Diploma Communicative Skills Volume 6 by Alan Sanchez Vazquez

Communicative Skills for Secondary Teachers http://ced.cele.unam.mx/englishforteachers

Program developers Escuela Nacional Preparatoria No. 1 “Gabino Barreda. UNAM Ma. Elena Delgado Centro de Enseñanza de Lenguas Extranjeras. UNAM Leticia Martinek Karen Lusnia Eréndira Camarena Dulce Ma. Gilbón

Online tutor Alan Sánchez

CONTRIBUTORS Name

Photograph

State

Martha Aguayo

Zacatecas

Denise del Rosario Ávila

Yucatán

Jorge Alberto Ávila

Eva H. Baez

Karina G. Becerra

Zacatecas

Sinaloa

Gabriela Cabrera

Querétaro

Julio César Carreón

San Luis Potosí

Sigilfredo Cervantes

Zacatecas

Eustolia Díaz León

San Luis Potosí

Sandra Luz Fierro

Distrito Federal

José Gómez

Sinaloa

Susana Hernández

Valle de Bravo

María del Socorro Huitrón

Distrito Federal

Lydia A. Martínez

Sinaloa

Omar E. Melgarejo

Distrito Federal

Eduardo I. Moreno

Sonora

Samuel R. Ortega

Sinaloa

Arnulfo I. Palacios

Sinaloa

Alma Velia Picos

Sinaloa

Cintya L. Rivas

Distrito Federal

Madel I. Rubio

Sinaloa

Constantino A. Sánchez

Queretaro

Alma María de Lourdes

Distrito Federal

Velazquez

Jesús H. Zepeda

Nayarit

Introduction

A 120 hour online teacher development program was prepared for English language secondary school Mexican teachers. Free access sites were carefully

chosen in order to facilitate their improvement of language skills and grammatical competence as well. Seven modules were designed to reach this objective.

Would that program be an appropriate response to that population’s needs? At the end of each module, teachers were asked to reflect on their own learning process in the different contents: learning to learn, the four linguistic skills, teaching strategies and the use of ICT.

As a final project of the afore mentioned diploma, the participants are required to write a report. This volume includes the reflections of the sixth group participants who share their enthusiasm, surprise, stress and even frustration struggling with new technologies during their learning process, but their willingness to face the challenge as well.

TUTOR’S PRESENTATION I am learning all the time. The tombstone will be my diploma. ~Eartha Kitt El desarrollo de las nuevas tecnologías de la enseñanza, la presión de una sociedad globalizador, y

las transformaciones en los roles educativos, han cambiado el

concepto de aprendizaje y la enseñanza tradicional. En este sentido surgen nuevas condiciones en el ámbito de la educación. Dentro de la modalidad de educación a distancia se promueve como una de las características fundamentales la autonomía del alumno en el aprendizaje, para que los alumnos logren aprender a aprender es necesario que los alumnos aprendan e incorporen estrategias de aprendizaje. Muchas de sus representaciones mentales van a cambiar seguramente pero es un hecho que esta transformación los ayudará a la consecución de sus objetivos. La experiencia en este Diplomado Communicative Skills for Secondary Teachers fue definitivamente una de las experiencias más enriquecedoras que como tutor en línea he tenido, la contribución activa y propositiva de cada uno de nosotros significó el éxito de este Diplomado. Dentro de mi perspectiva como tutor, puedo decir que mis profesores-alumnos asumieron en todo momento una actitud proactiva hacia el conocimiento, tomando por completo la responsabilidad

de su propio proceso de

aprendizaje. Un aspecto fundamental que debe ser tomado en cuenta es la comunicación que se dio y se ponderó en todo momento, pues aunque se trata de tomar estrategias del estudio independiente y la autonomía es una de las características fundamentales, nunca se dejó de lado el concepto de aprender a ser. Es decir, no sólo aprendimos de nosotros mismos sino de nuestros pares, y eso nos hacer ser mejores personas y por supuesto docentes. El aprendizaje autónomo no debe ser sólo un lugar común en la sociedad del siglo XXI, realmente debemos encontrar la forma de concretar el concepto en cada uno de nuestros distintos contextos educativos. Estoy seguro que los participantes de este Diplomado serán un pilar fundamental en sus comunidades.

Lic. Alan Sánchez

Vázquez

CONTENTS Contributor

Pages

Martha Aguayo

Denise Ávila

Jorge Ávila

Eva H. Báez

Karina Becerra

Gabriela Cabrera

Julio César Carreón

112

Sigilfredo Cervantes

119

Eustolia Díaz

138

Sandra Luz Fierrro

151

José Gómez

156

Susana Hernández

170

María del Socorro Huitrón

188

Lydia Martinez

202

Omar Melgarejo

226

Eduardo Moreno

235

Samuel Ortega

255

Arnulfo Palacios

266

Alma Velia Picos

278

Cintya Rivas

301

Madel Rubio

308

Constantino Sánchez

323

Alma Maria de Lourdes Velazquez

332

Jesús H. Zepeda

348

Reviewing the report of my learning experience

By: Martha Aguayo Gómez

Do you believe in dreams coming true? Well, I didn´t either, until several months ago when I was invited to enroll to this wonderful Diploma by UNAM. I would like to say I feel very honored to have been chosen. I always wished I could have an opportunity to be in a course which enabled me to be, as Churches’ says, “a teacher of the 21st century”. Although it is sad to admit, but it is a true fact, some students know more about ICT tools than most teachers. Besides, while they open and close many games and software unknown for many of us, some teachers have difficulties being able to control the mouse. Because of this, I always hoped the SEC authorities would train us in order to use Internet tools with educational purposes and I am honored to have been included in a course I have always dreamed of, in order to improve as an English teacher and student. In order to review my learning experience in this course I will make a big effort and try to synthesize the most motivating activities discovered through each module. When I say I will try, it´s because all the activities provided are unique, but if I mention all of them I would have to publish an entire book to include all the experiences learned.

English language learning awareness

Learning to learn English through Internet tools and resources It´s a great advantage to use the tools available using Internet sites, while learning English, since you can find oral, written, reading and listening exercises as well as quizzes in order to practice your English skills. In addition, it is very important to have a positive attitude which includes motivation and confidence to pursue and succeed at learning throughout one´s life. Besides, I would like to mention some advantages I discovered of distance learning: you are not subject to a strict schedule, you can manage your time more effectively according to your needs, you can have video conferences with various people simultaneously and you can practice authentic listening without being physically in the United States. In this first module, I also learned one of my strengths: being able to identify English tenses and one of my weaknesses: not being able to recall spelling rules.

Reading I learned several skills and strategies to facilitate comprehension, but the one I enjoyed the most was, 5.1 “Reading and writing”, because I was able to read the article: “Amistad Incident” which is a famous trial that talks about the illegal purchase of slaves and it´s a great reading exercise that we may apply effectively in our classroom. In addition, I reviewed skimming and scanning using Internet tools, as well as being able to identify facts from opinions thru reading exercises. I also learned how I must read, revisit and reflect while reading.

Listening One of my favorite activities was “Thought groups”, because I motivate my students using music in my classroom and they appreciate it. Something very interesting I learned in this module was “thought groups”. I was not aware of the fact that they way we group our words into thoughts were called “though groups”. These are three tips that you must keep in mind when working with thought groups: 1. There are natural places to pause such as commas, periods, etc. 2. It is not natural to say looooong sentences in one breath. 3. Using “though” groups will give a better flow to your speech and it will be easier for people to understand you. This is a dictation of a listening of a news story at BBC: Learning English, reflecting “thought groups” ( / ) and the end of the sentence ( / ).

By contrast / to the spectacle of his life / and death / Michael Jackson´s funeral is planned / as A private ceremony for his family / and close friends / But / it´s bound to attract a huge amount of interests.//

Furthermore, I was able to review the importance of word stress, intonation and rhythm that, without them, a text would not make any sense. I also had the opportunity

to complete listening quizzes in order to practice minimal pairs, phrasal verbs and tag questions among others.

Speaking This was one of the most challenging modules, since I had never recorded my voice before and I found it very interesting. I also liked the fact of being able to listen to my peers exercises. I enjoyed making video conferences with my peers and establish a conversation in English with them. This was a fascinating experience. An additional activity that I found exciting was being able to create voice threads in order to express our personal opinion about a specific subject.

Writing â&#x20AC;&#x153;A book of poemsâ&#x20AC;? was one of the projects I enjoyed the most, since my peers did excellent jobs and I loved reading them as well as being able to comment about their work. At this point, I can create tales, comic strips, a piece of writing, make a book of poems and create a visual story, but most important of all, I learned resources and tools for learning to learn English through Internet sites.

Cultural learning awareness

One important aspect I learned about the English language is that, it does not matter what your cultural or socio-economic background is, in order to learn, you must “want to learn” and be interested in what you “are learning”. Otherwise, you will block yourself and your learning process. It is difficult to mention the main aspects I learned throughout the course in which I can focus my students´ attention to English language and culture in a brief summary, since there are many, but I will mention at least two that will definitely motivate students. First, I would like to mention the use of “Face up the Phrasal’s” exercises, since, as English learners, we are not aware of the proper use of these verbs. Just imagine listen

how interesting these phrasal exercises are, I was required to listen to only 6 episodes and I listened to 12 motivated by

a romantic love story called: “Fred and Betty: Is this the end? In these types of Internet sites you are able to practice listening and learn new vocabulary. Furthermore, you are given the meaning of the “unknown phrase”, grammar, an example sentence and synonyms. All this in addition to an exciting funny story!

Secondly, I strongly recommend “Funky Phrasal Quizzes” in which they offer a list of different categories to chose from, which makes it more interesting to practice due to the freedom and variety of topics. We must also keep in mind that the English speaking people use phrasal expressions that we must learn to cope with! Now I

understand why English is sometimes considered a “crazy language”, but as well as Spanish, it has its own idioms.

New teaching strategies discovered

As a language learner and teacher I discovered that there are many interactive ways of teaching English as well as reviewing grammar in a dynamic manner. According to Andrew Churches´ investigation in regards to what makes succeed a 21st century teacher, I would like to mention several habits that, in my opinion, are perhaps the most outstanding in his theory: “that the teacher be able to teach the curriculum in imaginative ways, be able to adapt to a dynamic teaching experience, be able to grasp emerging Web technologies and tools and manipulate them to serve their needs”. The strategies observed during the course relate to the habits described by

Churches´, because all the strategies we used throughout the course are innovations and teaching strategies using new technologies to achieve better performance in our students. In order to prove the above I would like to state some examples: during our reading of “Foster Children”, we practiced reading, listening and vocabulary while

watching a video of the story using authentic material. It resulted more interesting being able to actually see the characters tell their story instead of the traditional way of just being able to read a story and either answer questions or make a brief summary of what you had learned. Another dynamic activity was being able to make a video conference with my peers and being able to make agreement or disagreement on a particular subject. In distance learning, this gives us the wonderful opportunity to not only have peers, but we have also acquired new friends. “Sharing and using your picture”, was a unique experience since we were required to upload our personal pictures to photopeach.com where we created a visual story of what we wanted to share with our peers in this Diploma. In this particular activity I learned many things about my peer’s personal life that I was not aware of. Besides, we were also able to make comments about their work. I am sure students will definitely love doing this kind of activity since they enjoy taking and sharing their personal pictures as in the Web sites such as, “My Space” and as Churches mentioned, this is one way of grasping Web technologies and turning them into educational. To sum up, I would like to mention the activity “Movie segments to assess grammar goals”, as the titles says, an author creates several films segments in which you are able to practice a particular grammar subject that could go from pronouns to verb tenses. One film segment which I reviewed was “The Pursuit of Happiness” where I was able to study the past and past continuous verbs. After watching the small movie segment and reviewing the verbs, I felt I had to keep watching the movie because it resulted very interesting; it talks about the Afro American community when they were considered inferior and were therefore discriminated. I don´t what happened to the little boy, so I guess I will have to watch the whole movie!

However, there are teachers who resist "to change" their teaching strategies and refuse the use of technology tools, not knowing that this is the most dynamic way to motivate students. Students love technology and we learn a lot from them too!

“If someone´s not willing to teach in a

contemporary information landscape, one that´s meaningful to the students, then they need to find something else to do” David Warlick

Reading teaching strategies Through this module I was able to review several reading strategies such as: Skimming, which helps you read more quickly and scanning which is used to find specific information. In addition, I learned that a fact is something that can be verified, while an opinion is based on a belief or a view, these among other interesting strategies. Analyzing the different teaching strategies, I would like to mention that the one I enjoyed the most was, “Reading while listening”. I read the story titled: “A Horseman in the Sky”, written by Ambrose Bierce, reading found in the Internet site, American Stories. It is an outstanding story, since being the father a Southerner and the son part of the Union Army of the North, one night, by life´s strange coincidence, Carter´s father was camping very close to where his

son´s Army was. Carter was on duty, when suddenly, a Southern soldier (his father), found him sleeping while on duty and he woke him up, knowing that if someone else had seen him they would had killed him for had fallen asleep while on duty.

Carter looked at the man´s eyes and could not kill him, because the

Southern soldier was his father, but instead he shot the horse, which fell off the cliff killing Carter´s father!

Carter´s father gave his life for his son and Carter was forced to act as he did because when he left home his father told him: “Carter” . . . he said: “No matter what happens, be sure you always do what you think is your duty”. Can you imagine this tragical scene?

Furthermore, the background software was amazing, I was able to imagine all the scenes as the narrator was describing them and I was able to read along in case I missed something. When I heard the story, I remained speechless, listening how a father had sacrificed his life for his son´s, who was forced to kill him to maintain his honor, as his father had always taught him. It was an unforgettable experience and the story was incredible! In conclusion, you should always apply the following strategies to understand a text: •

Active prior knowledge before reading, because this helps you understand the text more clearly. Also, because we use our knowledge as a framework for learning new information.

•

Ask questions before, during and after reading because this gives you an overall view of what the story is about.

•

Infer the meaning of unfamiliar words. If you read the text before and after, this will give you clues to reach a conclusion.

•

Visualize when reading to create a picture in our mind is helpful because it´s easier to understand something if you visualize it.

•

Always remember to, read: Who?, Where?, When?, Why?, How?

•

Revisit: re-reading for text detail. What facts did the reading reveal?

•

Reflect: making inferences drawing conclusions.

Listening teaching strategies

Reviewing the fourth module “Listening”, which is, in my opinion, one of the most difficult strategies to practice both as a student and teacher, due to the fact that the Web sites are the closest we can get to practice using authentic material, is a strategy where most of us have many problems. Analyzing all the activities practiced in this module I would like to state that, personally, the activity which I found more difficult was “Practicing Dictation”, which is a free Web site, called “Graded English”, a language dictation, dictationsonline.com, provided in Activity 5.1. A dictation is a close listening and you are expected to write down exactly what you hear. In this particular activity we were required to select two particular exercises from the intermediate section.

First, we had to select the activities we wanted to listen to. Then, we were able to listen to the practice at a normal reading speed without writing anything yet, only listening. After that, we clicked to be able to listen to the exercise a second time, but this time the reading was done at a slower pace, giving us time to write down what we were listening to including punctuation marks such as commas and full stops. Finally, we were able to click again on the reading and we were able to listen to it one third and last time at a normal rate in order to correct our final writing. In order to grade our work at the end of the activity we were able to copy the full reading as we were supposed to have written it. I think this activity could have been easier for me if I had the habit of practicing dictation. I had never done this kind of activity before, but although I found it very interesting and useful to improve my listening skills, it is essential that I dedicate more time on these activities in order to raise my listening level. Perhaps, another important factor which made this activity difficult is the fact that the speaker I listened to was a native British English speaker and since I am not accustomed to listening to a British accent this made the task more difficult to accomplish. More important of all, I need to continue practicing, as we say in Spanish: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Practice makes perfectâ&#x20AC;?.

Speaking teaching strategies

Reviewing the fifth module and reflecting on which activities turned out to be the most useful for me, I would have to state that all the activities I worked with are useful, depending on what particular aspect you are going to be working with. I believe that there

is no right or wrong activities if you apply them properly and effectively depending on your students needs.

Among many interesting speaking strategies I learned throughout the fifth module, I would like to mention a few as examples as how I would apply them specifically in my classroom. First of all, I would use Activity 1.1, “How to tell a story”, in which I would ask my students to choose a period of their lives to talk about. I

would

first

review

with

them

the

Web

site

http://www.english-at-

home.com/speaking/telling-a-story/ . An exceptional Internet site which provides you with useful tips that answers all your questions in regards to the work you are expected to produce. In this site you are given a summary of: sequencing words, linking words, summarizing, giving a reason, giving a result and contrasting ideas, all in one single link. I would apply this particular activity with students from 3rd. grade in Unit 1, “Memories”, which in my opinion, is an excellent unit in which we may apply this teaching strategy, since students are expected to share their past experiences and present an oral production to the group. When we were requested to accomplish this activity, we were required to download a special recording audio software file called, “Audacity” in order to record our story. Since we had never done this type of activity before, we had to record our work many times before we could reach our final production, but it was worth it, because it was a rewarding experience being able to express your feelings thru a recording, as well as being able to listen to your peers work. I strongly believe that the students would enjoy listening to the productions created by their peers, as much as I enjoyed mine. This also gives you the opportunity of learning many personal aspects of the people around you that you would otherwise never know.

Writing teaching strategies

Writing is essential in order to communicate and it is not an easy task, so why not make writing a more enjoyable project, instead of a boring one? In Unit 7, I learned many fun ways of writing using modern technology and although I discovered several new strategies I would like to mention at least one which caught my attention in a special way. One writing teaching strategy which I enjoyed very much was Activity 2.1, “A book of Poems”. In this project we first had to visit the site ETCC.Instant Poetry Forms where we were able to create instant poetry “without being a poet”. It´s a fabulous site! You just have to choose the one you like the most, you fill out the blank spaces, you click and without much effort you obtain an incredible poem.

The poems were just the beginning of the project. Then, we had to give life to our work. How? By illustrating it and publishing our “First Book of Poems” with pictures using Bookr.

Just as an example of the incredible work created in this

fascinating site, I copied one of my favorite poems published in my book to share with you, so you are able to examine the high quality of this project:

What if?. . . What if life would never end? I might be eternal. What if ice cream was good for your health? I could eat it all day! What if sleeping made you younger? I would sleep all day!!!! What if dreams were wishes that could come true?

Is in it incredible? It´s a beautiful poem and I wrote it! Besides, as you can appreciate, it has an enormous variety of photographs to choose from. I copied several which were included in my book.

I invite you to read my book at

http://www.pimpampum.net/boor/blog.php?id=8930 and I challenge you to create your own book of poems! Another interesting fact about this project was being able to read my peers projects and comment about their work. The main objective of a Forum is to share with our mates our experiences and reflexions, which were totally achieved in this particular activity. I enjoyed the communication with my peers in this activity because we were able to learn from each other. As Alma said: “It´s like to see the inside part of the soul of each one. In this activity we exposed our dreams, feelings, hopes, likes and dislikes”. Something I would like to mention about this project is that I received many beautiful comments about my work. I am not going to mention any peer names because I would feel bad if I left someone´s name out, but I would like to thank all my peers as well

as my wonderful Tutor Alan for all the support and beautiful comments. I think that we have all gone thru hard times trying to meet deadlines and have put a side many

important things to accomplish our work, but every minute of struggle has been worth it, after reading such beautiful comments which compromises’ me to improve my work. Congratulations to all my peers and special thanks to someone very special for me. . . Alan who was always there, when we needed him.

ICT Tools

Times have changed and so have we. I still remember when we played hide and seek for fun. Today, our children barely play this game leaving us just good memories. However, now they play the famous Wii and X-Box, which we, as parents, don´t know how to play! In regards to our education, I recall spending my afternoon´s in the library searching for information in order to be able to finish my homework. During our adolescence we did not have computers at school or at home. Now, our children, our students, ourselves, just click on the subject and right in front of us we have tons of information to select from. This is one of many examples of how ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) tools have simplified our world.

I would like to mention at least three wonderful ICT tools, that I found very challenging and enjoyable for learning English as well as appropriate for my students. First, I would like to focus on reading strategy. For this particular strategy I will definitely use the Web site “Reading and writing”, studied in Module 3, Unit 5,

Activity 5.1, which in a previous exercise, I mentioned in a more detailed manner my wonderful experience in this activity. I am sure my students will enjoy it as much as I did. Furthermore, taking into consideration listening strategy, which in the opinion of many peers and mine, is one of the most difficult strategies, since we don´t have the same opportunities of being able to practice it that often as in comparison with the other teaching strategies such as reading and writing. I strongly recommend “Authentic listening”, reviewed in Module 4, Activity 7.2. These listening differ from the ones prepared for English language learners because these listening are “authentic listening” and most of them are “just for pleasure listening”.

For example, the video I listened to from The New York Times was “Flying High”. A man was interviewed and he talked about New York City´s first Municipal Airport, Floyd Bennett Field which was build in 1931. Although it has a lot of history it ´s currently a National Park. It was a different experience being able to listen to an authentic listening and I am sure students will enjoy it as well.

As I mentioned

previously, don´t forget to use the Audacity software, it is incredible for listening exercises!

Finally, talking about writing strategies I would like to strongly recommend the use of Photopeach an activity found in Module 6, Activity 3.2 called “Sharing and using your pictures”. In this activity you are able to tell a story using pictures and adding captions to them in order to explain what you want to transmit. You are also able to add music ending in a beautiful and interesting project. Above, you will find two of the pictures I included in my project. As you can see, we shared good experiences as well as sad one´s. I took the pictures during the flood which occurred here in Tlaltenango, my hometown, on July 18, 2008. The first picture represents part of our loss in our gift shop. The second one is how my parent’s patio ended after the two meters of water finally followed its course.

Lesson Planning

One essential factor we must always have in mind as teachers, is to always take our time to do a good lesson plan. Why? Because if we don´t plan our class and we improvise, our class may result a disaster and therefore our student´s will lose interest in our class instead of motivating them to learn a second language. “In this curriculum the students are considered an active constructor of knowledge. The teacher, on the other, is designed as a more experimented language user who is in charge of creating the conditions for students to address the language and guide the process”,: Programas de Estudio 2006. curriculum we are suppose to “coach instead of just judge”.

With the new

While planning, we must also consider that our behavior, our students seating arrangements as well is listening to our students are very important factors to consider. I would like to mention some elements which Dr. Holtrop mentions in his Web site Dr. Holtrop´s Page, in which he states that: “There are only a few essential elements of a lesson plan”. 1.

Objectives - what the students will be able to do as a result of the lesson.

2. Standards - which state content and developmental standards are addressed in the lesson. 3. Procedures - what the teacher will do to get the students there. 4. Assessment opportunities - what the teacher can do to see if the lesson was taught effectively, watching students work, assigning application activities, getting feedback, et.

5. Modifications / accommodations - for any special needs students in the class. Additionally, many lesson plans also includes: •

Materials needed for the class period and any special equipment.

•

Time estimates.

•

Procedural - sub points.

After reading Medeline Hunter´s, Seven Steps which were

developed

for Math classes, Bloom´s Taxonomy and Critical Thinking as well as Howard Gardener´s 7 ways of knowing, Multiple Intelligences, I think I would have to choose Bloom´s Taxonomy´s lesson planning, because it seems more appropriate for my context.

Nevertheless, I would like to state that in my opinion, there is no bad or good lesson planning as long as “we plan”. Besides, we must combine the different methodologies in order to avoid falling in a monotonous way of teaching.

For example, Gardener´s Multiple Intelligences tells us how our

students learn in different manners, so if you have constant changes this will give us the opportunity to touch our students, if not on a daily basis, at least during certain project works or activities during class. To sum up, we must be able to adapt our lesson plans according to our students’ needs and knowledge. Sometimes, we estimate our planning time and we exceed the minutes we initially designated to that particular activity, but, if our students require more time, why not give it to them, don´t you think?

In order to conclude my reflection of this course, I think I must mention that we must be aware of the fact that our schools lack the required essential elements in order to set in practice all the interactive materials provided in this unique course. If we take my school for example, half the computers don´t even have CD-ROM, which means that they are obsolete and we are unable to use memory sticks either, since they do not recognize them. I am aware of the fact that our country has many schools and it is impossible to provide all of them with the required resources

simultaneously, but I hope that in the near future, our schools are able to enjoy of these wonderful ICT tools. Meanwhile, I will try to take them to a public Cyber or have them present as a project work using one of the many tools I learned for teaching English using free Web sites with educational purposes and be closer to be a “21st Century teacher” as described by Churches. Finally, I would like to say that this Diploma enriched my skills and gave me the tools to improve my weaknesses as well strengths. Besides, with all the Web sites I have as references I am able to teach English as a second language in a more interactive manner. Also, this course, as a distant learner, gave me the wonderful opportunity to meet many peers, who I now consider my new friends. I am unable to conclude this reflection without mentioning my wonderful Tutor Alan. . . thanks for all your help and may God Bless you. Thanks UNAM and SEC authorities for giving me this wonderful opportunity that has been an unforgettable experience full of challenges and many unique learning strategies.

Yours truly, Martha Aguayo Gómez

Once my mother showed me a recipe for the perfect teacher and I really enjoyed reading it, but in my opinion the perfect teacher is who can adapt classes to create a great learning experience, who can create situations for learning and I can continue this list but my point is: A good teacher is the person who really has the conviction of transforming someones life through knowledge. When I was told that I could take this diploma I first felt fear, but then people around me told me that it was a good way to improve my knowledge and superate my personal goals. I really want to thank all the people who gave me the oportunity to take this diploma, to my group for all their support and comments, to my peers Lydia and Eduardo for their help and especially to my asesor Alan, thanks for all your support, your advises and you time; you were really great with me, thanks for everything. I would like to share with you a phrase, there are some many about education but this one made me think in all I learnt in this diploma:

“ Educar a un joven no es hacerle aprender algo que no sabía, sino hacer de él alguien que no existía” Ruskin

John

My language learning…

• Learning to learn English trough internet tools and resources.

