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1- Age is the major factor in a teacher decision about how and what to teach. According to the age students have different needs, competences and cognitive skills. For a teacher is extremely important to know about the different types of learners because theory is central to have a basis to start. Teachers also have to know, or at least to have an approximation to the approaches and methods to teach. We think there is no a perfect method, but there are a wide range of methods which a teacher can apply. The teacher has to take into account age basically, motivation, previous knowledge, intelligence (different kinds) and, of course, context. That knowledge can help the teacher to teach in more effective ways. Because there is no a “right” way to teach. There are strategies and approaches that help teacher, also some methods will be better than others, but all are tools to take advantage. 2Age Very young learners 10 – 11 years old

Young learners. 12 – 13 years old

Adolescents

Adults

Characteristics They respond to meanings. They often learn indirectly. Their understanding comes from what they see and hear or have a chance to touch or interact with. They have limited attention span. They find abstract concepts such as grammar rules difficult to grasp. They are keen to talk about themselves. Greater ability for abstract thought. Most of them understand the need for learning. They need to feel good about themselves and valued. Teenagers often have an acute need for peer approval. They are able to discuss abstract issues

Possible activities Games. Puzzles. Songs. Drawings things. Making things. Physical movements. Dialogues. Question-and-answer activities. Matching exercises. Material has to involve topics which they can react to. They must be encouraged to respond to texts and situations with their own thoughts and experiences. Activities for contrasting ideas and concepts.

They can engage with abstract Games and songs can be thought. appropriate for some students. They have a whole range of life experiences. They have expectations about the learning process. They tend to be more disciplined than other groups. They often have a clear understanding of why they are

learning and what they want to get out of it. They can be critical of teaching methods.

3Teachers need to teach to the group as a whole, but at the same time, they want to satisfy the many different students in the class, taking into account their individual characteristics in order to produce the best result. It is important to recognize how different students are, so the teacher can choose the appropriate methods or strategies to apply during teaching. That can be find out throughout observation or by formal techniques. For example teachers can ask their students about their learning preferences in questionnaires or try to find their tendencies by using specific tests. A worthy element to consider is the intelligence and the way it has been studied through the theories. For example, if we go into Howard Gardner´s theory and realize there are many different styles of thinking, we can take strategies that let us to teach all the class and, at the same time, give opportunities to those who prefer visualization or physical movement. 4The individual needs and behavior profiles will change according to various factors like age, motivation, context, etc. We can mention motivation. There are different sources of motivation: external like the society we live in and context, the people around, goals, etc, and internal factors. If we consider age the motivation is not the same in an adult or a children. Most of adults want to learn because their own reasons, while most of children are made to study.

5We consider aptitude tests are very useful because they are a first approximation to the student´s reality. Of course, there are a lot of systems to measure the aptitude. According to what we have read, an aptitude test is referring to natural abilities. But some critics think that test only consider a specific abilities that can benefit some persons and harm others. That is because they consider tests are focused only on grammar or other specific tasks that not everybody are able to manage. Other critics say test may discriminate the “least” intelligent students. Nevertheless, we consider tests a valuable tool to bring a previous idea about the student, just like other elements a teacher can observe during the class or watching student´s interaction. According to what we have said, those are elements that a teacher will take to determine the way to follow in her/his labor. 6) _ We consider that a ‘good language learner’ should have the next characteristics:  Is willing and accurate guesser  Is willing to make mistakes and learn from them  Practises as often as possible

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Analyses his or her own speech and the speech of others Attends to whether his or her performance meets the standards he or she has learned Tries to get a message across even without the complete language knowledge

These are the characteristics that we consider the ´good language learner’ should have but we also consider that not all language learner will follow these characteristics to letter, and also than we can consider like a ‘bad language learner’ to those who not have these characteristics because not all students learn in the same way and of course in the same time. 7) _ a)  Convergers: these are solitary students, prefer to avoid groups, they are analytic and can impose their own structures on learning.  Conformists: they tend to be dependent on those in authority, doing what they are told.  Concreate learners: they are like conformist, but also enjoy the social aspect of learning. They like language use in the communication rather than language as a system. They enjoy work in groupwork in class.  Communicative learners: they are mucho more interested in social interaction with other speakers of language than are with analysis of how the language works. They are perfectly happy to operate without of a teacher. b) _ we consider us like ‘concreate learners’, because most of us are conformist, but we the work in groups at the same time.

