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

UNIT 11

Unit 11

The role of error

On the process of language learning errors are common and from my point of view they show a signal about progress on the learner. Interlanguage is also a result of the learning process because learners unconsciously analyze and recognize the two languages and creating a new version, an example of interlanguage is the “Spanglish”. One of the most common mistakes is interference, when students use the grammatical structures from L1 (mother tongue) into L2. Not all the mistakes are the same, errors occur when learners try to say something that is higher to his level, on the other hand, slips are the result of tiredness or other emotional factor that produce a mistake.  

I have to mention two main ideas that can help learners to develop the target language, the first one is exposure so they can analyze the language structure and apply to their language production, on this case I would present students authentic material as news on English, but taking into account their level and interesting also.  Second, learners’ needs the language to interact so I would create into the class activities as discussions, role plays or interviews were students have their opportunity to develop their confidence.  

Another problem is fossilization when a student`s error do not disappear, that is always present, this is caused by the lack of exposure of L2.  Most of the time, the English class is the only time where students use the target language so the teacher should provide students as many opportunities as possible to work out the language.

The teacher wants from students to speak perfectly but if every single time a student opens his mouth we make corrections, we are making a bad learning language experience. I consider that is important to let them talk for as long as we can understand the message they are trying to get across. Whenever the message becomes unclear, time to help them a little bit or reformulate it.  Native speakers don't care if you say things perfectly or not as long as you can get the message across.

For more information check this link:

Maria Karra . (2006). Second Language Acquisition: Learners' Errors and Error Correction in Language Teaching. 2014, de ProZ.com Translation Article Knowledgebase retrieved from: http://www.proz.com/translation-articles/articles/633/1/Second-Language-Acquisition%3A-Learners'-Errors-and-Error-Correction-in-Language-Teaching

Susana Gómez Martínez, Universidad de Valladolid (2007), Should we correct our students errors in l2 learning? Encuentro Retrieved from:

http://www.encuentrojournal.org/textos/16.8.pdf

UNIT 10

UNIT 10 

Exposure and focus on form 

Every time, students are exposure to the target language, as for example the music, but this isn´t enough to learn a language. Students need to pay attention to different characteristics of the language as for example the pronunciation.

We as a teachers will meet students that have traveled abroad and just picked up the language but also students that learn the language using a method (most of the cases the grammar translation method) In a class is important to create a variety of teaching methods according to the learning styles from students . Sometimes students can face problems at the moment of learning a target language , sometimes isn´t enough to read or listen , that`s why I consider that the teacher should use correct material to the correct level.

In my opinion, students need to interact more that be siting and just act as receptive learners instead of be productive ones. If I have the chance to create an interactive activity, I would to every Monday and Friday because learned did several activities outside the classroom and Friday because they have plans for the weekend, therefore there is a lot to talk about. In this case I can work with pair work interviews or problem solving activities, the objective is the interaction and that learned could be able to work out the language.

Sometimes with fist level learners don`t have enough vocabulary to express his ideas, encourage students to use other words to express them take a successful part at this point of the class. Paraphrasing which is a valuable learning process, by a warm up called Pictionary students can practice paraphrasing. 

Foreign language also needs to focus on other features like pronunciation and here takes past and an activity I suggest, use song to practice pronunciation, more that be authentic material it provides students a clear examples about sounds, and also useful to notice  certain grammatical patterns.        

For more information about this check this links:

Alberto Amaro. (2011). Exposure and focus on form, de slide share Retrieved from: http://www.slideshare.net/albertamaro/exposure-and-focus-on-form?related=2

Elizabeth Crawford-Brooke, Ph.D., CCC-SLP Director of Educational Research and Design, Lexia Learning (2013), THE CRITICAL ROLE OF ORAL LANGUAGE IN READING FOR TITLE I STUDENTS AND ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS, Lexia Learning. Retrieved from:

http://lexialearning.com/lexiaresearch/whitepapers/oral-language-whitepaper

UNIT 9

UNIT 9

Motivation

Personally, motivation is the most important factor that influence the classroom environment and result from students too, without it, students won`t make enough effort into the class. Some students may have extrinsic motivation like a possibility to travel abroad or some of the have intrinsic motivation that is personal for example the improvement of the target language.

One of the most important characteristics of motivation is the material like course books, most of the time they used to be monotonous so is appropriate to vary the material and also be sure that it is according to the learner’ age and level and needs.

Another relevant factor that help students to achieve a sense of achievement (confidence), is giving positive feedback. On an oral presentation you can point out fist the positive aspects from the students work as the material, presentation management if these are the cases. On the other hand if there is something that the students’ needs to improve is better to talk about it personal but do it as a suggestion for example: You could use this words… or a good idea is… Otherwise the students will be demotivated if you mention in from of the class his mistakes or errors in from of the al class.   

Finally I consider that target language culture is also part of motivation.  I have to say that one of the reasons I Liked to study English is because I wanted to learn American culture.  Some students, like me, not only look for grammar on an English class but also they look for a new culture. My English teacher from the high school  used to bring to the class American TV programs, I learned a lot from them and that`s why I do suggest that a new way of studying American culture and also be familiar with it is using this king of material, so learners will face authentic material.

For more information check this links:

Pablo Mejia Madonado. Msc.. (2009). How to motivate students. 2013, de Slide Share Retrieved from: http://www.slideshare.net/pabmejia/taller-how-to-motivate-students?qid=8543ad15-4caf-4fe7-b9bf-f59508cc771b&v=qf1&b=&from_search=1

Dr Jennifer Irwin. (2006). Student motivation. Slide Share Retrieved from: http://www.slideshare.net/jvirwin/student-motivation-13228070?related=1