Methods for Teaching EFL: Classroom and lesson management PDF

9.2. Classroom and lesson management in teaching skills High-quality teaching is essential for a successful learning process. In order to achieve succes...

9.2. Classroom and lesson management in teaching skills High-quality teaching is essential for a successful learning process. In order to achieve success for the students, teachers should be prepared for providing adequate solutions and strategies to deal with challenges that vary from large multilevel classes that make working towards a common proficiency-related goal very difficult to the need to support students’ social and emotional development. So the first question we have to ask is: What makes a great teacher? And, by extension, what makes a good English teacher? There is not an easy answer to these questions and although numerous sources provide lists of personality traits and teaching styles, being a great teacher means different things to everyone. Let us compare two lists of tips from “What Makes a Good Teacher?” by Rob Jenkins and “Nine Characteristics of a Great Teacher” by Maria Orlando. “What Makes a Good Teacher?” “Nine Characteristics of a Great Teacher” by by Rob Jenkins Maria Orlando Great teachers A great teacher Are good-natured Respects students Creates a sense of community and belonging Are professional without being aloof in the classroom Is warm, accessible, enthusiastic and caring. Seem to enjoy what they do Sets high expectations for all students Has his own love of learning and inspires Are demanding without being unkind students with his passion for education and for the course material Seem comfortable in their own skin Is a skilled leader Can “shift-gears” and is flexible when a lesson © Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (UNIR) Are tremendously creative isn’t working Collaborates with colleagues on an ongoing Make teaching look easy basis Maintains professionalism in all areas—from personal appearance to organizational skills and preparedness for each day Table 1. What makes a good teacher. Source: adapted from Jenkins, 2016; Orlando, 2013. Methods for Teaching EFL: Skills 5 Unit 9. Key ideas  Think about it! Which characteristics appear in both lists? Jenkins considers that these characteristics apply to teachers from kindergarten through graduate school. Do you agree? Why/why not? Do great teachers in primary schools and secondary schools have the same traits? Think about enthusiasm and expertise, for instance. Think of your favourite teacher. Which are his/her personal traits and professional qualities you most value? Do they appear in the lists above? Are great teachers popular among students? Are popular teachers great teachers? Make your own list of characteristics of great teachers. Both Jenkins and Orlando seem to place the emphasis on teachers’ personality and their relationship with the students, i.e. how teachers make their students feel comfortable and enjoy lessons. Passion, friendliness, flexibility, and humour are essential qualities for a good relationship with the students. A good teacher is not only compassionate and concerned about his/her students, but is also willing to collaborate with his/her colleagues. While it is clear for both students and teachers that teacher personality is fundamental for effective teaching, it is not easy to define the ‘ideal teacher’ and we have to be careful not to create stereotypes. As Harmer (2010) rightly points out, “effective teacher personality is a blend between who we really are and who we are as teacher”, that is why we have to “present a professional face to the students which they find both interesting and effective” (p. 24, emphasis is mine). © Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (UNIR) An approach to what it means to be a good teacher might credit a slightly different list depending on what is being measured and who is measuring these characteristics. It is not surprising then that teachers, students, and teaching awards highlight different qualities. The educational level in formal education also affects categorization of teaching excellence. Teachers who work with young learners should Methods for Teaching EFL: Skills 6 Unit 9. Key ideas  be caring and supportive, while expertise is essential for those who teach advanced proficiency levels. Some of the features that are seen as relevant in a great number of studies are creativity and imagination, but also adaptability. In “A ‘teaching excellence’ for the times we live in?” Alan M. Skelton offers his personal statement about teaching excellence summarized in six principles. He focuses on higher education, but his emphasis on values and a holistic approach to education applies to any educational level, as seen in the quote below. Teaching excellence is about the enduring human struggle to ‘live out’ educational values in practice. Excellence is about the degree of engagement with this struggle as our values inevitably get denied in concrete material circumstances. We learn about and sometimes modify the educational values that underpin our teaching as we attempt to put them into practice. (Skelton, 2009, p. 109) Apart from personal traits, effective teaching requires teacher knowledge (for further information on teacher knowledge, see “T is for Teacher Knowledge” in the “In-Depth” section). First and foremost, teachers should have a good knowledge of the subject matter they teach, i.e. they should know how language systems (grammar, vocabulary, phonology, and discourse) work. There was a debate on who teaches English better: native or non-native speakers and some believed that