In the second module, learning to learn English trough internet tools and resources, I started to notice my improvement in this language. First I noticed that I could write longer texts and express myself a little better. Second, I learned that there are manu sites on the internet that I could use to teach this language an that teaching it using a book or reading a lot was a little obsolete and that it was boring for our students. In this module I also notice my improvement in my vocabulary and discovered that one of my weaknesses was: that I didn’t use the modern tools we have now, I discovered that I was being left behind by my students and that to improve their learning I needed to catch up.

• Reading

When I finished this module I was very excited because here I realized how much I had improved in the language. In this part of the diploma I Iearnt to read using different strategies and I also learnt to read while listening. The most important thing that I acquired here was my comprehension of listening texts.

• Listening

The most important part of this module was my comprehension of real conversations, here I was able to listen to real conversations in english and I could understand them because all the previous practice we had. I really enjoyed this part of the diploma because I was put into real conversations that let me improve this skill. The strategies given in this part were really helpful, interesting and new to me and I think thought groups were the most helpful strategy. My weak area here was vocabulary, I had to start reading a lot to really improve it.

â&#x20AC;˘ Speaking

Speaking was the most difficult part of this diploma for me. Why? Because I noticed here that speaking is not only explain or say something, to be understood we need to do pauses, to follow a rhytm, to give the correct stress and to be coherent. What I learnt here was exactly that because now I can express myself more freely, almost without using many pauses and expressions like mm or well.

â&#x20AC;˘ Writing

The advantage I found in this module is that, when I started it I had acquire a big amount of vocabulary that was really helpful by the time of doing the activities like the book of poems or a tale. I really enjoyed doing the acivities in this module, they were really funny. My improvement here was the ability of expressing myself more confident in any situation, using the correct vocabulary. This was the module I enjoyed the most because of the activities we did and because here I discovered that I had improved my abilities in the english language.

Cultural learning awareness

In this part we should base our learning in the cultural aspect of the language and the most important aspects I learnt here are: •

Even tough there are many countries that speak English, all of them have differences in pronounciation and meaning. For example, american english has a particular pronounciation for the R and it is very different for the pronounciation in british english. This differences are not only in pronounciation, in writing there are also very remarkable differences that we might take into consideration by the time of writing, because if you are writing for a British with an American english you might not be understood.Some examples of this are the words: British English

Colour

•

American English

Color

Centre

Center

Honour

Honor

Labour

Labor

Favour

Favor

There are a lot of dialects, accents and ways of speak english, but the most common ones are American and British english;but each community of speakers have different ways to refer to things and that is something that we must take into account when we are in touch with native speakers because if we don’t know this differencess we might not understand them.

•

With this language we must keep a continuous review of it, especially in the american english; the reason of this is due to the fact that this culture change constantly adding slangs or new meanings to the words, what could be an impediment for us to be understood and we will be left behind in our communication.

•

One of the most difficult parts of English is pronounciation. One of the most remarkable differences this language has with Spanish is that we have accents and guide our pronounciation and meaning by them. On the other hand, English language does not have accents and that makes a little more difficult to learn the correct pronounciation adn sometimes the meaning of a word.

•

With adult people is easy to explain and understand the differences in this language but with our students it is more difficult. They are used to be in touch

with american english and by the time you are listening a British audio they seem to be completely lost, thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s why we must use as many versions or accents of English as possible; and at the end they will noticed the differences and theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll learn that English is a language that has many differences like Spanish.

Teaching strategies By: Denise del Rosario Avila Coral.

In this diploma we were in touch with many strategies that were new and interesting but further more these strategies were really helpful to us by the time of teaching a foreign language. First of all the strategies given here strongly suggested us to use the internet as an educational tool, that will give our teaching and learning process a new turn more interesting, modern and funny. Here I could realized the importance of the use of the ICTâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s but I also learnt that this is not the only tool we have, we could mix both the old fashioned and the modern teaching strategies, in order to be better every day and to have students more prepared for the future. One of the most important aspect we should take into account after this diploma, is the importance of lesson planning. Our lesson planning should change year after year, being that our students are different every year and the technologies and information change after certain time and we could not teach the same thing from four years ago. We also have to have imagination by the time of teaching a foreign language because people learn more through real experiences and meaningful activities, for which we need to create something that could be one of this to our students. Finally I can say that as teachers we are not only going to give our students information and exercises, we should create learning situations that involve our students in the environment of the language and that in the end result of their interest.

Unit

Reading

strategies. By: Denise del Rosario Avila Coral.

The activity I chose was grammar and reading comprehension. The text here was a easy to understand and with common vocabulary, it was about a boy who liked women and he had many girlfriends at the same time. It was a short and easy that expressed a lot of the characteristics of the American culture. In the activity I read the text and after doing so I did the exercises suggested there, but the main aspect of this was the use of the strategies like scanning or skiming. In this activity I had to explain one of the cultural aspects I found in the text, which was an easy part for me to do it.Some of the teaching strategies I could notice here were: the use of the new technologies to the ones most of the people have acces, the reading and comprehension of the text I developed here without knowing the meaning of each word, the use of imagination to give a common text to us as a learning tool, the use of the this kind of texts to notice the differences between the cultures and most of all how this kind of texts were really interesting and they could catch our attention for a learning purpose. Like teachers we must be interesed in searching texts of this kind to give to our students, because it doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t make sense if we give them texts about something that is not of their interest or something that is not attractive to them because at the end we will not get to the final goal with them. So we should start thinking wath could be soemthing that creates a good learning environment for them and not to just be easy or that fits in our planning. Like teachers we must think as what is of the interest of a student.

Listening Teaching Strategies

By: Denise del Rosario Avila Coral.

After reviewing this module, I found the activity minimal pairs in unit one the most difficult for me. First of all the listenings that were given here resulted to be a little difficult for me because of the topic that is a little complicated, and also the texts of the second website was too difficult; not at the time of reading but at the time of listening. Also the information here was too long and you had to go back and search for some words from the menu. For me this is a good activity for our students to understand the differences in the words when they are listening, but we must adapt this kind of activities to our students level. One way of making this kind of activities a little easy for our students is to start with easy words that are familiar to them and that cause confusion when they are listening. After this easy practice we might include new and different words for them, this will be done with the purpose of let them know that besides the words they know there are other words that might confused them and they need to pay closer attention to pronounciation and vocabulary. Another way of making this activity easier could be separating the words in groups, according to their pronounciation, but we also need to give them the word in a paper sheet because this kind of exercises should always start practice with a writen vocabulary list.

Speaking activities. By: Denise del Rosario Avila Coral.

This module was a little difficult for me because I was afraid of my results and I think this is what happens with our students, they are affraid of speaking in front of everybody else because they think they donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have enough amount of knowledge to speak freely, but we must encourage them to speak and explain that if

they practice they’ll be better. The activities presented here can be used with our students, but not at the level presented here because they don’t have enough knowledge yet to give opinions on certain topics so we have to modify the activities in order for them to use them. In the activity of “Describing a place or situation”, we might modify the topic and start with simple things for them to describe; we can maybe use first a brainstorm in order to get to a complete text. In the activity telling a story, we could give our students some vocabulary and let them create a story using it, this is because I think it can be a little hard for them to start creating a oral story out of nothing. Another activity I find interesting is “Expressing agreement or disagreement” in which students can preapre a debate on certain topic; like in unit four, third grade, where students have a topic where they have to talk about how they think life will be in the future.

Writing teaching strategies. By: Denise del Rosario Avila Coral.

In the module Writing I didn’t do as I expected. This was not a difficult module but I had some preblems with time, so I didn’t get any comment from my peers, but I’m happy because I know I did great and I noticed this improvement at the time of writing, becuse is easier for me now to write a longer text. One of the strategies I enjoyed the most was “ A book of poems” and this is because before doing this activity I couldn’t write a poem but know I can do this easily! When I first saw the activity I had to complete I tought on letting the activity to the end, but when I saw how this activity will be done, it encouraged me

to do it and I created a great book of poems that I edited in Bookr and then published with images and everything. There was one activity in the forum where we had to create a funny tale and when doing this I couldn’t stop laughing because all the stories I wrote were really funny and the most notorious aspects is that those activities were really easy to do, they were done on web pages created with this purpose and in this way is easier and funnier to learn english. The other activity I enjoyed and found very usseful is the one where we had to create a story and I created a story about a worm who doesn’t want to be ugly anymore. Another activity I enjoyed is when I wrote a summary of my favorite book. This activity can be done in our classrooms but with a variation of the topics, maybe our students can write a brief summary of 35 words talking about their favorite program or song. Definitely one of the stratgies that I will use with my students is the Comic Strip. This is a great way of encourage our students to learn english because is funny and interesting, here our studentss must use their imagination and all the knowledge they have, trough which our students will notice all the knowledge they weren’t aware. The first unit of this module we did exercises were se should notice mistakes in a text that involved, not only spelling mistakes but also ponctuation mistakes. This kind of activities will make our students notice that, like in Spanish, in english we should also use ponctuation correctly and that they have certain rules of writing that they should follow and take into account by the time of writing a text. But there is also an activity that turn out to be a little difficult for me, this is the “Eyewitness account model”, I did the activity but it wasn’t one of the activities I enjoyed doing; it was kind of weird and difficult to realized. This module was based on the work in forums and this was a great opportunitty to be in touch with our peers, we had more communication and support from each other in this module; that why we develope a good work team but our tutor had also an important part here because he always supported us to work hard and cheer us up during all this work.

ICT tools. By: Denise del Rosario Avila Coral.

As we grow times change and we must go with all the new technologies that are created everyday. Before this modern era, we had to go to libraries and search from book to book the information we needed, now you just have to tip the name of the information needed and less than a minute all the information will be in your computer screen. But this is not only for educational purposes, there are also games, books, movies, music and a lot of things that it is imposible to count it. ICT have come to make our lifes easier, but there are not only advantages on them, there is many information that can be harmful if we don’t know how to give it the correct use. ICT help us to have a more extended communication with people from around the world and this make the learning process more interesting and enjoyable. I found very useful tools here but the three I found more interesting are: •

The first one I’ll mention is the Audacit software.Why? Because I think this can be really helpful with them at the time of improving their speaking ability. Using this program our students can practice over and over their pronounciation and speaking weaknesses.

•

The second one for me will be the activities on the webpages, where we had to listen to real english interviews and conversations. This can develope our students listening ability, because they are going to e in touch with native speakers.

â&#x20AC;˘

And last, the activity where we created a comic strip. I remember that in this website they presented us some people that was learning english and they explained how the comics had helped them to improve their knowledge of the english language.

Lesson planning. By: Denise del Rosario Avila Coral.

An essential part of a teacher is the lesson planning and this is because through a daily planning our students are able to follow an structured knowledge that will have great results. As I mentioned before every student and situation is diffeerent and at the time of planning we must take all of this characteristics into account; because if we plan following a general rubric we are not going to get to the goal. The lesson plan I chose is the Madeline Hunterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s seven steps. The reason I have for choosing this model is because my students demand this. With this kind of planning will be a little easier to them learning english. In the new programm provided by SEP, we have to do our plannign each year and we must haave a plan for each class and for each group of students, we canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t teach the same in two groups from the same grade. This way of teaching has had a great result because all of our students demand us how they want to learn. One of the most important reasons I chose this plan is because the teaacher in the grade before me does not make his planning and this causes me problems with the student because they have to learn in a slower rythm and they need a lot of help with the language, all of this is practically new to them.

UNIT 2

ACTIVITY: Cultural Awareness

By:

Jorge A. Avila

MODULE 2

LEARNING TO LEARN ENGLISH TROUGH INTERNET TOOLS AND RESOURCES

I learnt something about the CN Tower that is located near Toronto's waterfront on the northern shores of Lake Ontario. Also, I reviewed Strategies on using time in order to schedule my activities in the Diploma. A European Framework described 8 abilities that a learner should develop in order to succeed in the Knowledge Society. I discovered my multiple intelligences and I got the highest score in intrapersonal intelligence. I read about The war of the worlds that described about the arrive of Martians to the earth. Widespread panic gripped the United States. Finally, I learnt English Learning Tips.

MODULE 3 READING

In this module I learned interesting things about "The Golden Gate Bridge" story like the fact that in its construction was the first use of the hard hat to protect the worker's head. Talking about the story "American and British English" I learn many facts. For example: • •

Americans began to change the sound of their speech after the Revolutionary War in 1776. Webster published The American Dictionary of the English Language in 1828. So he worked to establish an American version of the English language.

•

Sometimes Americans and British people do not understand each other because of different word meanings.

•

French fried potatoes in the United States are called "chips" in Britain.

I learnt also about people who lived difficult conditions of slavery and lack of freedom. I checked something about cell phone safety and read about foster children.

MODULE 4 LISTENING

I learned about the steps people follow in an airport in order to travel from one place to another. I listened about people working in a fitness business and people swimming with sea lions. I also realize about songs with thought groups and other

song without them. I learned about cloud conditions and the coronation of the Queen of England.

MODULE 5 SPEAKING

I learned a lot about resources we have to practice speaking: audacity program, youtube.com site and others. I had to search for information about an important person in the history. In this module I used the videoconference for the first time in my life.

MODULE 6 WRITING

This module had a lot of activities that changed my way to teach English in my class. I realized there were very relaxing activities for the students: creating Tall tales, writing a book of poems, creating our stories using imagination and photographs. I learned to make book reviews and other writings using sequence steps in order to make them interesting and clear (writing models).

UNIT 3 ACTIVITY: Relations between strategies and habits highly effective 21st century teachers By

Jorge Avila

MODULE 2 Learning to learn through Internet Being visionary Imagination is a crucial component of the educator of today and tomorrow. They must look across the disciplines and through the curricula; they must see the potential in the emerging tools and Web technologies, grasp these and manipulate them to serve their needs. Time management as a part of Learning to Learn. Modelling behaviour There is an expectation that teachers will teach values, so we must model the behaviors that we expect from our students. We are often the most consistent part of their life, seeing them more often, for longer and more reliably than even their parents. Discovering the intelligences Modelling behaviour There is an expectation that teachers will teach values, so we must model the behaviors that we expect from our students. We are often the most consistent part of their life, seeing them more often, for longer and more reliably than even their parents.

MODULE 3

Scanning and Skimming

Learning We expect our students to be life-long learners. Teachers, must continue to absorb experiences and knowledge, as well. We must endeavour to stay current. I wonder how many people are still using their lesson and unit plans from five years ago. To be a teacher, you must learn and adapt as the horizons and landscapes change.

Strategies

used

understand

texts

Adapting Harnessed as we are to an assessment-focused education model, the 21st century educator must be able to adapt the curriculum and the requirements to teach to the curriculum in imaginative ways. They must also be able to adapt software and hardware designed for a business model into tools to be used by a variety of age groups and abilities.

MODULE 4

Listening strategies Leading Whether they are a champion of the process of ICT integration, a quiet technology coach, the 21st century educator is a leader. Like clear goals and objectives, leadership is crucial to the success or failure of any project. Taking risks Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s so much to learn. How can you as an educator know all these things? You must take risks and sometimes surrender yourself to the studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; knowledge. Have a vision of what you want and what the technology can achieve, identify the goals and facilitate the learning. Use the strengths of the digital natives to understand and navigate new products, have them teach each other.

MODULE 5

How to tell a story Learning We expect our students to be life-long learners. Teachers must continue to absorb experiences and knowledge, as well. We must endeavour to stay current. I wonder how many people are still using their lesson and unit plans from five years ago. To be a teacher, you must learn and adapt as the horizons and landscapes change. Communicating To have anywhere, anytime learning, the teacher must be anywhere and anytime. The 21st century teacher is fluent in tools and technologies that enable communication and collaboration. They go beyond learning just how to do it; they also know how to facilitate it, stimulate and control it, moderate and manage it.

MODULE 6

Correcting a piece of writing Taking risks Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s so much to learn. How can you as an educator know all these things? You must take risks and sometimes surrender yourself to the studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; knowledge. Have a vision of what you want and what the technology can achieve, identify the goals and facilitate the learning. Use the strengths of the digital natives to understand and navigate new products, have them teach each other. Trust your students. Communicating To have anywhere, anytime learning, the teacher must be anywhere and anytime. The 21st century teacher is fluent in tools and technologies that enable communication and collaboration. They go beyond learning just how to do it; they also know how to facilitate it, stimulate and control it, moderate and manage it. Making a book of poems Adapting Harnessed as we are to an assessment-focused education model, the 21st century educator must be able to adapt the curriculum and the requirements to teach to the curriculum in imaginative ways. They must also be able to adapt software and hardware designed for a business model into tools to be used by a variety of age groups and abilities. Being visionary Imagination is a crucial component of the educator of today and tomorrow. They must look across the disciplines and through the curricula; they must see the potential in the emerging tools and Web technologies, grasp these and manipulate them to serve their needs. If we look at the technologies we currently see emerging, how many are developed for education? The visionary teacher can look at othersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; ideas and envisage how they would use these in their class. Creating stories with pictures Being visionary Imagination is a crucial component of the educator of today and tomorrow. They must look across the disciplines and through the curricula; they must see the

potential in the emerging tools and Web technologies, grasp these and manipulate them to serve their needs. If we look at the technologies we currently see emerging, how many are developed for education? The visionary teacher can look at others’ ideas and envisage how they would use these in their class. Adapting Harnessed as we are to an assessment-focused education model, the 21st century educator must be able to adapt the curriculum and the requirements to teach to the curriculum in imaginative ways. They must also be able to adapt software and hardware designed for a business model into tools to be used by a variety of age groups and abilities. They must also be able to adapt to a dynamic teaching experience. When it all goes wrong in the middle of a class, when the technologies fail, the show must go on. Applying writing models Modelling behaviour There is an expectation that teachers will teach values, so we must model the behaviors that we expect from our students. We are often the most consistent part of their life, seeing them more often, for longer and more reliably than even their parents. The 21st century educator also models tolerance, global awareness, and reflective practice, whether it’s the quiet, personal inspection of their teaching and learning, or through blogs, twitter and other media, effective educators look both inwards and outwards. Taking risks There’s so much to learn. How can you as an educator know all these things? You must take risks and sometimes surrender yourself to the students’ knowledge. Have a vision of what you want and what the technology can achieve, identify the goals and facilitate the learning. Use the strengths of the digital natives to understand and navigate new products, have them teach each other. Trust your students. Adapting Harnessed as we are to an assessment-focused education model, the 21st century educator must be able to adapt the curriculum and the requirements to teach to the curriculum in imaginative ways. They must also be able to adapt software and hardware designed for a business model into tools to be used by a variety of age groups and abilities. They must also be able to adapt to a dynamic teaching experience. When it all goes wrong in the middle of a class, when the technologies fail, the show must go on. Being visionary Imagination is a crucial component of the educator of today and tomorrow. They must look across the disciplines and through the curricula; they must see the potential in the emerging tools and Web technologies, grasp these and manipulate them to serve their needs. If we look at the technologies we

currently see emerging, how many are developed for education? The visionary teacher can look at others’ ideas and envisage how they would use these in their class. Movies and grammar Adapting Harnessed as we are to an assessment-focused education model, the 21st century educator must be able to adapt the curriculum and the requirements to teach to the curriculum in imaginative ways. They must also be able to adapt software and hardware designed for a business model into tools to be used by a variety of age groups and abilities. They must also be able to adapt to a dynamic teaching experience. When it all goes wrong in the middle of a class, when the technologies fail, the show must go on. Being visionary Imagination is a crucial component of the educator of today and tomorrow. They must look across the disciplines and through the curricula; they must see the potential in the emerging tools and Web technologies, grasp these and manipulate them to serve their needs. If we look at the technologies we currently see emerging, how many are developed for education? The visionary teacher can look at others’ ideas and envisage how they would use these in their class. Collaborating Blogger, Wikispaces, Bebo, MSN, MySpace, Second life, Twitter, RSS – as an educator we must be able to leverage these collaborative tools to enhance and captivate our learners. We, too, must be collaborators; sharing, contributing, adapting and inventing.

UNIT 4 ACTIVITY: Reading teaching strategies By Jorge Avila The activity I chose is: Activity 1.2. Read while listening. Practice your reading while you are listening. It’s relaxing and it can be fun.

Click on American Stories Read and Listen to the two stories written by Bierce, Ambrose.

The texts (“A Horseman in the sky” and “An occurrence at owl creek bridge”) were very detailed and interesting. They got the attention quickly. This way to practice reading is very funny. The strategy reading while listening, I think is very effective because it attract the attention of the reader-listener right away. The activity had music and special features to environment the story and the narrator way to tell us the story is very special. Although theses texts lack of images, I could imagine the places and the people involved in the stories. I think this activity is going to be very useful in my class, but I have to prepare a lot of resources (CD player, computer, internet, pieces of paper with the texts and images showed through a projector) before showing it in the classroom. This activity had an effect on my teaching practice because I used resources like those used in these texts shows, but I realize that I have to prepare very carefully this kind of plans.

UNIT 5

ACTIVITY: “The most difficult activity of the 4th module” By

Jorge Avila

The activity 5.1 (practicing dictation) was the most difficult task because of the next causes:

• •

The kind of keyboard in my minilaptop because the keys are very small. So the solution is using other computer with bigger keys. The velocity of the dictation according the grade of difficulty. I think the solution would be to choose activities of the elementary level, but I have to take the challenge of hard activities to improve my English level.

• • •

The time to finish the writing. The solution would be increasing the mount of time but again I have to say that I have to take risks and challenges to improve my development. Dictation is very difficult itself as well because I have would have to be good typing words and I need a lot of concentration in order to get the idea and at the same time write it completely and correctly. The lack of practice. In the school we don’t have many opportunities to practice the dictation; so when I face to it I have a lot of problems getting the ideas to write. The solution would be practicing.

UNIT 6 ACTIVITY: The most useful activity of the speaking module By Jorge Avila

I think the most useful activity was recording my speech, because I used the program "audacity". This software helped me to improve my talking ability because I had the opportunity to record my speech as many times as possible to get better pronunciation, fluency and velocity. The audacity program would help my students to practice speaking and use imagination to create good stories about their lives or about other oral presentations in the class.

At the beginning I felt very nervous recording my voice but little by little I felt more confident and I enjoyed this activity. I think I will use this software in my class in order to improve the development of my students in many aspects, for example improving speaking, getting more confident to their partners, creating real or imaginary stories, etc.

Speaking is the most difficult ability to improve, because of the fear to make a lot of mistakes when we speak to other people. To improve this ability, like teachers we can make a lot of activities with our students. For example, going to touristic places where American or European people are visiting. Near my town we have two places to do this activity: Zacatecas City and an archaeological site named “La Quemada”.

I need to give confidence to my students because they are always avoiding speaking because of their mistakes and the laugh of the partners. As a matter of fact the main goal is communication no matter the mistakes.

UNIT 7

ACTIVITY: WRITING TEACHING STRATEGIES BY JORGE AVILA

In the module 6 (writing) I learnt a lot of strategies to improve writing. First, I wrote some funny pieces of text named Tall tales. I think this kind of activity is going to be very interesting to my students, because they could make their own Tall tales using spaces to be filled out by other partners and get a lot o fun.

After this activity, I corrected a piece of text. I think this activity is very useful in the class in order to improve students’ writing but we have to do this only 1 time by bimester because students don’t like this activity a lot.

Other activity I think is going to be very attractive to the students is “making a book of poems” because of the ability of the students to write poems for their boyfriend/girlfriend, mainly in secondary school. The students have a lot of imagination; so they could love this activity. They have many resources like digital cameras, internet, cellular phones, and others where they can get images and ideas to make great pieces of this.

“Creating stories” is other activity the students could love. They can practice writing about it on special dates like Valentine’s Day, Christmas, Halloween, etc.

Other writing interesting activity, was the use of a video to get information (answer questions, making questions making short descriptions, etc.) of the scenes and characters. I think this activity has to be with shorts pieces of video in order to get the attention of the students, because if not, this activity could be boring. I have to choose an attractive scene in which several things can be observed, I have to prepare some yes/no questions about the segment, and other activities from the video in order to get as many advantages as I can.

UNIT 8 ACTIVITY: About ICT tools. By Jorge Avila

I chose the module 5 (speaking) where I used three of the most important ICT tools: Audacity software. This software is very useful to practice speaking, because of the versatility of it. It permits record our voice as many times as possible to improve our oral production. Audacity is a program that we can use in the class to support this ability in the class planning. It permits convert audio file to MP3 audio in order to use it in a computer or CD/DVD player. Practicing with this tool, we can improve quickly our speaking because we can use it in our house without audience. So, we can practice in the peace of our room feeling confident. Voicethread: This is other powerful ICT tool which we can discuss about different topics with other people. We can see their photograph and we feel like being in the center of the group. In addition, we can write comments, draw images or signs to emphasize some information, telling opinions, having conversations using different media like cell phone, digital camera, microphone, phones, etc.. So we have many ways to participate. When I used this tool, I felt very nervous at the beginning but little by little I felt more confident doing the descriptions and giving opinions.

Using music: This tool was the most attractive to me; so, I included a detailed description of the activity extracted from: Using Music to Generate Student Oral Production of Descriptive Stories Johanna E. Katchen Introduction and Rationale What culture does not express itself with music? As with the visual arts, mankind and music seem always to have had an affinity; prehistoric cave paintings depict musicians, and ancient writings mention music. In an illiterate society, history could be handed own to succeeding generations by stories and oral epics which had some kind of rhythmic structure (making them easier to remember) that were often sung or chanted or recited to the accompaniment of a stringed instrument. Scholars believe this is probably how Beowulf was performed, and Jewish and Christian religious traditions would be far poorer without David and his lyre giving us the psalms. In the mountains of the Balkans today, performers charge admission for concert performances of their chanted epic poems as they accompany themselves on the gusli, a one-stringed instrument. Yet in our technologically advanced societies of today, we, with all our VCRs and video games, feel far from these village poets. But are we?

How many young people have you seen with their

Walkman these past few days?

Arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t they listening to the

repetitious chanting of the poets of their own age? So what does all this have to do with language teaching? We teachers tend to be textbook oriented.

Have you ever tried teaching a course without a textbook?

