The orientation of independent work in the English Language Teaching

1. Introduction
2. Development

INTRODUCTION:

In the centuries XVIII and XIX the capitalist society establishes the necessity of increasing the scientific development of the middle class, and at the same time the necessity of knowing the history, literature and the way of living of other countries through the reading of articles in their own languages.

The general objectives of our National System of Education express:

"…the necessity that students acquire a scientific conception of the world based on a deep knowledge of the basis of science; develop their intellectual and physical capacities and acquire an aesthetic, moral, polytechnic and labor as well as ideopolitical education according to the principles of the working class."

From here, it is important to analyze the individual and social values of the study and knowledge of foreign languages, in this case English.

Nowadays, education is a dynamic process and it is in constant transformation. These changes answer to the great demands of modern times. That is why, it has been necessary to give a really active character to the teaching – learning – process in which the correct orientation of independent work plays an important role. Independent work constitutes an effective, practical and productive form for the student’s formation, since such formation is a complex process that should be undertaken in any activity that propitiates its consolidation.

DEVELOPMENT

Independent work in teaching cannot be carried out without the aid of an adequate guidance by the teacher from the pedagogical point of view, although the student’s cognitive process of learning must not be forgotten. A task is required to exist: the establishment of a task by the teacher and the time in order to solve it, as well as the performance of an intellectual effort on the part of the students, in order to carry it out correctly. A motivation toward the task should also exist.

What is understood by independent work?

Independent work, on the part of the students, consist in a productive attitude from the pupils towards the act of learning through their own activities. A correct guidance on the part of the teacher and the gradation and organization of the material is particularly needed.

The teacher assigns several tasks to be achieved in a given period of time; the student should be encourage to investigate in order to solve problemic situations. Well planned independent work or assignments will grant the development of capacities, abilities, independence and logical thinking.

In other words the student’s independent work is that form of the educational process carried out inside our outside the classroom, within a schedule, and in the course of which the students have to read and analyze the oriented literature, developing an intellectual, creative and intense activity for the mastery of some topic.

Independent work, in whatever form and class, is the most efficient type of activity for students, by means of direct, indirect, and guiding action of the professor.

The performing of independent work is a fundamental condition in order to develop the abilities and habits of the student’s self education. It is furthermore, significant to point out that independent work provides adolescent, to a great extent, with the formation of several motivation aspects, taking into consideration some methodological requirements.

That is why, it is necessary for a person to receive a system of influence in his or her formation, where school plays an important role, and within the educational process, independent work offers innumerable potentialities for the development of personality.

Adequate education of personality includes a correct vocational formation, since it cannot be conceived like a spontaneous process, or as the addition of a group of measures or developing actions without keeping in mind the complexity and integrality of the process of education of the personality, of which the professional aspects form part and to a great extent, independent work if it were well planned, guided and directed in a conscious way, possesses many intellectual resources for the adolescent’s potential future professional life.

For these reasons, independent work unquestionably constitutes an effective, practical and productive form for the student’s formation, since such formation is a complex process that should be undertaken in any activity that propitiates its consolidation; this work should be structured taking into account the contributions that the several independent task that are programmed offer in all pedagogical processes, which includes, above all, the Marxist conception of the personality, so that a group of considerations susceptible of application in a group of actions may be derived from independent work as a builder of the personality that is needed by our society in accordance with social demands.