a native speaker would always do better in class. Research shows that successful teaching requires the combination of a wide variety of personal traits and professional knowledge and skills, i.e. it takes much more that speaking English well. Having a slight accent under the influence of teachers’ L1 is acceptable. However, this does not mean that non-native teachers can make mistakes in spoken or written English. © Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (UNIR) Grammar, style, or spelling mistakes in our classroom practice are unacceptable if our aim is to provide quality teaching, which means that, put simply, English teachers should speak English well, preferably at a near-native level. Teachers also need to know a variety of methods and approaches to teaching English and their corresponding strategies. This and knowledge of classroom management techniques Methods for Teaching EFL: Skills 7 Unit 9. Key ideas  should constantly be updated, keeping up with the latest research and best practice in the field. The capacity to go on learning is crucial for teachers. In a rapidly changing world, where learning environments are constantly evolving, teachers need to be self-aware and committed to continuous development. Adaptability is imperative for classroom management, as teachers must be able to interpret students’ response to proposed activities and act accordingly. In order to be able to react to students’ performance and modify some aspects of the lesson plan, such as sequencing or timing, teachers need knowledge of teaching methods and strategies and pedagogical skills to apply them in class. This ability is especially important when we see that students will probably not achieve the planned objectives. We have to be able ‘to think on our feet’ and quickly vary pacing, procedure, or grouping to respond to what happens in the classroom. A quality that needs both personality and professionalism is the ability to establish and maintain rapport. Although it looks like magic in Scrivener’s definition below, teachers can learn some techniques that can help them master this ability, such as showing respect, listening to your students, or having a good sense of humour, among others. Rapport is sometimes characterized as a kind of indefinable magic that some teachers manage to create where others fail, and, certainly, you can often detect when it is present within a few seconds of walking into a room: a sense of lively engagement, a roomful of people who are happy to be together. (Scrivener, 2012, p. 40) Think about it! © Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (UNIR) Do you think teachers should be friends with their students or, on the contrary, maintain certain distance? Is the balance between the two attitudes affected by students’ age? How? What does being friends with students mean to you? Methods for Teaching EFL: Skills 8 Unit 9. Key ideas  Harmer (2010) observes that “part of a good teacher’s art is to adopt a number of different roles in the class” and explains the significance of some of them (p. 25). Teacher roles This role may work for grammar explanations and other presentations, but teachers Controller should encourage students’ agency, rather than control all the activities all the time In projects, for instance, teachers can feed in some ideas, information, or language to Prompter help students proceed and work together Assessor Give students feedback and grades Resource This role is necessary when students ask for language information Language The teacher is an adviser who responds to what the student is doing and advised them tutor on what to do next Table 2. Teacher roles. Source: adapted from Harmer, 2010, p. 25. Teachers act differently in their different roles, although it would be wrong to think that there is a clear-cut boundary between them and that they perform one role at a time. The ability of performing different classroom management roles is crucial for establishing positive and respectful relationship with our students. Thus, they can perceive our professionalism. Among teacher skills are managing classes and managing tasks. Managing classes involves working with the classroom equipment, organizing seating patterns, grouping students, giving instructions, setting and reinforcing meaningful rules, establishing classroom procedures (what students should do in different circumstances). There is evidence that one of the most important teacher skills is effective listening. Classroom situations in which teachers need effective listening skills can be roughly divided into: students asking their teacher a question, students completing a task that consists in oral production (e.g. oral presentation), and © Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (UNIR) students completing a task that involves oral interaction. The teacher should first consider if he/she should correct students’ language errors and in what way. When students are completing a task, this decision will depend on the aims of the task (e.g. accuracy and/or fluency), but when a student is asking a question and makes a mistake, it might be a good idea not to correct that mistake. This skill is particularly Methods for Teaching EFL: Skills 9 Unit 9. Key ideas  relevant when a student is trying to share a personal experience. In such cases, as long as the utterance is acceptable and the message properly understood, teachers might prefer not to interrupt the student, but listen supportively instead. The teacher needs to be audible. It has been a longstanding observation that some teachers talk in a loud or sometimes very loud voice in the classroom in an attempt