Finding our Multiple Intelligences

     Have you ever thought about why your students react in different ways to the activities you do in the class? Or even why different groups react differently to the same activity?

     According to Gardner there are eight different types of intelligences. Everyone has all of them, but they are pronounced in a different way. Through questionnaires people can test their strengths ones.

     Here there is an online test if you are interested in finding out your multiple intelligences:

http://literacynet.org/mi/assessment/findyourstrengths.html

     This resource is really useful for teachers. Once they and their students know which their strengths are, teachers could adapt different activities depend on these ones.  

Learner type	Is good at	Learns best by	Activities
Linguistic	Reading, writing and stories	Saying, hearing and seeing words	Memory games Trivia quizzes Stories.
Logical/ mathematical	Solving puzzles, exploring patterns, reasoning and logic	Asking questions, categorizing and working with patterns	Puzzles Problem solving.
Visual/ Spatial	Drawing, building, arts and crafts	Visualizing, using the mind's eye	Flashcards Colors Pictures Drawing Project work.
Musical	Singing, listening to music and playing instruments	Using rhythm, with music on	Using songs Chants Drilling.
Bodily/ Kinaesthetic	Moving around, touching things and body language	Moving, touching and doing	TPR activities Action songs Running dictations Miming Realia.
Interpersonal	Mixing with others, leading groups, understanding others and mediating	Co-operating, working in groups and sharing	Mingle activities Group work Debates Discussions.
Intrapersonal	Working alone and pursuing own interests	Working alone	Working individually on personalised projects
Naturalistic	Nature	Working outside and observing nature	Environmental projects.

     To sum up, we should know our students and thanks to this questionnaire we can approach to them and give them some resources so they are engaged with English. In addition, it is also useful for other areas in their life, because they could know their main strengths and work harder in their weakness ones.

Miriam Orón. 

Who am I as a learner? (Carolina Araújo)

We all unconsciously are used to study for an exam in a certain way. Now that I am 20 years old and studying the degree of my dreams in university, I believe, I know which is the best way for me to acquire knowledge.  I do not think we usually recall in which way we obtain language or information. But now that I have being asked to do so I have realised how it works for me.

My name is Carolina and I am studying the beautiful degree of Teacher in Primary Education. I believe for the most part of my life I have learnt in the same way: listening and through visual. When I have to study for an exam I always tend to do schemes, or drawings, even songs. Also, the easiest way for me is listening. When I come back to the notes I took during the explanation of the teacher I can remember the examples or ideas just by reading the title. Maths have always been the fork on the road for me, I would rather study lots of paragraphs: when I was in school my teacher did not try to do something to the students that seemed to have difficulties, like me, with his subject. The thing is that I had this teacher for many years, so I did not acquire the basics of maths; leading to a failure in my high school with this subject.

Furthermore, I used to study better when I was in high school at home with full silence and in my room (would not be able to study in other place but my bedroom) but since I have been in university I prefer going to the library with friends. Also, I concentrate more in the mornings and evenings...in the night-time it is kind of impossible for me to even read one sentence without distracting.

Most of the English I have learnt is because of watching movies in original version, listening to music and watching youtube videos -as I have said before I am a listener-.

In my view my strengths as a learner are that I can acquire information in not much time and my organisation. On the contrary, my weaknesses are that it costs me a lot of time to concentrate, I am a slow reader when I have to understand everything on a text to after acquire it, and the biggest weakness I have is that I almost always procrastinate which is something that I have been trying to change lately.

As a conclusion,in my opinion I would like to say that even these are the ways that work better for me, it does not mean that it is the same for everyone. So taking that into account, I find so important for teachers to know different methodologies and work through all of them since each student has a way of learning and acquiring knowledge. This has been a good way to know a bit better how I function as a learner so I can take it into account for my future as a teacher.

Games for Learning English

Nowadays, we live in a society that is immersed in new technologies. This fact brings us many benefits, for example it allows us to teach or practice different skills through multimodality and not focuses so much on the textbooks.