Students panic, particularly or Asian students, who think they need something concrete to memorize in order for learning to take place. Even presenting a listening activity without the written text can cause frustration in those students who have a low tolerance for ambiguity. Moreover, students are often asked to talk about visual stimuli (arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t most description assignments visual?), yet they may get little practice describing aural stimuli. Maley and Duff (1975, 1979), however, have produced tape recordings of sounds and sound sequences and have suggested very creative ways of using them to elicit student language production. Their ideas can also be applied to the use of music.

When we think of using music in the English language classroom, we may imagine students learning songs for cultural exposure, for grammar practice, or for just plain fun. Music has also been used as a background to set a classroom mood. How many of us have taught Jingle Bells or other holiday songs, or have used a song to lighten a mood, to reward hard work, or to fill up those last ten minutes of class? Children love to sing out, and so do adults. Some of us have even performed songs in languages we do not speak. We can also appreciate music sung in languages we do not understand, especially if the record jacket gives us the title and the general meaning in our own language. After all, just look at how many young people all over the world listen to English songs on their radios without having a clue as to their meaning. By taking an aural stimulus—music—and remembering that we can appreciate or enjoy music without understanding the lyrics or knowing the composer’s purpose, we arrive at the building blocks for this assignment—using familiar pieces of music in EFL classes to give students a purpose for speaking.

Objectives This assignment is given in the second semester of the class Oral Training I (Conversation) for university English majors as preparation for the course Oral Training II (Public Speaking) in order to get students used to speech. Previous to this unit by a few weeks, students do a similar activity with pictures as stimulus; each student is given a different picture and the homework is to make up a story that somehow fits in with the picture. Therefore, as a follow-up to the previous assignment, this unit uses tape recordings of various pieces of classical music and international folk music to elicit students' oral production of descriptive stories--their mind's imaginary music videos. The objectives of this assignment include (1) practice in preparing reports in English; (2) practice in speaking English in front of a group; (3) expansion of sensitivity toward and ability to talk about aural stimuli; and

(4) expansion of cultural awareness. Students studying English should be able to use it to give reports in English for their current or future professions and they should, as educated professionals, be able to express their ideas and opinions clearly before at least a small group of people. For this assignment, students must not only create a story or explanation to go with the music, but they must consider how to best present it to the audience. The rationale for objective (3) has already been given in the introduction. Objective (4) deserves special attention. It is often said that music expresses the soul of a people; even without a text we can share a feeling or a mood, particularly with instrumental music. The language teacher's goals need not always be tied to discrete language skills. After all, the culturally sensitive individual is often the better language learner and culture assimilator. In the preparation of the assignment, the student at the very least will have spent an hour or more in close relationship to the music of a people he has probably never come into contact with. This assignment is appropriate for students with a high intermediate ability or higher. Students must have sufficient language skills to create their own stories. Materials This assignment requires some work setting up for the first time, but the materials can then be used over again. At the very least you will need (1) a written copy of the assignment to give the students with your own specifications and procedures on it; (2) a good quality tape player to use for both the preparation and the activity itself; (3) student access to tape players, either their own or those in your language lab; (4) three or four tape-recorded excerpts of music to use in the preparation part of the assignment (and optionally one or more video examples); and (5) an audiocassette tape for each student. Upon each of these tapes in (5) you will need to record one piece of music approximately two to three minutes in length (classical and international folk music both work well). Choosing and recording takes time but, once done, you can use the tapes many more times. If a student accidently loses or destroys one, they have only lost the cost of the blank tape. Procedures

The procedures for this assignment are divided into two parts: the preparation for the activity and the actual activity. In the first part, the teacher does most of the work; in the second, the students perform. Preparation In preparing the students for this assignment, you will need to spend at least one hour of classroom time. Students need to have a clear idea of just what is expected of them. The following activities can be used. (1) If you want to spend more than one hour in preparation, if your class is of a lower level of language ability, and if you have the time, you may want to begin with one or more of the activities given by Maley and Duff (1975, 1979) in Sounds Interesting or Sounds Intriguing. This can be done in a previous lesson. You can use their series of sound sequences to sensitize students into paying attention to sounds and to assign meaning to them. Students can write a paragraph or discuss among each other what they think the sounds in sequence mean. They start making up their own stories; there are no right answers, just different interpretations. (2) Play a short piece of familiar music for the class and ask them what it makes them think of. The fanfare in the middle of Rossini's "Overture to William tell" works well.

Students in

Taiwan immediately say "the news" because some radio stations use it before they present the news on the hour. Students from Hong Kong say "horse races" because it is used in advertising that popular activity there. If you play a little more of the piece, most students will say "horses" or "cowboys", associating the music with TV programs and movies. It is probably best to include one or more excerpts, another familiar piece and an unfamiliar one. Each time, ask the students to be more specific. For example, if a student says "people are walking", you can ask "How many people? How old are they? How are they dressed? How are they walking? Fast? Slowly? Where are they going? Where is this scene taking place? When? What time of day? In the past, present, or future? what happened before this scene? What will happen next?" One possibility is Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries", which was also used in the Star Wars films. With this one, some students see marching or fighting. With a Strauss waltz, females might see a beautiful princess at a formal ball. You could have each student write a paragraph for one of these.

(3) If you have a short scene from a TV program or movie where the music and action seem to go well together, you could play just the music first and ask students to describe the scene they see. then show the film excerpt to see what the director did. Remember to stress that there is no right answer, just different interpretations. Another possibility would be an excerpt (three minutes of so) from a silent film, such as one of the Charlie Chaplin films, or "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" scene from the Disney film Fantasia. (4) Give the students (a) your assignment sheet and (b) the audiocassette tapes. Explain the assignment sheet, telling students the exact procedure the day they present their stories, approximate length of their story, and so on. Tell them where they can borrow or use a tape player if they do not have access to their own or a roommate's. Remind them to return your tapes when they are finished with them. In short, set out your housekeeping procedures. Explain that each student's tape has a different piece of music recorded on it. The music is probably unfamiliar. If there is singing, they will not understand the language, and that's not important. Your examples should have prepared them for this. The student's task is to make up a story that results from his feelings from listening to the music. there is no right or wrong interpretation. When they listen to their music, students will picture their own stories in their heads; they will have their own music videos playing in their mind's eye. Remind them that they are the only ones who can see their imagined videos; in order for us to see them, they must use descriptive language to fill in the shapes and colors. For this, they will need to use the rhetorical skills of both narration and description. (5) After you have done the activity once and have videotaped it, you can use one or more of the best examples to show to succeeding classes. Students will be able to see what previous students have done successfully, and they will have a clear idea of their task. Here you can point out various ways to present the story, such as playing the whole piece of music first, the speaking; playing a part, speaking, then playing another part; speaking while the music is playing softly in the background; or some other combination of playing and speaking. They need not even play the entire selection. Students choose their own manner of presentation depending on the story they create. You have given them the raw material from which they create the finished product.

You may also put good examples of previous speeches in your language lab for students to view on their own time. Student Activity The time required for the student performance of the activity will depend upon (a) the language ability of the students, since higher level students tend to produce longer stories; and (b) the number of students in the class. With teacher and audience reactions and comments, for English majors in Taiwan, the average is five to six speakers per hour. About the only materials you need for these classes is a tape player. Each students, of course, brings her own pre-recorded tape that you gave her. For now, the teacher and the rest of the students can sit back and enjoy the show. You may want to take some notes in order to make a few comments after each speech. You will need some sort of evaluation sheet to assign a grade; you can give students a more exhaustive written evaluation if you videotape. During your comments, be sure to tell the students the source of the music; after all, they are curious. Bring in the record jacket or tape cover if you can. Show these to students after they have al finished speaking to prevent distraction while speaking is in progress; if you have a long class with a break, the break time is good because students are free to show each other the CD and tape covers and you can circulate informally and chat with students about their musical selections. Remember, this is not wasted time: if students are chatting with you in English in a non-threatening situation about musical tastes, they are practicing the kind of everyday conversation that goes on in everyday life, where the focus is on content, not on whether the grammar is completely correct. When all the students have completed the assignment, you may want to repeat what your objectives were and tell them you hope they have learned to talk about music a little more easily and to appreciate the music of other cultures. And probably you will also thank them for providing you and the class with some very enjoyable stories. Evaluation

As mentioned above, in addition to providing classroom comments, you should evaluate each student's performance more carefully in writing and give a copy to the student. If you want to be even more thorough, you can videotape the assignment. Not only do students enjoy seeing themselves on television, but they can also learn by critiquing themselves (Katchen, 1992). It is most useful for the teacher and individual students or small groups to watch speeches together; this way there is more time to point out specific features, both good and bad, to hear student reactions, and to suggest how they can improve the next time. Because the first time we see ourselves on the TV screen can be a shock, you need to build student confidence, showing them what they can improve. Remember, you must guide students individually the first time in self-criticism, showing them how the technology is not punishing them but giving them concrete means for self-improvement. From my experience, the majority of students modifies their speaking behaviour and show positive improvement. Videotaping has some advantages for the teacher, too; you can enjoy the presentations without spending all your time writing. Later, at your own convenience at home, you can watch the speeches on your own TV one or more times and write thorough evaluations, which you can then go over with individual students as they later watch their speeches. Furthermore, your accumulated tapes can be a source of research data. And the next time you teach the assignment, you can show the best presentations to your class as examples. Concluding Remarks Music is a part of our collective history and also a part of our everyday lives; we should be able to talk about it and express how we feel about it. Although this assignment is not about an academic topic, students need to use the same skills--how to organize a story while capturing and keeping the interest of the audience, skills which are also necessary in giving any presentation in future employment situations. Furthermore, in all fields we are using AV equipment more and more to enhance our presentations. Our students, too, can learn to use these primarily leisure AV toys to aid in the expression of their ideas. If you, the teacher, have never particularly cared for music, then you need not do this assignment; we all perform better when we do what we enjoy. But if you would like to try it, then start collecting your own music. I use mostly international fold music, since

this is my personal interest and I therefore have many recordings. Classical music would work well; you're welcome to try other kinds. One caution: don't use English singing, because some students might spend too much time trying to decipher the words, thereby defeating the purpose of the assignment. Not all students will like this assignment, either; no assignment ever does please everyone. However, many students have said how much they enjoyed creating and telling these imaginary music videos. The assignment is a little out of the ordinary, so it captures our interest. Students have maximum opportunity and flexibility to create and perform using English, and they may even learn something else on the side. If you try it, you and your students will also have some enjoyable and educational experiences.

UNIT 9 ACTIVITY: Lesson planning By Jorge Avila The lesson plan I chose was: Critical Thinking (Bloom's Taxonomy) Animation by S. Holtrop 1997

This lesson plan, matches exactly to my context because it is very neat and clear. In addition, it has interesting techniques that students could like. With this lesson plan, the students would be occupied and interested about the activities. The only problem I could have, is choosing interesting topics to the students. This plan is very useful and short. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t need a lot of complicated text to fill it out. I could use ICT (videos, VCR, internet, etc.) in this lesson plan.

At the beginning of this course, I learnt how to use lots of the resources for doing a good job during the following 5 modules, and I have to recognize that I never imagined that I was going to work with lots of resources from the internet.

This course, for sure, taught me that grammar is never enough to raise our learning goals. We were provided of many web site resources, to improve my grammar and to help my students to improve theirs. I could also find and use some websites for my students, interesting for their content and their powerful influence of the information found there.

When I started working on unit 2, we were provided of some dictionaries on the web, ready to use it, not only for meanings, but also for knowing what part of the speech each word represents.

By the third module, my vocabulary and learning on the use of the internet had increased a lot, I have learnt how to categorize readings and ask myself what kind of strategy is appropriate to se for each group or studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; level. To raise my reading comprehension skills I have been using some strategies in my own daily practice

During the 4th and 5th modules I could understand the difference between Proper material and authentic material, what strategy is better to use, or which would be more helpful when organizing my own class. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s very successful to work when using authentic listening material and speaking practices, but also to pay attention on my own speaking patterns, and to teach them

students.

By the end of this course I think that my language progress has become very wide and clear, so that, I feel ready for the next challenge.

During this course, I have been provided of sites and readings, I have learnt the key competences for life long learning about the English speaking community. (Based on the European Parliament) I also read about Reading Strategies and some others are special for reading practice. There is always a good resource also for preparing my classes at any level on where my students are at. I think they (the resources) are going to be useful on my own authentic material preparing. I learnt that it is not all about selecting an easy text… it depends on the reading strategy I want to use for picking up my piece of text, or picking up a text and design choose an appropriate strategy for it. I have improved my vocabulary in English, that it is an important aspect in the management of the language As my teacher told me as a feedback comment, “As you said, Reading Comprehension is not only about selecting a good text, and neither a good strategy is needed only. Actually for Reading comprehension are needed a good text, reading objectives, an appropriate set of strategies and a very creative teacher, I'm sure you'll be able to fulfill all of that”. I learnt some aspect about the English speaking community, those people who learn how to speak English and others who are native speakers... and the main aspect is that, there are sites designed for English speaking Learners, and there are others for Native speakers, but that doesn’t mean that we, English learners, could not listen to them or participate on its practice.

During different speaking activities, I also learnt how speaking is improved and how is the progress

reached

inside

the

English

speaking

community.

By the end of the 6th module, I learnt lots of techniques that English teachers use in their English speaking community. And they help us to develop our own speaking and communicative skills. English Language Learning and Teaching and its relation to the “Eight habits of highly effective 21st century teachers”

As a language learner and teacher, I discovered that teaching is more than fifty-minute class, there are some aspects we must cover to have a better conduction on our own teaching methodology (time management is one of those I must improve). Being aware of the learning process as teacher but also as a student, and to have the cultural awareness to admire and express our ideas and thoughts and being critical of our teaching development. We must have respect for others and their culture. (it is related to the habit of the Adapting, As a teacher but also as a student).

As a reading comprehension teacher and learner I feel comfortable about what I can do, but I think I can still improve it, but the question here is, what am I going to do to improve it? Well, As Andrew churches says, “must look across the disciplines and through the curricula; they must see the potential in the emerging tools and Web technologies” and I will never give up to be visionary.

As a language learner and teacher, I discovered that there are really important aspects... about listening, for example, the fact that we can use some strategies can let students feel confidence with a listening... using strategies like “read along” that let them also practice two skills at the same time. We also can participate, and must be collaborators; sharing, contributing, adapting and inventing.

I also discovered many important characteristics and methodologies to use in the classroom with English learners, and how important is not to leave on a side these practices on speaking. But as an advice, my teacher said: “just remember being aware of our own mistakes will lead us to reflection and therefore to improve our weaker areas” so there it comes “Have a vision of what you want and what the technology can achieve” Students can also help us: They may be more aware to the technology, let’s let them teach us. Lets take some risks.There are many

funny activities for our children and they deserve to have fun at least with something that it is interesting for them, just like comics, etc.

And something that really changed my mind is this comment that I read from a colleague: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Writing is one of the most important skill, we express feelings and emotions. Sometimes it is not enough to write well to be a good writer, sometimes we really need to be aware of the different approaches to writing and of course the different perspectives a text might convey.â&#x20AC;?

It was a 100-word Reading. But what I liked most was that I was reading while listening. These kinds of activities help students to recognize sounds, to give rhythm to the reading, and to hear the real intention of the author. Even if it doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have any image on the reading, it shows feelings and moods. I might be kind of difficult to record the MP3 file and take it to the class, but If you have a well equipped classroom (Media Classroom, or Enciclomedia) you could only look for the site and have prepared the material for the activity that you are going to present. Just by photocopying the reading previously designed with some images, the students can get engaged to the content of the reading. Imagine a Horror reading, and a horror narrator. It must be fun.

But also, with this activity you could use some other strategies, like skimming and scanning. If you decide to have a pre-reading activity, or to try to guess some information throw watching images, or to have a Post-reading activity, having some questions to see if they remember specific details on the reading, these activities can be all used in one single reading.

Trying to find out how different are listenings prepared for native speakers and for English language learners. I found that there is a wide difference between these listenings… For example, listenings for English language learners, are always in special websites, for ESLL, then, they are divided into levels, and there is a bunch of easy vocabulary… the speaker is always speaking clear and laud.. Listening not prepared for English Language Learners don’t even have a glossary or vocabulary boxes. Or objective purposes… it is well designed for Native English Speakers only…

Then I had to make a summary of 75 words maximum to send to our tutor. That video was an interview for Ben Stein, an old reporter from Nytimes.com, that is one of the best news website in the United states. Ben is interviewing Dr. Mehmet Oz, a Cardio that is trying to show how a heart transplant is made… The example takes place when the Doctor takes a watermelon and cut it by half, I cut, by half… he forces the piece of watermelon to fit in a half took from the other half… he says Ben, that the heart can be forced and pushed. Just as the watermelon. I don’t want to be a doctor anymore.

The Activity that I found more useful was that about recording oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s important period of our life, and to prepare a story to talk about it. We had to prepare it talking on the mirror, but it is weird because you are not really paying attention to your face in the mirror or in your intonation, you are just paying attention on the images in your head, just by remembering how important that moment was. And you can even feel the same sensation that you felt that day. When we record it we really saw our weakness, was it intonation? Was it grammar a grammar mistake? Was it lack of vocabulary? Or may be a little mixed up! But it was really helpful to me while my students were doing it so.

They worked in pairs and they faced a little bit difficult the Evaluation part. They are a little susceptible to their classmate's opinions. And because we know that is one of the biggest

barriers for English learners, “to be judged”. Isn’t it? But it really helped them to improve their speaking, by practicing some times. They also recognized that it isn’t good to be mean while evaluating their classmate’s development, but to appreciate the braveness for working hard.

It was really funny to explore the sites provided for these activities. We had to try every activity to find out some that could be interesting to us and also to our students. Of course I place the site on “Favoritos (*)” but after trying most of the activities, I found some of them really funny… And as it was the purpose of the Unit, I found it interesting and funny. It requires a certainly level of English language and vocabulary. Also when we were writing poems, it was so nice. I found the Poetess that I had inside of me. Just kidding… But I really enjoyed doing that activity.

But when I did the comic, which was really HARD. Not only difficult, just HARD. I had to learn how to manage the program. By that moment, I had forgotten what my comic’s story was about. Jhajhaja. But I have to say that I will never forget how to do it. In fact I have used that Writing teaching strategy with my Secondary students.

Every simple activity had a model, so we could get along to it very quickly.

This unit was so useful for my learning on teaching strategies but also for my Improvement of Internet manage skills.

Now it is time to reflect about the effect of Information and Communication Technologies on English Language Learning. Select one of the modules and select three of the tools that you found more useful for your learning and appropriate for your students.

I found very useful the tools from Module 5. They are Audacity, Window’s Recording Software and the Voicethread.

Audacity is a system for recording sounds or voice. I used it to record a story for the Diplo, and then, I learnt to use it to create my authentic material for every required lesson or activity when necessary.

The Window’s Recording Software is a little more difficult to use but it is a good tool to record music and voices, or both at the same time… but it just work for some activities.

And the Voicethread. Voicethread is a collaborative, multimedia slide show that holds images, documents, and videos and allows people to navigate pages and leave comments in 5 ways using voice (with a micro phone), text, audio file, or video (via a webcam). With no discussion it is one of the most useful ICT tool that I have learnt to use.

In any way, everything I learnt during this module was so meaningful for me, because I had never experienced something like this.

The most useful for me was The Bloom's Taxonomy and Critical Thinking. It’s aspect to highlight are: • •

Knowledge - recall Comprehension - understand

•

Application - use, practice

•

Analysis - dissect, generalize

•

Synthesis - create, combine

•

Evaluation - appraise, value

It is very important for us, as teacher, to have always a lesson plan. It’s our principal tool to keep the way of the classes, to maintain the control of the 50-minute class. It is also required for us to be in the classroom. Our principals ask us to have it to let us work. And we need it to do it successfully. All of us need to take these aspects to make a class work. Some of us do it this way; some of us do it in a different one. But the interest must be the same: The main objective. What the Student requires to learn (said in the Nueva Reforma ) not as we use to do it before (as in the Plan de Estudios 1993).

I would like to thank my tutor Alan Sanchez Vazquez from UNAM for its support and good advices, not only as a Tutor, also as a Guide in this really interesting and hard freeway to the knowledge.

Thanks for sharing ideas and reflections, for your patience and the encouragement. Thanks for your effort and loyalty.

MY LEARNING EXPERIENCE By Karina Becerra

During this diploma I reviewed, learned, and practiced a lot of new things, concepts and interesting activities which help me with my personal development as teacher and student.

Language awareness

As a teacher and a second language speaker is important to know about English native speakers and their country, in order to have a closer relation to the language that I speak as a second language and understand it better.

In this diploma I read and listened interesting stories that helped me to learn about native speakers life, the different kind of problems that they face which may be different or even similar from the ones that we face in our own country.

Something else is that I could appreciate the different opinions of people from the same country about the same country. Another thing that I could notice is that the writing process is the same in English as in Spanish, and native speakers could have the same problems as us with we want to write about something.

English Language Learning and Teaching

We as teachers must be aware about what we do, say and express because we are models for our students. for this reason is very important be preparing each time that we can in order to improve our teaching practice.

We as teachers must create the habit of learning: learn about the new strategies to read, listen, speak and write in order to be better teachers give us the opportunity to be always prepared. We also must know about the new technology, the use of computer and internet, in this way we can be at the same level of our students and work with something different: as the use of different web sites in order to work with our students can be motivating and help to develop studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; autonomy

The different kinds of resources that we can use with our students are easy to learn. If we want to be visionary teachers we must lose the afraid to use the different kind of technology that we have in our schools, as the enciclomedia, computer, tape recorder, movies, etc, especially for those teachers who have their old methods and are not interested to try something new.

I personally consider that we can be the 21 st century educators always that we be aware of the importance of be always preparing ourselves and not be dinosaurs of our schools.

Being part of this diploma is one way to develop our selves as teachers. in this diploma we learned how to develop the reading, listening, speaking and writing skills in order to improve them and be better as teacher and as a second language speaker. Something else is that we learned about different tools and a different way to use the technology to take advantage of this.

In the module of reading I learned different strategies to read and improve our skills and learn new strategies to do it. I also noticed specific aspects to work on them.

In the module of listening I enjoyed the different accents and the different activities in order to educate my ear and improve this skill

as teacher and student and in this way help my students to improve this skill, work on my weakness as phrasal verbs and reinforced on the importance of stress and intonation.

In the speaking module, I work in very interesting activities where I could practice my pronunciation, intonation, stress and other strategies that I learned as thought groups of the listening module.

In the writing module had the opportunity to practice my skills as writer in a different language and in a different context from the one of Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m use to as teacher. I also work with very interesting and motivating tools which I found helpful to work with my students.

The most interesting activity

In module 3: Reading, I had the opportunity of learning the different strategies to be a second language reader. The use of skinning or scanning when we read helps us to understand better the text or find specific information, something else is the

importance of knowing the different kind of texts in order to know and have an idea about it.

In this module the most interesting activity for me was the 5.1 from the unit 5. I really enjoyed the text that I read in that unit, â&#x20AC;&#x153;content area reading strategiesâ&#x20AC;? where I could read about twenty interesting strategies to use before, during and after the reading in order to improve comprehension, also to use them with my students and help them to understand better. I have to say that I knew and have applied some of these strategies like: activate prior knowledge which I found very easy to use and helpful with students in order to introduce to students the text. Another one is the ask questions before , during and after the reading, also the strategy of make interference and draw conclusions, sequence events, use context clues to decipher unfamiliar words and visualize images from the text.

I consider all these strategies very useful for my students in order to teach them to read using all the tools that they have in their hands: the context, the previous knowledge and others tools, to read like they do it in their own language instead of reading and trying to understand the text word by word, in order to improve studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; comprehension in reading.

In this same module I found the most difficult activity which was the activity 6.1 phrasal verbs from the unit 6 phrasal verbs and tag questions and it’s fun because in the same unit I found the most difficult activity and the easier one because with the activity 6.2 tag questions I did not have any problem.

In the activity 6.1 phrasal verbs the instructions were clear, I had to read some text with some phrasal verbs and answer the questions about them, the texts were easy too, they were short and clear conversations. What I found difficult was to get the meaning immediately of the phrasal verbs in these texts.

I had to read the words before and after the phrasal verbs in order to understand the context and figure the meaning of these, for example when I read this one: “get ahead” it was difficult for me, finally when I got the meaning of the phrasal verb I thought that they were easy.

I guess that I find them difficult because sometimes I do not notice them; I guess that I heard them and read them as separate words instead of read them as phrasal verbs and pay attention to verbs with prepositions.

I have to practice in order to improve my understanding with phrasal verbs and be a better listener.

The most useful activity.

The module that I most enjoyed was the module 5: speaking. I really liked the idea of recording my voice for the activities in this module, because I had the opportunity to heard me and see how I improved as a speaker of a second language.

The activity that I found more useful was in the unit 3. The activity consisted on see a picture of a boy, talk about this picture, describe it and talk about what I think of the person in the picture.

In this activity I could noticed how my partners and I can have very different perceptions from the same picture even when we live in the same country, and I could listen many different description because it was not the same.

Something else is that this activity remembered me an activity where an English teacher who video recorded my partners and me

and then showed us the video, and it was a very good way to correct ourselves and to promote self assessment with our students.

I think that it is a very useful activity for my students and very easy to do. If students do not have a computer can record their voice on a celphone or a tape recorder, individual or in team, something else is that this activity gave me other idea that maybe students can create a radio program and talk about their likes and dislikes or talk about the news, or even I can ask them to read and recorder their voices reading and then show it to the rest of the group.

I think that students will like the idea of record their voices and it could be an English project.

Main teaching strategies.

In the module six: writing, I did a lot of writing activities and also practiced my writing in many different ways in which Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m not use to.

In unit one: grammar and writing, I enjoyed the story that I created by adding some words, and when I read my partners stories I had a lot of fun. This activity was interesting because it gave me the opportunity to see how easy is to create a crazy story and how fun could be for my students.

My favorite activity was the one of book of poems in unit two, because I’m not good writing rhymes or poems in my own language and I like them a lot, so when I wrote my poems in English I just had a lot of fun, In unit two: book of poems. Something interesting is that even when some of my partners used the same structure of the poems that others used as me, we had very different results; I mean the poems were very different.