to attract a noisy classroom’s attention. The effect can be quite the contrary and students can be distracted by so much noise or just stop paying attention. In a noisy classroom teachers can employ a different strategy to control the noise rather than speaking louder than students. By using the right voice volume and tone, teachers can create a safe learning environment for practicing the four macro skills. As necessary as voice control in the classroom are gestures and facial expressions, especially in low-level classes, where learners often feel the need for visual support to understand a message. When we give instructions or explain a grammar item or new words, we should be aware of our body language and make sure our gestures and facial expression reinforce the meaning of our message. Scrivener (2012) recommends establishing eye contact, making sure our gestures are clear, using our eyebrows to convey reactions, exaggerating our usual ways of conveying meaning through body language, and eventually, encouraging students to use gestures and facial expressions in oral communication (p. 64). Teacher use of graded target language and/or learners’ L1 is another classroom management technique that depends on a variety of factors, such as learners’ language proficiency, the length and complexity of the message, and the aims of the instruction/task. Some teachers use code-switching to give instructions. The question of pronunciation is vital in teacher language. In lower levels teachers should avoid elision and assimilation. Listening to the teacher’s explanations and instructions © Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (UNIR) in the target language can be viewed as a kind of listening comprehension activity and teachers should make sure that students have understood the message. Methods for Teaching EFL: Skills 10 Unit 9. Key ideas  9.3. Monitoring learning Classroom arrangements are an essential part of classroom management and in particular on the teacher’s capacity to monitor learning in tasks and projects carried out individually, in pairs, or in groups. In EFL classroom students are expected to interact with one another in the target language and seating arrangement in rows facing the board and the teacher does not facilitate student-student interaction, except in pair work. Traditional sitting in rows is very much about listening to the teacher and taking notes, i.e. passively consuming information. To a certain extent, seating arrangements reflect the approach adopted by the teacher. Harmer provides different examples of seating arrangements to illustrate how they can be used to facilitate interaction among students. Figure 1. Seating arrangements. Source: Harmer, 2010, p. 41. Other classroom arrangements include: tipped U, one large table, curved rows, diagonal, no tables, etc. Students can also sit in rows facing each other like in railway © Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (UNIR) carriages. It would be interesting to ask students what classroom arrangement they feel comfortable with. Arrangements depend on the size of the class, group age, classroom equipment, and type of task. It might also be useful to change arrangements for specific lessons or activities. Teachers must be able to get easily to any student in the class in order to control the learning process. Methods for Teaching EFL: Skills 11 Unit 9. Key ideas  Each arrangement presents advantages and disadvantages and is suitable for a certain group of students. Circles and horseshoes are useful for group work, such as group projects, brainstorming sessions or debates. Circle arrangements create a feeling of inclusion and equality, as barriers between them are less prominent or inexistent. They can see each other, share personal experiences, and help each other whenever necessary. These arrangements also contribute to the cohesion of the group and thus potentially enhance motivation. Harmer (2010) argues that separate tables are “especially useful in mixed-ability classes where different groups of students can benefit from concentrating on different tasks (designed for different ability levels”, e.g. collaborative writing or “listening to different audio tracks in a jigsaw listening exercise” (pp. 42-43). Think about it! Do you remember a classroom you especially liked as a student? How was it decorated? Dull-looking classrooms can be de-motivating however good the seating arrangement. How will you decorate an English classroom for adolescents? Will you use posters, comics, leaflets, magazines, puzzles, etc.? Grouping in the EFL classroom include: whole class, group work, pair work and individual work. Whole-class work Whole-class work is suitable for warm-up activities, giving instructions, using the board, starting and closing lessons, presenting new grammar structures or vocabulary, watching a video or a TV programme, listening to an audio, establishing © Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (UNIR) and maintaining rapport, motivating students, and any other activity that implies providing input and/or feedback to the whole class. It is essential that teachers control the time spend in teacher talk in this type of grouping. Teachers can decide to sit weaker students next to stronger ones, so the latter can provide language support if necessary. Friendships can also be taken into account. In any case, teachers Methods for Teaching EFL: Skills 12 Unit 9. Key ideas  should vary their position in the classroom, so that all the students can see and hear them properly. Group work and pair work In group activities and pair activities, students work together to carry