Sharing my life

¿Qué canciones cantamos?

2008-12-01T09:29:00.000-08:00

Hola muchachas y muchachos de mi alma. Les cuento que nos juntamos 3 gatos locos (literalmente) jajaja. Grabamos un par de canciones (que no quedaron muy bien, pero bue, es el audio, la que tocaba la guitarra un desastre! y hasta nos confundimos en un par de letras). El tema es que no teníamos mucho tiempo, y esperamos que se puedan aprender aunque mas no sea el ritmo de las canciones así nos juntamos en la semana y practicamos. Si no es esta, la que viene.
Les anexo varias cosas en este post. Primero van a poder ver la letra de las canciones, les puse un video de La Hermana Glenda ya que encontré esa cancion (Alianza de amor entre tu y yo) que me pareció hermosa como para elegir. Tambien apretando acá se pueden bajar un archivo en zip con los temas así los pueden escuchar... y como si esto no fuera poco, al mismo precio, les mando un sorteo para ver que cantamos en cada momento!!!
Para que vayan sabiendo los momentos son:

Entrada: Hasta mi final (Il Divo)
Salmo: a elegir
Bendición de alianzas: Ave María
Firma de libreta: a elegir
Salida: a elegir

Las que van seguro son la 1, 3 y 5. Las otras dos son opcionales pero me pareció buena idea tenerlas listas y cantarle algo mas que 3 canciones.
Bueno, ahora a elegir!! y aprender...

Canciones Casamiento Sabri

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Religion sabri casamiento

¿Cuando nos juntamos?

2008-11-26T14:05:00.000-08:00

Chicas, nos tenemos que poner de acuerdo si queremos que la cosa salga linda! Porfis, completen este poll así decidimos lo antes posible. Muchos besos

Cumple de Tincho

2008-09-25T05:30:00.000-07:00

Hola a todos, les quería contar que el 26 es el cumple de Tincho. Nosotras, Agus y yo, le armamos un videito para que se entretenga ese día. Si quieren, acá lo pueden ver. Muchos cariños,

Lore

My Practice Lessons

2008-08-20T18:39:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone!
You know, I've been spending the last 3 months having fun while doing my practice lessons. I loved teaching that group, so funny, nice and good-hearted. Here there is a little presentation with some pictures taken the last day of classes. I hope you enjoy it. See you around,
Lore

P.S. If you want to see what we've done, you can visit our wiki.

Cumple de Agus

2008-07-13T08:59:00.000-07:00

Hola a todos, les cuento que el sábado fue el cumple de Agus. Cumplió 3! Ya esta grande... jajaja. Bueno, les quería hacer llegar las fotos que sacamos en el cumple. No pude subir las que sacó mi suegro porque estan en mi compu y sigo sin internet. Por eso subo las que saqué yo, la que quiera, me manda a pedir las fotos que quieran ok. Solo hagan click acá y me mandan un mail.
Espero que les haya gustado. Muchas gracias por venir.
Lore

BubbleShare: Share photos - Play some Online Games.

Feliz dia del Padre!!!

2008-06-15T07:56:00.001-07:00

Diego's Wedding

2008-02-18T11:51:00.000-08:00

BubbleShare: Share photos - Play some Online Games.

How summer's going

2008-01-23T12:44:00.000-08:00

Hi everybody,
It's been a long time since my last post and I think my blog deserves to have a new post.
It's summer holidays and I'm studying... as usual! But I'm also doing other things...
I'm preparing for my final exam on History, painting (in my free time, which is not much), playing with Agus and, as I couldn't be just enjoying holidays, I've enrolled in 3 EVO Sessions for this summer. I'm attending Video Session, Web 2.0 for ESP and Becoming a Webhead. You can't imagine the load of work I have... but I love it!
As it couldn't be any other way, my hubby Tincho is in Antarctica, Flor (my "little" sister) was operated on her appendix, my father has a pain in the chest and we are supposed to be leaving for Cordoba on Saturday :)
But things happen to be brightening up. My sister was released from hospital today and my father has to go again tomorrow but doctors told him he's OK.
I must be forgetting something really important, but I have to go to play with Agus a little bit.
See you soon,
Lore

Empowering learners

2007-11-29T13:39:00.000-08:00

Dear Lorena,
Now we've got to the end of our "official" time together, I'd like to give you a small "souvenir"... Hope you like it!