In the third unit: creating a story I found the activity of creating a comic very funny and useful for students because they can use it in order to practice their language without noticing that they are working on it. I just love the second activity, creating a story through the use of pictures it’s a great opportunity to let students’ imagination to work. Also read my partners’ stories.

One of the activities that I found a little difficult was in unit 4: describing people, places and things, where I did a book reviewed because I had to think in one book that I already read and remember it, also because as teachers I think that we are not use to write about things that we are not related with our daily work.

What I really like was the unit five: using punctuation. My mother is a Spanish teacher and always says that a good punctuation can even save your live because it helps to understand the message of

the text. I consider punctuation important in all language because it let us to write clearer texts.

I found very useful unit six: sequence of tense, because let us to know when we should use the tenses and be clearer not just only when we write but also when we speak and do it with accuracy.

In unit seven: other writing models, where I wrote a story based in just two lines wish is very useful to activate studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; imagination and let the opportunity to practice their knowledge.

Even when the writing module was one of the hardest for me it was also one of the most interesting because I could work by practice my writing and let me the opportunity to practice a lot of activities that prompts writing which are not just useful for me but also for my students.

The three most useful tools.

Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hard to think in only three tools useful for my learning and my studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. Through the modules of this diploma I found very useful tools to use with my students in order to improve their English skills.

The use of the computer is essential in order to develop all the new activities with our students.

Finally I decided that in module five: writing is the one with the easiest, funniest and most interesting tools to work with my students.

I could take students to the multimedia room, put students in pairs and ask them to create a comic like the one that we created in the unit 3 activity 3.1, where students can create as many characters that they want and let their imagination flow.

Something else is that maybe with the use of power point if the internet is not able or with the link of the unit 3 activity 3.2, I could ask students to create a story using images or photos about them and create a story it could be a true story or even invent it. I imagine that this activity is motivating because they can personalize the story using their own photos and write a real story adding some music or even their voices, because they could record the story with the use of power point.

Other useful tool is give them is the story starter which is in unit seven, where the link can give students many story starter and they continue it, this activity I think that could be in group, pairs and

even individual. Something else is that if in that moment the teacher do not have a computer or internet, can give to students little piece of papers with the beginning of a story.

Other tool that would like to mention is the one that I used in the module of speaking, with the program of audacity, I consider it great because students can heard them and give them the opportunity to self correction, and if they can do it with many different tools not just with a computer.

The Bloomâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Taxonomy and Critical thinking

I find hard to decide which of the format plans I have to choose because, we as teachers have to be able change, we can not be married with just one method or just one lesson plan format, we can change it according to our needs and the ones of our studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, also to the objective of the lesson and other factors.

After analyzing the format lesson plans I chose the Bloomâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Taxonomy and Critical Thinking: knowledge- recall, comprehensionunderstand, application- use practice, analysis- dissect generalize, synthesis- create combine and evaluation- appraise value.

Even when I consider that the one of multiple intelligences is a good way to work in order to think on the different learning styles of my students. The one that I chose: blooms’ taxonomy and critical thinking, is an easy way to plan, also I consider it like the general that we used.

I consider the bloom’s taxonomy and critical thinking format of lesson plan useful for my context, because is clear in order to know what we want to achieve in each activity of the lesson plan and the objective of the activities, where you can work on many different areas of knowledge as comprehension, analysis, application of the new knowledge and others.

As I mentioned before, that I had chose this lesson plan, doesn’t mean that I don’t take in consideration to apply or use the others lesson plans.

UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL AUTONOMA DE MEXICO

Distance Education Department

FINAL REPORT

For grading my participation on

COMMUNICATIVE SKILLS FOR SECONDARY ENGLISH TEACHERS

Writing by

GABRIELA CABRERA ZUÑIGA

SUMMARIZING MY LEARNING By Gabriela Cabrera

The best place to begin is on july. I hadn’t any idea about distance education meaning. Now, i am happy to come here due to i have got not only knowledge but skills and attitudes too. This diplo course has been great! The first thing i did after getting some internet abilities, was to learn how to use electronic dictionary resources, it is a lifelong treasure! To begin with the main goals here, i could say that i had to look for my passion in english language, as they suggested on a list of strategies to learn english. I love things like psycology or human thinking as you noticed on my “social intelligence” book review. The next step is telling you about my learning on text types; these are: instructive, descriptive and informative ones. After that, i can talk about reading strategies. Before, i had heard only two – scanning and skimming- but i know 20 strategies now. The best way to learn minimal pairs was by listening them, so you can’t be confused for that single sound that makes the difference. Another thing to be aware is that related to facts and opinions. I thought it was easy to look the difference but this is not for real, since the opinions can be manipulated in order to show them like comfirmed discoverings. I was very surprised for the amount of phrasal verbs! There are more than i never imagined!

For agreements and disagreements, it was a good resource to keep in mind the use of negative verbs with “either” and positive verbs with “neither”. Some of us may use both with out rules. For writing, i was taking care of the grammar parts of a sentence (nouns, adjectives, etc) in order to make my books. In the end, i must not forget to talk about intonation patterns that may change all the sense in a conversation. It is a very, very important goal for english learners to speak english like an emotional language. On the other hand, i was asked of how to keep on studying. My answer is: i wrote down as many web pages as i could, so i’ll try to visit one each day after my diploma course had finished.

CULTURAL AWARNESS By Gabriela Cabrera

Definetly, the main cultural strenght i have could get, is that one related to electronic tools supporting my teaching job. My digital competence is improving, and it is correctly focused on my students goals.

Speaking about competences, -wich means general cultural awarness i think- , i have appreciated and shared experiences, ideas and emotions with people from different parts of my country. Everybody is full of creativity and willingness; and i could notice that my classsmates from culiacan, hermosillo, etc,; are better english speakers, maybe because they are closer than me to the united states.

I loved incident amistad. Sometimes it is very difficult to me to know about this kind of articles. Sometimes human beings are too cowards to see the real pictures of our "civilizated" world. Personally, my stomach hurts when i see people trying other people like animals. This is the case of "black people" who had a very sad history, eventhought they are not the only ones who have suffered because of the human pervertions.

I am glad that president obama had come to show that intelligence is not in your skin color but in your efforts to make a better world.

I admire to people like john quincy adams and attorney baldwin, who were braves and faced to their laws, but i over-admire to those like pieh, who prefers to stay human than be slave despite the consecuences. Thanks to him, many people can be brave too.

In the golden gate bridge story, the most interesting for me was to know about the international

orange

color

matching

with

the

whole

place.

I was impressed too, because i didnÂ¨t hear this story before and i have never seen a net in mexican buildings to protect to the workers. It is good to look up who took the first safety rules.

In the american and british english story i learnt all kind of new facts. Certainly, i had forgotten

this

story

because

all

this

seems

new

for

me.

It is amazing how the people want to be free from every single topic of a non desirable culture. Establishing new rules to speak in order to be different and trying to show that english speakers

are

complicated

than

american

ones

So, i learnt where the webster book trade market came from.

great

nationalism.

I think all of us have used social tools of behaviour because we have solved problems by communicating in both tongue and foreing languages.

My emotional behaviour has been challenged many times because i have had to do the activities for more than two hours per day. I am slow on commputer resources and i have faced a lot of frustration.

By the way, i am an intrapersonal learner and i have not problems organizating my time because i am very schematic. Maybe that is the reason for me to have problems when somebody changes my times. i have a lot of work to do here.

NEW TEACHING STRATEGIES DISCOVERED MY 21th TEACHING HABITS By Gabriela Cabrera

I could change my point of view about electronic tools. Now, i am convinced about their real application to my students learning process. I think is kind of generational breakthrough, and some of us are resistent to changes.

My students were used to do a pictionary sometimes.the media classroom is about being opened very soon, so we are going to work on videonary making. About holding a piece of paper with three famous words, i am currently doing with present, past and participle verbs, one each day. This is for third graders to learn as many verbs as be possible. In those cases, i am adapting my work to the software, hardware and dynamic experiences. While the media clasrroom is not ready, i am using internet resources with my own commputer for showing my students images, lyrics, and how to use some software in order to accept their homeworks by e mail. In that case i am visionary, because i am looking for the web technologies. As an english teacher i realized that big tasks can not motivate students, i have to make them fell succesfull, because they're more sensible than adults who many times can be unpatient when they donÂ´t behave as we expect from them In that case we are modelling our behaviours.

i discovered how to use instrumental music with two new english objectives: real feelings

and

creativity.

I have learnt to use computer instead the old-fashioned tapes to review my students dialogues. I will use these teaching strategies next bimonth and iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll use communticative ability for being current.

I took advantage from this writing module. For third graders, the unit i name is "memories" my students had a biography for homework (we haven't the web resources yet at school) that was taken from a template for creating tales. At the same website, second graders are writing about animals, because that is the name included on unit i: people and animals. My students also made cartoons and comics. This has been worked with first graders

check

interviews

This module has many resources for learners. I think of using them for homework.

out.

I am taking the risk for asking my students go outside in order to do their homework ina cyberspace. It is not easy because they sometimes lie about this. I am chating a little bit with some students for being an anywhere teacher and for them to feel closer to me. This is the gratest wat to build a leadership. If somebody loves you (in a good sense), he probably follow yous steps Another Thing To Say For Leadership Is Sharing Passions With Them. We Are Working In A Halloween Project With Horror Movies And We Are Looking For The Information In Interent And Enjoying Toghether Of Music And Dancing.

READING TEACHING STRATEGIES MY FAVORITE READING ACTIVITY By Gabriela Cabrera

I have to say i enjoyed this module a lot since i felt comfortable with the activity and i could be succesful –i think-on reading more than other english skills. My favorite activities were the following: 1. - the best choice i found was, with no discussion, “100 short stories”. You can find that in unit 3. It is wonderful! First of all, the text is presented in a clear, simple and, atractive way. It was like reading an elementary book when i was a child. It mades me fell confident; so, my students maybe feel the same. As the name says, there are 100 stories for all sorts of people. This website gives us the chance to listen the reading in two different speeds for training from slow to faster levels. The beginners speed has an empty screen where students can check their ability out. As a result, it is sure that learners will improve their reading and listening skills without stress. Although i could find a dictionary at the same place! Isn’t it great? The section has just a little bad option: the advertisements. But i think it is normal to hold the site on. 2. - the second best option was the cultural readings about “golden gate bridge” and “american and british english”. I loved this nice learning tool because is as usefull as simple to understand. This website will be a comfortable one for my students because there is no way to loose the reading. As you are listening, the screen presents only one or two lines then you can focuse on the point. The most interesting thing is that these themes are symbolic for native english speakers culture. All i have mentioned is good for my students learning. 3. - i also enjoyed a lot the reading of “amistad incidet” but i didn’t like the support provided but i learnt something new and important for americans.

4.- in the end, if i really want to learn more english i have to stop reading those sections and start working on what i really need: words in the news. This part has been always been my hard stuff!

LISTENING TEACHING STRATEGIES MY MOST DIFFICULT ACTIVITY By Gabriela Cabrera

AS i said in the previous chapter, i had difficulties in the unit 7, module 4. There is not any problem with websites, texts, methodology or activities. The problem is with my little ability as a listener to understand native speakers, even more at the news. I know time on tv is very expensive, i guess that is the reason for all the news to be as fast as they can. Maybe there is something cultural in it, because it has been always hard for me. The fact of being a difficult activity doesn’t mean it doesn’t work, it just means that i have to practice more in order to be good at listening. About the activity for itself, i have nothing to say. I am just worried for my inability. I am kind of a new learner for both: internet resources and distance education; that is why all activities seems to me great. All the modules was amazing and interesting, tha oinly reason for me to not enjoy some class is because the lack of time, but i really like to learn new strategies. I don’t’ want to be an old fashioned teacher.

ACTIVITY: STORYTELLING AUDACITY By Gabriela Cabrera

For this year i am doing a different job for unit i, third grade. It was born from my experience in unit i, module 5. I found in Aaron shepardÂ´s website, an inspiration for stop telling biography or fairy tales for using past time verbs. This time i wanted to do something original and i found the way by adding an excellent ingredient: loving and enjoying your history in order to tell it with a big smile. First, i joined ghost story, myth, legends and halloween celebration. After, my students were asked to watch films like: ghostbusters, twilight, adams family and the very famous thriller video, by michael jackson.

Then, we found the parts to memorize to make a little history with each team (there are 4 third grade groups). This is just like author suggested.

Storytelling would be at school on october 29. It would be wonderful because everybody would dress like the actors in the film; after 10 students wouldpractice storytelling and all students of the group would dance the main theme.

After to enjoy this particular, my students could do a report the day after the festival.

That was the part where the audacity program was used because They are asked to record how the celebration was and after, send it to my email.

I should mention that was a very happy day for everybody. Students were euphoric and they are more motivated for daily work. I can forget their faces! Good way to enjoy and love a story, isnÂ´t it? Now, what i am going to do with audacity in everyday work is not now. Maybe next month, media classroom will be useful at school. Then i will use audacity program to record the parts of the social practice taught that day in order to preserve the discipline in the class. For example, if students are supposed to learn how to buy, we divide the social practice in little fragments such as asking prices, asking clothes, trying clothes, etc. The way we used to do it, is by practicing in pairs and after students came to my place for checking the little conversation. Now this process will be by recording the conversation fragment and send it to my e-mail and i will be able to check their speaking. I have big expectations about it.

WRITING TEACHING STRATEGIES

MY WRITING REVIEW By Gabriela Cabrera

This was a succesfull module since we had the oportunity to check a sort of models to make texts. For me it was a very nice experience that improved my thinking tools. The best that i have to tell is about photoshop and book review. Related to photoshop, i am trying to find the time to send to my students good number of pictures i have taken about each social practice spoken at the classroom at evaluation time. I use to do that and present the pictures at school news wall chart. They get excited and they ask me for photos many times. I am going to print them anymore.

THE COMMENTS OF MY ONLINE CLASSMATES WERE ABOUT THE PICTURES, THEY LIKED AND THEY TOLD ME ABOUT THE GOOD IDEA OF PROMOTING MEXICAN HERITAGE.

Refering to book review, i can tell you it was an activity that i enjoyed a lot because i had the oportunity to read again the book, on a scanning way of course, since it is very extense. I loved this book so it was not a boring task at all. I had to look for new words at the dictionary and my vocabulary improved. I had not many comments; maybe because i was of the first writers, perhaps my book is not very popular. Anyway, i was delightful with my two voters; or i have to say three, because i would vote for me too! â&#x20AC;Ś Because i did it, of course

ABOUT ICT TOOLS By Gabriela Cabrera

Information and communication technologies on english languages, is the part that all of we were expecting to learn, i think, because we want to be part of the modern worls and it is the way for not being obsolet after many years of teaching and on agreement with our big experience and enthusiastic job. It has been amazing; i am feeling as a new teacher.

I couldn’t say i have three favorite tools because of all them are great. Every activity has its own meaning. On the other hand, i can’t speak of a favorite activity because maybe i loved one but my students haven´t practiced yet for the lack of the resources or simply because we are introducing. Then, i may tell you about my personal experiences and my student´s ones until now.

The winner is, absolutely, “movie segments to assesment of grammar goals”, eventhought i will use it about two more months later. There isn’t better way to maintain students motivated for english learning. This is the most authentic material i found.

“Audacity” was a novelty for me, and my students have homework with the program for next week as i described before. So, i’ll test its efectiviness in the real practice. “Reading 100 shorts stories”, is a fantastic way to practice the speaking, reading and listening skills at the same time. It is an almost whole tool that can be completed by writing a report after the activity. By now, i have experimented making biographies with third graders and animal description with second graders; both of them are about unit i and the program used was “template for creating tales” First grader students have had a great time by making comics with “making beliefs” too. I think it is not bad for being the first time, and my students are asking me what is happening because i am turning into a commputers teacher. They are surpsised and i am so, because they can do the same job in half of the time! They are a very modern and digital generation. There is a big expectation for their notes improving.

LESSON PLANNING I AM FAMILIARIZED WITH: BLOOMâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S TAXONOMY AND CRITICAL THINKING By Gabriela Cabrera

Educative models at this time declare the importance of a critical thinking. Besides, we have short time classes because of all sort of formative and cultural activities and institutional plans. For those reasons, we need a lesson plan as practical and functional as it can be; of course, in agreement with ourteaching-learning objectives. I found these characteristics at bloomâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s taxonomy and critical thinking model, which parts are: -

Knowledge: where students speak about what they learnt before.

Comprehension: to get the needed information through books or notes.

Applications: for me, all the meaningful works that students can do in order to get the expectations about learning. This includes:

analysis: vr.gr. About grammar rules

Synthesis: summarize what they learnt in this class

Evaluation by performance It doesn’t tell about test but speaks about performance and i totally agree with this.

THANKSGIVING By Gabriela Cabrera

1.-Profra.: ma. Socorro vazquez farfan. She was my principal last year and she motivated to me for going to do the test. She is one of the most hardworker persons i have met. 2.-Profr: manuel perez duran My current principal who is giving my facilities for all my activities with students, eventhought it means more time for everybody. 3. - Profr: javier martinez lopez Viceprincipal at school Who listens always what i want to say. (patient!) 4. - Profr: santiago rubio A kind and great usebeq’s person who s very interested in our teaching developmnet. He was phoning to everybody for asking their participation! 5. - Profr: carlos escoto patiño

English teaching director Who allows me to go behind my projects and dreams, eventhought they are new. 6. - Profr: alan sanchez vazquez Unam tutor Who deserves the first place for been so patient and tolerant with me. 7.-Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico For this great, wonderful oportunity. It is meaningful because is something new. 8. - To my beautiful family; husband and kids. They are my inspiration and they so understanding. I love you, guys. My students are included too! 9. - To my classmates. We help each other and some of us became good friends.

UNIVERSIDAD AUTONOMA DE MEXICO CENTRO DE ENSEÑANZA DE LENGUAS EXTRANJERAS Coordinación De Educación a Distancia Departamento de Lingüística Aplicada

DIPLOMADO COMMUNICATIVE SKILLS FOR SECONDARY TEACHERS

LEMB. Julio César Carreón Rodríguez

Final Report:

My Learning Experience

Introduction: Being a student is not a grateful experience, but in this case I’ve found the exception to the rule, this course was magnificent, and is very hard to finish it, but honestly, is a quite relaxing to know we are in the final part of the course, not because it was not funny or useless, but with our work charge is very difficult to take the time to do it, in my personal case I has 35 hours in front of the group, 27 in English, nine groups with 37 to 42 students and 8 hours in History that’s two groups with 40 pupils in each on, apart from the Master degree studies in the Saturday, from eight in the morning to 4 in the afternoon; plus the reading and exposition home work I had to do . Sincerely it was not easy to take the time to do the exercises, but I know I had to do it. But that’s enough of complaints, I know the rest of my of my partners had to deal with similar or worst conditions, so I have to move on and continue with the description of my own Learning Experience; well all that I can say is that I really learned a lot; hey this is not taking the easy way out; I really learned a lot because of the exercises and suggestions for me and to my job, for me as an English Learner and as an English Teacher, I certainly can say that my skills don’t increases exponentially, but I can say that I move to the next step on my continuous preparation, cause learning is a life time process that only ends with death. Reading: This module was very helpful for me, cause it gave me a new perspective about my own level as a reader, and taught me some new strategies to use while I’m reading, but specially it gave me the tools to make my classes a little bit more interesting an dynamic. All the exercises were fun and very helpful, but the most interesting of all was the one about the Amistad incident, because it provides us with a very interesting topic, additional information and an structure that really help us to understand the text and mainly the context and the different point of view of the person implicated in this historical trial. In general I enjoy all the activities in this module because all of them were designed to be Fun and interesting in order to motivate students to develop their reading skills. As conclusion I can say that my preferred

reading strategies are skimming and

scanning, that’s a method that I use even on my own language to construct a general idea of the main objective or idea or the text I’ve to read. In this moment I’m studying a master degree, and I have to read a lot for my home works and classes expositions an

as a teacher with 9 English groups and 2 History groups (35 hours per week), I have no time to reading so I use this Techniques to facilitate my own preparation on topics as Scholar Investigation. Writing: Writing is a complicated issue, but it was so interesting for me, because it motivate me to write my own ideas and challenged to me cause it make me to think about my own writing, and the mistakes I committed in the elaboration of a text. To me, all the activities were very productive and interesting, but the most relevant to me, was the one about a personal experience, where I wrote about an accident occurred 5 years ago, in which I had to face with terrible remembrances and to put them in a well structured text, I know that I had several mistakes, but I know that at the end I could emend the most of the text. As a teacher I can say that in order to motivate students to write texts is very important to take in count activities that involve their own interests, by planning classes based on topics as: •

Movies.

•

Music stars.

•

Series.

•

Cartoons.

•

Videogames.

•

Japanese “Animes”.

•

Songs (with nowadays music idols)

•

WWE all-stars.

•

Sexuality.

•

Adolescents (body and mind changes)

•

Their own feelings.

In general, any topic that can provoke they start to write and write and write. Teenagers are very sensible and had a lot of interests, and we can use these to motivate them to write. Because they are actually very well informed about this topics, so they no need to investigate or in contrary case, they don’t get bored about investigating this topics. Listening: Thought Groups, was the most difficult part to me, but it was not for the instructions or the contents, I think that all of this activities was very good designed, That’s doesn’t mean that they couldn’t be perfected, but it means that I ‘m not sable to suggest any changes to them; mainly because for me those activities were interesting an very fun, but the most difficult part of all was to begin, I has been separated from the real process of learning English because of my others activities (six years studying a new specialty: History, and now a Master degree), but I know that sooner or later I must t6o take an English Course, in order to improve my own professional development as an English Language Teacher. I know that the main goal for this work is to make suggestions to one of these strategies, but as I’ve said, My difficult were not about the description of the activities instructions or something like that, It was for my incapability to start on the process of being again an English learner. But thanks to this course I’m pretty sure that I will keep going on my learner process, and I think that while I get an opportunity ($$$) to get an English course, I will continue the process here started, by using the pages recommended. Speaking Strategies. The use of software such as Audacity, is a great option at the time of practice an evaluate the speaking skill, but it very difficult to use it in a context like Villa de Arriaga, S.L.P; because the context doesn’t permit the use of this media, the most of the students don’t have a computer in home and from all of those who actually have one, don’t are able to use the most of the resources this device bring to them. But we can use a variant of this, by using a voice recorder and a cassette; and student that has the capability can use the software. I consider the use of voice recording, by any media is an excellent method to develop speaking skills, because this facilitates the process due to this permits; •

Self evaluation.

•

Correction.

•

Helps to introverted students to beat their condition.

•

The teacher to listen to all of them (9 groups x 40-45 students).

Those are the reasons to implement the recording as a speaking skill development strategy, the most of the students are cruel with their peers, and it very complicated to make them to participate in class, so by the recording they can strength their confidence and still progressing in this skill development. ICT Tools: Since 1999, when my father buy his first computer, I decided to learn about the way of use this strange machine, and sooner I discovered what a PC user can do with a little help from the computer. In my first secondary school, that’s Technical Middle School 75, in Cañada Grande, I was the first teacher in using ICT tools in my classes, maybe a little wrong in some aspects but always trying to make my class colorful and fun to my students. Nowadays, the most of my peers in my school and in my state academy, are interested in the ICT tools for class, And the most of them know the way to use different software to improve their classes. In this moment I´m especially interested in Microsoft PowerPoint, as a teaching and learning tool for my students, even I´m making my thesis for the master degree in this specific topic, yes; you could tell me that PowerPoint does not qualify as the chat, or the e-mail or the web quest; but although I partially agree with you, I can tell you that in a context where most of the students don’t have a personal computer, or the access to internet and the family needs does not permit the constant use of the few Internet Coffee that this town has. I prefer tools they can use in a more simple way. In PowerPoint you can make an animated story, a class presentation, an interactive dialogue or many other different activities, but mainly you can facilitate the creative process. In addition to this, I can tell that the different web pages we studies offers to us a variety of exercises to work in class, the only problem is that the internet is not available in my school, at least in my own English classroom, and by the other side the Media Room, is not complete, it only has 1 computer for each 4 or 5 students, and the furniture is not enough for the whole 42 pupils.

But, I seriously recommend the activities we share in this course because they are very well designed and they are very interesting to me, in fact one day I down the video material, I use a movie segment for the Can/Can’t topic. For sure I’m not going to write against the use of the ICT tools, but it is a reality that most of my students: •

Don’t have a computer.

•

Don’t have access to internet at any time.

•

Can’t afford the cost of internet and a computer.

•

My school does not invest on the technological resources as happily as for papers, markers and other classic materials for the class.

Sincerely I hope that someday we could do something to change it permanently, and that the technologies in classroom will be a reality, by the moment I must to search in the web, copy paste and adapt in order to make my class a little bit funny and interesting to my pupils. Conclusion: As a conclusion I can say that there are a lot of faces to the teaching profession, but there are some important things to consider in order of being in the way to be a good teacher: 1. Keep always in the learning mode, a teacher must to be an open mind person that enjoy learning, even from his or her students, so we must to still preparing us to be a better person, we have to study and searching new approaching methods to make our class fun, interesting and useful. 2. Adapting is one of the most useful characteristic for a teacher in this new century, remember to learn to use and adapt the new information and communication technologies. The computer could become the best English teacher friend. 3. Keep always in touch with your student interests, because they are the key to your students motivation, if you use the elements that they domain as subject for the class or home work, this would help them to express more that if you use topics that don’t concert ho their life, and use this topics would make their classes lighter and funnier. 4. No matter what problems you have in home or in work, always be gentle and kind with your students, some teacher told me once, that an English teacher must become in

something almost like a clown, I disagree with this concept, but I think that you can give to your students a little bit of fun with some funny comments or some mimic in your class that make them feel comfortable in your class, you must be fun but you couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be ridiculous. 5. At last, I can say that this course ins to the panacea to solve the English Class problems, but it gave us a lot of resources to make our work a little more complete, easy and productive, it was a little bit tired and difficult to follow at a 100% because of our work, family and other studies; but I think that just as me, the rest of my peers want to continue in this process to strength our professional development, So I hope that this would be just the first of many other courses destined to improve not only the English teachers, but all the others teachers development.