out tasks, such as role-play simulating real-life situations, discussions, searching for information on the Internet as part of a reading/writing/listening/speaking activity, preparing an oral presentation or a mind-map with grammar items and new vocabulary, playing board games, etc. The teacher can move around the classroom to control the learning process, observe students’ performance, provide support and personalized feedback. One of the advantages of group work is that students can avoid the pressure of a whole-class task and work at their own pace. When teachers design group tasks, they should make sure that all students participate, although there will probably be one student who will try to dominate the group. Think about it! Think of a board game in which the players create a story using cards. One of the players is the storyteller and the other players perform different roles, depending on the characters they represent. This group task combines storytelling, collaborative work, motivational elements, and great opportunities to practice the four macro skills. Think of the people, places, and objects that you would like to include in the plot. What game rules will ensure the balance between the four skills and the equal participation of all the players? What grammar structures and vocabulary will suit the story? © Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (UNIR) Figure 2. Magical healing journey to the land of fairy tales. Source: https://europa.eu/youth/node/59097_ga Methods for Teaching EFL: Skills 13 Unit 9. Key ideas  Key teacher skills have to be put into practice in teacher interventions aimed at managing the learning process. Scrivener (2012) provides a list of fourteen key teacher interventions in the language classroom. The most common ones are discussed below. Being supportive Positive language attitudes facilitate language learning, which is why being supportive is so important in the language classroom. Foreign language anxiety can be reduced and students motivated by paying attention to them, to their concerns and achievements. Affirming comments are essential for improving learners’ self- esteem and confidence in their ability to complete a task. Asserting authority It is not easy to define teacher authority. However, there is no doubt that without students accepting the formal authority of the teacher, it would be difficult, if at all possible, to provide a quality teaching and expect positive outcomes of the learning process. We should distinguish formal authority from personal authority. Formal authority resides in the job title, while it gradually grows into personal authority based on students’ respect. Ideally, self-confident teachers find the natural authority in them and control the learning process. Giving instructions It is necessary to speak slowly and clearly when we give instructions. All the students in the class should be able to see us. Instructions should be simple and to the point, © Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (UNIR) ideally not more than one piece of information per sentence. We have to bear in mind that we are using the target language and our students need to process the information, which is why we have to pause to let them process our instructions. A useful technique is to write some key words on the board as a means of visual support. Methods for Teaching EFL: Skills 14 Unit 9. Key ideas  Telling Teachers must prepare their explanations carefully in order to tell their students what they need to know for the completion of a certain task in an efficient and effective way. Starting with what students already know will help them understand the new information. Visual support will facilitate comprehension. Eliciting Scrivener (2012) points to eliciting as “the technique of drawing things from students, mainly by asking questions, rather than using teacher explanation. It leads to greater involvement, encourages thinking and nudges the learners toward making discoveries for themselves” (p. 139). Teachers must ask clear questions and not too may at a time. This technique requires a clear idea of what type of questions we should ask in order to lead students to the new information, drawing on previous knowledge. After students’ response, teachers are expected to give the necessary feedback. Questioning Questions are crucial in the language classroom. They encourage students to speak and get involved in the learning process. Apart from the two main types—open and closed interrogatives, questions can be classified as real questions, check questions, and concept questions. If students do not understand a question, we can reword it and make sure we grade language to adapt it to their proficiency level. Depending on grouping, we can ask the whole class, a small group of students, or an individual. © Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (UNIR) Checking learning and understanding Students can be asked to present information in a drawing, a graphic organizer, or a diagram. A traditional way of checking learning is a multiple choice or a true/false activity. Another way of checking understanding is to ask students to transform Methods for Teaching EFL: Skills 15 Unit 9. Key ideas  discourse from oral to written and vice versa, e.g. they can listen to an audio and write a summary of the text. Being catalytic Being catalytic means that the teacher can motivate his/her students and use various techniques to speed up the rate of the learning process. For instance, after a student has produced an oral discourse, the teacher can summarize the text. A variation of summarizing students’ discourse, which can be limited to a number of sentences or even a single question, the teacher can reorganize the speaker’s thought in a clearer way. Other teacher interventions include: structuring and signposting (e.g. signposting the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of our methodology); giving encouragement, feedback and praise; giving difficult messages (e.g. poor exam results); permitting emotion (e.g. giving explicit permission to speak about emotions or allowing humour); being unhelpful (e.g. when you want to provoke a discussion, your statements might not express your beliefs); vanishing (e.g. it might be better not to be noticeably there when students need to work without the fear of being interrupted and corrected. This technique is particularly useful in oral interaction in pairs). 