Hedge: Speaking

I found a recording about two students that had to agreed on a given topic. I invite you to listen to it at : http://splendid-speaking.com/blog/?m=200705. The first part is an explanation of what these two students have to do. Their conversation starts after 3 minutes more or less.
In this activity, as it was a pairwork task, both students had to speak a lot, so in a way they did not have the chance to be silent. They had to speak all the time by answering to the other person. Unfortunately, I could not find examples of conversational adjustments, maybe because both of them speak really well and had a very good level. This is why, I could not find any correction made from one to the other neither. As regards their level of accuracy, I would say that it was really good, it is obvious that they manage the language and that they are accurate and fluent when speaking.
This activity in particular was focused on the outcome and I think that they succeeded in that.
Finally, I believe that this is an activity worth doing, because it gives students the possibility to speak freely about a certain topic and it makes them think more on the outcome than on the language itself, which can be useful for practising fluency. I would try it in my lessons!!!

Reading: What students say about new words.

Many students find difficulties when dealing with reading tasks. According to Tricia Hedge´s book these are some of the strategies students use get over them:

1) "I think if there is a Spanish word like it."
2) "I start again from the beginning of the sentence."
3) "I write it in my notebook."

In my view, the first strategy can be very tricky. I mean that if the word has a literal Spanish translation and this translation fits in the context being presented it can be useful for the student. However, if the word has different meanings and the student gets the wrong one, the reading can be turned into a more difficult task for him.
The second strategy can be very useful for the student, because by re-reading the sentence he can get the meaning of the word or phrase from the context.
The third strategy is very useful as well, because students can have their notebooks with new words which can help them remember their meanings.
All in all, every student will have different strategies to learn new words taken from a reading task. In my opinion, if these strategies help our students remember and even use them, they are all useful for them.

Halloween task

I found a great task about halloween. It is a quiz about the history of this festivity. I think it would be great to use it as a competition game after dealing with some reading task about the history of halloween in class. I would include this quiz because I think that It might be very motivating for students to be involved in a competition in the net. Besides, this will give them a purpose for reading. If you are also interested try this page and find out how much you know about the history of halloween:

http://www.theholidayspot.com/halloween/quiz.htm

HAVE FUN!!!!!!

Hedge: Are there any listening tasks with which you would not use a pre-listening stage?

I do not think so. In my view, the pre-listening stage is always necessary when we deal with listening tasks. We need to prepare our students in order to carry out the listening succesfully and this can only be achieved if we help them by using the pre-listening stage. No matter if the listening task is easy or difficult, the use of this stage will allow them to get prepared to what they are going to listen about, so they will not feel at a loss when they start carrying out the task. If we get rid of this stage we can generate an unnecessary feeling of frustration in our students if they cannot understand the listening task. I think that the pre-listening stage is a must and that it is our job to help students succeed in language learning.

The prominence in grammar

Liz and John Soars give the following reasons to teachers to explain the prominence of grammar in their materials:
It is the mechanism that generates the infinite number of sentences that we produce and receive.
It is a tangible system, and can provide one element of a systematic approach to teaching a language.
It develops cognitive awareness of the Language. Language is ruled-based, and consciouss or sub-consciouss knowledge of the rules is the key to "generalizability" and creativity.
It conforms students´expectations of language learning.
It will be of assistance to teachers in the planning of their lessons.

I agree with the reasons mentioned above but for the first one, because I do not think that grammar alone can form sentences. In my view, grammar is the backbone of the language but it cannot work without its parts. We need all the systems in order to develop the language. However, I do agree with the other reasons mentioned, because grammar is something in which students rely on. It makes them feel safer when using the language, they like to know the rule and they generally feel that they do not learn anything if they are not taught some grammar.

Different pocedures for teaching vocabulary

I have found that the coursebooks that we use in our lessons show different ways of teaching vocabulary. So, do not panic and make use of it. For instance, in " New Snapshot Elementary", you can find word search, matching pictures with new words, matching words with their meanings and also sentences to complete with new words. As regards the coursebook "Challenges" , you can find other procedures like boxes with key vocabulary or word builders, also fill in the blanks exercises and some matching exercises. Finally, in the case of the "New English File Intermediate", we find highlighted words that are part of a matching exercise or a fill in exercise, these words can also be part of a multiple choice exercise in which students have to choose the correct meaning, or sometimes students are just giving the words and they have to guess their meaning from context. What is really useful in this book is that you can also find vocabulary banks in which the words are related to a certain topic.
Hope you can find all this useful!!!

Self - direction and its implications in our lessons

The concept of self-direction has really influenced my ELT situation, because I always expect students to be more independent and to develop strategies to learn by themselves. Anyway, this is not very easy to achieve, because there are always some students that need the teacher in order to learn. However, I think that maybe I should help these students develop self-direction, because they might profit of it. The problem is that sometimes I do not know what I have to do to achieve that. In my opinion, it would be desirable to have self-directed students, but maybe if we think about it in the institutional area, these students might feel that they do not need to attend the lesson because they have the ability to learn by themselves, which at the same time could be a constraint for their learning process.

The communicative classroom

These are the reasons given 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 practising 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 absolutely agree with these ideas, because I think that if we want our students to speak we have to give them the opportunity to practise, and only by providing them they will be able to take risks with the language and negotiate meaning. Besides, many students prefer to speak with a partner than with the teacher, because they can feel intimidated by her or him.

In my opinion, the only disadvantage of working in pairs or in small groups is that sometimes teens can become disruptive or can speak in Spanish and about any other topic that the one given by the teacher. As regards this matter, we should pay attention and try to make them carry out the activity correctly.

For pair or goupwork to be successful in the classroom, I think that we need to give clear insructions and interesting activities, so as to get them involved in it. By doing this, they will feel enthusiastic and will do the activity taking advantage of it.

Characteristics that a teacher needs

I agree that all these characteristics are important, teachers need to have sense of humor and to understand others` jokes as well. A good sense of humour in both teachers and students makes the lesson more enjoyable. As regards self-confidence, I can compare it to the horse, if he knows that you do not know how to ride it he will throw you away, so you have to be self-confident and believe firmly that you can teach your students. Teachers should also be sensitive to others, they should care about them and never forget that we are dealing with people. Undestanding the feelings of others is a must. I think that the ability to build rapport is conneceted to sense of humour, because generally if you have a good sense of humour you can create rapport. Finally, in my opinion the ability to be methodical is really important, we as teachers have our own methods and we believe in them, we think that through this methods students will learn and this conviction is necessary if we want to be teachers.

Comments about observations

I feel really confident about observations, but anyway I prefer to be the one who is observing and not the one that is being observed. My ideas about observing have changed considerably because at the beginning I did not see it as a learning tool. It was just a matter of finding out what you do not want to do in your lessons. I was really wrong, and I think that I will make more profit of it now. This is why I feel more confident about making observations and from now on I will try to learn from them. I believe that I will be able to learn about classroom management, how to deal with certain matters (like mistakes) and I also think that observations will be useful to find out which things I would like to do in my lessons. To sum up, I believe that observations are necessary for our learning process.

An activity that I like

This activity is called Taboo Game and it consists of defining a word without using other four words which are the taboo ones. I took this activity from "Reward" upper intermediate. It is a nice activity and students generaly have a lot of fun.

Presentation

Hi everyone!!
My name is Cynthia and I live in Buenos Aires, Argentina. I am studying to become an English teacher at the Liceo Cultural Britanico. I have been teaching for 3 years and at the moment I am working with children (5 years old) and adults.
I hope we can interchange ideas and experiences!!!!
I am waiting for your comments on my blog.
Cynthia