One day in Hawaii a ferocious storm washed hundreds of starfish ashore. A woman, on her morning walk, bent down every few steps to throw a starfish back into the sea. A man saw her and commented, "There are so many of the poor things it can't make any real difference for you to throw these few back." With a knowing smile, she tossed another starfish into the water and turning to the man said, "It made a difference to this one."

Sue Patton Thoele , Making a Difference
(as cited by Tessa Walter (2007)
in Teaching English Language Learners - The How-To Handbook; Longman)

I know you will make a great difference in many students' life... Enjoy having this privilege!

All the best,
Gladys- your Methods teacher

PS:Thanks for having shared this blog with me and your classmates during this school year. It's been really enriching for me!

A true communicative activity

2007-11-15T17:17:00.000-08:00

Record a group of students performing a communicative activity. Listen to the recording and try to decide on the following:

(a) To what extent does the activity encourage or oblige participation from all of the students? The activity is connected to student's experiences so they both (because it was pair work) were involved in the activity. First St A asks St B and then St B asks St A so they equally participate and are encouraged to do so (information gap)

(b) What examples can you find of conversational adjustments as students try to negotiate meaning, for example, asking for and giving clarification, repetition, further explanation through paraphrasing? One of the students needed to know what "waste" meant and the other student explained to the first one that it meant "throwing the money" and then as Student A kept on asking, Student B told her it meant "desperdiciar"= students negotiated meaning by paraphrasing and then resorting to their mother tongue.

Students also tried to find the right word for "Shop which sells CDs" = they came up with different names such as "record shop", and "musical store" and in the end they could understand each other.

(d) How would you comment on the general level of accuracy in the students' language? As it was a fluency-oriented activity, the level of accuracy was not so accurate. Students were involved in getting across their message, not that much on accuracy. E.g: "I've wast my money on trainers because I bought it to go to the gym and I never went to the gym". Another example: Have you ever lose a credit card or a wallet? I've losted my wallet on the bus.

(e) If the activity had a focus on some area of grammar or use of vocabulary, to what extent did this appear in the students' language? cStudents were practicing "Present Perfect" with "have you ever..." and contrasting it with Simple Past. Students almost never resorted to their mother tongue. They resorted to L1 when they didn't know a word, for example "disparar", however, Student B said "shot". This grammar appears in students' every day life, maybe Present Perfect not that much (here in Buenos Aires) but Simple Past is used worldwide. Finally:Have you ever been robbed? Yes, in the shop of my father. Five years ago and I working there with my father, he had a shop of CDs. He taked the cash and they pointed with the gun... and "disparó".

Anyway, this activity, as I said, was aimed at fluency (or at least when the girl started telling the story when she was robbed) and the message was more important than accuracy.

When you have considered these points, decide whether you think it was an activity worth doing, and why. Would you change anything in a re-run of it? I think the activity was worth doing because it was a real communication activity and students were engaged in it because they had to tell each other about their experiences. If I were to do the activity again I would let them speak and then correct some mistakes that I would jot down while they are working so as to check them later on (deferred correction).

Let's see if you agree or not. You are welcomed to comment on anything you want to. See you,

Lore

Bibliography

HEDGE, Tricia (2000), Teaching and Learning in the Language Classroom, UK, OUP; Chapter 8 "Speaking" (Discussion Topics and Projects # 8- p. 295)

Recording made by Alejandro J. and Paula V. students of intermediate level. Teacher: Gladys Baya (thank you)

Aims for a speaking course

2007-11-10T06:06:00.000-08:00

Review the list of skills and set of questions below and use them to formulate a list of possible aims for the speaking component of a course book. Then look at a contemporary course book for intermediate students and review the extent to which it tries to incorporate your set of aims.

Pronunciation Aims:

Learners identify and produce the difference between several pair sounds, such as /I/ /i:/ - /U/ /u:/; and different sounds.
Learners recognize and produce stress in words, rhythm in sentences and intonation patterns.

