According to the given questionaire, personally, drills have some communicative pupose, but they can give us all the support we need, they just give us an idea how to follow instructions but they don´t permit create a communicative environment in our classes.
On the second hand, If you, as teacher , are interested in your students get the appropiate fluency and oral production, of course you should permit some errors in their first productions, for example all those grammar details like she do/she does, order or adjectives and nouns in a sentence: the woman tall/the tall woman, entonation and questions, because they are trying to engaged all these new words and structures in a conversation, but they are still thinking in their native language structure while they are talking.
And if we focus this discussion on colombian students, where most of them feel shy of speak a foreign language, in our role of guides in the process , we have to support the acquisicion of the needed fluency, and the rest are details, easier to correct in the future.
Learning English through a CLT, involves several of language functions that also includes non-verbal behaviours.When you talk about acquisition
fuctionally, it means that you besides learn feeling, cultural points of view and opinions.
I think this approach is suitable for all subjects, because its main goal is to be competent using language in a particular situation, it means that you can learn the basic vocabulary of the subjects or jobs you are doing as learner. But , if we apply this method in a class maybe, we can do it easily though subjects like technologies and information, science, literature, socials.
domingo, 30 de septiembre de 2007
lunes, 17 de septiembre de 2007
COLOMBIA BILINGÜE PROJECT
Giving response to the questions given by Norbella, I think that this could be possible while the governors really know what a biligual country means. They are exposing all the needs and troubles aour students would have if they are not well qualified to use another language (English in this case) , but they don´t recognize all the things envolving the aspect of speak and also think in other language. As we discuse during the class, schools need more resourses and more well prepared teacher to get the challenge. Although, I notice that people is working very hard in order to develope this project, all the teachers have to be engaged with their roles in this process, and may offer alternatives and resourses to students and teachers who really want to learnEnglish a s a second language.
According to the second question, I think it´s possible to reach the National Standard, but It won´t be so fast.We need to build new plans , all of them appropiate for our students needs and interests.And remember that the porjects have an experimental part, we starting with it, so we ought to wait for the results and apply the best methodologies and technics that really works in our students. We can denie that learning is related to environment and culture.
To help our students to reach a higher level of proficiency should reflect about the lesson plans we are applying in our schools,also, we need to improve our awn level . There are a lot of coleagues that don´t have enough experience using English in particular situations(they aren´t competent). As a conclusion, we havwe to create the methods, thecnics or tools to make our students love English and make them find how useful learning a second language could be.
According to the second question, I think it´s possible to reach the National Standard, but It won´t be so fast.We need to build new plans , all of them appropiate for our students needs and interests.And remember that the porjects have an experimental part, we starting with it, so we ought to wait for the results and apply the best methodologies and technics that really works in our students. We can denie that learning is related to environment and culture.
To help our students to reach a higher level of proficiency should reflect about the lesson plans we are applying in our schools,also, we need to improve our awn level . There are a lot of coleagues that don´t have enough experience using English in particular situations(they aren´t competent). As a conclusion, we havwe to create the methods, thecnics or tools to make our students love English and make them find how useful learning a second language could be.
sábado, 8 de septiembre de 2007
ADDRESSING COMPETENCES INTO A ELT ENGLISH CLASSROOM
When you are connected to your work , while you are teaching, you can recognize inmediatly what kind of competence you are applying to; that´s when your job, intead, being theoric becomes practical.
I try to make different activities during my classes. For example, to improve the lingüistic competence I plan written exercises according to the topic. Sometimes we listen a short story where kind have to complete with the correct forms of verbs, prepositions etc. After finishing that, we read the text, completed, and a I take advantage of that, to teach phonetic aspects and fluency.
Getting through socio-linguistic competence, we make activities like games, short sketches, or " complete the conversation game". I also have a material related to Idioms and Proverbs, where children have to replace a picture for a word, and finally find together the meaning of the proverb and its equivalent in mother tongue. They use to laugh because, they think that proverbs are just for old people.
Pragmatic competence activities consist in tell a story by pictures, firstly, you can do it with a well known story in their mother tonghe. When kids acquire experience and more vocabulary you can make them organize the pictures and tell the story using their own words, eventhough they can "build" a new story using the picture card in different order.
To conclude, and this , depends on individual abilities, you can also work with your children trough handcrafts making. That could help you to teach culture, vocabulary, commands and work-in-groups management.
I try to make different activities during my classes. For example, to improve the lingüistic competence I plan written exercises according to the topic. Sometimes we listen a short story where kind have to complete with the correct forms of verbs, prepositions etc. After finishing that, we read the text, completed, and a I take advantage of that, to teach phonetic aspects and fluency.
Getting through socio-linguistic competence, we make activities like games, short sketches, or " complete the conversation game". I also have a material related to Idioms and Proverbs, where children have to replace a picture for a word, and finally find together the meaning of the proverb and its equivalent in mother tongue. They use to laugh because, they think that proverbs are just for old people.
