Theories of Teaching and Learning: My English Learning Experience

This essay delves into the complexities of teaching and learning, focusing on the author's personal journey in acquiring English language skills. The paper begins with an introduction to various learning theories, such as constructivism and behaviorism, highlighting their significance for both students and educators. The author shares their experience of struggling with English, emphasizing the impact of traditional teaching methods and the subsequent positive influence of a supportive tutor who implemented spaced learning, self-learning techniques, and VARK learning styles. The essay provides a narrative analysis of these methods, illustrating how the integration of different learning styles, group discussions, and role-playing enhanced the author's language skills. Furthermore, the essay discusses the advantages and limitations of learning theories, concluding with a reflection on the positive impact of these theories on the author's educational experience and overall confidence. The essay references various studies to support the concepts presented.

Running head: THEORIES OF TEACHING AND LEARNING
Theories of Teaching and Learning
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1THEORIES OF TEACHING AND LEARNING
Introduction
Learning has been regarded as a complex process and every student has their unique
learning process by using various technologies and information. In the process of learning,
the theories of learning such as constructivism, behaviourism and more tend to advantageous
for student as well as for teachers (Jaber, 2016). Accordingly teachers and educators are
actively involved in providing better education to students by implementing different learning
styles and theories. The paper elucidates on narrative analysis of different learning views of
the researcher.
Discussion
Students find learning to be a complex process as it tends to deal with pedagogy and
psychology. By understanding the complexity in learning and its risks, it helps to develop and
implement effective learning theories that will help to develop better learning process (Leeuw
et al., 2015). Families and schools play an important role to make the process of learning
resourceful.

2THEORIES OF TEACHING AND LEARNING
Figure 1: Learning process
Source: (Leeuw et al., 2015)
While I was a student, I had faced difficulty with the learning process as I was poor in
English. Though my writing skill for English was good, but I had problem in speaking as I
could not able to speak fluent English. Moreover the educational system of our country
mainly focussed on the writing and practicing skill and the teachers of my school used to
teach us English in our native language. This put a negative impact on my reading and
speaking skill and because of this I was very ashamed of speaking in English in front of my
friends and relatives. Moreover this had also lowered my level of confidence and my parents
were very concerned regarding my English speaking skill. Furthermore, my parents were also
concerned and worried regarding my English speaking skills and tried to find out ant possible
solutions so that I could overcome this problem.
Although my parents tried their level best my applying various measures so that I could
increase my level of confidence, but then nothing proved beneficial. After few months, my
parents got to know about an English teacher from other school who provides personal tuition
in English. I decided to join his tutorial class and that tuition class had been the turning point
of my life. The English teacher was a very supportive and friendly teacher and always
provided me best possible solutions to improve my speaking skills and whenever I used to
need her assistance he tried out his level best to help me in whichever way he could. Her
teaching procedure was a very interesting and exciting process that helped students like me to
get into the depth of the subject. Prior to that, the personal English teacher had implemented
spaced learning method that is the method mainly focused on repeating things for numerous
times until the student gets a clear concept (Smolen, Zhang & Byrne, 2016). Accordingly she
used to explain me the subject that many times until the concept became clear. Apart from

3THEORIES OF TEACHING AND LEARNING
this another learning technique was implemented by my teacher that was the self learning
technique, through which my teacher used to encourage me to learn certain things by my
own by developing new ideas. The self learning techniques had helped me the most as I was
able to use my creativity and ideas in my learning process.
Figure 2: Teaching through role play
Source: (Huang et al., 2014)
Prior to this, my personal English did not limit the teaching process only to text
books, but she also applied other processes such as small group discussion, extempore where
students had to speak on any random topic, role play and more. Moreover, implementation of
different learning styles in studying process helps to understand things more easily, as
different students prefers different types of learning (Huang et al., 2014). Therefore, with the
implication of different learning styles students can learn as per their unique styles, similarly
my personal tutor had also implemented the VARK learning styles, and as I preferred
learning visually, therefore my teacher used to teach me with the help of images, diagrams

4THEORIES OF TEACHING AND LEARNING
and with real life pictures. This had been highly beneficial for me as it helped me to learn
things more easily. However, this learning style is widely implemented by many
professionals while teaching students as it consisted of four styles of learning that includes
learning through visual images, audio, reading or writing and kinaesthetic style (Pritchard,
2017). Apart from this, in the teaching procedures, teachers have been seen in implementing
of various learning theories in their teaching process as it proofed beneficial for students as
well as for teachers. Various learning theories include behaviourist theory, cognitive
theories and more (Walker, 2017). To improve my English speaking skill, my teacher had
also implemented behaviourist learning theory in his teaching procedure. The behaviourist
theory tends to focus on the behavioural pattern of the students that includes the learning
ability, interest and skills and accordingly the teacher tries to focus on that particular field to
enhance students to perform effectively (Heeneman, et al., 2015). However, my learning
interest was through visualising things and by developing new ideas, therefore after
observing my learning process, my teacher introduced visual learning system, group talks,
role play so that I could speak fluent English. Thus, in this way, with the help of my English
teacher I had been able to improve my English speaking skill, and in the present day I can
speak fluent English with confidence.

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Figure 3: VARK learning style
Source: (Heeneman, et al., 2015)
It is important to note that learning theories helps to initiate better performance and
help teachers to understand the behaviour and emotions of the students and accordingly can
implement appropriate learning methods to maximize learning (Husmann & O'Loughlin,
2018). There are various advantages and disadvantages of learning theories such as
learning theories helps teachers to identify students’ psychology and thoughts. Whereas it has
one major disadvantage as the theories are all limited, it could not able to explain everything
regarding the student’s nature and behaviour.
Conclusion
From the above conclusion it could be concluded that my narrative analysis explained
my learning process and the way through which I was able to improve my English speaking.
Furthermore, the implementation of learning theories and styles proved advantageous as it

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helped in positive ways. Apart from the strength, the learning theories have weakness too
such as learning theories could not able to understand the overall behaviour of the student.

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References
De Leeuw, A., Valois, P., Ajzen, I., & Schmidt, P. (2015). Using the theory of planned
behavior to identify key beliefs underlying pro-environmental behavior in high-school
students: Implications for educational interventions. Journal of Environmental
Psychology, 42, 128-138.
Heeneman, S., Oudkerk Pool, A., Schuwirth, L. W., Vleuten, C. P., & Driessen, E. W.
(2015). The impact of programmatic assessment on student learning: theory versus
practice. Medical education, 49(5), 487-498.
Huang, D. A., Kang, L. W., Wang, Y. C. F., & Lin, C. W. (2014). Self-learning based image
decomposition with applications to single image denoising. IEEE Transactions on
multimedia, 16(1), 83-93.
Husmann, P. R., & O'Loughlin, V. D. (2018). Another nail in the coffin for learning styles?
Disparities among undergraduate anatomy students’ study strategies, class
performance, and reported VARK learning styles. Anatomical sciences education.
Jaber, M. Y. (Ed.). (2016). Learning curves: Theory, models, and applications. CRC Press.
Pritchard, A. (2017). Ways of Learning: Learning Theories for the Classroom. Routledge.
Smolen, P., Zhang, Y., & Byrne, J. H. (2016). The right time to learn: mechanisms and
optimization of spaced learning. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 17(2), 77.
Walker, S. (2017). Learning theory and behaviour modification. Routledge.