Skill Aims:

Learners learn strategies for managing turn-taking in conversation, including taking a turn, holding a turn, and relinquishing a turn
Learners learn how to interact and negotiate meaning
Learners learn how to negotiate purposes for conversations
Learners learn strategies for opening and closing conversations
Learners learn how to initiate and respond to talk on a broad range of topics, and how to develop and maintain talk on these topics
Learners learn how to use both a casual style of speaking and a neutral or more formal style
Learners learn strategies for repairing trouble spots in conversation, including communication breakdown and comprehension problems
Learners learn how to maintain fluency in conversation, through avoiding excessive pausing, breakdowns, and errors of grammar or pronunciation

Communicational Aims:

Learners learn how to interact and negotiate meaning
Learners learn how to use conversation for both transactional and interactional purposes
Learners learn how to produce both short and long turns in conversation
Learners learn how to use conversational in different social settings and for different kinds of social encounters, such as on the telephone, at informal and formal social gatherings.
Learners learn how to produce conversational fillers and small talk
Learners learn how to use conversational routines

I've browsed through Adventures Intermediate and learnt that the book covers almost all of the aims I had thought taking into account the list. The only aims that the book didn't cover are the ones in italics. As you can see they are not many, and can be taught anyway by changing some activities.

Bibliography

HEDGE, Tricia (2000), Teaching and Learning in the Language Classroom, UK, OUP; Chapter 8 "Speaking" (Discussion Topics and Projects # 8- p. 296)

WETZ and GAMMIDGE (2005), Adventures Intermediate Student's Book, UK, OUP

Pre-listening stage, always?

2007-11-01T14:01:00.000-07:00

Are there any listening tasks with which you would not use a pre-listening stage?
What a difficult question to answer! If I had had to answer it on the spot, I would have said 'no'. But when I stopped to think about it, I realised that there are a couple of tasks that don't need a pre-listening stage. For example:

listen and guess the sounds (of animals, Halloween shrieks)
if you are using a well-known TV programme, you could ask students to listen to it and say who said what (as a warm-up to a lesson)
listen for enjoyment to a song

I cannot think of any other, but at least the answer is 'yes', just to go against the grain.
Feel free to enlighten me and suggest anything that comes to your mind. Hope to hear from you soon,
Lore

Bibliography

HEDGE, Tricia (2000), Teaching and Learning in the Language Classroom, UK, OUP; Chapter 7 "Listening" (Discussion Topics and Projects # 7- p. 256)

Purposeful Listening

2007-11-01T13:28:00.000-07:00

I've browsed through an intermediate book to prepare two lists that I included below. Check if you would any other activity or kind of text that you can use in your classes.

Review a textbook in current use in your institution and make lists:
(a) Reasons for listening which learners are given as they tackle listening texts

listen and check
listen and repeat to see different types of pronunciation of the same word
match events with their dates. Then listen and check.
listen and answer questions
listen and repeat, then translate.
listen to the weak forms, then repeat the sentences
listen and choose the correct answer
listen and complete the sentences
put the sentences into the correct order. Then listen and check
listen and number the pictures
listen and write true or false
listen, repeat and mark the stress on the words
read some options and guess who says them. Then listen and check.
put the opinions in the order you hear them
complete the song with the words given. Then listen and check.
listen and read.
listen and complete the table
listen and identify the programmes
guess the correct answers. Then listen and check
tick the options that are mentioned
listen and match
listen and identify the sounds
listen and find mistakes in the sentences

(b) Types listening text they encounter

sentences
historical events (like documentaries)
isolated words
dialogues between pairs about everyday life matters
conversations between pairs who are comparing two places or things
radio programs
songs
pop facts
travel programmes
telephone conversations
sounds
stories

Bibliography

HEDGE, Tricia (2000), Teaching and Learning in the Language Classroom, UK, OUP; Chapter 7 "Listening" (Discussion Topics and Projects # 7- p. 256)

WETZ, Ben and GAMMIDGE, Mark (2005), Adventures Intermediate Student's Book, OUP

Reading activities

2007-10-09T18:57:00.000-07:00

Many textbooks which state the aim of improving learners’ reading ability claim that they develop certain strategies through the activities they offer. Here are some of them:

Find a specific item of information quickly.
Make use of accompanying information, e.g. headings, pictures, to predict the content of the text.
Distinguish between fact and opinion.
Guess the meanings of unfamiliar words by using contextual clues.
Read at different speeds for different purposes.
Recognize larger rhetorical patters such as classification, cause-effect, problem-solution, etc.
Recognize coherence relations such as main idea, supporting details, examples.
Use prior knowledge to work out meanings within the text.
Predict the connections between parts of the text form the use of connectives.
Use the dictionary well and understand its limitations.
Realize that a writer does not express everything explicitly and in detail and make appropriate inferences.
Respond appropriately to the text.

