proposals of excellent methods and theories, it is about a total transformation in the system, for create the best conditions  in order to apply it, so, it is true that we teachers have a great responsibility to prepare good classes for students can really learn, but we need the cooperation and coordination of the entire Mexican system of education.

Essay*