Characteristics Of Pupils

953 Words4 Pages
1.4 Characteristics of Pupils Pupils come to school from various social and economic backgrounds and teachers are often not able to realize its impact on the pupil as a learner. Even if the teacher knows the family of the pupil and its situation, the teacher has little or only a small influence on it. Harmer (2015, p.81) asserts that “the age of our students is a major factor in our decisions about how and what to teach. People of different ages have different needs, competences and cognitive skills” and that “we might expect children of primary age to acquire much of a foreign language through play, for example, whereas for adults we can reasonably expect a greater use of abstract thought.” Many psychology course books or teaching manuals…show more content…
It is also at this stage when pupils start to understand metacognition, in other words, that “there are different ways to know things and that some ways are better than others,” and they also begin to understand that “learning and recall are caused by particular cognitive processes that they can control” (Snowman, McCown, & Biehler, 2012, pp. 82-83). As learners they can use logical reasoning, they can plan activities and they can argue and explain why they think what they think, but the physical world is still dominant, their understanding mainly comes through senses – hands, eyes, ears. They may sometimes have difficulty in knowing what is real and what is only a fiction/imagination. Young pupils love to play and learn the best when they are happy, yet sometimes they take themselves too seriously and believe that what they are doing is “real” work, at this age level they depend on the teacher very much as they are not able to decide for themselves what to study (Scott, & Ytreberg, 2011, p.2). To help these pupils learn, the authors Slattery, & Willis suggest making the English classes as enjoyable as possible, using lot of gestures, actions and pictures to demonstrate meaning and playing games, singing…show more content…
At this stage they replace adults, who used to be the major source of their behavioral norms, with their peers. Pupils do not need so much praise from their teachers, because it is now their peer group they seek approval from. This is also the age when they realize that the rules set by adults may be different from the rules set by their peer group. Elementary school pupils still like to play, but without supervision of adults and their friendships are more selective and gender-based (Snowman, McCown, & Biehler (2012, p. 84-85). Scott, & Ytreberg describe these pupils as partly adult and partly childish. From the age 9 or 10 they are able to differentiate between facts and fiction for sure. They also still rely on the physical world to understand meaning, but they understand the meaning based on spoken words too. Now they are able to make some decisions about their own learning. They develop a sense of fairness and from time to time they tend to question the teacher´s decisions. Regarding the language, they are fully competent users of their mother tongue, they are aware of the major rules of its syntax. According to Scott, & Ytreberg “there are many similarities between learning one´s mother tongue and learning a foreign language in spite of the differences in age and the time available,” but so far no one “has found a universal pattern of language learning which everyone agrees

More about Characteristics Of Pupils

Open Document