Assignment – CMTRP

SUBJECT ASSIGNMENT:
CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT -
TECHNIQUES AND REFLECTIONS ON PRACTICE

Name and surname(s): María Natalia Delbono Lacoste

Group: FPMTFL###2022-PPS-TFC-Oficial

fp_tefl_2022-02_uneatlantico

Date: 21 / 5 / 2022

1
 Assignment – CMTRP

GENERAL INFORMATION:

The subject assignment consists of reflecting on two readings and two issues from
the materials. This assignment must be done individually and fulfil the following
conditions:

- Length: 5 pages (without including cover, index or appendices –if there are any-).
- Type of font: Arial or Times New Roman.
- Size: 11.
- Line height: 1.5.
- Alignment: Justified.

The assignment has to be done in this Word document and has to fulfil the rules of
presentation and edition, as for quotes and bibliographical references which are
detailed in the Study Guide.

Also, it has to be submitted following the procedure specified in the “Subject

Evaluation” document. Sending it to the tutor’s e-mail is not permitted.

In addition to this, it is very important to read the assessment criteria, which can be
found in the “Subject Evaluation” document.

Assignment:

Take any two readings and two issues from the materials – for example:

● segregation of low-track students,

● the usefulness of web-quests,
● group dynamics (the 6 types),
● the relevance of the new ‘key competences’ to language teaching and
classroom management,
● the way in which the market shift to young and very young learners has
changed the way we think and teach,
● Multiple intelligences,
● any other which has attracted your attention.

and discuss them separately:

1. Say why you have chosen them from a personal perspective.

2. Explain their importance with reference to the general framework of classroom
management.
3. And try to predict how the topic will evolve in the future.

Important: you have to write your personal details and the subject name on the
cover (see the next page). The assignment that does not fulfil these conditions
will not be corrected. You have to include the assignment index below the cover.

2
 Assignment – CMTRP

INDEX

TABLE OF CONTENTS p. 3
INTRODUCTION p. 4
TASK DEVELOPMENT p. 5
CONCLUSION p. 8
BIBLIOGRAPHY p. 9
APPENDIXES p. 10

3
 Assignment – CMTRP

Introduction

Being a “reflective practitioner” (Schön, 1983, cited by Burden, R.L. & Williams, M. 1997) in
our profession is one of the cornerstones of our success as teachers. Delving into classroom
management issues is perhaps, from the practical side of our career, one of the leading resources
we have to improve our performance and offer our students a well-designed and well-informed
learning experience.

Having read all the course resources, I came to find two topics that deeply caught my attention
as I feel they are always intertwined in our daily practices. I will then discuss both of them,
specifically Motivation and Feedback, through the ideas discussed in two of the suggested
articles:

● Motivation in ELT, written by Steven McDonough

● Corrective Feedback in Second Language Learning, written by Leonardo Véliz

Furthermore, I’m planning to enrich my analysis of both topics with contributions taken from
other authors included in the course, as well as key concepts introduced in FUNIBER’s study
content.

A reflection on my choice of topics will pinpoint why both are so crucial within the general
classroom management framework. A thorough discussion on how they connect and why they
are such vital constituents of a successful teaching and learning experience will follow with the
hope that this yields further analysis about the possible implications the proper study of both
topics will have in the future.

4
 Assignment – CMTRP

On that first day of class, I walked into the classroom with a big smile, my head full of new
ideas and anxious to embrace the challenges that the group would imply for me as a teacher. I
praise myself as a caring person who is capable of building an excellent rapport with her
students. Therefore, that day began as most first lessons at the beginning of a course, presenting
myself to my students, showing genuine interest in their personal and learning stories with the
language and being as receptive as possible, when that invisible wall came between us. To
which wall do I refer? The one that was built particularly in that institution between teachers
and students after years and years of attending lessons that did not cater to their needs and were
based on syllabuses approved and designed by authorities who believe they know our student’s
reality when they actually only have achieved a glimpse into it. The wall that was built with
frustrating learning experiences with teachers who chose to follow “folkways of teaching’’
(Buchmann, 1987) to justify their choices whether they worked or not. The wall that, in this
specific case I am narrating, is built on the social differences my students have to face with
other students from other high schools.

