Communication Strategy for a Group of Learners – Term Paper Example

The paper "Communication Strategy for a Group of Learners" is a worthy example of a term paper on education. Harris (2010) has mentioned that Teachers need to use different teaching methods in order to reach all students effectively. In his opinion, a variety of teaching strategies, knowledge of student levels, and implementation of which strategies are best for particular students can help teachers to know which teaching methods will be most effective for their class (Harris 2010). Bidirectional communication is important in the learning process. The teacher and the students should have communicated properly in order to ensure the transfer of knowledge from the teacher to the students. But it is difficult for a teacher to formulate a standardized and effective communication style for a group of students because of the differences in the learning styles and the personality types of the students. Some students might be quick learners whereas some others might be slow learners; some may be confident whereas others may be shy; some may like teamwork whereas others may like individual work. Based on the above differences, the teacher should formulate effective communication techniques in order to help each student learn well. At the same time, the communication strategy adopted by the teacher to cater the needs of some students need not be effective for the other students and the teacher may find difficulties in catering the needs of all the students in a class. This paper briefly analyses a strategy for communicating and collaborating effectively within a group of people with different learning styles and personality types

Communication strategy for a group of learners
“No two individuals are alike”. The same way no two individuals may have the same intelligence. Therefore the learning abilities of different students also might be different. The teacher should assess the class properly in order to identify the learning abilities, styles, personality and intelligence of the students. Based on the initial assessment, the teacher should divide the entire class into small focus groups and devise specific strategies aimed at each focus group formed within the class. Learning and communication occur in both formal and informal manner. The teacher can use both strategies judiciously to help all the students in overcoming their learning difficulties.
“Inquiry-based learning is a teaching method which is rapidly gaining popularity” (Harris 2010). In this method, the teacher will present a topic in the class through inquiries and focus the responses from the class. After analyzing the responses the teacher will get a proper idea about the knowledge level of each student on that particular topic. The teacher will guide the students to reach the solution in this type of teaching method by creating different problematic situations in front of the students. This kind of teacher-student communication will help each student to learn the topic by his own effort using his own learning style under the guidance of the teacher. The student may not experience much difficulty in this type of teacher-student communication as the teacher is not imposing any uncomfortable learning styles upon the student and the student can use his comfortable learning styles.
Cooperative learning is another learning method used by many teachers to communicate effectively with all types of students. In this type of communication, the teacher divides the entire class into different small groups with students having different learning abilities and personality types. The teacher creates a team environment in which each student in a team forced to help others in the team in the learning process. The teacher communicates only to the team as a whole; not to the team members individually. At the same time, the teacher will ensure that each team member is actively participating in the teamwork. The to and fro motion of diverse knowledge among the students within a team will help each student immensely in grasping the topic equally well.
Giving different homework tasks - easier tasks for the weaker students, more challenging tasks for the brighter students, is another way of communicating effectively with students with different learning needs (Teaching Tips, n. d). This strategy helps all the students equally well. Bright students always like challenging tasks whereas dull students need easy tasks for learning a topic well. By providing a variety of home assignments with different difficulty levels to different students, the teacher might be able to address the needs of all the students.
Rees (n. d) has argued that it is easy for students to get frustrated in a class of mixed ability. Moreover, stronger students may feel held back, weaker students may feel pressured and the teacher may feel stressed. In his opinion, the best solution to this is to have an open-class discussion about the classroom situation - to ensure the best for everyone it is better to acknowledge the situation and for everyone to agree how to deal with it.
It is impossible to have a group of learners with same personality types, learning abilities, styles and intelligence levels. The teacher should formulate effective communication strategies to address the needs of each student in order to make the learning effective in the class. 

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