UNIT 18

Assessment types and tasks 

This Unit was about Assessment, it means judging learner´s performance based on his work. We can do it in formal assessment and informal assessment. 

We assess learner’s formality to know how well students learned a part of a course, this is the objective of the progress test.  A portfolio is another way of formal assessment where the student collect all his work and mostly s presented at the end of the course, it also helps the learned to revised and improve his learning.

 

Achievement test or summative test also take place as formal assessment, they are taken by learners at the end of the course to see how well they learned the contents of the course.

On the other and, informal assessment is rarely used to give a grade, for example the teacher judge the level of fluency or notice the motivation. Informal assessment helps teacher learn about the needs of individual learner, it give advice to learners on how to improve in the future. Students also take part on informal assessment like self-assessment and peer-assessment, it helps students to become more autonomous.

Personaly I would use informal assessment especially before an oral test, I would give feedback on the strengths and weaknesses so learners would be aware about I would focus on the test.     

For more information check this web sides:

Maria Stickley, (2011), NSTA Learning Center,

http://learningcenter.nsta.org/discuss/default.aspx?tid=3/agRA/3tDo_E

UNIT17

Practice activities and task for language and skills development

 

These activities are designed to give learners opportunities to use the new content of the language such as vocabulary, grammatical structure or of the subskills like reading, listening, speaking or writing.

The controlled activities allow students to make few mistakes, guide students using the target language like: drills, choral drills, copying words or sentences.  On the other hand, free activities students can use any language in order to complete the task, therefore, teacher isn´t able to predict what language will be used. This activity focus on fluency and give chances to interact to students. Some examples of the kind of activities are.  Writing e-mails, prioritizing, problem-solving activities.

Activities that are between free and controlled are called freer activities as for example: role plays, information-gap activities, surveys. Sometimes these activities can change from controlled to free and vice versa. If I give students what questions use on a survey then it´s controlled but I don´t control what language will be used to answer them, therefore it changes into a freer activity. Like this and other varieties, some teaches manipulate the activities and that makes a Leeson more interesting and motivating.  

For more information check this links:  

Heads up English, Chris Cotter, lesson structure, controlled to free activities, lesson structure, Retrieved from:

http://www.headsupenglish.com/index.php/esl-articles/esl-lesson-structure/310-controlled-to-free-activities

 Prezzi, Controled and free practice activities,(2014), Celeste Lemus, Retrieved from:

https://prezi.com/wmhrgroztcv3/controlled-and-free-practice-activities/

UNIT 16

UNIT 16

Preentation techniques and Introductory antivities

They are ways used by the teacher to focus learner´s attention on the meaning, use and form of the language, when is the first time. Introductory activities are used to introduce a lesson or a topic. 

Some interesting ideas presented on this unit were about to think about what grammatical structures, new vocabulary, new functional components, lexical phrases, etc. can be presented on just one class. Choose a context that shows the meaning of the new language (meaningful), connected with student´s life (personalized) and relevant for students. Also I learned that the teacher should consider the learning age, preferences, learning styles, resources available and if the class focus on the meaning or form.

Let´s clarify some concepts. Warmers are often used to raise student´s energy levels or make him comfortable before the lesson while lead-ins make a link between the topic of the lesson and the student´s own life.

Supporting material will help to the teacher to crate the context like pictures, DVD, CD, and thinking about how the teacher resent the meaning or use of the target language? In my opinion I will present through a situation because the learner can create a connection between something new (target language) with something familiar (situation)

For more explanation check these links:

https://prezi.com/favx3bysftea/what-are-presentation-techniques-and-introductory-activities/
   

UNIT 15

UNIT 15

Approaches to language teaching

The unit is mainly about to our view of language and our view of how language learning takes place, approaches that have had an important impact on teaching English, practices and materials. Let´s look at the most important for me and its characteristics:

Presentation Practice and Production: learner can´t make mistakes during the practice stage, the decision are taken only by the teacher about what and how to learn. This approaches contains activities like situational presentations, miming, drills and information gap activity.

Grammar translation method is the oldest one, t consist on working out what language means by applying rules, isolated sentences from L1 to L2 or vice versa, the emphasis in on grammatical accuracy . The language is view as a grammatical rules.