To all of you that read my incipient writing works, share my opinions and even all of you that disagree with them, specially to our assessor Alan; Thanks a lot

Communicative

Skills

for

Secondary

Teachers My Learning Experience By Sigilfredo Cervantes NĂşĂąez

People learn all the time, from everything around them. As educators, as parents, as learners ourselves, we know that some situations are more conducive to

learning than others, and that learning can be unpredictable. Are there methods for ensuring that the learning we wish to encourage does indeed take place and in as effective a manner a manner?

The process of learning is acquiring knowledge and skills. Learning also may involve a change in attitude or behaviour. Learning occurs continuously throughout a person's lifetime. To define learning, it is necessary to analyze what happens to the individual. For example, an individual's way of perceiving, thinking, feeling, and doing may change as a result of learning experience.

Thus, learning can be defined as a change in behaviour or as a result of experience. This can be physical and overt, or it may involve complex intellectual or attitudinal changes which affect behaviour in more subtle ways. During this course I have learned many aspects that are very useful to me as a teacher and as a student. By this moment, I have acquired the knowledge to be an independent learner. I know that there are some essential guidelines for materials and techniques in order to improve my English level and proficiency.

In the following I will describe the aspects that Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been working with during this course, such as; Cultural Awareness, New Teaching Strategies, Receptive (Reading and Listening skills) and Productive (Speaking and Writing Skills), ICT Tools, and Lesson Planning.

Cultural learning awareness

This Diploma is an excellent way to learn about the English Speaking Community. I learned that cultural awareness is very important, because it helps us to understand how our world works and also that cultural competence provides the knowledge and the necessary skills to understand and relate with people from other cultural groups. We are all shaped by our cultural background, which influences how we interpret the world around us; perceive ourselves, and socialization with other people. We have to turn our differences into opportunities. As a teacher, I must include multicultural awareness and foster an acceptance and respect of different cultures and linguistic traits to facilitate students learning a second language and models of a new culture, while maintaining an appreciation of their own cultural heritage It is always important to identify individual needs and preferences between students. There are many ways to involve our students in the English language. We do not need to be an expert in every culture or have all the answers to be culturally aware; rather, cultural awareness helps us to explore issues with recipients more sensitively. A good way of focusing students attention or making them aware of different cultures, is asking them to choose a holiday that is celebrated in the USA, UK, etc. (Thanksgiving, Halloween, Christmas, among others) and present an activity to their classmates using a grammar point that you will tell them to adapt. In addition, it is very important to mention some advantages I discovered and learned in this course about cultural aspects. I learned about sports, literature, fashion, national holidays, ethnicity, etc. which helped me understand and be aware of American and British characteristics culture have. With the activities I did during the course, such as; American and British English, adult learning activities, 100 short English stories, a book of poems, and authentic listening, I improved my knowledge and enjoyed these types of internet sites, where we are able to practice and learn a lot due to the freedom and variety of topics. I must also give my students the opportunity to develop their knowledge about the English language and to let them be aware of some aspects about the culture of the foreign language they are studying.

New Teaching Strategies

The world is changing over time; new technology items, cars, peoples’ behavior, etc. Due to the fact of this change, we, as teachers should try to be different and try not to get stuck with the same teaching model. We need to make our classes in different ways, thinking in our students learning styles and interests. It is very important to present different activities and try to not repeat them frequently, because this will decrease students’ motivation. I know that the visionary teacher can look at others’ ideas and envision how they would use these in their class.

Nowadays students are very fascinated with technology and a good way of increasing their motivation in the class is to give them the opportunity to play with language using technology. It’s time to take risks and sometimes surrender yourself to the students’ knowledge.

Grammar points and vocabulary can be adapted to different activities according to the type of students you have. Humanistic activities are easy and very memorable for them. This gives them the opportunity to develop their speaking skills by sharing personal aspects that they would like to contribute.

Characteristics in a good teacher is when he is more than just the instructor, when he or she helps students in personal problems by giving ideas and when he or she has a good relationship with his or her students.

Developing skills:

The methodology helped me understand the procedures through which I could acquire linguistic and communicative competences as a language learner.

I found

my weak and strong points in each language skills. There are strategies that we can use and have good management of the receptive and productive skills. We need to identify all the possible ways in which we can promote independence in teaching and learning conditions. I am going emphasize in the four skills I worked with: listening, speaking, reading and writing.

Receptive Skills :

READING TEACHING STRATEGIES

I enjoyed all the reading activities. I applied certain skills and strategies such as deducing and inferring meaning in order to find the different purposes in each reading. I worked with skimming and scanning, which helped me find specific or general information, main ideas and supporting details. One of the most interesting activities was “Read while listening” because these kind of activities are easy to understand the reading and can be relaxing and fun in class. “American Stories” is an excellent web-page because we can read a variety of texts and to know and learn about other cultures. I learned that there are instructive, persuasive, informative, and descriptive readings. The pictures in the reading help us understand the general purposes and we can create our own images from the text during and after reading to support our comprehension of the text. The different reading strategies are great. They help us a lot as a reader and we can use them in the classroom. Using the different reading strategies we can apply our personal experiences and connect new information to our existing knowledge base, we are able to monitor our level of understanding. Structure knowledge is very important because students can anticipate what information will be revealed in a selection when

they understand text structure. We can help our students to organize and classify information, compare and contrast ideas, distinguish facts from opinions, identify authorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s purpose and point of view. Students are invited to go beyond the literal meaning of text to derive interpretative meanings.

Listening Teaching Strategies

On the fourth module we were working with listening strategies. It was one of the most difficult modules; acquiring listening skills can be frustrating. This is because successful listening skills are acquired over time and with lots of practice. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s complicated for students because there are no rules as in grammar teaching.

I understood that listening is a natural way to learn English. Listening

skills

are different from reading skills because speech is different from writing and the English sound system varies from place to place, and from speaker to speaker. Speakers often use their tone of voice, or stress and intonation to express

important

information, for example emotions such as pleasure and anger, attitudes such as disbelief or sarcasm.

In my opinion one of the most difficult activities that I found was “Phrasal Verbs 6.1” which is a web-site called “English Phrasal Verbs, Using English.com”. I answered the quizzes, but as I’m not in touch with the phrasal verbs, it was kind of difficult to get the correct answer, because a couple of them were similar in meaning.

Another important activity that is special and hard to understand was “Top-down listening”. I found a lot of “English Idioms”. I had never done these kinds of activities before but I think they were very interesting and useful to me. I’ll work hard visiting these kinds of web-sites in order to improve my listening skills. I think these activities could be easier if I had the custom of listening authentic material. I have to spend more time on these activities in order to raise my listening level. This Diploma is an excellent way to be a better English teacher.

Productive Skills: Speaking Teaching Strategies

Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m going to start talking about my experience as a teacher and as a student too, about speaking skills; learning a foreign language. Students are often too embarrassed to say anything when they do not understand another speaker or when they realize that a conversation partner has not understood them. Being able to speak English is critical to our studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; success, both inside and outside the classroom. We always see a number of students who are too shy to speak up in the classroom or to answer a question, even when they have the answer. As a student in this Diploma I learned that there are interesting, useful, and specific strategies to help my students acquire and use oral language.

The best activity for me was “Telling a story” using the Audacity program. I enjoyed this activity. First, I was very nervous because I had never recorded my voice in order to improve my English. After I listened to my recording I repeated the activity several times. Then, I listened to my voice many times and finally I understood that this is an excellent strategy to use in the classroom. Now, I’m working with this activity and my 3rd grade students are very happy talking about their own information. They share their hobbies and interests. They can work alone and record their voices where they want. I think that, strategies like this help all students to improve their language development in a supportive and encouraging way.

Module 5 was one of my favorite. I really enjoyed each activity. I improved my speaking ability. I experimented with different type of expressive languages (happy, sad, love…) situations. I listened to my peers’ recordings. We created an authentic personal practice. This is my advice for my partners: “We should try to speak as often as possible. Please, speak English every moment you can”.

Writing Teaching Strategies

Writing can be difficult and time consuming for us, but like any complex job, writing is easier if we have the right tools. Writing strategies are the tools we can use to do our work better. I learned a lot of teaching strategies when I worked on module six. This module provided practice spaces, professional materials and links to writingrelated web sites. The writing strategies are deliberate and focused ways of thinking about writing in a fun manner.

When we write a composition, it is not enough to have good ideas or persuasive arguments. It is important to express them correctly. One of the most important purposes in this module is how to introduce us to written language and how to use it creatively and effectively to communicate.

I did many interesting activities like grammar and punctuation, my first story, sharing and using your pictures on photo peach website, book of poems, comics, a book review and even an essay. All the activities were great but I want to choose: â&#x20AC;&#x153;sharing and using your picturesâ&#x20AC;? because this teaching strategy is

wonderful and I really enjoyed inviting my peers to Zacatecas city using fantastic pictures and adding interesting information in order to present how beautiful and fascinating the capital of my State is.

I learned that the most important factor in writing exercises is that we need to be personally involved in order to make the learning experience of lasting value. At this moment, I know that a good composition has three important elements: an introduction, a body and a conclusion. It should also flow from sentence to sentence and connect the ideas in a clear and logical way. When we want to write something interesting we should write an attractive opening in order to acquire the readersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; attention and make them want to read more.

I worked very hard on every writing activity. I read my peersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; comments about my work. Thank you, Martha, Karina Guadalupe, Omar, Gabriela, and Eduardo. All your nice comments encouraged me to keep working hard. Every word you sent was motivating to me and congratulations to everyone for your excellent participation and great job in this Diploma.

ICT tools

In recent years, explosion of knowledge and internet access seriously challenged the traditional language of teaching and learning methodologies. In this Diploma, I analyzed how to use the â&#x20AC;&#x153;Webâ&#x20AC;? to teach and learn English. I tried different tools. I did many activities using the internet as resource. In the field of language learning and teaching, one of the main benefits of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) seem to be the progressive elimination of the time and space

limitations inherent in more traditional teaching situations. I learned that the implementation of ICT in teaching and learning English is very challenging.

Nowadays students are in touch with the new technology. They use it every day; watching TV, talking on cell phones, playing videogames, sharing photos or music, sending e-mails, and surfing the internet. As a teacher, I can recognize that the value of using ICT is considerable and works on a variety of levels to support both teaching and learning. The motivational aspect of ICT is clear. Students who are learning a new language find activities on the computer that they can do instantly. Also they feel that there is something that they can do and often as well as, if not better than their peers.

This Diploma offers a lot of interesting, exciting, funny, developmental, innovational and useful activities. I am going to talk about three that are most important to me:

The first tool is “Describing People, places and things” from module 6 activity 4.1. This web site http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/words/grammar/, help us with grammar, spelling, reading, writing, listening and vocabulary topics. I worked

grammar section with adjectives. You have the opportunity to choose one of the four principal icons “Factsheet (Find out all you need to know about adjectives on a printout-and-keep sheet), worksheet (practice using adjectives), game (play a game and learn about adjectives), and quizzes (grade your knowledge). This tool is very useful and appropriate for our secondary students in order to work in a funny way on grammar points.

The second tool is “How to tell a story” from module 5 activity 1.1 “Prepare a short story” using Audacity. This is a very useful tool in order to improve speaking skills. I’m working on third grade with this important tool and my students feel safer and happier in their speaking ability. They can hear their voices and evaluate their progress.

The last tool is “Photopeach” from module 6 activity 3.2.”Sharing and using your pictures”. This is very exciting tool. Students can create and publish a lot of interesting real stories using pictures, writing text below them and even adding their favorite song. They can send the link to their peers and enjoy each presentation. This tool is a true challenge activity. The combination of spoken, written, visual and picture support gives the learner the scope to engage in meaningful curriculum focused activities at a linguistic level that is matched to their level of English language development. So remember, “Creative use of ICT in the classroom can promote inclusion and reflect cultural and linguistic diversity”.

Lesson Planning

Writing a “lesson plan” is a preliminary and essential stage that helps increasing the success-rate of anything you are teaching. As teachers we must use them. When you are able to create your own lesson plans, it means that you have taken a giant step towards "owning" the content you teach and the methods you use and that are a good thing. Acquiring this ability is far more valuable than being able to use lesson plans made by others.

We as teachers create lesson plans to communicate instructional activities regarding specific subject-matter. The lesson plans developed by us contain student learning objectives, instructional procedures, required materials, and some written description of how the students will be evaluated. A lesson plan also needs to include general information (group, level, date, number of students.), general and activity objectives, time, etc.

In order to complete this unit I checked the web page about “Common Lesson Plan Models.” I found very useful examples that can help me develop my own lesson planning. There are fundamental components that I need to learn, such as; writing, revising, and improving my lesson plan. It is difficult to decide whether one lesson plan is better than another from the ones presented on the web page.

I believe that if we use a mixture with the Madeline Hunter's (Seven Steps), Bloom’s Taxonomy, Critical Thinking, and Multiple Intelligences (Howard Gardner's 7 Ways of Knowing) we can succeed in the classroom. The mentioned before it’s because Hunter’s approach is based on the sequence in presenting vocabulary or grammar points. Bloom’s Taxonomy and Critical Thinking are very helpful in setting the aim of the class. It provides examples about words that can be used in order to specify what your intention of setting an activity or task is. Finally, the Gardner’s 7 ways of thinking give you an opportunity to think about their ways of learning before planning a class. Focusing on one or two intelligences will not satisfied our students’ interests, so, we need to balance our classes to help our students learning process and improve their motivation to learn.

The steps for a presentation can be the following: a) For reading and listening presentations: 1. Pre - Reading: Teacher introduces the topic by showing an image and eliciting from it, brainstorming, prediction, matching, true / false questions, etc. 2. While - Reading: This step is divided in 2 tasks. (From easy to difficult) 2.1.

Task 1: Ss can scan the reading by looking at unknown words, they can answer true or false questions, etc.

2.2.

Task 2: Ask for more complicated questions.

3. Post – Reading: Ss will produce what they read or listened by writing an article, filling the blanks, create a conversation, role plays. 4. Follow Up: Ss will have the opportunity to produce the English language by practicing their speaking or writing. Some excellent activities that students might like are: running dictation, question master, debate, etc. b) For normal presentations (vocabulary or grammar): 1. Warm Up: It’s when you give students the opportunity to wake up and have them ready for the presentation. It can be a link backwards (to introduce) or forwards (to reinforce).

2. Presentation: In this stage, you will teach a grammar point or vocabulary by following the five steps of a presentation: 2.1.

Lead in.

2.2.

Elicitation.

2.3.

Presentation.

2.4.

Accurate Reproduction (Choral / Individual repetition)

2.5.

Immediate creativity.

3. Controlled Practice: Students have the opportunity to practice the grammar point presented in the previous step. 4. Free Practice: Students need to have practice in their productive skills by writing or speaking. (It depends in the context and grammar point). 5. Wrap Up: This is an activity that serves to recycle everything or just to have a game to relax students. There is no one “best way” to plan lessons. Regardless of the form or template, there are fundamental components of all lesson plans that you should learn to write, revise, and improve. We can search in the internet for sites that have good lesson plan models and adapt them to our students needs.

CONCLUSION: As a general conclusion, I would like to say that this Diploma is great due to the fact that is innovating, useful and practical course. With the excellent help of my tutor Alan, I could develop my knowledge in the English language, and more important my teaching strategies. During the course I experimented two roles; teacher and student.

I strongly recommend this updating type to all the teachers who are working with this special subject: English. I am very glad of being part of this course taught by the “UNAM” by the invitation of the SEP. I’m grateful with these two institutions that gave me the opportunity of improving my teaching practice. Another important aspect that I had from this Diploma was the opportunity to meet new people (pals) who I now consider my new friends.

Finally, I would like to say that this Diploma helped me to improve my language proficiency by practicing all the skills and giving me tools to improve my weaknesses and strengths. Besides, with all the Web sites I have as references I am able to teach English as a second language in a more interactive manner by having different ideas of how to adapt activities with my students. Now, I can consider myself as a 21 st Century teacher with the tools to manage my students in a more interactive way.

CED

CELE

UNAM

Diploma

Communicative

for

Skills

secondary

Teachers

My learning experience

Report by Eustolia Diaz Leon November 2009

My learning experience

This is my report focused on the main communicative, cultural and teaching aspects which I may incorporate to my practice. I really think my level is higher as I longed when I started following this Diploma Communicative Skills for secondary teachers.

CULTURAL LEARNING AWARENESS

In Reading

I learnt that British and American English is intentionally different since 1776. In the websites, I read and listened about English writers in American Stories. Read about Famous Trials like Amistad Incident where I found how slavery is in the past of American history.

And I knew about nowadays topics like bankruptcy in Words in the News.

In Listening

In the site BBC, 6 Minute English I enjoyed hearing about different types of clouds such as nimbus, cirrus and corymbs.

I learnt actuality topics watching authentic videos recorded in Australia, U K, New Zealand and America.

In Speaking

Audacity and Voicethread were the sites where I learnt how to become an English speaking partner. I knew about people of influence from all over the world.

In Writing

In the websites Photopeach, Bookr, ETTC Instant Poetry Forms, Comic Strips and writing models I learnt to share the real me.

We have to be able to select or to be suggested, including our students, the right authentic documents for reading and listening in English. We also can innovate using the speaking and writing websites of this Diploma.

NEW TEACHING STRATEGIES DISCOVERED

CED- CELE â&#x20AC;&#x201C; UNAM Diploma helped me to improve ICT skills. Quizzes, games and many learning and teaching language materials we can find using these websites

http://www.tcet.com/eaonline/MouseMaster/index.html

http://www.askoxford.com/?view=uk http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ice

http://www.studygs.net/index.htm http://free-english-study.com/home/grammar-index.html

http://www.interfacemagazine.co.nz/links.cfm?i=16 Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Type for gold, a game. http://www.brainyflix.com/words http://www.cdlponline.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=homepage http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/quizzes/index.shtml

http://www.englishpage.com/readingroom/readingroomintro.html my favorite! http://australianetwork.com/englishbites/stories/s1799378.htm http://www.englishlistening.com/startListeningNow.do http://www.dictationsonline.com/ Wow!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/general/sixminute/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLOBq2WcINY&NR=1

Site filled with brand new

knowledge. http://www.eslgold.com/speaking/discussion_techniques.html

Eight habits of highly effective 21st century teachers are related to these new teaching strategies We are fluent in tools and technologies. They facilitate, stimulate, moderate and manage communication and collaboration; adapting because we can manage imaginative ways to teach; collaborating; taking risks; learning, we have to be lifelong learners teachers as well as we expect from students.

READING TEACHING STRATEGIES Listen and read along sites and Adult Learning Activities were the most interesting exercises I found to improve my own learning: I could practice listening and reading at the same time.

Reading teaching strategies make easy to do the right pronunciation, they have ways to translate poetry meanings used in songs.

I had read a few English literatures before and in this Module I did like to spend my study hours reading (I almost cried with Bierceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge).

ENGLISH READING ROOM, FREE ON LINE NEWSPAPERS TOOK ME ALL OVER THE WORLD.

This Module, READING, was my first opportunity to deal with real spoken English language.

I used to believe I knew my English class curriculum. Now I’m quite sure there were too many things I did wrong.

LISTENING TEACHING STRATEGIES For me 6 MINUTE ENGLISH was the most difficult task because I hadn’t practiced listening from authentic audios before. I taught English language using tools such as subtitled movies and singing songs’ lyrics. I preferred romantic songs in order to grow interests in translating love phrases in my teenager students and grammar worked. That’s why oldies are my favorites. In movies I liked historic ones to get back in time and understand the past life styles. I have made a big mistake; I was not the best English teacher my peers believed in. I started to hear about Word Stress in this Diploma. So I had to study it hard and it took me some days to get it right. Word Stress pointed out to my teaching failures. It made clear my English deafness and opened my eyes in what I had missed in listening for so many years.

6 MINUTE ENGLISH couldn’t be easier because I had to come to a deep understanding of Word Stress as a new knowledge. I had to re play the audio CLOUDS several times in order to learn to listen well. Once I studied the topic Word Stress as much as I could, I feel deeply honored to have been a participant in this Educational Challenge.

SPEAKING TEACHING STRATEGIES

Audacity and Voicethread Tools were very useful to dare to speak English.

In these Tools I made mistakes in intonation, in pronunciation, in rhythm; improved my vocabulary and searched Web information to share interesting comments about people of influence. This was the first time I heard about Francisco Toledo, Mexico’s master painter.

In these Tools I recorded my own stories and hearing myself and the ones from my peers still keep me filled with satisfaction.

This Unit helped me to notice that I have not been a good English teacher because my students don’t learn to speak English in my class. I only had taught them to read and understand written English.

Module 5, SPEAKING, was the most useful. It made me feel confident to speak English after 26 years Teaching Career.

WRITING TEACHING STRATEGIES

•

Tall Stories are a fun way of writing where unbelievable ideas appear fluently free. Grammar is involved and nice vocabulary.

•

Instant Poetry Forms by Educational Technology Training Center put me in the serious way of writing. Interactions with autobiographical forms where feelings and memories come up. Vocabulary must be very large and selective.

•

The hardest time in this Diploma were writing the comic strip and the visual story. I had problems using the ICTs tools. When I come to the end I just thought about the huge information I need to learn.

•

Writing isn’t a difficult task. I enjoy writing informal notes in English as a hobby but formal writing in autobiographical stories was fantastic. We, the participants, almost meet each other using our stories and imagination.

•

Here is Sweet dreams the piece of poetry my peer commented about

SWEET DREAMS Last night I dreamed of fireflies, there were fireflies everywhere, they were flying around with the wind,

they were lighting in my darkest night, they were happy playing in the forest, they were twinkling much besides my eyes, they were landing on my lazy hips, as they raced about my bed. They were on the grass for lurking, they were on the arrow of time to glow, they were passing in the middle, they were passing at the end, there were fireflies, fireflies, fireflies, for as far as I could see... when I woke today, I noticed there were ashes all over me.

ABOUT

INFORMATION

TECHNOLOGIES TOOLS

AND

COMMUNICATION

Communicative Skills for secondary teachers involves two Diplomas at a time. I couldn’t imagine having ICT tools in it. I’m very pleased to be living “10 Competencies for teaching” by Perrenaud with myself such as: •

Administrate one’s own continuous training

•

Use new technologies

•

Inform and involve peers

•

Work in team

•

Conceive and evolve differentiation tools

Thanks to these ICT skills Diploma I am able to direct my personal development, take decisions, analyze and share information and search objectives. ICT tools are there to be used in Language learning situations. The skills we have learned in this Diploma trained us to make nowadays schooling projects. This is the importance of this Diploma. I select three tools for my own learning and three teaching tools. Three ICT Tools for my own learning: 1. Photopeach 2. ICTT Poetry forms 3. ENGLISH PAGE/English Reading Room, free on line newspapers, magazines and books. Three ICT Teaching tools: 1. MANYTHINGS/Interesting things for ESL Students. A fun study site with word grammar, quizzes, exercises, proverbs, songs, jokes, signs and much more for learners of English as a Second Language.

2. WORDS IN THE NEWS. The newest about people real lives in the authentic English speaking world.

3. MOVIE SEGMENTS TO ASSES GRAMMAR GOALS. This site has great ideas to study grammar from watching amazing pictures. We are able to suggest and create our own material according to our studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; interest.

LESSON PLANNING INSTRUCTIONAL SCAFFOLDING

I use the constructivist educational theory of Instructional scaffolding. Scaffolding Instruction as a teaching strategy originates from Vygotskyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Sociocultural theory and his concept of the zone of proximal development (ZPD). The activities provided in Scaffolding instruction are just beyond the level of what the learner can do alone. The more capable other provides the scaffolds so that the learner can accomplish (with assistance) the tasks that he or she could otherwise not complete, thus helping the learner through the ZPD. The temporary scaffolding provided by the instructor is removed to reveal the impressive permanent structure of student understanding.

Gradually, with scaffolding, students are able to direct their own attention, plan, and control their activities. In my context I’m trying to be a constructivist teacher guiding my students into discovering the topic to be learnt, building up curiosity, challenge and the confidence in the students to believe in themselves when learning English as a Second Language. I used to be a perfect traditional teacher, a behavior engineer with no chances for creativity, just following Bloom’s Taxonomy. I was wrong.

“I believe that the primary goal of schooling is intellectual, not academic. Academic has to do with what people study. Intellectual means using your mind. Every human being is by nature an intellectual.” Debora Meier.

My learning experience By Sandra Luz Fierro

First of all I would like to say that I never studied English in a course like, so t I did have no idea about all these kind of tutorial pages we checked. Thought this course, I’ve been learning about how to improve and learned about pronunciation, vocabulary, writing, reading, listening, speaking; The principal skills of the any language. Nowadays in education we’re talking about competencies and one of them is to teach how to learn by myself and another one is to be capable to use technology in order to take advantage of the resources of the internet offers to us. So this course taught me not only about English that I believe this the principal objective but her, I learned some useful strategies about teaching and of course I learned about how to use technology I can see, these are the three main objective to this course. In my case, this course was a little bit difficult because I don’t have a lot of free time; however, I’m glad I am finishing this course because many times I thought in giving it up. Now, I can see all the advantages for instance I learned a lot of vocabulary because I had to research how to say something I didn’t know before as a result of this course I’ve been practicing grammar structures that I almost forgot because I do not use a lot of language. I would like to write a very short summary about each module:

Reading, I love reading. It was my favorite module.

I learned about scanning and

skimming, these strategies are very useful and I learned a lot the history and culture of the English language. Listening, I learned some strategies about pronunciation, I learned about minimal pairs and I practiced some strategies about word stress, intonation, pause and rhythm. In the module of speaking, I learned phrases, linking words, sequencing words and the most important to feel confident to recorder my opinions. Writing, I have being writing a lot in this module, we had a lot of interesting activities but my first poem book was my favorite. As you can see the most important thing for me about this course is that Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve already known many tutorials where I can practice English in order to improve my level of English and learning lot of interesting strategies I would like to use with my students. Language and culture About language and culture I can see how they are involved each other because language is a mixture of history, traditions and of course culture. As a student, teacher or a speaker of another language we need to know about history, culture and traditions. Sometimes when Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m checking the history of a country or language I found that other countries are involved each other in the history of the others. Money, power, politic and ambition are the key about how the history of a country had changed. This is important because when a country changed its traditions and culture took other way. In this part of the course I traveled around the time of the English language. I could understand how different the modern English is to the old English, for example with the legend of Beowulf; here we can see how the language developed. Another example is the difference between American and British English, why the pronunciation is a little bit different, it was promoted by Americans and their reason were good.

