Ministerio de Educación

Dirección General de Educación Primaria

Módulo

Pautas didácticas para el desarrollo de las habilidades lingüística del idioma

inglés en niñas y niños de Educación Primaria

Unit II: Social-Affective strategies to help students in the development of communicative skills.
Unit Competences:

 Identifies students with high affective filter through the observation in the classroom.
 Uses affective strategies in the classroom to aid students in the English language learning.
 Evaluates the use of the affective strategies in the English lesson in order to help students in the
development of communicative skills.

In the previous unit, the focus was on understanding the nature of children´s behavior and the
characterization of the child cognitive according to Jean Piaget, and why intrinsic motivation is
important for learning a second or foreign language according to Stephen Krashen.
Considering these basis which are theories that help to comprehend why children behave in some
particular and different ways, why they are not motivated sometimes. There are many internal and
external factors, one of them could be because of the oriented tasks are difficult to the student´s level
and age. As a result, students may feel anxious and uncomfortable leading to the distraction and
disinterest in learning a language, particularly in young learners.
Now, that you have some insights and aware of the cognitive and emotional development of school age
children, our task is to aid students to have a successful learning through the innovation of learning
strategies that develop the language skills based on your real context.

Exploring previous knowledge of the unit

Bingo! Firstly, the participants take a piece of paper with three questions. Secondly, they interview
different people, when they finish, they say Bingo! After that, they make groups of four participants,
discussing and giving feedback of the information they collected. Finally, a participant is selected to
present the most important ideas they shared.

1. Why intrinsic motivation is important to develop in young learners?

2. What´s the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation?
3. In your opinion, what are affective strategies?

4. Reference Theory of the unit:

One of the factor that help students to learn a new language is motivation, but how can teachers motivate
to young learners? Probably, they are not aware of the importance of learning a foreign or second
language. For that reason, it is advisable to getting know the difference between intrinsic motivation and
extrinsic motivation.

Extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation

Extrinsic motivation to learn caused by external pressures such as work, because parent has sent a learner
to class, or the need to gain a qualification in the language. In contrast with intrinsic motivation, which is
an internal force such as interest in learning a language to communicate with other people or for further
personal development in general.
In order to help students to develop intrinsic
motivation is essential to make them feel
good when doing different activities that
they enjoy, activities that can satisfy their
curiosity through readings stories,
experimenting about their natural
surroundings and having the sense that they
can do something challenging.

On the other hand, extrinsic motivation is

when you do something to earn a reward, when a student studies very hard is because he /she wants to get
a good grade. Another example is when a student does his / her homework because it is going to be
evaluated. In other words students obtain a reward in return, it is not because they enjoy learning.
However, extrinsic motivation can lead to intrinsic motivation, when giving rewards students are
interested in participating in the activities helping them to learn successfully.

Learning Strategies

One of the main purpose of second and foreign language acquisition is to study why some students
learn a language easily, being successful in learning a language while others have difficulties. It is
defined that teachers should provide a set of learning strategies to be used for students.
One of the learning strategies that teachers should use to develop learning are the social affective
strategies.
According to Oxford (1990: 8) Strategies are specific actions taken by the learner to make learning
easier, faster, more enjoyable, more self-directed, more effective and more transferable to new
situations.
In this context, teachers can influence on the students´ type of learning strategy they should select to
learn a new language.

In Ellis (1994) a classification of strategies is presented divided into three categories:

Metacognitive strategies, cognitive strategies, and social – affective strategies.

Social Affective Strategies

The social – affective learning strategy is a technique used to deal with emotional and socio-cultural
challenges that students encounter in their learning process.
According to Oxford (2003: 14), social affective strategies can help students improve the learning in an
effective way by applying team work techniques to interact with others, it means helping students to
cooperate with others.

One of the gratifying work is being a teacher and our goal is that students be successful learners. This
can be done by creating a successful classroom, what are the characteristics of a successful classroom?
It is the classroom in which students feel they are appreciated, comfortable, enjoying the experience
that they are learning a new language with interesting activities.

As teachers we may ask ourselves, how does my student feel in the classroom? This is one of the first
questions we need to ask ourselves before planning a lesson.
One of the component in reducing the affective filter is to establish a good rapport with the students,
they need to feel heard, so they feel comfortable, knowing that you are there to help them sincerity.
When learning a new language there are some differences among the students language developing,
these are attributed to individual differences such as: intelligence, aptitude, personality, motivation and
anxiety.
Thus, it is presented a set of social - affective strategies to develop with the young learners.

Affective Strategies for young learners

Motivating students’ participation
There are some elements teachers may consider when teaching, speak slowly, reinforce the instructions
through examples, write legibly on the board, bring a tone of voice with energy and biases.