With the links that I will leave below, we find some examples of possible tools to put into practice the theory that we could give in class. Thanks to these games, students can have fun and at the same time reinforce the contents. Also, they have exercises to improve their pronunciation.

https://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/fun-games

https://www.eslgamesplus.com/

Miriam Orón. 

Who am I as a learner? (Noelia Máñez)

During eighteen years I have been a learner, so many things have come up to my mind and I have been building my knowledge little by little. The most I have need, have been patience and perserverance, overall, when I had to learn from my mistakes. I have been learning in a private school during fifteen years, and I felt like in a bubble, where all teachers have been there if I need something so I get used to this. After that, suddently, I noticed that something changed in my life  when I arrived to the University and I have to learn how to be more independent not only as a learner but also as a person.

Since I started to be conscious and be aware of all I was learning, I have to try to find the best tool to learn; first, I started talking alone and repeating what I had been doing in class. After that, I tried to do the same my teacher did, writing the things I had learnt on a board and taking the role of my teacher trying to explain what I had learnt before. After doing this during a lot of years, I decided to change the method and try to memorise the concepts without doing nothing, just focusing the attention on remembering the things, and until now it has worked.

It is true that lot of times I have felt that I did not achieve what I want, but I never felt defeated, that is because I know that  learning is a process that could take more o less time to people but you can achieve what you want. Me as a learner, I think that is important to be motivated on what you do and be reflected on what you are learning, it could be the first  factors that I need to feel comfortable with what I am learning.

It is also important to know what you want to study and focus on what you want to achieve and learn, having an objective could make your learning development easier. For example, I have always in mind what I want to be and what I have to be reaching during all these previous years to achieve it, so having this into my mind I have gone towards this objective.

In conclusion, I think that as a learner, what I need is the support and feedback from the others, the necessity of being secure of what I am doing, the perserverance and the need of having an objective to achieve, that nowadays is learning how to take into account all that children need to learn a foreign language.

                        Noelia Máñez.

Looking for learning. (Cristina Francisco)

              One thing I have realized during my life so far is that I am constantly learning from the things and people that surround me. From the moment we are “inside our mothers” we begin to learn. Education is the main system that has offered me the possibility to learn all the necessary academic stuff that is required from the socio-economic statement, but it is not the only way to get knowledge. Environment is constructed by living and not-living beings (people, animals, objects, nature, food...) that encloses our live. When we born all this is new for us and we have to adapt, to get familiar, and learn how to get along to them. The interaction that we made with this environment is the learning that we are constructing. We all are teachers and learners during our life.

            I am a student who is trying to become a teacher. As I said before, in our life we do no stop acquiring knowledge, we are continually gain fresh information that is connected to the previously  we already have. Our education is based on experiences. I still have not stopped being a student, actually  nobody does, because I need these experiences to achieve the required knowledge to become that teacher I want to be. I have always loved learning things from my parents, friends, teachers, classmates, relatives... because all them have helped to build my identity.

            All the experiences and all the knowledge that we obtain during our life makes us be who we are. In my experience, all these things have become the supporting point to my identity. As my learning was getting by, I was acquiring values, ideologies, beliefs and knowledge that I was transforming in my own identity, in who I was. More or less, it was my “sign of origin”. Therefore, I could never conclude my experience as a learner until the moment I die, due to I will always be a learner who always will have new things to know and to teach. Then, there is not an end for me as learner.

           

                                                                                  Cristina Francisco.

Who I am as a learner? (Miriam Orón)

          It is true that not everybody acquire language at the same time, each person does it in a different way and that is a sign of learning. Some students are better in reading skills, whereas others could be better at the listening part. Personally, I have been studying during my whole life, so it is time to ask myself ''Who am I as a learner?'', taking into account that I am a student of three languages, which are Spanish, Valencian and English and I am in constant contact with them.

            Firstly, I am going to talk about my mother tongue, Spanish. It is a language which I have acquired when I born, in fact I did not realise that I have learnt it. It is a natural process. While I was growing I was using this language, for example with my family, my school, my friends. I received output, because I was surrounded by the speech and I was listening it all the time.