Would you add anything to the list that you feel is important? Choose a reading textbook and survey it to see if any or all of these strategies are trained.

I have surveyed English File 2 by Clive Oxenden, Paul Seligson and Christina Latham-Koenig (OUP; 1997) and I found that all of the items mentioned above are fostered in the book.

I would like to add some other activities to the list:

Read and find mistakes
Read and highlight specific words, e.g. adverbs of frequency
Read and connect it to your feelings, e.g. by asking questions like ‘Did you enjoy it?
Read and guess, e.g. read and guess her job
Read and complete the text with some words
Read and use the information to complete a map, chart, drawing, etc.

Let’s see what you think. Eager to know.

Lorena

Bibliography

HEDGE, Tricia (2000), Teaching and Learning in the Language Classroom, UK, OUP; Chapter 6 (Discussion Topics and Projects # 6- p. 223)

OXENDEN, Clive (1997), English File 2 Student's Book, OUP

Reading skills

2007-10-09T18:32:00.000-07:00

Consider these examples of things students say they do when they meet difficulty in reading comprehension, particularly when they meet a new word or phrase. Would you encourage or discourage any of these, or suggest a sequence of strategies?

a. 'I think about whether the word is important for understanding the whole text': encourage.

b. ‘I read on to see if the word is repeated’: encourage, and it is connected to the one above, because if the word appears more than 3 times and it is key to the understanding of the text, we need to pay attention to it and try to guess the meaning.

c. ‘I go to my dictionary for a translation’: discourage. I will first ask my students to try to guess the meaning from the context and then to translate it but as the last resource.

d. ‘I think if there is a Spanish world like it’: discourage. Sometimes it is helpful, but most of the times words are misleading and they can be false cognates.

e. ‘I ask my teacher to explain’: discourage. I would try to foster independence by making my students try to guess the word or ask their partners, or resort to a dictionary.

f. ‘I look to see if the word has some part I know’: encourage. Sometimes we can guess the meaning of words by looking at its morphology.

g. ‘I say the word out loud’: encourage. Some students are auditory and need to hear the word to check whether they can guess it or not.

h. ‘I start again form the beginning of the sentence’: encourage. It is a good way to make students focus more closely on the context and not just the word, so they can guess it.

i. ‘I ask the other students in my group’: encourage. I don’t like to underestimate my students. Sometimes they know more than what they show.

j. ‘I write it in my notebook’: encourage. As long as the word is not written in isolation, it is a good technique to record the words the student finds interesting or useful and to remember them, most likely.

k. ‘I study the words around it’: encourage. Once more, the context should be the main help for students to guess a word.

I would include also: try to recognize what category the word falls into so as to restrict the scope of its meaning. And I would also like to highlight the importance of the context and meaning of the text so as to work out the meaning of a word.

I have racked my brains thinking about this, now the ball is in your court. What do you think about this entry? You are welcome to leave a comment, as usual.

Lorena

Bibliography

HEDGE, Tricia (2000), Teaching and Learning in the Language Classroom, UK, OUP; Chapter 6 (Discussion Topics and Projects # 2- p. 222)

Time!!!

2007-09-09T15:35:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone. I gave a presentation on TBL in 3 days. Yes, believe it or not, it took me 3 days. I think that all in all the presentation must have taken me 40 minutes to deliver but it was supposed to be given in 30'.
This shows me and everyone that I cannot, yet, manage effectively the time. I know I have to improve on this because it is essential for my teaching career. If not, I will end up teaching half the plannings I set out to carry out.
So, when thinking about a question Gladys left in the wiki that says: How effective was your timing? I can definitely say that it was not effective but this mental thinking helps me to come to terms with myself and try to improve on this aspect.
Now that I've opened up it's your turn to do so. You can say anything you want and if you have any ideas to help me fulfil my goal please tell me.
Hear from you soon,
Lore

Handouts fever

2007-09-08T15:57:00.000-07:00

If you hand out materials for the class to work with, do you hand them out just when they need to focus on them? Do you remove them as soon as they stop being useful for your teaching purposes?
Tough questions for tough teachers.
I always hand materials out when I begin with the class so my students get lost in it and don't pay much attention to me. Another problem!!! When teaching children I have already worked out this problem, but when teaching to my classmates, I haven't. It seems that my brain divides the two types of teaching and thinks that my colleagues are not going to get involved in it until I say so... but that is not the case. So, what I have been faced AGAIN with is this anxiety for delivering my handouts as soon as possible, as if they were burning and I had to get rid of them.
Please, could you help me out. I know there are no many options, that I should wait, but maybe you have other ideas you would like to share.
Hope to hear from you soon, 00
Lore