Some of these reasons were power, money, politics and they wanted being

separated from the British government to only about government they wanted being separated in language, too.

English language learning and teaching

I learned about grammar, idioms, and same words with very similar written form or similar pronunciation in English, stress in order to pronounce better, minimal pairs, reading strategies, etc… I realized they are very useful. Talking about reading I learned two specific strategies: These are s: skimming and scanning; they are excellent so I found them out very useful to teach my students in order to develop their competence in reading. About listening, the strategy of thought groups it’s very useful because first we need to focus on the pronunciation and noticed where the pause is. This activity helps in order to check punctuation and in addition we improve our pronunciation. These are the reasons why I would like to teach it to my students. In writing we saw lot of resources but I found very interesting my first poem book and commix, why? Let me explain, the poem book will help my students to think in English write in English, and it is an excellent way to write their emotions, feelings or thoughts what is communication the principal purpose to teach English in secondary; And the commix page, I think my students will find it interesting and it is according about their needs and interest. As teacher we need to adapt the topic in an imaginative ways, we need to adapt software and hardware I order to take advantages of the technology. As a teacher we need to be visionary, use our imagination and creativity; they are the crucial components in all times about learning and teaching. It is very important model behavior, we need to model tolerance with the problems of communication of our students, and even we need to take in account their personal problems because they affected their process of learning. Learning and teaching involved lot of elements but, I would like mention two basic aspects , one of them is as a teacher we need to be a leader, leadership is crucial to the success or failure of any project, secondly, we need to learn all the time learn and communicate anywhere, anytime, the teacher must be anywhere and anytime.

Teaching strategies I’m going to mention one or two activities from each module I find out very useful for my students and I would like to teach using them and how I would like to use it. Reading: I enjoyed this module but now I ‘m going to talk about one activity I like, It consisted on selected a text, this text is about why Americans changed spelling and pronunciation, then we had to answer two questions about our opinion and our findings

about the text. The interesting her was or is that when I was listening the file I could see what I was listening and reading, obviously I checked the vocabulary. In this activity I worked with: reading, listening, grammar, vocabulary, a little writing. I believe we can find a text according to our students in context and in level of English. I truly think that Reading in this way is very interesting and motivating. Speaking: I believe all the strategies and resources are very useful to us if we decided to

use them obviously we need to adapt some of them about our real context. Music clip: I will use it with my tape recorder in my classroom, so they start writing, I would like to use this activity in Christmas with some music clips about that, Then they write a letter to a friend telling him/ her about what the music evokes to them. An important person in his/ her life: First they prepare their descriptions in sheets of paper in order to help them if they need a correction or helping with some words, before that they will practice their descriptions out loud in order to be sure, finally they present their product in an oral way.

I think these kinds of activities re moved feelings, emotions and thoughts. As a teacher I can notice it’s one of the best way to encourage students to communicate their ideas here we can see many skills are involved because communication is always like this. Writing: I would like to use these activities with my students I think this is a wonderful and

creativity way to develop writing skill. One is writing a tale and writes poems, these activities are very similar. Here the web page guides us in order to complete some sentences and then the magic, we have or poem or our tale. Here students can practice, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, nouns, etc.

In this part I would like talking about which activities I really think I’m going to use with my students and why. As I said before all skills are very important, however, one of these skills I never worked a lot is writing, why? Because I though it was a very difficult skill. During this course I was learning how I can use the technology and obviously new strategies about teaching that’s why I’m going to start with writing. Activities I select:

•

A poem book: It’s an amazing web page where we can write poems. First of all we need to choose a topic from the list, secondly we complete the phrases with our own ideas before that we can read our poem but if your poem doesn’t like you, you can try it again.

•

Make beliefs commix: I think commix it’s a wonderful tool, first of all because pictures or images are cartoons and they can create their own character, they can explore their descriptions (well, descriptions because I chose this tool for the topic describe people and animals) Later on when they finished they will share their comix to their partners.

•

Tale: In this case is something similar like the web page where we can write poems, but the difference it’s that here we can create tales. It’s similar first we need to choose a topic then you need to complete the phrases in order to complete the story but in this activity the web page asks for specific word. For instance: adjective, nouns, places, verbs in ing, in present. Etc… I think it’s a wonderful to practice writing like that and at the same time practice grammar.

As a teacher, I can’t turn around technology. ICT tools affect our students, I’ve been observing my students and young people how they use their mobiles, surf on the net and how they talked and use technology. That’s why, in the few past decades the education has been having problems with the quality and the results of the education, I mean unfortunately for young people the majority of their professors are afraid how to use computers bit it seems very complicated to teach in a traditionally way more time. It’s time to face the truth about the advantages of technology. I said many times I don’t like technology and in my case is truth bit I know it’s the best way to motivate my students. Although I’ve been resisting about use technology I would like to try some resources and tools that I learned in this Diploma with my students.

LEARNING EXPERIENCE

JOSÉ GÓMEZ PÉREZ ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING AWARENESS.

DURING THIS DIPLOMA COURSE I HAVE LEARNT A LOT OF

THINGS

EXAMPLE:

GRAMMAR,

LANGUAGE

CONTENT,

PRONUNCIATION

FOR

(INTONATION

PATTERNS), IDIOMATIC EXPRESSIONS, PHRASAL VERBS, ETC.

THE WAY I USED TO STUDY GRAMMAR BEFORE THIS

COURSE WAS THE TRADITIONAL ONE: BY ONLY READING GRAMMAR BOOKS. WEB PAGES, NOW

I HAD NEVER STUDIED ENGLISH ON I KNOW HOW TO STUDY GRAMMAR ON

INTERNET USING A WIDE RANGE OF RESOURCES WHICH ARE VERY INTERESTING.

WORKING ON A TECHNOLOGICAL

PLATFORM HAS BEEN INVALUABLE TO ME IN SPITE OF SEVERAL PROFESSIONAL DUTIES DURING THESE MONTHS.

I HAD TO CARRY OUT

I DO BELIEVE MY LANGUAGE

LEVEL CHANGED A LOT, AND THE MOST IMPORTANT THING OF ALL IS THAT THIS.

I´M STILL LEARNING ENGLISH AS I WRITE

OF COURSE I HAVE SO MANY WEAKNESSES…BUT

THEY´RE GONNA ALLOW ME TO IMPROVE MY LANGUAGE.

CULTURAL LEARNING AWARENESS

ABOUT THE CULTURAL LEARNING AWARENESS, THAT IS ONE IMPORTANT ASPECT IN LANGUAGE LEARNING,

LEARNED SOME CULTURAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE

ENGLISH SPEAKING COMMUNITY AND THE MEXICAN ONE. FOR EXAMPLE: AN OLD TRADITION IN ENGLAND IS HAVING A CUP OF TEA IN THE AFTERNOON AND

I CAN EASILY

EXPLAIN THAT TO MY STUDENTS PLAYING A SONG TO THE CLASS.

SO I THINK MUSIC IS AN EXCELLENT

WAY TO FOCUS OUR STUDENTS´ ATTENTION TO CULTURE.

BEATLES ENGLISH

AMERICAN AND ENGLISH FOLKLORE CAN BE

TAUGHT BY SHOWING PICTURES OR MOVIES TO THE

ENGLISH CLASS. EVEN FICTION BOOKS ARE USEFUL TO POINT OUT CULTURAL ASPECTS.

BUT MAINLY THE USE OF

ENGLISH WEB PAGES IS ONE OF THE BEST RESOURCES TO GET STUDENTS INVOLVE IN ANOTHER CULTURE.

NEW TEACHING STRATEGIES DISCOVERED

SOME OF THE TEACHING STRATEGIES THAT I CONSIDERED IMPORTANT ARE RELATED TO THREE OR FOUR HABITS MENTIONED IN THE TEXT, PARTICULARLY ADAPTING,

LEARNING

AND

BEING

VISIONARY.

AS A

TEACHER

I MUST ADAPT TO THE 21ST CENTURY, WHICH

MEANS

THAT

TECHNOLOGICAL TEACHING

MUST TOOLS

EXPERIENCE.

IMPORTANT NEED.

BE FOR

ABLE ACHIEVING

TO A

MANAGE DYNAMIC

BEING CURRENT IS A VERY

AS EVERYONE, TEACHERS MUST BE

LIFE-LONG LEARNERS AS WELL.

THERE´S SO MUCH TO

LEARN ABOUT WEB TECHNOLOGIES AND WE CAN USE THAT KNOWLEDGE WITH IMAGINATION TO CAPTIVATE OUR STUDENTS. SEEMS

TECHNOLOGY IS CHANGING FASTER AND IT

EASIER

FOR

STUDENTS

ADAPT

NEW

TECHNOLOGIES, SO IT IS PRETTY LOGICAL TO ME THAT TEACHERS HAVE TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THAT SITUATION.

READING TEACHING STRATEGIES

AFTER REVIEWING THE THIRD MODULE I REALIZED THAT

EFFICIENT.

READING

PRACTICE

HAS

BECOME

I USED MANY READING COMPREHENSION

STRATEGIES AND ALL OF THEM HAD A POSITIVE IMPACT ON MY LEARNING.

RECOGNIZING DIFFERENT KIND OF TEXTS

HELPED ME TO IDENTIFY THEIR PURPOSES MAKING THEM EASIER TO UNDERSTAND.

EVEN THE USE OF SKIMMING IS A

GOOD STRATEGY TO RECOGNIZE WHETHER A TEXT IS INFORMATIVE, DESCRIPTIVE, PERSUASIVE OR INSTRUCTIVE.

SKIMMING HELPS ME TO IDENTIFY AND ANALYZE TEXT STRUCTURE. WORDS

TO INFER THE MEANING OF UNFAMILIAR

USING

STRATEGIES

CONTEXT

CLUES

WAS

THE

I USED THE MOST. TWO STRATEGIES: “TO

ACTIVE PRIOR KNOWLEDGE” BY

“ASKING QUESTIONS”

BEFORE READING IS SOMETHING WHICH DO WITH

ONE

I NEVER USED TO

ENGLISH TEXTS BEFORE THIS DIPLOMA COURSE

HAD BEGUN.

BUT I MUST ADMIT THE MOST INTERESTING ACTIVITIES FOR

WERE

“INTENSIVE READING” AND MAINLY

“READING FOR PLEASURE”. WHY DID I LIKE THE “INTENSIVE READING” ACTIVITY? BECAUSE I READ, I LISTENED

AND

SIMULTANEOUSLY, VOCABULARY

WATCHED

AND

AFTER

ACTIVITIES

VIDEO

THAT

ALMOST

THERE

HELPED

WERE TO

UNDERSTAND BETTER THE STORIES YOU HAVE SELECTED FOR THIS COURSE.

AND WHY WAS THE “READING FOR

PLEASURE” ACTIVITY THE ONE

I LIKED THE MOST DURING

THIS LEARNING PROCESS?”

THAT IS BECAUSE I PREFER READING AS QUICKLY AS IT CAN BE POSSIBLE.

YOU HAVE SAID: “REMEMBER THAT

THE MORE WE READ THE MORE WE UNDERSTAND AND THE MORE WE ENJOY READING” AND

I HAVE ALWAYS ENJOYED

READING FICTION BOOKS SO IT IS PRETTY NATURAL TO ME TO READ A BOOK WITHOUT GOING TOO MUCH TO A DICTIONARY.

BUT IN FACT, AS AN ENGLISH READER, I

NEED TO KNOW SO MANY WORDS SO

I SUBSTITUTE

THAT ACTIVITY

(FINDING WORDS IN A DICTIONARY) WITH

OTHER READING STRATEGIES, FOR EXAMPLE

“READING

AGAIN TO FIND THE WORDS IN THEIR CONTEXT AND TRYING TO INFER THE MEANING OF THEM. PREFER THE

THAT´S WHY I

“READING FOR PLEASURE” ACTIVITY. IT

HAS ALWAYS BEEN A PLEASURE TO READ THAT WAY.

LISTENING TEACHING STRATEGIES.

I THINK ONE DIFFICULT ACTIVITY IN MODULE 5 “LISTENING TEACHING STRATEGIES” WAS THE AUTHENTIC LISTENING EXERCISE.

THOUGH REAL LISTENING IS A

NECESSARY PRACTICE TO BE DONE ALL THE TIME, SOME

DIFFICULTIES

WHEN

LISTENED

I HAD

NATIVE

SPEAKERS AND TOOK NOTES AT THE SAME TIME.

DICTATION ISN´T AS SIMPLE AS EVERYONE COULD IMAGINE.

I DO KNOW NOW THIS ACTIVITY IS GOOD FOR

DEVELOPING A CLOSE LISTENING SKILL.

I WAS A BIT

INSECURE ABOUT WRITING DOWN EXACTLY WHAT HEARING, BUT

I WAS

I REALIZED IT IS A PRETTY GOOD EXERCISE.

BUT MAYBE THE MOST DIFFICULT ACTIVITY TO ME WAS RECOGNIZING PHRASAL VERBS IN CONVERSATIONS OR DISCOURSES.

AS YOU POINTED OUT PHRASAL VERBS

COME UP ALL THE TIME SO IT IS IMPORTANT TO LEARN THEM WELL. IT IS A BIT EASIER TO UNDERSTAND THESE IDIOMATIC EXPRESSIONS WHEN YOU ARE READING.

BUT

WHEN YOU LISTEN TO THEM AND YOU DON´T HAVE THE CHANCE TO GO TO A DICTIONARY, YOU ARE MAYBE MISSING SOME MAIN IDEAS.

I DIDN´T FIND THIS ACTIVITY DIFFICULT BECAUSE OF THE TEXT SELECTION, NOR BECAUSE OF THE GIVEN INSTRUCTIONS.

THE TEXT LENGTH WAS NORMAL, I THINK.

THE TASK ITSELF IS NOT COMPLICATED. SO WHY DO I CONSIDER THIS TASK AS A DIFFICULT ONE?

SIMPLY

BECAUSE THERE ARE A LOT OF PHRASAL VERBS AND MANY OF THEM ARE NOT THAT OBVIOUS AS

I COULD WISH.

LEARNING PHRASAL VERBS COULD HAVE BEEN EASIER IF THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN EXERCISES WITH THESE VERBS

+ PREPOSITION (S) STRUCTURES SINCE THE

BEGINNING OF THE COURSE. MODULE.

I MEAN EXERCISES IN EACH

NONETHELESS, I HAVE ADDED SOME OF THOSE

WEB PAGES TO FAVORITE’S FOLDER.

AND I WILL CONTINUE

STUDYING PHRASAL VERBS LITTLE BY LITTLE BECAUSE THEY APPEAR VERY OFTEN ON SPEECH AND IF IMPROVE MY LISTENING SKILL

I WANT TO

I´LL NEED TO RECOGNIZE

THEM.

SPEAKING TEACHING STRATEGIES. THERE WERE MANY INTERESTING ACTIVITIES IN THIS SPEAKING RECORDING

MODULE.

REALLY

EXPERIENCES

ENJOYED

USING

ALL

SOFTWARE

THE LIKE

AUDACITY OR VOICE THREAD. DESCRIBING PEOPLE USING A RECORDING TOOL WAS A BRAND NEW EXPERIENCE TO ME AS WELL AS CHALLENGING SINCE OVERCOME MY NERVOUSNESS.

I NEEDED TO

THE MOST USEFUL ACTIVITY FOR ME WAS TALKING ABOUT PEOPLE OF INFLUENCE IN THE PROVIDED TOOL.

HOW WAS THIS ACTIVITY LIKE? WHICH WERE ITS CHARACTERISTICS? AN

HOW COULD I USE THIS RESOURCE IN

ENGLISH CLASS? WELL, LET´S START BY SAYING THAT

IT IS POSSIBLE TO USE IT WITH SECONDARY STUDENTS SINCE THEY ARE MORE FAMILIARIZED WITH THIS KIND OF TECHNOLOGICAL

ENVIRONMENT

THAN

ARE.

FURTHERMORE, THE PHASE THEY ARE GOING THROUGH MAKES THEM ADMIRE A LOT OF PEOPLE, THUS THIS ACTIVITY CANNOT BE SO DIFFICULT FOR THEM.

ON THE

OTHER HAND THE ACTIVITY ITSELF CAN ALLOW STUDENTS TO INTERACT WITH THEIR PEERS.

IN ADDITION, IT IS A REAL COMMUNICATIVE SITUATION WHICH HELPED ME TO DEVELOP SELF-CONFIDENCE. IS A LOT OF FUN, TOO.

AND IT

WRITING TEACHING STRATEGIES

DEVELOPING WRITING ABILITY REQUIRES FOCUSING ON GRAMMAR AND THERE WERE MANY ACTIVITIES USED IN THIS MODULE IN ORDER TO DEVELOP MY WRITING SKILLS. WILL MENTION SOME OF THEM. USING A TEMPLATE

CREATING “TALL TALES”

(IN A WEB PAGE WHERE I HAD TO

CHOOSE NOUNS, ADJECTIVES, VERBS, ETC. IN ORDER TO CREATE FUNNY STORIES) IS A GOOD WRITING TEACHING STRATEGY

BECAUSE

CONFIDENCE.

CAN

DEVELOP

STUDENTS´

CREATING A BOOK OF POEMS IS A SIMILAR

ACTIVITY AND YOU CAN ILLUSTRATE AND PUBLISH YOUR BOOK USING

BOOKR RESOURCE. A VERY INTERESTING

AND FUNNY ACTIVITY WAS TO CREATE A COMIC STRIP; THIS WAS ONE OF MY FAVORITE BECAUSE CARTOONS.

I´VE ALWAYS LOVED

AND I THINK IT IS A GOOD WAY TO WRITE

CONCISE TEXTS,

I MEAN YOU HAVE TO TELL A WHOLE

STORY USING JUST A FEW WORDS AND THAT MAKES YOU THINK IT OVER CARTOONS!).

(I SPENT SO MUCH TIME TO WRITE THREE

ANOTHER GOOD STRATEGY IS TO TELL A

STORY USING PICTURES PHOTOPEACH.

(IT WAS MY FAVORITE) WITH

CREATING A VISUAL STORY WITH BRIEF

CAPTIONS ON EVERY PICTURE IS A VERY FASCINATING

TASK.

I THINK THIS COULD BE A VERY GOOD SUGGESTION

FOR A SCHOOL PROJECT AT THE END OF AN

ENGLISH UNIT

TO ASSESS STUDENTS’ PROGRESS.

FINALLY I´D LIKE TO SAY THAT ALL THE ACTIVITIES WERE EXCITING BECAUSE WE HAD A REAL AUDIENCE AND VERY GOOD WRITING MODELS TO FOLLOW; WITHOUT THEM WRITING COULD HAVE BEEN MUCH MORE DIFFICULT.

ABOUT ICT TOOLS

ICT

(INFORMATION

COMMUNICATION

AND

TECHNOLOGIES) ARE VERY IMPORTANT RESOURCES ON ENGLISH

LANGUAGE

LEARNING

PROCESS.

SOME

TECHNOLOGIES ARE VERY COMMON TODAY AND YOU CAN USE THEM PRACTICALLY EVERYWHERE.

AMONG THEM,

INTERNET HOLDS A SPECIAL AND UNIQUE PLACE. IT IS ALSO VERY POPULAR AMONG TEENAGERS AND IT HAS A GREAT TRANSCENDENCE FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS. AS AN

AND,

ENGLISH TEACHER, I AM AWARE ABOUT ALL THOSE

THINGS.

I FOUND MODULE 6 VERY INTERESTING. ITS ACTIVITIES WERE VERY FUNNY AND USEFUL FOR MY LEARNING AND THE

THREE

TOOLS

THAT

I CONSIDER THE MOST

APPROPRIATE FOR MY STUDENTS ARE:

TO TELL A STORY WITH PHOTOPEACH, ADDING PICTURES AND MUSIC, AMONG OTHER CHARACTERISTICS.

IT IS

POSSIBLE TO CREATE A VISUAL STORY WITH BRIEF CAPTIONS ON EVERY PICTURE.

I THINK THIS ACTIVITY IS

A VERY GOOD SUGGESTION FOR A SCHOOL PROJECT

(E.G. AT THE END OF AN ENGLISH UNIT) TO ASSESS STUDENTS’ PROGRESS.

TO CREATE A COMIC STRIP. I THINK IT IS A GOOD WAY TO WRITE CONCISE TEXTS, BECAUSE YOU HAVE TO TELL A WHOLE STORY USING JUST A FEW ELEMENTS AND THAT MAKES YOU THINK IT OVER SLOWLY IN ORDER TO FIND THE RIGHT WORDS. IT CAN BE DIFFICULT AT FIRST, BUT LATER ON

I´M SURE IT WOULD BE A VERY USEFUL

RESOURCE.

CREATING “TALL TALES” USING A TEMPLATE. THIS TOOL ALLOWS YOU TO SELECT A TOPIC AND TO CHOOSE NOUNS, ADJECTIVES, VERBS, ETC. IN ORDER TO WRITE FUNNY

STORIES.

I´M SURE THIS CAN DEVELOP

STUDENTS´ CONFIDENCE.

LESSON PLANNING.

CRITICAL

SELECTED

TAXONOMY)

BECAUSE

THINKING

CONSIDER

(BLOOM´S THE

MOST

APPROPRIATE WRITING LESSON PLAN FOR MY CONTEXT. IT IS CLEAR ENOUGH AND EASY TO ADOPT AND, ACTUALLY, IT IS NOT AS DIFFERENT AS THE ONE WE WORK WITH.

AS A

MATTER OF FACT, THIS WRITING LESSON PLAN INCLUDES THE MAIN ASPECTS WE TEACHERS CONSIDER MOST OF THE TIME WHEN PLANNING A LESSON.

ALTHOUGH CONTRIBUTION

LIKED

HOWARD

GARDNER´S

“MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES: SEVEN WAYS

OF KNOWING” TO PLAN A WRITING LESSON MORE THAN

BLOOM´S TAXONOMY, I DEFINITELY CHOOSE THE SECOND ONE BECAUSE

I WORK IN A TELESECONDARY SCHOOL

AND, EVEN THOUGH

I HAVE ONLY ELEVEN STUDENTS THIS

YEAR IN A UNIQUE GROUP,

I HAVE TO TEACH SPANISH,

MATH, SCIENCE, GEOGRAPHY, SINALOA HISTORY, ARTS, ETC. AND THAT WAY TO PLAN A LESSON SEEMS EASIER TO ME AS YOU CAN IMAGINE.

THE WAY I KNOW MY STUDENTS SHOULD BE THE BEST REASON TO SELECT

GARDNER´S SEVEN WAY OF KNOWING

(LOGICAL, VERBAL, INTERPERSONAL, MUSICAL, VISUAL, INTRAPERSONAL AND KINESTHETIC) BUT, AS BEFORE,

I MENTIONED

I DON´T HAVE ENOUGH TIME TO PLAN A LESSON

USING THAT FORMAT BECAUSE

I PLAN FIVE OR SIX

LESSONS EVERY DAY.

BLOOM´S

TAXONOMY

KNOWLEDGE,

(

COMPREHENSION, APPLICATION, ANALYSIS, SYNTHESIS AND

EVALUATION) IS MORE RELATED TO TELESECONDARY

METHODOLOGY.

My Learning Experience. By Susana Hernรกndez

Through this Diploma course Communicative Skills for Secondary Teachers, I have learnt many things that helped me to understand clearly, how technology and distance learning can help people. I also collaborate with great colleagues which wonderful work pushed me to try and do my best. Thank you all of you and to our tutor Alan Sรกnchez Vรกzquez

English language learning awareness

Learning to learn English through Internet tools and resources

When I started to work on this Diploma course I realized that my language was in an intermediate level. I also thought that I already knew how to use the resources of the Internet, but I was completely wrong. Every day is changing and adding new interesting and helpful sites. On this Diploma course I learnt much more in how technology can help people to be update. As a learner I have found a new ways to learn English. I can mention some advantages of distance learning; as the use

a digital dictionary, some quizzes that can help us to enjoy using English while also widening our vocabulary. Now I have more resources to take a hand and do my classes more interesting and innovators. Reading In

this

module

learnt

skills

reading. I practiced some activities of readings and grammar of interesting topics that helped me to improve my comprehension. There is a section where I worked Grammar, vocabulary and Pronunciation. I think this is very interesting strategy to teach. Students are listening to the text while are reading. There are words in bold that attract the attention of the students then they see the same words with their meaning, beside they hear the real pronunciation of each word. Now I can read texts with more complexity. Listening In real life is necessary to listen carefully in order to understand new information. The listening exercises in this module were based on authentic dialogues and opinions. There were several topics that I worked on but the most interesting to me was â&#x20AC;&#x153;thought groupsâ&#x20AC;?. I watched a video where I had to identify the pauses of the sentences.

also practiced on many web sites that gave me clues and ideas to understand a real conversation between native speakers. Speaking

also

learnt

speaking

strategies,

through

activities which I had to correct myself about pronunciation. There were activities where I shared them with my partners.

It was something different where I had a chance to express my ideas and hear the views of my partners through a videoconference and sites on the net. These activities helped to rich my vocabulary and speak with more fluency and confidence.

Writing The writing section was difficult to me but at the same time the most enjoyable.

I did many

activities that werenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t easy to produce; the activities encouraged me to use English to express personal ideas and feelings and, where possible was, to use my imagination. It was not demanded literary talent.

I think writing is difficult but it could be improved with practicing. I felt my level more adequate for an English Teacher. We never stop to learn something new, so my English level will rise through along the life. I have to practice the four aspects of the language, in order to improve them and transmit truthful knowledge to my students.