Working with students from critical contexts, such as those I refer to, is a highly demanding
teaching experience. Never had I imagined how difficult it would be to start demolishing that
wall between us. While resorting to all the theories I have learnt, and after hours and hours of
deep reflection on ways to reach them, I concluded that some key aspects could help us teachers
do so. Whenever I presented them with a challenging and motivating task and gave my positive
thoughts on their performance, a light sparked in their eyes and the next time, the wall became
lower. Thus my choice of topics.

Motivation and feedback have always been a constant source of inquiry and interest to me.
Being a teacher-student, I had to face many hardships in my learning process. Which teacher has
not gone through the same? However, I took up the challenge of researching feedback as a result
of finding a way out of my own frustration and why not from the anger I felt with some of my
teacher’s attitudes towards our process of learning to become a teacher. Since I began to work as
a teacher, I have tried from day one not to follow into the traps that made me investigate these
topics.

As stated above, both concepts are closely knitted, so I would like to start by reviewing their
key ideas. First of all, Motivation is closely related to affective factors connected to the students
and the classroom environment. Does the student have a positive self-concept or high
self-esteem? How is his/her attitude towards the teacher, their classmates, and the work to be
done in class?

5
 Assignment – CMTRP

Delving into the different theories regarding this concept, the first ideas I came across during
my readings were the ones about Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation in the Motivation to Learn
Theory. The former refers to how a person has to satisfy his/her interests or needs, and the latter
to external aspects, such as the teacher, the classroom, the syllabus, etc. Another view of
Motivation is the one posed by the Need for Achievement Theory, in which high-achievers are
those students who look for challenges and low achievers are those who dodge them and feel
dismayed with their results. Finally, the Attribution Theory is based upon two central beliefs:
when we assume that a particular outcome is linked to our ability to do the task and the effort
we put into it (High Internal Locus of Control), or when we assume that the difficulty of the task
or luck were key elements to have achieved the expected result (High External Locus of
Control).

Furthermore, we can find different types of motivation: Integrative (when the stimulus for the
student is to get to know the culture and be able to communicate fluently using the foreign
language), Instrumental (when the student takes advantage of knowing the language), Global
(general disposition to learn the target language), Situational (when the need of learning the
language is to be able to thrive in a specific context or environment) and Task (when the
understanding or mastery of the language is affiliated to the accomplishment of a particular job).

How do we realise a person is motivated to do something? There are two essential components:
our craving to achieve a goal, the Effort we put into it, and our Attitude towards achieving that
specific aim. This is interwoven with many aspects of our lives, such as our personal history
(family and peer influence), anxiety, age, sex, etc. The last component plays a significant role in
the specific context I am currently teaching. Most of my students have a high affective filter
(Krashen, 1981, cited in Funiber 2022, online), so they display a passive attitude towards
learning and need constant encouragement.

Much research has been done in this area, as Motivation is fundamental to creating a
constructive working environment. In the article "Motivation in ELT," Steven McDonough
(2007) recounts all the conclusions and inquiries distinguished lecturers such as Gardener have
come up with regarding this topic (see Appendix 1). I support his ideas when he says,
"Motivation is a property of the learner, but it is also a transitive concept: coaches can motivate
their clients, teachers can motivate their students. Furthermore, it is dynamic and changes over
time, especially in the usually long-drawn out process of language learning. Motivation is thus
remarkably complex". Though most studies have focused their attention on the reasons for

6
 Assignment – CMTRP

learning, undoubtedly, the teacher's role in the Motivation realm is paramount, as he asserts in
his conclusion.

