Leia o texto a seguir: What type of student do you have to teach? Most lecturers try to help students develop their understanding. But understanding a foreign language is not the same as understanding why someone is upset or understanding electromagnetism or understanding history. It is not to be expected therefore that the same teaching methods will be appropriate to these different kinds of understanding. Most forms of understanding are expressed by concepts which differ from everyday ones. For example, we all know that suitcases get heavier the longer you carry them, but in science this is described in terms of constant weight plus increasing fatigue. The concept “weight” is introduced and laid alongside the commonsense concept of “heaviness”. Similarly we all know that time passes quickly when we are absorbed and slowly when we are bored, but science tells us that this is an illusion; time really ticks away at a steady rate. Note that conceptual change should not be the aim, as is sometimes suggested, since people still also need their common sense. The aim is to add new sets of concepts and to explain when to use which set. But “understanding” is not the only kind of learning which students need to master. Instruction, demonstration and error-correction are the key teaching activities – which are quite different from those needed to reach understanding – while practice is the main learning activity. Students also have to memorize information and be able to recall it when required, as well as acquire several other kinds of learning (such as know-how and atttudes and values) each of which calls for different teaching methods. So learning-centred teaching includes a conscious matching of teaching methods to the intended kind of learning. While good teaching involves, among other things, helping students to achieve their chosen learning goals, the picture is further complicated by the different learning styles adopted by different groups of students. Many ways of categorization and modelling students as l