9.4. Promoting learner autonomy The growing number of studied on learner autonomy in recent years shows researchers’ and instructors’ interest in defining the concept and providing a variety © Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (UNIR) of strategies that can help students gain more agency in the learning process. It is closely related to one of the key competences in education, namely ‘learning to learn’. Interest in developing learning autonomy also signals the shift from teacher- centered pedagogies to learner-centered pedagogies (for further information on learner-centered pedagogies, see “Reimagining Classrooms: Teachers as Learners Methods for Teaching EFL: Skills 16 Unit 9. Key ideas  and Students as Leaders” in the “In-Depth” section). Before discussing how we can develop learner autonomy in the EFL classroom, it is necessary to define the concept. Scott Thornbury’s definition below is a useful starting point for identifying the qualities that will help learners interact autonomously with other people in the target language. Autonomy is your capacity to take responsibility for, and control of, your own learning, either in an institutional context, or completely independent of a teacher or institution. [...] Autonomous learning assumes that the learner has well developed learning strategies, and the development of such strategies is the aim of learner training. (Thornbury, 2006, p. 22) Promoting learner autonomy means that we should adopt an approach investing time and effort in creating opportunities that enhance learners’ self-esteem and confidence in their ability to complete a language task, which can involve at time taking certain risks, such as using the target language in oral production activities in front of a group of students or even in front of the whole class. Autonomy is especially relevant in FL learning, as it has become clear that classroom activities and related homework are not enough for gaining proficiency and learners need to read and listen to authentic material outside formal educational context. Learners have to complement classroom activities with reading blogs, newspapers, or magazines or watching films and videos in the target language that are not necessarily part of a language task, but for this purpose, they need to apply suitable learning strategies. Wharton (2012) rightly points out that “Learners who only come to class for an hour a week have to find opportunities to use their English during the time they are not in the classroom” (p. 37). © Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (UNIR) A great opportunity for learners, especially adolescents and adults, is to organize extracurricular activities that involve in one way or another the four macro skills. Examples of students’ extracurricular exposure to English language include: newspaper-reading circles, translation clubs, volunteer interpreter association, and volunteer teaching for low-level English learners (Wharton, 2012, p. 37). Thus, Methods for Teaching EFL: Skills 17 Unit 9. Key ideas  “learner autonomy can be defined as self-directed learning, but within institutional contexts, self-directions of learners may be constrained by other demands” (Irie & Stewart, 2012, p. 7, italics in original, emphasis is mine) (for further information on self-directed learning, see “How to Put Self-Directed Learning to Work in Your Classroom” in the “In-Depth” section). Think about it! What factors can represent a constraint to developing learner autonomy in formal educational contexts? How can we deal with these constraints? When selected and used suitably, resources can provide diverse opportunities to enhance students’ autonomy. Apart from considering language proficiency level and the aims of a course/lesson/task, teachers should be aware of the need to assess materials’ potential for motivating learners and developing their autonomy. Textbooks attempt to cater for a universal target learner, assuming needs and expectations, based mainly on target learners’ proficiency level. Some textbooks are aimed at a certain age group. Apart from that, their approach to language teaching/learning is prescriptive and leaves little choice to teachers and students, alike (For further information on the importance of choice in the classroom, see “Teaching Methods for Inspiring the Students of the Future” in the “In-Depth” section). When teachers use additional materials to complement a textbook, they often focus on the theme, but it is also important to note that the type of activities which abound in printed textbooks are mostly the same: multiple choice, gap-fill, drills, etc. and mainly focused on the form rather than on communication. To develop learner autonomy, we can provide materials that are not only interesting, but also contain activities that reinforce autonomy; a shift