A significant part of motivating our students is when we offer feedback to them. Amett (1969,
cited in Funiber, 2019, p.25) discusses the three functions it has, namely: reinforcement,
information and motivation. Feedback is always present in many of our actions as teachers, in
any interaction that we have with our students, whether it is implicit or explicit. “Feedback is
information that is given to the learner about his/her performance of a learning task, with the
objective of improving this performance” (Ur, 1996:242).

Feedback has been one of the major concerns in the language teaching realm. Many lecturers
have researched the topic as it is how we connect with our students allowing ourselves to create
a productive and constructive classroom environment built on joint trust and empathy. “It
should serve the purpose of reducing the gap between current and desired performance by
either providing information for improving inappropriate knowledge (...) or by reducing the
cognitive load presented by a task or content” (Díaz-Painter Farrell, 2016).

How could we provide information for our students to improve their use of the language? In his
article, Véliz (2008, p.286) makes a clear distinction between Positive and Negative Feedback,
defining the first one as the way in which we tell our students what is possible for them to do
with the target language and the second one as the way in which we say to our students what is
not possible. Positive feedback tends to be more descriptive, whereas Negative feedback is more
prescriptive. In any case, we should be cautious about our word choices when offering it, never
forgetting to reflect on how useful it would be for the student.

Understanding Corrective Feedback as “The teacher’s response to a student error” (Dekeyser:

1993), Véliz asserts that “error correction is effective, necessary and essential, but the obstacle
which prevents error correction from being totally effective lies in teachers’ inconsistency and
unsystematic ways of dealing with errors.” How many times do we stop for a second to rethink
what we are about to say to our students to avoid being harmful? Do we reflect on the efficacy
of it?

To offer effective corrective feedback, I found in Erico, M. et al.’s work some key concepts to
bear in mind: “showing our appreciation for good things and our support and suggestion in
improving those that need to. Remain an encouraging referent for those receiving our feedback,
and be capable of highlighting the strong points our mentees’ performance has”.

7
 Assignment – CMTRP

Ideally, we should be able to offer feedback focusing on the production of the language without
placing strong stress on mistakes (only if they impede communication), but how many times
have we heard our students requesting specific error correction? As with motivation, many
theories have arisen. The Behaviourist Theory assumes that learners will take up the correct
form of the target language from the modelling of it by the teacher. In contrast, the Cognitive
Code-Learning Theory does not view mistakes as something unfortunate but rather a natural
constituent of the learning process. Though the Interlanguage Theory also supports this concept,
the Monitor Theory (Krashen, mentioned in Funiber, p. 23) strikes a chord when analysing the
concepts of learning and acquisition and how important feedback is in order to provide the
student with plenty of comprehensible input from which he can acquire the language.

Therefore, it is not just a matter of praising our student’s work and only telling them what is
right and what we like about it. It is about helping our students raise awareness on their learning
processes. How could we manage to “establish a culture of trust and constructive support”
(Erico, M et al., 2011)? Many models on steps to follow to achieve that have been proposed.
They constitute an excellent resource for teachers who really care about offering motivational
and enriching feedback (See Appendix 2). Is it esay? Not at all, but as Scrivener (2011) said: “it
will almost certainly have a great long-term benefit”

Conclusion

A teacher’s central concern should always be his/her students. How to approach them, nurture
them and help them be better versions of themselves. There is much to say on the relevance
motivation and feedback have within these processes. The literature on both is abundant.
However, the more we read, the more prepared we are to achieve our teaching goals.
We live in a continuously changing, diverse reality in which we need to cater to our student’s
personal and professional development needs. Instead of building walls that divide us, we have
to realise that we might be helping our students better prepare for their future through
motivation and feedback. As John Dewey said, ’’if we teach today’s students as we taught
yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow’’. Suppose we are to help our students develop vital skills
to achieve the 21st Century Learning Competencies (Creativity & Innovation, Critical Thinking
& Problem Solving, Communication and Collaboration). In that case, we need to constantly
stimulate them and nourish them with constructive yet consistent feedback. If we do so, we will
show them we cherish their future and that what they do right or wrong in class takes them one
step ahead in their growing process as global citizens and individuals.