Variety
Keep changing the pace. In your lesson plan, include a variety of different activities. For instance: play
a game that wakes the children up and follow it with a calm game so that the students do not get too
excited. There are educational games, such as board games, crossword puzzles, art projects and
competitions. For fifth graders they could read comics, comedy, peaceful music, and hands-on
activities.

Collaborative pairs or groups

Provide children lots of opportunities to work with partners or in groups dividing the students with
proficient and non-proficient ones. This strategy help children learn to cooperate, build community in
your classroom and it can decrease fears and feelings of judgment. In addition, they learn how to
negotiate with others and develop leadership skills.

Personalize your classrooms and assessment

Place positive affirmations in the classroom. Use simple vocabulary and powerful, positive images,
photos of your students and goals in an accessible location of your classroom or in the English corner.
Those are some examples of phrases you can adapt: “I’m powerful”, I’m unique”, I’m kind”, “I’m
getting better and better every day”, I’m patient”.
Another idea to implement is to create a bucket, students can write messages of kindness, appreciation,
and love on pieces of paper throughout the week to fill up the bucket. At the end of the lesson or week
spend a few minutes sharing the positive messages.
Feeling chart
It would be wonderful if you elaborate a feeling and emotional chart to check how students feel every
day, it could be as a simply warm greeting to start a lesson by asking the question: How do you feel
today?

This is a good way to

begin teaching students to recognize their feelings and emotions and learn to manage their moods.
Increase social-emotional vocabulary
In our teaching context, there are some repeaters students who do not have an English background, or
even students who feel they are not successful in learning a new
language, so they feel frustrated. In this case, it would be helpful if teachers provide positive phrases to
lower their affective filter by hanging a poster on the wall. Here, there are some examples of phrases you
can adapt based on the student´s level and age.

Assign students classroom duties

This is a good strategy to encourage students to become leaders through the assignment of
responsibilities. For some students it is helpful to assign these roles especially when they active students,
and get them all involved in the lesson. Example:
Class leaders
Duties Name Days
Erase the board Andrés Monday
 Strengthen friendship
There are many ways to cultivate friendship among students. For instance: Watching videos.

Encourage students to encourage expressions through art

When students are developing speaking skill so they cannot express themselves enough, particularly if
you assign to read or listen a story, so they are going to share specific or general information, art is a great
tool to allow them to explore their minds, thoughts and feelings being able to create a painting or
drawing.

 Self - Learning
activities
 Group work:
1. Based on your experience, analyze the following situation.

A case study
Silvia is a repeating student in fifth grade in this school year 2022. So, she does not have a previous
experience in English language learning. At the beginning, she seemed to be worried during the lesson
without participating in the activities. One day, she reached out and told me she did not understand
anything at all in the English lessons. I replied that she would improve every day as I was available to help
students in the Reinforcement Scholar Plan (Plan de reforzamiento escolar) conducted on Saturdays. After
she was motivated to participate in this plan, I supported by attending their learning needs and little by
little she now has progressed in the learning process, participating in the English lessons.
(By Primary English teacher Bethel Palacios)

2. Have you experienced a similar situation in your English lessons?

3. What kind of actions would you implement if you have the same situation in your classroom?

2. Group work
2.1. Share a learning experience in which you have aided or helped your students to be more successful
in the learning process.
1. What did you do to help him / her to become successful?
2. What kind of activities can you include in your lesson plan, so that students feel confidence to
participate?
Whole group: Demonstrate one activity per each group.

 Unit Self – evaluation

 Select four social - affective strategies that you have developed in your teaching experience and describe
the purpose of them to engage students in their learning process.
  Example:

Performance GradeG Social affective Activity Result after the implementation

indicator Strategy
To ask and Fifth Game Hot potato The students felt motivated to
answer questions participating in the lesson. As a
related to result, they improved asking and
personal answering questions about personal
information. information.

1. Bibliografía

Web-grafía

1. Wyman K. MEd (Resilient educator)

https://resilienteducator.com/classroom-resources/affective-filter-english-learners/

2. Fatimah Lisa. Connecting, developing and empowering educators. Teach Middle East.
https://teachmiddleeastmag.com/four-tips-reducing-students-affective-filters/
3. Rossiter Marian J. University of Alberta. (2003) The effects on affective strategy training in the ESL

classroom. Teaching English as a second or foreign language.

http://www.tesl-ej.org/wordpress/issues/volume7/ej26/ej26a2/

4. Elizabeth Mulvahil. http: //www.wearteachers .com/21-simple-ways-to integrate-social-emotional-

learning-through-out-the-day