The next one is called CLIL (Content and language Integrated learning) .The lessons focus on the subject rather than on language therefore, language serves to communicate meaning. Language is mainly learnt through acquisition and through using it so the school subject is taught is the L2.

And finally the most known by all of my teachers who say that use it but some of them don´t do it. Communicative approaches´ task focus on communicative needs, fluency is more important accuracy and authentic material are often use in the classroom.    

As we can see some approaches are more developed in some areas than others

Me as a future teacher can create a mixture of the approaches, remember the learning styles, cousebooks and syllabus that influenced on the approaches that teacher can use.  

 For more information check this video:

Aproaches and methods inlanguage teaching, LTM 1G week 3, (2007), Emma Arthur Retrieved from:http://es.slideshare.net/emma.a/language-teaching-approaches-and-methods?related=1

UNIT 14

                                                      UNIT 14                     

Learner needs

Learning styles are not the only factor that influence on students´ learning.  On a class each learned have a different personal reasons for studying a target language and this is motivation, personal goals (general or academic goals) that need to be achieved at the end of the course, all them are expectations from the learner.

The learners ‘needs vary in length, frequency, class size, language skills focus on, type of English, teaching methods and strategies. A year preparation for a TOEFL exam is not the same as a six month course in an English speaking country focus on social aspect. Teacher can identify it through observation or an interview with student.  

One important aspect is that the teacher cannot meet all learners´ needs all the time, so teacher can include variety with across lessons as for example using different kind of activities( role plays on different situation), different interaction patterns (function).    

For more information check this video 

UNIT 13

 UNIT 13                      

Learning Characteristics 

Motivation, learning style, learning strategies and maturity are factors that influence how the learners perceive the process of learning a second language. All of them are important but personally I consider two of them the most important ones: Learning styles and learning strategies.

Learning styles are personal skills that a learner have through the process of learning, its natural. These characteristics should be consider on planning the class.

Visual: watching and looking.

Auditory: listening and hearing

Kinesthetic: moving or touching

Group: working with others

Individual: working alone:

Reflective give time to consider choices

Impulsive:  respond immediately

Analytic: analyze things

Autonomous: decide what and how to learn.   

Learning strategies are ways that help learners to process the new language. Repeating the new words or create a note about them help to memorize them, asking the teacher for feedback could clarify about something and practicing, I would create on my schedule were students can come and ask for feedback. Use the language as much as possible the language like talking with tourist. These ideas are consider for me an extra support outside the classroom that help learners to reinforce, remember and use the new language.

If you want visit this web sites for extra information about learning characteristics:

The University of Knansas(2014), center for reseach on learning, learning stratgies: Retreived from: 

http://www.ku-crl.org/sim/strategies.shtml

UNIT 12

Unit 12 

Differences between LI and L2 learning

L1 (first language) stars when the person is a baby, is common to notice mistakes buy they disappear at the moment of learning the language skills. On the other hand the L2 learned on an academic way like schools or high schools. The motivation for learner L1 is essentially necessary because they the language to communicate so it works as a motivation.  A learned from L2 probably had a bad experience about learning the target language therefore he won`t be fully motivated to learn again the language any without any motivation at all.

Learned from L1 are exposure all the time to it so the practice of the language is complete but for the L2 learner the language is in controlled practice and aging me as teacher I would expose to students as much as possible to the L2 as for example not talking any word in Spanish in my classes or if you don´t know the word in English so paraphrase it. On the L2 class there is not too much interaction between the teacher and the learner. One of the advantage about L2 learners is that they can focus on the form of language but sometimes the teacher ask students to produce correct language and they may not be able to make mistakes and experiment with the language, that I consider is bad on learning the target language, I think overgeneralization as also experimenting with the language and it shouldn´t be taken as a mistake but as part of the learning process.

For more information check this link:

Hiromi Hadley, (December 2002). Niigata Studies in Foreign Languages and Cultures, Reviewing First and Second Language Acquisition:A Comparison between Young and Adult Learners Retrieved from:

http://www.nuis.ac.jp/~hadley/publication/languageacquisition_files/languageacquisition.htm

Christie Patti,Cedar Bluff Elementary School,Knoxville, TN, ESL Professional Development Second Language Acquisition - Learning in L1 and L2 retrieved from:

http://eslprofessionaldevelopment.wikispaces.com/Second+Language+Acquisition+-+Learning+in+L1+and+L2