in focus from the outcomes to the process/operation of reading, writing, listening, and speaking is necessary. © Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (UNIR) By all means, mastering a language skill requires a lot of repeating and exercises that might not always be inspiring. However, repetition is only part of the learning process and it will be more effective when followed by reflection on the learning strategies Methods for Teaching EFL: Skills 18 Unit 9. Key ideas  that help students acquire and master language competence. Routine is helpful, especially with young learners, but not at the expense of creativity and autonomy. This takes us to one of teachers’ key concerns, namely when are students ready for autonomy? The process in which responsibility for management of learning is sometimes referred to as self-instruction, i.e. students work without the direct control of the teacher. Some researchers distinguish between autonomy and semi-autonomy, the latter “is used to label a stage at which learners are preparing for autonomy” (Ikeda, Saito, & Ieda, 2012, p. 21). To prepare students for autonomy, we can provide a Learning Record form and ask them to write in it what they have done, the difficulties they have found, and the support they needed to complete the task. It would be interesting to draw a Learning Record form to reflect the strengths and weak points in mastering the four skills. Learning Record form Reading Writing Listening Speaking Weak points Strengths Support needed Strategies applied Outcomes... (add one or more parameters) Table 3. Learning Record form. Teachers can propose a group activity in which students compare and discuss their © Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (UNIR) Records. Additionally, in one-to-one sessions the teacher can analyze each student’s accounts and suggest improvements. There are multiple ways to develop learner autonomy, we have to find the one that most suits each student’s needs. Thus, apart from the roles mentioned above, the teacher should also act as team member, motivator, and empowerer. Sometimes, we can ask our students what support they Methods for Teaching EFL: Skills 19 Unit 9. Key ideas  think they need and when and adapt to their perceptions. However, it is also necessary for the teacher to identify learners’ needs through surveys or other tools (needs assessment). Rundle (2012) explores the relation between scaffolding and autonomy and proposes five principles that help achieve “balance between the freedom inherent in learner autonomy and the conformity inherent in socialization into a community of practice” (p. 107). The participants in Rundle’s study are graduates, taking an intensive program to meet English proficiency requirements for a Master’s program, but they can be effectively adapted to courses aimed at adolescents or adults.  Problem-solving group projects.  Visual mapping of timelines and cycles of the project process.  Schedule consultations and allow for unscheduled interaction among peers and with teachers.  The teacher’s role is as literacy expert who can mediate between the students, models, and project objectives, not as a content expert.  Learning is achieved through cycles of practice and reflection facilitated by the teacher, not insistence on immediate mastery. (Rundle, 2012, pp. 107-108) Some students display high dependence on the teacher and instruction. They need support and encouragement. Group tasks and projects have proved effective in providing support for these students. Stronger members of the group often assume the role of a leader and as such can give instructions and provide help. Collaborative tasks decrease the pressure on the individual and learners are less afraid to use the target language. Foreign language learning classroom anxiety, which is characterized by communication apprehension and fear of failing is one of the difficulties teachers © Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (UNIR) have to face when they attempt to develop learner autonomy. Out-of-school activities are a great opportunity to deal with the problem of anxiety. For instance, a visit to the local history museum is a great opportunity for motivational, autonomy- developing group work. Some students can act as guides and give information about Methods for Teaching EFL: Skills 20 Unit 9. Key ideas  the objects of an exhibition; others can ask questions, take notes, and do a special project based on the visit. Figure 3. Museo Arqueológico Nacional. Source: http://www.man.es/man/en/home.html Closely related to the idea of group work is Littlewood’s much cited distinction between proactive and reactive autonomy. For him, in proactive autonomy “learners are able to take charge of their own learning, determine their objectives, select methods and techniques and evaluate what has been acquired” (Littlewood, 1999, p. 75, italics in original). Reactive autonomy, on the other hand, “does not create its own directions but, once a direction has been initiated, enables learners to organize their resources autonomously in order to reach their goal” (Littlewood, 1999, p. 75). Littlewood connects cooperative learning strategies and collaborative learning strategies to reactive and proactive autonomy, respectively. © Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (UNIR) Figure 4. Proactive and reactive autonomy. Source: adapted from Littlewood, 1999. Eventually, it is essential to remember that in order to develop learner autonomy, the teacher must have achieved a high level of autonomy in his/her own learning process. Methods for Teaching EFL: Skills 21 Unit 9. Key ideas