Cultural aspects I have learnt on this course through different activities that have included cultural awareness of English Speaking Community. On the module 2; Advantages of learning English using Internet sites. I found an interesting site where I learnt a lot about Canadian Culture, for example I read something about CN Tower; this is in Toronto City in the Province of Ontario and is the tallest tower in the world, I also learnt how Terry Fox fought against cancer. There are more interesting subjects in this site. There is a reading activity that was focusing on History of United States of America â&#x20AC;&#x153;Amistad Incidentâ&#x20AC;?. This is a good way to practice English grammar, reading and learn some of History too.

On the listening module, I used New York Times conversation I heard English for native speakers; on the English Listening Lounge I heard different kinds of accents from people around the

world. All these aspects helped me to learn more about English culture. The New York Times and The BBC have helped a lot of people, who wants to learn with their sections of teaching English. There is a section on speaking module that I learnt a lot about English culture is on â&#x20AC;&#x153;Improve English fluency with chunks!â&#x20AC;?

I practiced

collocations and idioms, Common polite expressions. These words are used in everyday Communication for native speakers. To

writing

students,

would

attractive

put

practice

activities to involve students to real life. I

would

include

entertainment.

Students like music and movies so I can

use

The

Forum

Movies

and

grammar to practice their assessment and take advantage of their likes.

I was a student of Secondary School, and I know what teenagers are interesting on. It is important to observe what is happening around us, because students put more attention to something different and if it is something from aboard is much easier to get their attention. There are many resources in different cultures that can help us to teach and learn English.

New teaching strategies discovered

Teachers are most of the time an example to follow by students. Teachers should put in practice the eight habits that Andrew Churches mentions:

Adapting,

Being

visionary,

Collaborating

Learning,

Communicating,

Modelling

behavior

Taking and

risks,

Leading.

Nowadays the social and education aspects have changed. This is the reason that to be a teacher is no only to stand in front of students and performance the whole lesson. Teachers have the responsibility to get good citizens able to face all the arbitrariness that the society has. Teaching values with the examples no only with words. Teachers

have

demonstrate

that

take

technology

opportunity is

easy

and and

different way to teach and learn any topic. Where I discovered there are many ways for teaching and learning English that help me to upgrade and try to do my best in the classroom with the students.

To improve the competitions in English is an important challenge for teachers to teach English in English. This has to be one of the most important strategy that I have to put in practice.

Each module presents a rich variety of material; the reading material has exercises of quizzes that help measure studentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s knowledge. There

350

is an activity on Speaking Module where students can hear their own voice, which could be fun for them.

There are activities where strategies could change according with their flexibility, their combination of directed and open ended exercises, their ability to be used for both spoken and written activities.

Seeing the differences of each student and adapt the topics according with the different studentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s intelligences and aptitudes.

There is something else that I learnt from the activities, that mistakes are an important part of the learning process. As teacher I will correct mistakes, even though reaching for new language is the better grade.

Taking risk and adopt the technologies as tools of teaching and get a meaningful knowledge, involving teachers and students in innovative types of research projects.

Teachers have to develop the ability to demonstrate to their students how these Technologies can be used for academic purposes, and convey to their students the educational advantages of computers and the Internet.

350

Reading, teaching strategies

One of the big challenges that English teachers have to face it is when they teach some abilities of understanding texts. This problem is for the importance of the English language as tool of communication that we find it in any situation, and students are facing every day.

Some times we don’t like to read at all, even in our first language. So Teachers have to look out for strategies or techniques that can capture the interest of students on English readings.

My vocabulary has been improving through readings because of the quizzes

exercises

that

had

done

along

this

Diploma

course.

I have learnt how to comprehend a reading by skimming and scanning strategy and how to learn new vocabulary on the “BBC Learning English”.

On the web sites that I used, I read about American History, American English evolution, News, Car crashes in USA, Foster children, and much more, that I did know them before.

I had the opportunity to read “Twenty Thinking Strategies Readers Use to Comprehend Nonfiction Texts”, some of them are;

350

•

Activate Prior Knowledge;

•

Ask questions: Before, During and after Reading;

•

Classify or Categorize information;

•

Distinguish facts from opinions;

•

Identify author’s View; What did the author Think?

•

Identify main ideas and supporting details

•

Make references and draw conclusion.

Those think strategies are really helpful. Students are asked to analyze the reading closely through those reading strategies. At the end of the reading students can analyze, compare, and evaluate.

I think one of the most interesting strategies for reading is on activity 6.2. Reading, listening, watching a video and vocabulary, we can find this kind of strategy on line in the follow site; Adult Learning Activities, California Distance Learners; Cell Phone Safety, In this one I

read a

article about If is safe to talk on the cell phone while driving at the same time. I heard the story, After that I watched a video. I did exercises where I could learn new words. I checked spelling. Finally I did a Matching game to concrete the already learned. This kind of sites helps students by different techniques. Students are listening to the story, watching images and reading the text. After that they can practice with different exercises as spelling, answer questions that put attention on comprehension and words meaning. I found this activity very interesting because I worked with themes of real world and the exercises are very good. In this kind of activity

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students can improve their level, and take conscience the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s problems. I think this activity makes reading more enjoyable because we use technology, vision and memory ability.

Listening, teaching strategies We would like to be able to understand a real conversation, what the favorite song says; watch a movie without read the subtitles etc. Sound impossible but it doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t. My listening skills improved after the Listening Module because we practiced with strategies that helped me, by recognizing key words and ideas, by activating background knowledge, and by identifying patterns, clues and attitudes. Those strategies were used in activities as minimal pairs where pronunciation was fundamental to understand each word. Word stress and intonations along with though groups were others subjects that I learnt as well. There is important to know where the stress is because we can say a wrong meaning of something. Sometimes students ask why we have to pronounce a word like that. Now I have the answer for that question. When you're not in an English-speaking country, turns difficult to practice listening. Fortunately,

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there are many ways of hearing English in almost all countries of the world. We can practice listen to the Radio, watching TV. the pictures help you understand what is being said, Internet; It is now a lot easier to hear English by Internet on sites that can help improve listening skills and also join forums of English speakers. Cinema; watch

films in English is

a good way to hear English from native speakers. I worked an activity from unit 5; Word stress, intonation, pause, rhythm focused on Dictation that I felt one of the most difficult to resolve. I put attention on Word stress, intonation, pause and rhythm. It is about dictation, from elementary to advanced. I picked an activity from PreIntermediate. I had four chances to hear it and write down what I heard. It shows vocabulary and punctuation

it could not easy to me

but I consider this one very useful for my listening. Dictations can help in many ways. They even help you learn new vocabulary in context. I think this strategy would be easier just with practice. THE

MORE YOU USE

ENGLISH

IN YOUR EVERYDAY LIFE, THE BETTER YOUR

UNDERSTANDING OF THE

ENGLISH

LANGUAGE WILL BE.

SPEAKING, TEACHING STRATEGIES

The goal of teaching speaking skills is communicative efficiency. Learners should be able to make themselves understood, using their current proficiency to the fullest. They should try to avoid confusion in

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the message to pronunciation, grammar, or vocabulary. Sstrategies help to improve fluency, and skills to increase our confidence so that we can initiate conversations, respond appropriately to the ideas of others, and express ourselves clearly. We always find students who are too shy to speak up in the classroom or to answer a question, even when they have the answer. Strategies help all students improve their confidence. For example there is more than one way to tell a story. Students improve their speak skills when teachers provide how to organize their ideas before to speak until reach to a fluency communication. Students may enjoy speaking about their personal experiences too.

It is useful for students to know what to say and whom,

most of the time

vocabulary differ in formality, such as when speaking to a Principal, a teacher, a parent or a friend. On Speaking module I found out many and different strategies that helped me to improve my speaking skills.

I found this unit very

interesting, because the beginning makes me feel more confidence and this confidence gets better along the whole unit, until get a good result in how to express my ideas verbally. There is an activity on unit 7, where first at all I had to practice some expressions of giving and asking for opinion, as; what do you think about..? I think this is â&#x20AC;Ś., in my opinionâ&#x20AC;Ś etc.

Then I worked on

voicethread site where I spoke about Barak Obama, but I had to prepare presentation first, trying to use appropriate vocabulary, expressions and

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truthful information in order to get a good presentation.

Since my

speech could be heard by other people I had to do my best in this activity and I think students will do the same. This activity could captive the attention of the students and be useful to get confidence, because students can organize their thoughts, develop speaking skills and track their progress throughout this activity and get confidence to speak in the classroom. It's important to use a natural rhythm when speaking English, but if you speak too fast it will be difficult for people to understand you and use clear vocabulary it makes easier to understand the ideas that we want to communicate.

Writing, teaching strategies English is a confusing language. It has borrowed words from many languages. Latin people have a lot of difficult to write in English, it is because the structure of a sentence is different to a Spanish language, having the doubt to put the correct word in the correct place. Adding English has become the most widely used language in the world. The necessity to write and comprehend texts in that language is a competition that everybody has to develop nowadays.

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A good writer has a good vocabulary, because is essential to clarity and organize thoughts in order

write

good

text.

Using

correct

grammar and spelling is the correct path to an excellent writing. In this Writing Module I learnt how to increase my vocabulary with activities in this Module includes. I practiced with Tall Tales, a funny and different way to learn a lot of adjectives and verbs which are the most important part of an English sentence, if we want to give or get information about an event or situation, a feeling, thought, or opinion, the verb tells us much of what we need to know. Another strategy interesting for students is to prepare a Book of Poems, where they can put in practice their huge creativity since this project include writing doing it easy and working with images in the Bookr site. There are two activities really interesting. One is to create a short story in Makebeliefs comic. The second one is about to relate something important to me. I used pictures from the red then I chose a song. In Unit four, I worked grammar for writing describing people, places and things with images and words where I had to put in the space the correct word. At the end of this unit I did my first book review, giving a sample to follow and the main structures to support the book review. Using punctuation to increase my writing the exercise is about to correct the article, something new, because I used to correct my students but I think they can learn easier and faster doing on this way.

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I did some tasks as autobiographical incident model I wrote about a strange incident in my life real or fictious, I use my imagination to write this task.

After that I

did exercises using different tenses that

helped me to do Eyewitness account model writing, which

it has

sequences and I had to use tenses in order to write correctly and make my text with sense.. Movies and grammar was quite different, this section incorporates video clips to practice grammar and writing. If we show action in our classrooms the environment turns more interesting for students.

tools Information and Communication Technologies on English Language Learning. The technology offers immense possibilities to improve the learning and the teaching, as well as the access to the education. Teachers need to understand the technical skills learners need in the real world, future etc. Technology offers all students opportunities for learning never before imagined. According to the Educational Reform which is based on competences increases demand on schools to align curriculum, instruction to prepares students to succeed on situations and problems in the real life, and we dog reach that goal through strategies using technology ace computer

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and such tools ace electronic grade books and program support tools, teachers dog generates you success in the classroom and out of it. The ICT has become one of the basic pillars of the society and today is necessary to provide the citizen an education that has that it counts this reality. The educational possibilities of the ICT must be considered in the aspect use of pedagogic tools. They should be used the ICT to learn and to teach. That is to say the learning of any matter or ability can facilitate, in particular, by Internet, applying the appropriate techniques. This aspect has to be along with the Educational Computer science. For example this course was developed with technology. I used many sites in each module from the beginning until the end; I improved my language English level a lot. In unit six, writing section, I really enjoyed to do the photopeach and Bookr, where technology can be fun and educational as well.

Module five of this course has a lot of interesting sites where I could see how technology can help to learn and practice English. Audacity is an excellent way to hear our own voice and try to correct errors of pronunciation, rhythm, intonation and spelling.

Voicethread and videoconferences are others ways where the use of technology can raise studentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s knowledge, if we use those sites correctly and focused on educational mean.

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It is not easy to practice a teaching of the ICT that solves all the problems that are presented, but it is necessary to try to develop education systems that relate the technology in different aspects and do the transmission of information more truthful being at the same time as constructive as possible from the methodological point of view.

Lesson planning

One of the most important things a teacher will face in our career is how to effectively write a lesson plan. Moreover, teachers should incorporate their objectives into the study material. Objectives focus on what a teacherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s

students

will

obtain

knowledge,

In order for teachers to assess the effectiveness of their objectives has to plan teachers must plan their contents and do a good work, instead of improvise a class. The purpose of the Programme for Secondary Teachers of foreign language says:

â&#x20AC;&#x153;The purpose is a dynamic social event in which the

teacher, learners and content interact with the ultimate goal of achieving learning. For this purpose, teachers need to understand the essence of the object of the study and plan teacher intervention in congruence with it. Thus, in that programme, the teacher needs to plan lessons and activities in which the characteristics of social practices are preserved, and in which there are enough opportunities for students to participate in and reflect the social practices for the language.â&#x20AC;?

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Planning a lesson according to requirements, could be helpful to reach our goals with Bloom’s Taxonomy and Critical Thinking. •

Knowledge – recall

•

Comprehension – understand

•

Application – use, practice

•

Analysis – dissect, generalize

•

Synthesis – create, combine

•

Evaluation – appraise, value

In this model of lesson plan, I observed that involve (reading,

the

four

writing,

aspects

speaking

the and

language listening).

Teachers need to adequate lessons to one of each statement of the Bloom’s lesson plan and focus on the practices needed to produce and interpret oral and written texts.

Susana Hernández Garduño

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MY LEARNING EXPERIENCE BY MARIA DEL SOCORRO HUITRÓN TALKING

ABOUT THIS NEW EXPERIENCE IS A WAY TO SHARE WITH THE READER

THE OPPORTUNITY THAT

HAD TO IMPROVE MY

ENGLISH

LEVEL THROUGH DIPLOMA

COMMUNICATIVE SKILLS FOR SECONDARY TEACHERS.

This diploma course has been a good new experience for me. In fact, I didn’t use to use the internet and now no only I’ve improved my English level; I’ve learnt how to surf by internet. Now I know where I can find help if I have some doubt about grammar structures,

I have increased my English vocabulary and I’ve practiced some strategies to read, for example: sequence events, recognize cause and effect relationships and paraphrase. That has helped me to read a little faster and to understand easier the main ideas of a text.

When I had the chance of listening different stresses and speed, I liked it too much, because I could answer some questions about what I was listening, even if I couldn’t understand everything, I think I improved this skill.

I think the videoconference was a very good experience, but in activities like this one, it’s necessary to depend of disposability of another person and that situation was uncomfortable. However talking about agreements and disagreements let us give our opinions and points of view.

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One of the problems I had to send my speaking activities was I didn’t know too much of the technology, but the experience was great. Listening yourself it’s something fabulous, it’s possible to check your stress, and speed. I really enjoyed it.

THIS

DIPLOMA COURSE HAS BEEN DIVIDED IN SEVEN MODULES; IN EACH ONE

HAD COULD FIND NEW IDEAS, STRATEGIES AND EXPERIENCES THAT HAVE GOT RICH MINE.

CULTURAL LEARNING AWARENESS English is one of the most important languages in the world; however I noticed that countries are divided for the same language. Several countries share a same language, but paradoxically they have different spelling and speed. Americans have tried of having no only independence of the English government; they have tried of having their own language. I could focus my students’ attention to English language and culture for example using comics or with a movie. Movies are an excellent resource because they can show American life with its customs, ideas and life styles. To see a comic type: http://www.makebeliefscomix.com/Comix/?comix_id=23642397C152477 May be some specific expressions can help us to understand what people mean in that foreign language, for example “it’s raining dogs and cats” is an expression that has its origin in the fact of that during century XV and XVI the roofs of the houses had beams

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where lived cats, dogs rats and other bugs, but when it was raining the leaks forced them to down. In nowadays this expression it’s used when it’s raining very hard.

When students have the opportunity of reading some text, it could be about news of the foreign country or about actress or actors living in that place. They could understand the main idea, and then they could be reflecting about way to live in other place. Circling unfamiliar words, underlining key word or phrases, writing notes can help us to answer previous questions or to make a mental map, because that means they could read, revisit and reflect. These steps can help my students to catch easier what they are reading, because they can clarify ideas littler by littler. If I want they understand what the reading is about, they need to know basic vocabulary and some basic grammar structures. Underlining main ideas they’ll be able to understand what they are reading about.

NEW TEACHING STRATEGIES DISCOVERED Like 21st century educators, in this course, teachers have been working with technology and we have shared our ideas and experiences; particularly in forums where we have had the opportunity of knowing a way to collaborate.

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It’s said that a 21st century educator must be able to adapt the curriculum to teach in imaginative ways, because even if we have to use tools, what happen when technology fails or when in some schools it isn’t used? We have to adapt the activities, for example it was possible to check a really interesting activity where we had to watch a movie and then doing some activities; but in some schools there isn’t a television or a video play; and in that case, it’s possible students (and teacher) watch it at home and then in class they can comment it and answer activities elaborated to check some topic with help of the movie.

It’s hoped that we be able to see the potential in the tools and web technology to manipulate them to serve our needs; and I think in this course we had gotten a lot of help in this sense, because now we have checked several good web sites and if we have some doubt, we know where find the necessary information to help us in our daily activities.

When it’s said that teachers must be a modelling behaviour, I think we are human and we make mistakes, but we should act being responsible persons and that could help students to be responsible too, however they are already educated, but if we can influence, we need to have a reflective practice.

Finally, we are in continuo preparation, this is an example of that, and we like to give the best of us,

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READING TEACHING STRATEGIES

The most interesting activity for me in module 3 was the activity 7.2. The text checked was an article titled “New projects could restore fortunes of Jackson estate” at the Journal “Los Angeles times” The strategies that I used were: 1.-“Active prior knowledge” because it’s a topic very commented in this time. Jackson has been news since he is dead. 2.-“Ask questions” because they can focus their attention first in the title, then in subtitles, headings or/and illustrations (if there are ones) and thinking what it’s the purpose for reading; what questions can the article answers, what conclusions can be done using the details from the text between other questions. 3.-Summarize information: Students take the key ideas and they rewrite them. 4.-Synthesize new information: Students can rewrite la information with their own style, respecting the sense of the test. It can help them to improve their vocabulary and grammar too. A good strategy is to active prior knowledge before reading because people adapt background knowledge.

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To me like to students, strategies above have helped me to increase my vocabulary and to improve my capacity to understand the main ideas of a text because these strategies aren’t alone. Other strategies I used during the module four were: Adjust reading; Compare and contrast idea; Classify or categorize information; Identify main ideas and supporting; Make inferences and draw conclusions; Make generalizations; Paraphrase; Make and refine predictions; Visualize imagines from text; Skimming; Scanning; Recognize facts and opinions; Identify and Analyze text Structure; Identify Author’s purpose; Use Context clues to decipher unfamiliar words And here I’ll write about some of them: Skimming is a reading technique that can help you to read more quickly and decide if the text is interesting and this one let you see pictures or images related to the topic, first it’s necessary to read the title, and the subtitles; to look at the illustrations; to read the first and last sentence of each paragraph.

Scanning is a fast reading technique useful to find specific information from a book or article quickly as there is not always time to read every word. It’s necessary to use the header to find specific information, and if you are reading to study, first you can make some questions and try to find in the text what you are finding out. Recognize facts and opinions: In a reading it’s possible to find facts and opinions, la first one is something that can be verified and the second one is based on a belief or view, It‘s not based on evidence that can be verified. We should be careful in this case because if we use opinions in our exercises they are considerate a little confidence. Identify and Analyze text Structure: We should be able to identify if the text has a chronological/sequence structure; Cause/effect; Problem/Solution; Compare/contrast; Description or Directions because this strategy can help us to organize ideas for synthesizing and summarizing.

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Identify Author’s purpose: the text could be persuasive, informative, descriptive and instructive; and their objectives are different, because, while persuasive is done to convince about some topic, informative gives results of researches, descriptive, like its name mention it’s a description of a fact, and instructive gives information about how to do something, the steps that are necessary following.

Use Context clues to decipher unfamiliar words. In reading of a foreign or our own language, it’s possible we don’t know all the words however we can infer some of them for the sense of the text.

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LISTENING TEACHING STRATEGIES

AT FOURTH MODULE, THE MOST DIFFICULT ACTIVITIES FOR ME WAS, THE 6.1 “ENGLISH PHRASAL VERBS AND QUIZZES”, BECAUSE PHRASAL VERBS ARE TOO MUCH, AND THE MEANING OF EACH ONE CAN CHANGE IN EACH SITUATION. IS MIXED UP WHEN

MY MIND

I HAVE TO USE ANY PHRASAL VERBS.

I KNOW “PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT” THEREFORE I HAVE TO PRACTICE AND PRACTICE. IN FACT,

I THINK THE DICTIONARY OF ENGLISH PHRASAL VERBS IS A

VERY GOOD TOOL TO COMMUNICATE WITH MORE FLUENCY.

RESOLVING THE QUIZZES HAS LET ME SEE I HAVE SEVERAL WEAKNESSES IN THIS TOPIC, BUT THAT HAD HELPED ME TO PAY MORE ATTENTION WHEN

I USE THEM.

THIS ACTIVITY WAS CLEAN, BUT I NEED TO USE CORRECTLY THIS KIND OF WORDS TO SOUND MORE NATURE.

I DON’T KNOW

IF THIS ACTIVITY COULD BE EASIER, IN FACT

I THINK THE PROBLEM

WASN’T THE ACTIVITY, BECAUSE THE STEPS WERE EASY OF FOLLOWING, BUT MAY BE FOR SOMEONE LIKE ME, WITH SEVERAL PROBLEMS TO IDENTIFY THE MEANING OF PHRASAL VERBS; LISTING TO THEM OR READING THEM IN A REAL CONTEXT THROUGH MOVIES OR ACTUAL READING, COULD BE A GREAT HELP TO IDENTIFY AND UNDERSTAND THE MEANING OF THESE WORDS.

IN MY CASE, LISTENING IS THE WEAKEST SKILL, MAY BE BECAUSE I DIDN’T USE TO LISTEN TO MUSIC, OR WATCH MOVIES IN

ENGLISH, BUT, NOW I’M TRYING OF

LISTENING TO SONGS AND MOVIES CAREFULLY.

IN THIS MODULE I’VE HAD THE OPPORTUNITY OF IMPROVING MY LISTENING SKILL AND

I FEEL THE NECESSITY OF CONTINUING STUDYING.

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SPEAKING TEACHING STRATEGIES At fifth module I used too much the audacity program, I repeated it too many times that I ended love it, because a had the opportunity of listening my self and I could improve my speaking skill; even if I had several problems when I had to send these activities, because I couldn’t send my activities in mp3 format and I had to did it in wav format. Like I’ve already said I’ve had problems with technology, but I’m improving.

This is a very interesting tool and I would love to use it with my students, because this kind of activity could help us to listen to our speed and stress. This tool let us use music or edit our audio. Students can practice any time and send their recorders to be checked.

They can describe people, tell a story or give opinions. In general, this tool can be useful to improve their speaking skill and it could be useful no only for English subject.

The only objection it’s that it’s necessary to have the elementary stuff and in my school we don’t have the opportunity of using computers; in that case students could work

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at home and send the activities, but in this case it’s more difficult, because they don’t have enough study habits and I don’t know if they have a computer and the service of Internet.

But I hope to have the opportunity of using it with my students soon because I love it.

This activity could be used to improve the way of teaching and learning.

WRITING TEACHING STRATEGIES MAIN TEACHING STRATEGIES USED TO DEVELOP MY WRITING ABILITY

Writing is a skill that needs to be supported by grammar rules and in this module several activities were done to improve writing skills by practicing writing short texts.

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At sixth module the main strategies to develop my writing skill used were:

Write a book of poems: That was a very interesting activity because I could make a little poem’s book with my ideas and feelings. At the beginning this activity was a little bit difficult because the technology isn’t my speciality, however, with the guide given to resolve this exercise, I could send it successfully.

The importance of this activity was the fact of identifying adjectives, nouns, and verbs, because never main the language, some people don’t identify them.

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CREATING STORIES: I ENJOYED TOO MUCH THIS ACTIVITY, BECAUSE IT’S EASY TO CREATE STORIES WITH THE PREDETERMINED PROGRAM AND WOULD ENJOY IT TOO.

I THINK STUDENTS

THEY COULD CREATE SHORT OR LONG COMICS; AND

SEVERAL CHARACTERS COULD BE USED.

REAL OR UNREAL STORIES COULD BE

THOUGHT AND THEY COULD BE PRINTED OR SENT TO FIENDS, TEACHER OR MATES.

SHARING AND USING YOU: HERE WAS POSSIBLE TO SHARE PICTURES, MUSIC AND A TEXT THAT EXPLAINED THE MEANING OF THE PHOTOS. IN THIS ACTIVITY USE ANOTHER WEB PROGRAM, (NEW FOR ME) AND

I COULD

I IMPROVED MY SKILL IN THE

USE OF THE TECHNOLOGY TOO.

DESCRIBING PEOPLE, PLACES AND THINGS: IN THIS UNIT WE PRACTICED WITH ADJECTIVES TO IDENTIFY DESCRIPTIONS OF VARIOUS SORTS. ABOUT THE USE OF ADJECTIVES.

WE TOOK QUIZZES

LIKE I MENTIONED AT THE BEGINNING, CORRECT

USED OF GRAMMAR RULES IS VERY IMPORTANT TO WRITE CORRECTLY.

I KNOW I

STILL MAKE MISTAKES BUT THIS KIND OF ACTIVITIES HAD LET ME TO PUT MORE ATTENTION WHEN

I WRITE.

USING PUNCTUATION: THE CORRECT USE OF PUNCTUATION IS IMPORTANT, WE SHOULD RESPECT SOME BASIC RULES LIKE WRITING CAPITAL LETTERS AT THE BEGINNING OF A SENTENCE, USING COMAS WHEN WE ARE WRITING A LIST, OR SETTING THE FULL STOP AT THE END OF THE SENTENCE.

ALL SENTENCES MUST HAVE A SUBJECT AND

A VERB IN THEM; THEY SHOULD HAVE SENSE.

THE PUNCTUATION IT’S NECESSARY

TO READ CORRECTLY BECAUSE IT HELPS US TO PAUSE OR MAKE SOMETHING A QUESTION OR AN EXCLAMATION.