Killing silence

2007-09-08T15:54:00.000-07:00

Do you allow enough time for people to come up with answers to your questions before you rephrase them? Don't be afraid of silence!
People who know me well have already learnt that I can't be in silence tooooo long: it kills me and it is one of the worst drawbacks I face when teaching. Sometimes I am so anxious that I answer my students' questions instead of letting them think and figure out what they need to know for themselves.
This is another weak point on my lessons and I will try to improve so as to be a better teacher... and if possible, a better listener.
Let me know if I am the only one that feels this pressure for talking or if I have others like me. Let's see if we can help each other.
Kisses,
Lore

Our Beloved Grammar!

2007-08-22T16:56:00.000-07:00

Why do we use grammar so much, if fact, why do you think we have fallen in love with it in the first place? We should bear in mind that if we choose to concentrate only on grammar, we are not seeing the wood for the trees.

John and Liz Soars, authors or Headway, give a list of reasons to teachers to explain the prominence of grammar in their materials. Let's try to answer some questions to reflect on our teaching, in fact, I will mention some of them and I want to see if you agree with me or not, and if you have the chance to see the list, please leave a comment. Thanx

Which of those would concur with your own views? It is a tangible system, and can provide one element of a systematic approach to teaching a language.

Are there any with which you would disagree? There is one of the statements in which I don't completely agree: "It conforms students' expectations of language learning, and meets an often-heard request for 'more grammar'" Though I have had some students who asked for grammar all the time, they were the least. Almost all my students try to avoid grammar one way or the other, they want to learn more vocabulary or set expressions (even though they are within the field of grammar, they think they are not)

Would you wish to add further reasons for teaching grammar explicitly in your own classes? Students need to know explicitly why they are making mistakes as regards accuracy when they speak. We need to explain how the rule is conformed so that they can understand when we correct some aspects of their speech.

Hope to hear from you soon.

Bibliography

HEDGE, Tricia (2000), Teaching and Learning in the Language Classroom, UK, OUP; Chapter 5 (Discussion Topics and Projects # 5- pp. 180,182)

Comparing Grammar Contents

2007-08-22T16:47:00.000-07:00

Dear everyone,
I've browsed through two books that are designed for intermediate students and which have a grammatical component to the syllabus.
The task I was to carry out, required me to compare those two books and think about:

(a) To what extent do you find similarities and differences in the selection and sequencing of structures?
They were more or less the same as regards grammar at the beginning of the units but later on, as from unit three more or less, they changed the order in which the items were presented. In one of them 'functions' were also included in the column of grammar.
Both of them had sections in which grammar was recycled.
One of the books ended up explaining 'third conditional' and the other did not. This may be connected to the fact that one of the books is aimed at teens and the other to adults and teens.

(b) Is an explanation given (for example, in the teacher's book) for the grammatical content and its order?
No, there is no explanation explicitly given. However, at the beginning of the English File Intermediate book, there is a revision from the previous book or the contents students are supposed to have at the beginning of the course to use the book.

(c) In what ways would the grammatical content of either of the books be suitable for your own intermediate learners?
The grammatical context would be suitable because the activities presented in both books are contextualized, dynamic and appealing to them. They are useful to be carried out so as to practice or present a topic.

You are now invited to leave a comment as regards grammar... or any other topic and suggest, if you want, some books you can use with your intermediate students and why do you like them.
See you soon,
Lore

Bibliography:
· HEDGE, Tricia (2000), Teaching and Learning in the Language Classroom, UK, OUP; Chapter 5 (Discussion Topics and Projects # 1 - p. 179)
· WETZ, Ben (2005), Adventures Intermediate Student’s Book, UK, OUP, pp. 2 and 3
· OXENDEN, Clive (1999), English File Intermediate Student’s Book, UK, OUP, pp. 2 to 5

Vocabulary List!

