lunes, 27 de abril de 2015

What needs to change and hasn’t: the control

Inside a classroom there are many things that are already pre planned before the course stars. The syllabus tells us what content, tasks, projects, etc are going to be developed in the school year. One of the most serious things to take into account before starting classes is to establish the classroom rules and how to manage the class. All of them are establish by the teacher and we can modify them if it is necessary. Until now the teacher plays an important role of the learning process, but the teacher has a role of a very strict man who creates new rules in order to keep students quiet and don’t have behavior problems in the class. This authority the teacher has give him all the power and let him to do everything, leaving students in a very comfortable position where they do not do anything and only listen and repeat and they do not have goals or expectations for the course. This comfort students have can make them passive students who are not worry about their learning. Students are worried only about grades and how to pass the course and it will affect them in the following courses because they did not get and develop the skills required to be in an upper level, and I consider it is what the teachers do not want since the main objective of being a teacher is to make our students to acquire knowledge and make them use it in different areas.

an interesting perspective about education and school below:


Reference:

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sábado, 25 de abril de 2015

Unit 8 - Speaking


The eighth unit was about speaking which is one of the two productive skills and or me one of the most complex and hard skills to develop. Speaking involves using speech to communicate meaning to other people. Speaking is an interactive process of constructing meaning that involves producing and receiving and processing information (Brown, 1994; Burns & Joyce, 1997). Some of the reasons why speaking is so complex is because when we speak we do not have enough time to prepare what we are going to say (unless it is a speech) as in writing in which we do have time to think.  Speaking as the other skills involves some sub skills such as: using body language, producing different text types, using features of connected speech, using interactive strategies, etc. all these sub skills must be used according to the person we are speaking to, the degree of affinity, degree of formality, etc. If we can used correctly the sub skills, strategies, etc we will convey the meaning and our message will be understood by the hearer. In the classroom we can used different activities to help our students to develop this skill like control practice activities, which means that students will use a specific grammar and there won’t be much space to mistakes. To motivate our students and encourage them to speak is really important because many of them don’t like to speak because they are afraid to make a mistake. Some activities such as pair or group work will ease the development of this skill. 

 A video about "How to imrpove your English conversational skills" below:

References


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Unit 7 - Listening

In this unit I could clear some doubts I had about why it is difficult for people to understand meaningful sounds of a language. “Listening has emerged as an important component in the process of second language acquisition” (Feyten, 1991).First of all, listening is a receptive skill and there are many factors that influence on the comprehension of a phrase or sentence , especially when we learn an second language, such as contractions, linking sounds, accent, intonation, etc and also because this skill is not so pre-planned as writing skill.  As in writing skill there are sub skills too, which are used according to our purpose. In the classroom, it is important to give learners many sources of listening such as radio programs, Cd´s, movies, etc. also, when bringing a listening activity it can be useful if we pre-teach some vocabulary words, or set pre-listening tasks. By doing this, students will have an idea of what the listening activity will be about. At the beginning we can use simplified texts with basic vocabulary and grammar structure and activities to do after listening a ext such as true/false activities, filling the gaps etc.

References


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Unit 6- Writing


"I've always disliked words like 'inspiration.' Writing is probably like a scientist thinking about some scientific problem or an engineer about an engineering problem."
( Doris Lassing, novelist)

                Writing skill is one of the two productive skills and a challenging one for many people. This unit helped me to remember some definitions of some very used and important terms that are within this skill. There are many things we have to take into account before star to write like formality, layout -which is structuring the text-, the complexity of grammar, register etc, all depends on to whom the piece of writing is going to be addressed. As many students are not accustomed to write, they will find it difficult to master it and this process will time much time. That is the reason why we as teachers must show them the stages of writing or the steps they have to follow. It is also important to encourage students to write, bring enjoyable activities with pictures or a model to follow, so, in that way they will have a guide to start writing.


Below there is a video with some tips to improve our writing:



References




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Unit 5 Reading

"Reading is an act of communication in which information is transferred from a transmitter to a receiver" (Smith 1973:2) Reading is one of the two receptive skills and for me one of the most difficult to develop because considering the Ecuadorian context, people here are not used to reading. For many of them it is difficult to read in their mother tongue and it would be much difficult in another language. Reading is a complex matter because it is not only understanding what a paragraph or a sentence wants to transmit. We have to take into account our knowledge of the world which is coherence and the grammatical linking between the sentences which is cohesion. There are some sub-skills that will help us to understand a text such as intensive reading, inferring, reading for gist, etc. each of them will be used according to our purpose of reading. Developing reading in class is challenging for teachers, but if we use some strategies like pre-teaching vocabulary, it means teaching vocabulary before reading a text, can help students develop this skill. Reading does not have to be boring; teachers can make it a fun hour bringing activities such as lead-in activities or interesting topics to read or graded readers with simple vocabulary.

How and why we read:



References


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Learner-centered teaching



This approach is, for me, really useful and as the title says, this approach is focus on the students. They are who are going to built their own knowledge and teacher are guides and help students need. Students are the ones who are going to think, analyze, enquire, solve problems, etc in order to find the answer to their questions. This approach makes students analyze the way they think, what they are learning and how they learn it. Also, with this approach teacher gives more responsibility and an active role to the students. These latter were accustomed to have everything ready to do such tasks, quizzes, works, topic to research, and some others, but now they are part of the process and they become active students and thinkers. Of course, the teacher still has to prepare the class, tasks, quizzes etc. but the teacher is giving more chance to participate to his students. Another important aspect this approach has is the fact that students have to work collaboratively, as a group, where each student can learn from another, focusing on the main objective that is acquire knowledge.  As all students or at least the majority are participating, using the language, using grammar and vocabulary the y are going to remember what they studied and in that way knowledge is going to be more memorable. The role of the teacher is really important and it must be focused on the students, so the teacher must be a facilitator rather than a controller.

Reference:

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miércoles, 22 de abril de 2015

Unit 4- Functions

In this unit I reviewed what function is, some examples of it, what we used to express it, etc and I can define function as the purpose of using a language.accordingg to Savignon, 1983 “the use to which language is put, the purpose of an utterance rather than the particular grammatical form an utterance takes” There is a reason why we speak; some of them are for greeting, clarifying, advising and some others. As we can see all of them end in –ing forms.  We use exponents to express the function and these exponents can express different functions at the same time, all depends on the context it is used in. it is not the same situation if we greet our friend with an exponent like “hi” to a different context such as talking to someone we do not know well, in that case we will use something more formal. If we can choose correctly the exponent according to the context it is referred as appropriacy, while if we choose the wrong exponent, it will be inappropriate. These levels of formality must be chosen correctly according to the situation.
References

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