Pragmatic competence activities consist in tell a story by pictures, firstly, you can do it with a well known story in their mother tonghe. When kids acquire experience and more vocabulary you can make them organize the pictures and tell the story using their own words, eventhough they can "build" a new story using the picture card in different order.
To conclude, and this , depends on individual abilities, you can also work with your children trough handcrafts making. That could help you to teach culture, vocabulary, commands and work-in-groups management.
CHILDHOOD TEACHERS: BEYOND INSPIRATION
Taking a short trip trough out my chilhood memomories, there are a lot of things to remember , some of them are those people whose advice and support make me be a good woman and lead me into the righteous way. Before starting to write, I´ve first thinking about all these things that inspired me , and It was difficult because personally I use to take the most relevant datails of each personality, all the things that will be useful in my future.
I could not avoid feeling some nostalgia when I remembered my 2nd grade teacher, her name was Nhora Palacios. Those days I could hardly recognize how experienced she would be or if she had taken a lot of methodology courses, the only thing I knew is that she really loved us and she was fascinated with her job. She taught me how to love books and children stories. With tender words and picking my chicks everytime she could do it, she motivated all those things because one day I decided to be a teacher: Learning to learn, love knowledge and help others to learn. She tought that all people could be as intelligent as they wanted, encourege themselves in order to discover all those abilities and skills they have. Whenever you are, Nhora, Thanks and Blessings.
Secondly, I ´d like to talk about Mrs Lucila Cifuentes.
During my early youth years I used to hate socials studies and all thigs referring to historical stuffs. But, since she started to teach me , she turned up the light. Despite my friends said that she was worried and her classes or most of them were almost lectures, she had a special way to express how interesting and important is the story and the world surrounding. She really enjoyed it you could easily notice that she read a lot and prepare many documents to give us a real information. Anyway, if she would have been my philosophy teacher, I would have learnt how to understand Aristoteles. Good for You Mrs Cifuentes.
I could not avoid feeling some nostalgia when I remembered my 2nd grade teacher, her name was Nhora Palacios. Those days I could hardly recognize how experienced she would be or if she had taken a lot of methodology courses, the only thing I knew is that she really loved us and she was fascinated with her job. She taught me how to love books and children stories. With tender words and picking my chicks everytime she could do it, she motivated all those things because one day I decided to be a teacher: Learning to learn, love knowledge and help others to learn. She tought that all people could be as intelligent as they wanted, encourege themselves in order to discover all those abilities and skills they have. Whenever you are, Nhora, Thanks and Blessings.
Secondly, I ´d like to talk about Mrs Lucila Cifuentes.
During my early youth years I used to hate socials studies and all thigs referring to historical stuffs. But, since she started to teach me , she turned up the light. Despite my friends said that she was worried and her classes or most of them were almost lectures, she had a special way to express how interesting and important is the story and the world surrounding. She really enjoyed it you could easily notice that she read a lot and prepare many documents to give us a real information. Anyway, if she would have been my philosophy teacher, I would have learnt how to understand Aristoteles. Good for You Mrs Cifuentes.
lunes, 3 de septiembre de 2007
ENGLISH LEARNING: COMMUNICATION OR KNOWLEDGE
According to the reading "English as a Lingua Franca" many things are a difficult point for reflection. In fact , now-a-days , many schools are worried because the class plans they are applying are not working at all. Most of their students can say how to "build " a correct sentence, or how to fill the blanks with the appropiately words. Maybe they can recognize how to answer according to the proposed situation( shown in books or written exercises) , but what happened when some of these boys and girls went abroad and faced up real situations in English like going to a grocery store or visit historical places or in a typical situation like take the right bus or train route? Sadly, they can recognize that all that time at school or in a specialized institutes was wasted. In my personal opinion, learning a language is not just to follow several grammar or phonetic rules, communication goes further, it involves competence, fluency and the personal conviction of spread your ideas clearly and share opinions in spite of cultures or religions.
That is why we, as teachers, have an important responsability of change all this school plannings in order to make our students understand the importance of communicate with others in a functional way, forgeting to feel afraid of exposing their ideas or without thinking if they have incorrect patterns of pronounciation, the only important thing is to spread your culture and express your feelings .
Grammar and phonetic patterns are necessary but they are not the unique aspect you need to learn for a meaningfull communication.
Coments? Please let me know your opinion.
That is why we, as teachers, have an important responsability of change all this school plannings in order to make our students understand the importance of communicate with others in a functional way, forgeting to feel afraid of exposing their ideas or without thinking if they have incorrect patterns of pronounciation, the only important thing is to spread your culture and express your feelings .
Grammar and phonetic patterns are necessary but they are not the unique aspect you need to learn for a meaningfull communication.
Coments? Please let me know your opinion.
Suscribirse a:
Entradas (Atom)