2007-08-18T18:52:00.000-07:00

Dear people,
I've browsed through three books to create a list of activities we can do with vocabulary. It is really helpful to have a list in which we can see and think of different activities so our students don't get bored and they practice different ways of learning the same vocabulary.
Here it goes:

guess the words from context
place words according to sounds
look at the pictures and then complete the song
divide the words in groups (lexical groups)
word building
crosswords
matching pictures with wordsç
matching pictures to their definitions
word maps
collocations
opposites
describe a picture with words given
acronyms
find words in the text
circle the correct word
odd one out
highlighting some words
find the differences between lexemes, e.g. get engaged vs. get married
translate
using a dictionary
put the phrases in chronological order
listen and repeat
complete with the word from the box
guess the meaning and then check in the dictionary
find synonyms for the phrasal verbs
put words in categories
each noun in bold is wrong. Write the correct word or phrase.
read the words from their phonetic representation and then complete the sentences with those words.

If you have any other to add, please you are welcome to do so. Let's enlarge our lists of activities to have more variety so we can reach to all our students. Kisses,

Lore

P.S. When I come back home I will include the bibliography, I promise.

Learning questionnaire

2007-06-17T09:50:00.000-07:00

Design a short questionnaire/inventory which you could use with students at the beginning of a course to raise their awareness of their assumptions about learning a language and/or their reactions to past learning experiences.

I don't know who to give credit for this idea because I'm sure I took it from one of my teachers, but to be honest, I don't know who. But the point is that I use this activity with my students at the beginning of the course to know more or less where they are standing and to get to know them. The name of the activity is "coat of arms" and as the name says it, it's a drawing of a coat of arms divided into 5 sections. There I write different things but just to give you an example: 1. Me (so they have to tell me or write something about them), 2. My family (idem but with the family), 3. Favourite Place, 4. Hobby, 5. English Experience.

This activity is like the springboard because after or during the activity, I ask different questions and also check how they want to learn and what they expect for the rest of the year.

I also work with photocopies from books that have kind of questionnaires or inventories where students have to tick what they like, the way they learn or the way they would like to learn.

It is very important to show students they have different ways in which they can learn and if we teach them that, they will have more possibilities to learn on their own (at home with homework or when they need to study for English or other subjects).

And what about you? Do you have activities to share with me?

Bibliography:

Hedge, Tricia (2001); A Framework for Teaching and Learning; chapter 3(Discussion projects and topics # 4- p. 103); O.U.P.

Learner training

2007-06-17T09:20:00.000-07:00

To what extent have the concepts of self-direction or learner training influenced your own ELT situation? Do you think the implications they hold for institutional practice are desirable or possible, and what are the practical constraints?
Before starting the Teacher Training College I used to teach at an institute and at home. I thought I taught beautifully because I gave my students everything and lots of grammar and exercises. But when I started learning how to teach, it changed my life completely.
These concepts, self-direction and learner training, have changed the way I teach because, nowadays, I start from my student's needs so classes are suited for them and not just for me.
I believe that this is possible to be applied as long as the number of students and the institution allow you. the problem sometimes lays on the institution when they think we have to follow the syllabus and that's it, without thinking about quality learning but only on the "quantity" of exposure.

Bibliography:
Hedge, Tricia (2001); A Framework for Teaching and Learning; chapter 3(Discussion projects and topics # 9 - p. 103); O.U.P.

Groupwork in the communicative classroom

2007-06-01T11:36:00.000-07:00

Hedge (2001) lists the following reasons for using pairwork and groupwork in the communicative classroom:

It motivates students to work in face to face encounters in the classroom.
It increases opportunities for practicing the language.
It enables students to take risks with the language and to see if they can negotiate meaning.
It gives students the opportunity to monitor how well they understand and are understood.

I agree with all of the reasons but I believe items C and D are the most important ones.

I think some students like this kind of activities because they can play and have fun and if they enjoy doing an exercise, they learn more. That would be another reason.

The disadvantages are that sometimes students don’t behave or speak in their mother tongue and complete the charts but in their mother tongue so the purpose of the activity is ruined.

I think there should be conditions to follow so students can profit from the activity. One of the conditions, for example, should be to speak in English when working or maybe telling them they can say 3 things in their mother tongue but not more than that, so they have to choose when to use their mother tongue and then switch back to English.

Lorena

BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Hedge, Tricia (2001); Teaching and Learning in the Language Classroom; chapter 2 (Discussion projects and topics # 6 - p. 73); O.U.P.