            Regarding Valencian, I started learning it at school. I only received knowledge through workbooks and dictation. When I finished my compulsory studies I wanted to take some level exams, so I had to prepare on my own. I did not have problems with the writing skills, whereas the speaking one was harder for me, due to the lack of practise during my school years. 

            At the same time I was acquiring the first language, I started to learn English. Thanks to that fact, now that I have decided that I want to become an English teacher I can know which techniques will be work better with the students, because I have already been in this place. For instance, I remember that when I really learnt was the moment we were playing or we were working in groups.  It is important to teach theory, but then through games they can assimilate everything better. Besides, not everybody has the same strong points. In my case, I can't be reading during a lot of time because I lose my attention, so maybe my listening or speaking are my best points. So, there are several tools to train them, such as media or interaction with people.

            To sum up, as I have said before the fact that I am a learner would helped me in my future with my students. It is important to know that the language acquisition takes time, specially foreign language. In addition, being motivated would be essential for your learning process. We need to have a good basis from our first language for learning the second one, and the interlanguage  will be constantly changing.

                                                                        Miriam Orón.

Who I am as a learner? by Júlia Torres

If we search thr word "learner" in the dictionary we will find the next objective definition: “person who studies in a teaching establishment”. After that, I can say that I’m absolutely sure that I am a leaner as I’m studying at the university and I have been studying in other centers since I was very little.

In our society, six years old is the mandatory age to go to school; in my case, my parents decided that I would go to kindergarten when I was 2 years. At that age, you are just able to walk and say some things, play and interact with other children, so I think that this is what I did during this period: play in the garden while I wore my bib, which would be dirty with paint and sticky things, make sand castles and drive car toys through the floor, not considering how I looked like or what the teachers said, just enjoyed my two little years.

I spent 3 happy years in childhood education, all of them with the same teacher. It was exciting because of the change of location, “the building is bigger mum, as the children who are there” I used to say; “that’s right, now you’re older” she explained to me, but I still wear my bib, maybe cleaner. You learnt better your ABCs, the numbers, you listened songs and you had to stay sit for more time. You can still play, but not in the same way, now you had to be in your chair. Although, it’s in Primary education when you forget completely what play was and you spent almost half of the day at your desk, looking at your teacher.

In Primary school, you had loads of books, I remember that my bag was always filled with them. From my point of view, I was a good learner. I had my lazy days and sometimes I felt tired and bored about school work, but I always did the homework, I used to read before went sleep and my mum helped me to study. She liked it because then, when I showed her my qualifications she felt proud of me. Primary education has six periods and actually I don’t remember what I learned in that time, but I know that I not only learned content; my teachers taught values like the respect, love, empathy, etc., I learned new things everyday thanks of my mates, such as loyalty, trust, friendship, etc.

Next ESO arrived. I did it in the same school. I more or less knew the teachers and of course the school and my mates, so I think there were advantages for me. I kept studying, did projects and task. The methodology was the same but at a higher level.

Then I went to High school, I spent there 2 years. New friends, new teachers and new environment, what a disaster... I noticed this change, especially with the students’ behaviour, they almost did not respect the teachers and they seemed rude. The first year it was hard for me to adapt to this new situation, however, the second year was the best of my student life. I got excellent grades that helped me to cover the bad ones of the previous year.

The University was a goal and I got it. I got to the Teachers University at 17. It was the first time that I started study something that wasn’t in my town. The environment was different, masses of people, a lot of traffic, several sounds, etc. Now I’m 20 and the path that I’m following is totally different from the one I was used to. No more heavy books, just you, with your notes or with whatever you want to have in order to get your knowledge better. It’s not always in that way but here you decide what you want, you have more freedom and you are aware that you are building your own future.

To sum up, all the centers I have been to, the books I have read and the teachers who have directed all the subjects that I have studied, have contributed to the construction of what I am and they have helped me to get where I am now. I have learnt to be more autodidact and also to be critical with the things I do, listen and watch. If you are in the correct degree, you will enjoy it; of course, you will find obstacles and difficulties but at the end you will feel motivated, and this is because everybody has a dream, and those situations are the way to make it real.