8
 Assignment – CMTRP

Bibliography

Buchmann, M. (1987). Teaching knowledge: the lights that teachers live by. Oxford Review of
Education 13/2: 151-64

Burden, R.L. & Williams, M. (1997). Psychology for Language Teachers. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.

Camelo, S. (n.d.). Affective factors. Learning factors. Methodology. Key concepts. Video
Presentations - Google Drive

Cummings, P. (2013). Diving into Project-based Learning: Feedback Friends

Diving into Project-based Learning: Feedback Friends - Philip CummingsPhilip Cummings

Diaz Maggioli, G., Painter-Farrell, L. (2016) Lessons Learned. (pp. 367-416). Oxford:
Richmond.
Erico, M., Sorondo, A., Gaione, G., Garcia Paullier, E. (2010). The Challenge of  Feedback.
ANEP (Ed.), Mentoring in a Mint (pp.  55-57). Montevideo, Uruguay:  ANEP.

Funiber (2019) Classroom Management - Techniques and Reflections on Practice. Barcelona:

Funiber.

McDonough, S. (2007). Motivation in ELT. ELT Journal Volume 61/4, 369-371;

doi:10.1093/elt/ccm056. Oxford University Press.

Scrivener, J. (2011) Learning Teaching. (p. 97). Oxford: Richmond.

Véliz, L. (2008). Corrective Feedback in Second Language Classrooms. Literatura y Lingüística

N°19 ISSN 0716-5811 /pp. 283-292. Retrieved from: Corrective Feedback in Second Language
Classrooms (scielo.cl)

Ur, P. (1996). A Course in Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University

9
 Assignment – CMTRP

Appendix 1

In the article "Motivation in ELT," Steven McDonough (2007) recounts all the conclusions and
enquiries distinguished lecturers such as Gardener have come up with regarding this topic. This
is a table that summarises those key ideas.

Gardner’s Approach to Motivation The strength of motivation is estimated from

attitude questionnaires

Crookes and Schmidt’s (1991) New Research Focused their research on individuals, the
Agenda context of learning, the strategies learners
might adopt and the observable learning
behaviour of class members

Covington’s self worth Theory (1998) Motivation is based on the learner’s beliefs
about themselves, their level of aspiration
and the strategies they operate or can be
taught to adopt to achieve their goals

Bandura’s notion of self efficacy How learners estimate their capabilities and
manage themselves to be successful

Ushioda (1996) Investigated the connection between intrinsic

motivation and the development of learner
autonomy in language learning

Wainer’s Attribution Theory (1972)
It focuses on how students evaluate tasks and
measure the reasons of their success on their
learning outcomes according to their
beliefs,e.g. If they succeed because they had
been working hard, then natural talent does
not matter

Dornyei (2001: 21) Refers to motivational shifts (choice,

execution and retrospection), and the
importance of the teacher's role as a
facilitator of the learning process.

Source: McDonough, S. (2007). Motivation in ELT. ELT Journal Volume 61/4, 369-371;
doi:10.1093/elt/ccm056. Oxford University Press.

10
 Assignment – CMTRP

Appendix 2

I include here two different approaches that helped me better understand the practical side
of offering feedback

What I found most inspiring from Gabriel

Diaz's view of Feedback is that it embraces
the importance of the affective realm.

Sources:

Cummings, P. (2013). Diving into Project-based Learning: Feedback Friends

Diving into Project-based Learning: Feedback Friends - Philip CummingsPhilip Cummings

Diaz Maggioli, G., Painter-Farrell, L. (2016) Lessons Learned. (pp. 367-416). Oxford:
Richmond.

11