Meaning-focused activities for the communicative lesson

2007-05-31T05:26:00.000-07:00

I’ve searched through English File 2 (OUP) by Clive Oxenden c.f. , trying to identify the three types of meaning-focused activity in the classroom that Prabhu describes. Let's see if others agree with my analysis!

Information-gap activity: on page 121 I’ve found an activity in which Student A has to read a description and answer B’s questions to complete a chart on page 81. Then Student B turns to page 124 activity 6B and reads the description and answer Students A’s questions and the latter completes the chart on page 81.

Reasoning-gap activity: on page 120, unit 2D I’ve found a crossword in which Student A has some information and has to answer Student B questions. Student A has to define the word and Student B has to guess the word and complete his crossword. Student B is on page 123 so he cannot see Student A’s crossword. He has to define the words too and Student A has to guess and complete his crossword.

Opinion-gap activity: on page 121, activity 7C. Student A reads and memorizes his problems and then tells B and C who are going to give Student A advice. Student A decides which the best idea is. Then Student B turns to page 124 and Student C to page 125. They do the same as with Student A.

So... what do you think?
Lorena

BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Hedge, Tricia (2001); Teaching and Learning in the Language Classroom; chapter 2 (Discussion projects and topics # 4 - p. 73); O.U.P.
Oxenden, Clive ; English File 2; O.U.P.

Quality teachers

2007-05-10T18:42:00.000-07:00

In my own classes the explicit teaching of grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary are quite important. On the one hand, I mostly base my classes on vocabulary and sometimes I have to show the phonetic symbols so that my students understand where they are making the mistakes. On the other hand, grammar is also very important but I try to make my students notice 'grammar' and then to practice it. That is to say, I explain grammar and everything, but I do not like having a grammar-based approach. The bottom line is that I believe I have to strike a balance as regards grammar and meaning.

I firmly believe that a teacher should have a good sense of humour so that your classes are fun and students enjoy themselves and you, as teacher, too.
We must be self-confident, if not we cannot teach. Someone once told me that teachers have to think they know something and feel confident on that knowledge so we can help our student's process of learning.
Another good quality is to be sensitive to our learners. We cannot expect our students to learn if we do not create a bond between them and us. Besides, they are human beings who are in constant need, and we should help them.
As regards methodology, it is good to know that we need to adapt to our learners. We need to have a bunch of new activities, old ones and things to do with particular students. We have to be flexible so everyone has the chance to learn.

Nerves of steel

2007-04-30T14:49:00.000-07:00

I feel really confident about observing lessons because I think I can learn a lot.
My ideas about observation have changed in the sense that now I know I don't have to be so critical. And that is why I think I won't have any problems as regards observing lessons. As I said before, I feel very confident about it.
Personally, I think I can learn a lot from my observations. For example, I can learn how to handle students; new activities and games; and improve in every aspect possible.

See you soon,
Lorena

Observing a lesson... what a topic!

2007-04-30T11:33:00.000-07:00

What do you think you should say when first going to observe a lesson? From my humble point of view, I've suggested some things we could say before observing a lesson so the teacher we are observing and we get along with each other.

What?

Who I am
When I want to visit
What is that I’m going to pay attention to during the observation
How I’m going to behave during her lesson (‘I won’t be an intruder)
I can show her the task I’m going to do

Why?

Identify myself to the T
Clarify date, timetable conflicts
So that the T doesn’t feel threaten by my observation.
The T can pretend I’m not there and behave the way she always does
The T knows exactly what I will be concentrating on

And you, what would you add or change?

Eager to know your answers.

Lorena

My first observation... this year

2007-04-30T10:33:00.000-07:00

By sitting in on this lesson I learnt that there are different ways to deal with writing because I used to think there were no GOOD ways to face writings but I have been awaken. As a consequence, I feel encouraged to look into the way I teach it and try to make it as nice as possible.
As usual, I didn't leave with questions in mind because I tend to see what I have to observe and that's it. Generally I don't have questions because I like asking them to the teacher so I don't have them lingering in my head.
I don't know if you are acquainted with microscopic and and telescopic observations but to me, the microscopic observations are easier because I like to write everything down. I can't just concentrate in one thing in particular. I need to see the whole of it and report on the whole. Anyway, this year we started using telescopic observations also so I have to come to terms with them and try to get the hang of them.
Let's see what you think of my report and the way I observe classes. You may want to add some comments and you are welcomed to do so.
Let's get in touch,
Lore