enjoy

8) _some people are better to do something than others, that’s mean that people respond differently to the same stimuli. All this suggests that exist an individual variation in the way that every student learn. There are two models which have tried to account for such perceived individual variation, and which teachers have attempt to use for the benefit of the learners. They are the ‘Neuro-Linguistic Programming’ and the ‘MI Theory’. a) _ Neuro- Linguistic Programming: this models says that we use a number of ‘primary representational systems’ to experience the world. These are the VAKOG (Visual, Auditory, Kinaesthetic, Olfactory and Gustatory). All persons use these systems to experience the world, nevertheless, have one ‘preferred primary system’, some people are stimulated by music (preferred primary system is auditory) for example. NLP gives the teachers the chance of offer student’s activities which suit their primary preferred system. It shows how teachers can operate in the C-Zone (the zone o congruence) where teachers and students interact affectively. NLP also use techniques such as ‘threeposition thinking’, to get teachers and students to see things from other people’s points of view so they can be more effective communicators and interactors. MI Theory: MI stands for Multiple Intelligences. Howard Gardner suggested that we don’t possess a single intelligence, but a range of, at least, seven ‘intelligences’. These are:  Musical/rhythmical  Verbal/linguistic

 Visual/special  Bodily/kinaesthetic  Logical/mathematical  Intrapersonal  Interpersonal Every person have all these intelligences, but in each person on or more of them is more pronounced. For example, a scientist will have a strong Logical/ mathematical intelligence. Gardner also has added an eighth intelligence called ‘Naturalistic’ (the ability to nurture and relate information to one’s natural surrounding). The theory of the MI suggested that the same learning task may not be appropriate for all students. Teachers cannot teach to each individual students of a class at the same time, but teachers could plan lessons around one or more intelligence. b) There are many activities that a teacher could use in classroom in order to work successfully with all the systems and intelligences of their students. ‘Storytelling and narration and writing stories’ could be used for verbal/linguistic intelligence. ‘Hear and sing sons’ for musical intelligence, ‘describing pictures’ for visual/special, ‘working in groups with practical works’ for interpersonal intelligence, ‘writing essays or autobiographies’ for intrapersonal intelligences, etc. 9) _ Realised about the individual differences of the students mentioned above, as teacher we want to satisfy every student in our classroom with activities that satisfy all the individual differences and produce the best results for each of them. Our tasks as teacher will be establish who are the different students in our classroom and recognize how they are different, for this we use the observation or in another formal devices like questionnaires with items, or some activities. As results we will have information about individuals, then we will be in a position to try to organise activities which provide maximal advantage to the many different people in the classroom. These variety of activities will be given in different times and moments in the class (as we see in answer 8-b, describing pictures, working in groups, storytelling, etc.), which means that not all students ‘will be happy all of the time’. There will be some students that enjoys it and find more useful than others. But if we are aware of this and act accordingly, will have the chance that most of the class will be engaged with the learning process the most of the time. 10) _ The ‘Common European Framework’ (which is a document that setting out what students ‘can do’ at various levels) and ALTE (Association of Language Testers in Europe) describe the different levels sequence: A1 and A2: elementary, B1: pre-intermediate and intermediate, B2: upperintermediate and C1 and C2: advanced. This ‘can do’ levels are being used by coursebook writers and curriculum designers, not only in Europe but across much of the language-learning world. It is important for the teachers to know about this ‘can do’ levels to avoid many problems with the student’s learning. Students must learn certain goals according with their levels. So, teacher must know this ‘can do’ levels to setting achievement goals, and organise the activities and exercises according to the correct level that their students possess.

11) _ motivation is some kind of internal drive which pushes someone to do things in order to achieve something. William and Burden suggest that motivation is a ‘state of cognitive arousal’ which there is ‘sustained intellectual and/or physical effort’ so that the person can achieve some ‘previously set goal’. In discussions of motivation an accepted distinction is made between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivation is the result of any number of ‘outside’ factors, for example the need of pass an exam. Intrinsic motivation comes from within the individual.