SEQUENCE OF TENSES: WHEN WE WRITE IT’S NECESSARY TO DO IT IN THE TIME THAT HAPPEN THE ACTION.

VERBS INDICATE THE TIME. WHEN WE TELL A STORY, THIS

ONE COULD BE IN PAST, IN PRESENT OR IN FUTURE.

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IN THIS MODULE I HAD THE OPPORTUNITY OF WRITING ABOUT A VERY NICE VACATION EXPERIENCE,

I COULD REMEMBER WHEN I BEGAN TO WORK LIKE A TEACHER, I

WROTE A FICTION STORY,

I COULD TALK ABOUT AN INTERESTING BOOK AND I COULD

SHARE THEM WITH MY PEERS AND

I READ THEIR STORIES TOO.

INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES (ICT)

TO THIS UNIT I CHOSE TO TALK ABOUT SIXTH MODULE, MAY BE BECAUSE I’VE BEEN WRITING DURING LAST DAYS, OR BECAUSE IN THIS MODULE

I COULD FOUND

SEVERAL INTERESTING TOOLS.

IN NEW “REFORMA DE LA EDUCACIÓN SECUNDARIA” THE ICT ARE CONSIDERED LIKE A NECESSARY RESOURCES OF THE TEACHING.

HOWEVER IN SOME SCHOOLS,

TEACHERS CAN’T USE TECHNOLOGY BECAUSE IT’S NOT LET OR BECAUSE THERE DON’T HAVE ANY COMPUTER AT SCHOOL; BUT

I KNOW THESE THINGS SHOULD CHANGE

BECAUSE THE TECHNOLOGY, LIKE PART OF OUR LIVE, IT WILL BE SOON IN THE DAILY USE OF EDUCATIVE PRACTICE.

THE MOST INTERESTING TOOLS IN THIS MODULE WERE:

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CREATING STORIES BECAUSE THE PREDETERMINE PROGRAM TO MAKE THE COMICS IT’S EASY OF FOLLOWING; HERE THERE ARE SEVERAL CHARACTERS TO BE USED AND DRAWS ARE ATTRACTIVE TO PEOPLE. IN THIS SITE IT’S POSSIBLE TO CREATE AND PRACTICE DIALOGS.

STUDENTS CAN SHARE THEIR PROJECTS, BECAUSE THEY CAN BE PRINTED OR SEND.

WRITE A BOOK OF POEMS BECAUSE THE FACT OF ELABORATE SOMETHING OWN COULD BE A GOOD INCENTIVE TO WORK HARDY.

HERE STUDENTS CAN IDENTIFY NOUNS,

ADJECTIVES AND VERBS ANT THEY CAN CHOOSE BETWEEN SEVERAL PICTURES TO GET RICH THEIR BOOK. WITH OTHERS.

THE FINAL PRODUCT IT’S A REWARD AND THEY CAN SHARE IT

BEING THE AUTHOR OF A BOOK SOUNDS INTERESTING.

SHARING AND USING YOU BECAUSE IT’S POSSIBLE TO CREATE A STORY WITH MUSIC AND A SPECIFIC TEXT.

SHOWING TO OTHER ONES YOUR FEELINGS, EMOTIONS AND

YOUR WAY OF SEE LIFE.

USING OWN PHOTOS CAN HELP TO BE INTERESTED TO

DESCRIBE THESE PICTURES AND STUDENTS TALK ABOUT THEIR SELF.

LESSON PLANNING

Writing Lesson Plans All models are good tools to be used in the education process, however educative politic is changing constantly. Now it’s wished that classes are based in students’ necessities and that people involved in education be able to work projects collaboratively

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In the context of the educative reform, it’s hoped that teachers be able to know the way students learn and to plan according that; however we aren’t ready to do it yet. At least I say it for me; and by other side, we can find principals or administrative personal in schools that aren’t ready to accept this new form to teaching-learning, because it could mean the discipline like we know it be disappeared.

Multiple Intelligences plan model would be great and I think we are learning how to identify these intelligences and how to plan expecting generate competent people, but the changes aren’t given from a day to another one.

People have more than one multiple intelligences however some of them are more developed for each person; these ones are: Verbal, Mathematical, Spatial, Musical, Kinesthetic, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal and Spiritual intelligences.

I know this plan model is according new reform, and the reform is my context.

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MY LEARNING EXPERIENCE

By Lydia A. Martinez

First of all I want to say that it has been a great experience for me to work in this Diploma; I appreciate this invitation from CELE-UNAM and SEP for this great opportunity of learning important issues for our own benefit in order to improve our job as English Teachers. I want to thank to our Tutor for your time and help, Thank you Mr. SĂĄnchez!

Now, I am going to show you a little bit about what I have learnt through this Diploma and the way how Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve used it with the students.

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LEARNING TO LEARN ENGLISH THROUGH INTERNET TOOLS AND RESOURCES

I have learnt a lot, my language skills have been improving a lot since the beginning of this Diploma.

One of the main goals of taking this Diploma is to become a better

teacher through the strategies of teaching as well as for the knowledge of the language. According to the aspects that I have learnt I want to say that these aspects have been very interesting and they have represented a challenged to me since the first module about computer skills.

Through different websites, I learnt how to manage my time in order to not to get stressed, (10 applications for using my time) and to prioritize the easiest task and obviously to do the unnecessary things after the work is done. I discovered my multiple intelligences and I found that I am a Linguistic-Word Smart learner. Also, I practiced the four abilities listening, speaking, reading and writing (Free English Study) and let me tell you that these websites shows us many interesting aspects in which our students can learn by themselves and theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re incredibly useful for us, because they refresh our knowledge on grammatical structures.

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There are a lot of advantages of learning English by internet: the first one is that sometimes we don’t have enough time and you can learn more in your free time (it doesn’t matter the time), you can do it step by step, doing it by yourself. Another advantage is that the students can also practice and they can learn faster because English class is only 3 times a week, so they don’t have enough time for learning English but they can practice at home or in our Media Center at school.

•

READING

In this module we found many interesting strategies, the most I liked was “the 20 strategies for supporting reading comprehension” which are strategies for readers in order to comprehend nonfiction texts (CARS) and now, it’s easier for me to read. I improved my writing and reading comprehension thanks to the types of texts that I learnt: descriptive, persuasive, informative and instructive. Also, I learnt two strategies of reading: skimming (if you want to know what is the text about) and scanning (if you want to locate specific information) that we can practice on Health and Safety in Construction; Also, in “American Robin” we learn about the three points of reading that we must take in consideration: Read, Revisit and Reflect, where the students can work with these strategies like: “fact” and “opinion”. Another activity that I liked was about the Golden Gate Bridge, because I could feel that I already have known it. I enjoyed “the missing cat” because I learnt how animals are part of the family.

•

LISTENING

Thru www.manythings.org and Randall’s ESL Cyber Listening Lab and Australia Network: English Bites, shiporsheep.com, I had the opportunity of working with minimal pairs and I think that is one of the most difficult topics, they were: the word stress, intonation, pause and rhythm, phonetics. It’s very important to learn about these topics because is basic for speaking and listening; it helps us to identify the real meaning of the word. I practiced and I learnt rising and falling intonation. I loved the classes of Mr. Joe and Miss Jennifer, they are wonderful and I learnt that every sentence or statement is a “thought groups”. Also, I learnt and practiced with Phrasal verbs and Tag questions, the first ones are important to recognize them since they come up all the time. There, I saw the “Flatmates” which is perfect site for the students in Second Grade since they are

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learning basic vocabulary of adjectives and parts of the body in persons and animals.

•

SPEAKING

Speaking is one of the most difficult skills to develop because I don’t have the opportunity of practicing. But when I worked with the Audacity program, I liked it very much because I practiced with the students and the most important, during that module, I recorded twice my voice and it was better in the second one and I had the opportunity of listening to our peers’ recordings as well. When we did the activity with the audios, I enjoyed very much because I used my imagination and I created a story. I wonder how powerful our mind is. I recorded two opinions about two persons: Francisco Toledo and another guy. On Module 5, we had video conferences with a partner and I enjoyed too much, this is another way of practicing our language L2. I loved the exercises with verbs and all the quizzes and the certificates with our “grade”.

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WRITING

In this module, I wrote some Tall Tales, some of them were really funny and I practiced the nouns, verbs, adjectives as well as adverbs. With the help of the link Eyewitness Account Model, I wrote a Book of Poems, I created a Comic Strip and I analyzed a poem. I created a Visual Story thru Photopeach (I loved it).I completed several quizzes about Punctuation and verbs tenses. I wrote an advertising, a strange accident and about my experience as a Fulbright Teacher. This module was one of my favorites. With this course I feel more confident because I have noticed that I improved my language skills. It’s very important not to stop learning English because we need to practice it everyday and we have to learn everyday.

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CULTURAL AWARENESS

In the web sites I read about different issues about American stories, Health, School, Law and Government, Science and Technology, etc. It was really an excellent experience because I learnt many interesting things about England and U.S.A. as well as their language and the changes in spelling rules that Noah Webster made in the American English in order to make it easier for immigrants; this shows us the vision that they had about future as a nation. Through different readings in Adult Learning Activities, I could notice that there are different aspects that they care too much. For example, I read “Foster Children” where children go when they can’t stay at home and I learnt that for the Government, children are very important and their parents must be very careful with them, they must attend their children and they can’t hurt them. I read about safety rules about making call (using the cell phone) and how workers must use a helmet or must take care of other safety instructions.

In American Stories, I learnt about The Golden Gate Bridge, and even that I have never been there; I knew many interesting things about it, for example the color and the origin of the name. Also, how the weather affects or benefits to the farmers and they must be strict about schedule, the rain is another factor that could help or ruin the farmers work. I also read about the benefits of having a dog for children, police, blind or deaf people and for people (with high or

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low)blood pressure and the last one, dogs help children in reading rooms, because the dogs are the audience and children read for them , and they just listen (PAWS for Healing). Talking about pets, on 100 Short English Stories, I read an article “The Missing Cat” and I learnt how a pet could be a member of a family or even that, more important than any relative especially for people who live alone or elderly.

And for example, in England, they are very strict with grammar rules and the way they teach and how they learn. In the link English Listening Lounge I learnt how important is for a teenager to belong a group (Joining to the Marching Band), I learnt that St. George’s Day is an important celebration and that is very similar to the United States of America because many people from all over the world and with multiple identities, celebrate this Holyday and they feel as English people and they join into a group, a great society. As well as, about teenagers or young kids are radical in their decisions (I am a vegetarian) they care about the animals and environment and (my vacations places) how people enjoy traveling.

I learnt about the life in Sydney, Australia. It was amazing because I didn’t have any idea about Australians and now I already know the way they live and the things they do. I noticed that they are healthy, they used to eat plenty of fruit during the morning (breakfast and brunch) but also, they eat a lot of bread and

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coffee. I could see that they have small patios and their houses are apartments, with small bedrooms and even that, they have pets. Their routines are going for a walk and swim. They spent Fridays at Pubs.

I also learnt about Sydney Events: They have a big celebration, a festival. It lasts 3 weeks in January but I was wondering because all the people were not dressing as in winter time, there were like in summer; well, probably the weather is nice during the whole year. So, in this big festival, there are many performances, with cultural aspects too. I also checked that they have a big New Year Chinese celebration, with a great parade respecting the great Chinese culture heritage. They have an Australian Fashion Week, in which the most recognized designers present their creations. In general, reading can help us to know and learn about other cultures. Reading a variety of texts in another language makes us be aware of our cultural differences and similarities in beliefs and attitudes. As a teacher I encourage the students to learn about culture of some countries, they always choose the United States. For example, students investigate about Halloween celebration, everything of this celebration, how did they use to celebrate and how is nowadays celebrated. It’s very interesting because some of them change their mind about this celebration. They investigate about “Thanksgiving day” because, believe it or not, some people from Sonora eat turkey on that day and they don’t know why, and they don’t know the real meaning of the celebration, so they have to investigate and they make presentations about American Culture. They really enjoy these activities because they are so near from U.S.A. and they have some relatives that are living there.

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NEW TEACHING STRATEGIES

During this Diploma, I learnt very interesting strategies about teaching; for example, the use of the ICT is very important because there are many links in which they can practice their language skills and they can take advantage of the technology at school because we have a Media Center. They also can use the web dictionaries and, the most important, the pronunciation of the unfamiliar words. They can find their favorite songs lyrics and bring them to the classroom. You know, we need to let them use the English in their real world. I am not going to give them a song from “Sesame Street” or “Barney”. They want to bring music from “Simple Plan”, “Green Day”, “Tokyo Hotel”, “The Jonas Brothers”, “Metallica” and even “The Beatles”, which is the most popular among the teenagers nowadays.

Another important point: they can practice reading comprehension using the 20 Strategies for supporting it, the use of the skimming and scanning methods; listening comprehension and written expression, using the spelling and listening exercises.

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For oral expression, the most I liked was the Audacity program, they also liked it, and it was funny for them to hear their voices at the computer. It’s also very important, that they work with the word stress, similar sounds, intonation and stressed syllable, falling and rising intonation, pause and rhythm; minimal pairs as well as the “thought groups” and finally, I love the movie section because we can show them relatively new movies. Even that the Methodology framework of the new Reforma Program has implemented by Secretaría de Educación Pública in Mexico, mentions that students must discover the grammar points and that we can teach them with verbs, I loved the games with the verbs and I will always use them. The visual story and the creation of comics, are a little bit difficult activity of the class, because I work with 495 students from third grade and 90 students from second grade, unless they can do it by teams. In fact, most of the activities are special for students due to the level of the exercises.

As a final comment, I would like to say that we are half 21 st century teachers, because we aware of the importance of the ICT but we don’t act. Most of English teachers continue teaching like 10 years before because in that moment it was the correct form of teaching. But the world is changing every minute and every generation of students is different, our students are different from students in 1999 and many of us haven’t changed the strategies. I liked so much the text “Eight habits of highly effective 21 st century teachers”. In my opinion we must have a copy in our lesson plan in order to read it every day until we get the main idea, we need to face the new challenges.

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READING TEACHING STRATEGIES

Well, the best activities for reading were from the link Adult Learning Activities because we had the opportunity of practice some strategies like: skimming, scanning, get the Fact and Opinion as well as the strategies mentioned at the Journey North Reading Strategies like:

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• • • • • • • • •

Active prior knowledge Ask questions: before, during and after reading. Classify or categorize information. Identify main ideas and supporting details. Make and redefine predictions. Paraphrase/retell. Sequence events. Summarize information. Visualize images from text.

It’s important to follow these rules especially with our students because we must know the prior knowledge that the students have and they must get the new information. Another point, students need to ask everything they don’t understand in order to clarify their understanding.

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The most I liked were the activities of the Cell Phone Safety because the text was divided in 2 sections: Basic story and Full Story, and there, I read the story in the meanwhile I was listening to the audio; then I watched the video from the news (it wasn’t the story) it was related to the story and then the activities, which I enjoyed very much. The first activity was: Learn New Words, by listening, and I could practice as many times as I want to. Second: Spelling the new words and I could check my answers in that moment. Third: A game and Fourth: The quiz where I could check my answers as well. In this reading I practiced the strategies of skimming, scanning, Fact and Opinions, but for the students, I followed these rules:

We worked with two readings (“The dolphin”, that is a poem) they really enjoyed it, and an article from the newspaper that I brought from Nogales, Az. And the students used these strategies: Adjust Reading/Rereading: Because they are not accustomed to read articles in newspapers, so they will feel more comfortable if they have the opportunity of reading as many times as they want. Use context clues to decipher unfamiliar words: it’s good for them because they recognized the cognates and this is an activity that they enjoy because of the false cognates. Distinguish facts from opinions: It’s a good idea because they can start to work with main ideas in order to get the facts and opinions and distinguish them.

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Summarize information: it was good for them, because they saw their own improvement at comprehension reading.

LISTENING TEACHING STRATEGIES

The fourth module was a little bit difficult, for example the phonetics for practicing minimal pairs. The exercises about intonation and stressed syllable and multi-syllable words were also difficult even for me (About.com ESL). It also was difficult because in the link Australia: English Bites was in British English and I am accustomed to American English, so it was a little bit difficult to understand the video about Sea Lions; I had to listen it many times and due to the same reason, the dictation was also difficult. There was another activity for me as a regular listener level and I tried several strategies in order to understand the speaker, one of them was slowly, the other girls spoke a little bit fast and with no pauses. Definitely this last activity I wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t use it with the students at the beginning of the school year because they will feel frustrated.

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In the link Interesting things for ESL students, we had to practice the minimal pairs and I think it was the most difficult part of the module since it took me a long time, checking the pronunciation; it was a kind of boring and overwhelmed to check all the minimal pairs. Besides that, we haven’t enough time. Even that there were good videos and exercises; the big list of minimal pairs weren’t interesting. I think the students think the same about the verb list or when we work with the adjectives list.

A good way could be to show them in a video like Miss Jennifer explained rising and falling intonation or the thought words, or like Mr. Joe explained about rhythm. In my opinion, a better way to teach them is to show the students in videos of only 10 minimal pairs.

SPEAKING TEACHING STRATEGIES

One of the most difficult issues for my students is to speak correctly, with fluency and obviously without errors. In my class they can speak English as they can, but they must pay attention in their errors and learn. Every school year, I have 11 groups of third grade with 45 students per group and 2 groups of second grade (90 students); so as you can see, it’s very difficult for me, to listen every student in every class; so the projects, presentations and songs are by teams.

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In this module I learnt several speaking teaching strategies and I liked them very much. For example, with the Audacity program, the students from the Conversation Club recorded their voices and they felt like me, we didn’t like our voices but it was very funny.

With the activity “how to describe a situation” we can do it in the fourth

bimestrial, I know they will love it because they are going to use their imagination. For example, even that they are working with “Halloween versus The Day of the Dead” project, they are so excited preparing the Christmas Song, with choreography and everything and I love that, that they feel comfortable and happy in my class. The point is that they are free to do whatever they want, they make their own decisions, it’s up to them the class in the meanwhile they learn and achieve the expected topics.

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Another activity was the voice thread, and I will use it in second grade for describing people and animals; here I will choose the pictures (animals, famous people, even a picture of the most charming teachers like ChalĂo and our Principal Mr. Cisneros) and they can record in a special computer or recorded in their houses and later they can send it to my e-mail address.

And finally, before the presentations of the project they can have a videoconference with the leader (every leader is the best English student of the class and I have 5 leaders

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in every classroom) which can listen their presentations and they can help themselves with the pronunciation.

WRITING TEACHING STRATEGIES

All the activities from this module help us to improve our writing skill. Since the beginning with a text in which we must find 20 errors, I just found 16, but I was good because sometimes we don’t pay attention to certain errors, especially when we are using capital letters. Another activity that I enjoyed very much was Tall Tale, in which we must think about adverbs, adjectives, nouns, verbs, etc. it’s a great opportunity to make a review of the parts of the speech. This activity is good for our students but I think they will need to practice a lot because some of them get confuse with adjectives and adverbs.

It also was another excellent idea with the activity of Book of Poems,

because I needed to think a lot even some words with rhythm and intonation. Well, the Comics were a funny idea, I can use them with my students, for example for the Christopher Columbus Day, and maybe they can create the last voyage, when he discovered America. The most I liked was the Photo peach activity, and I think I can use this one with my students but they need to work by teams or for example in second grade, because I have only 90 students and they can send me their visual story to my email address at Gmail (it’s better for homework).

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The only activity I didn’t like was with the link Eyewitness Account Model, because I had to write an advertisement, to analyze a poem, to write about a strange accident and to write a review from a book and I think my students don’t have the level for this activity, even the beginners’ section. But it was good for me, because I had to look at the dictionary for some words and others from the translator.

Again, we had the opportunity to complete the quizzes and I got excellent grades, at least I am good with verb tenses.

So far, writing has been one of my favorite modules because it gave me the opportunity of improving my writing skills. As you can see, the Reforma Program emphasizes that oral communication is better (no writing, or memory list or grammar) but all the exams that they apply for the Carrera Magisterial Program is about grammar and vocabulary. That’s why I consider grammar as important as oral communication and in this module I found a lot of activities and links that will help me to achieve the expected goals.

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INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES

To participate in this Diploma has been a great challenge due the fact that I am not an expert in Computer skills; I was able to work only with power point presentation (a little bit), word and e-mail. But about other things, no way, I used to think that only www was internet and when I needed to look for information at internet, I used to waste a lot of time and at the end, I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t find the information or it wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t complete. I was not able to upload documents or photos so all the tutorials have helped me a lot. Since the beginning of this Diploma, I have learnt a lot of activities that I can use them in class (I have already practiced some of them with my students).

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According to Andrew Churches’ Eight Habits of Highly Effective 21 st Century Teachers in which he mentions that we must take advantage of the use of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). There is no problem using ICT at school (Television, Radio, Videos, Movies, etc.) because our students are in contact with them everyday, the problem is that we are not accustomed to these tools and sometimes we are afraid, we don’t feel confident using the tools. It’s very important to be prepared for the new education paradigms and it’s an obligation for us to improve our knowledge at computer issues.

For that reason, it’s very difficult for me to choose only three tools because I liked most of them; they are useful and easy to work with. For Reading and Listening, I choose the link Adult Learning Activities, in which my students can practice their language skills through topics of Science and Technology, Law and Government, Health and Safety, Money, School among others; it has written texts, video and several activities for practicing as well as quizzes about the topic.

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For speaking I definitely choose the Audacity program because we have already used it and my students liked it so much. Also, the activity of voicethread and videoconferences in which my students will have the opportunity of speak by themselves, I think this will help students especially to the shy students. I will use them during this school year and I know that these activities will help us to be successful.

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For Writing I can use the photopeach with my students of second grade and the comics and the book of poems for my students of third grade.

LESSON PLANNING

Anything that a child Should do and can do, and We do for them takes away An opportunity to learn Responsibility.

-Gene Bedley

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After reading about these theories, specially the Bloom’s Taxonomy and my books from the SEP about English as a Second Language, I understand the points here.

Nowadays, we must be prepared in every aspect of Education. One of the most important tasks that every teacher must do is planning. It doesn’t matter the format, the point is that we must plan according to our students’ needs.

According to the theoretical foundations, we must make our students to be able to interact with others through the production and interpretation of oral and written texts in order to participate in society and this approach will be obtained with the Experiential learning due the fact that students are learning everyday, when they have a new knowledge, they must equilibrate, they make a balance between what is known and what is currently being experience (existing knowledge) and they adapt to the new situation through accommodation and assimilation. So in the example about the Pearl Harbor bombing, they recall their existing knowledge because they heard in Primary School and they have the experience and they can give their opinions about the topic and according to the values that the students have.

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Every plan has good aspects but I think that Bloomâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Taxonomy and Critical Thinking is the most useful. The good thing is that lesson plans are flexible and we can adapt it to every class. If we follow the actual program will be a little bit boring: text, repeat, reflect and then create. Some students are good in English and it seems to be boring for them, so we have to let them to learn by themselves, we can guide them but there are other students that you need to stay with them in order to encourage them to work especially with apathetic students.

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Final Report

My Learning Experience

By Omar E. Melgarejo Mendez

New abilities and skills have been developed in my learning experience in this complete course. How to teach English using the internet will be necessary for everyone and these sites have given the opportunity to learn new strategies to many teachers. It is thought that the Internet is only used to look for information that is why some teachers are afraid of use it like a teaching tool. A lot of knowledge about teaching can be given by these pages.

Looking for a topic and doing some exercises is what for internet is used. It is used as an exercise book and not as a tool that can develop or teach writing, speaking, listening and reading skills. This course has developed all this skills by using the internet in an excellent way. Many funny, useful, enjoyable strategies have been learned in this course in order to improve teacherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s English abilities.

Many strategies to teach English using the internet have been developed for many American teachers and it was surprised to me. Internet new tools and recourses will be really attractive to students. All the strategies that have been taught will be very useful to secondary students because they will be interesting and enjoyable for them instead of the traditional book and board.

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Learning strategies by using the internet is something that will continuo to my professional life. Teaching strategies by using the internet has to be update at least every year for teacher that want to continuo teaching in this century.

In the following pages I am explaining my experience in each module.

1. English language learning awareness

In this course I have learned a lot of new things; it has given to me a new way of teaching English using the Internet. This new way of teaching is something that will improve my English Teaching strategies and will be reflected in my students learning.

I learned about how to use internet and computers as a learning tool. I like these sites because it has important information about how to teach and how internet is used to teach different abilities by many teachers in different schools.

I learned about the eight competences which are defined as a combination of knowledge, skills and attitudes appropriate to the context. I really agree with the eight but especially with the ones about learning to learn and Digital competence because they are similar to the ones that we need to teach in secondary schools according to the SEP programs.

I learned some strategies like scanning and skimming a reading, this is important to teach because some students want to translate or get the meaning word by word. Most of the suggested strategies are really interesting because give you excellent ideas for teaching.

Activities like: Reading, listening, watching a video and vocabulary give us the chance not only of practice our reading, it give us the opportunity to listen and practice pronunciation which is very important for teachers now a days.

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I really appreciated the spelling sites and the word stress because most of the time we have some pronunciation mistakes and these activities give you pages where you can listen and improve or correct your pronunciation. Thought groups were something knew for me and I like how you teach us in a Bon Joviâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s song.

I liked the site where I could record my voce and I learned form this experience that we have to organize our thoughts because some times we speak and we do not know or notice what we are saying. Listening to us is a great way to notice many mistakes we have.

How to describe people using the Voicethread site is a really exciting experience because you have a tutorial and developed your abilities in a very active way.

I loved writing some experiences or stories, because this way is the only way to improve this ability, I mean you have to write and write if you want to get a better writing skill. Using the Photopeach and the My first poem book sites my English writing and teaching will be improved, because these sites motivated me to write and express my ideas.

2. CULTURAL LEARNING AWARENESS In this course I learned and realized many cultural aspects not only about language besides traditions and way of living.

I will focus my studentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s attention in songs because I think these give them many things like pronunciation and different ways of expressing ideas.

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In module 2, I learned important information about how to teach and how internet is used to teach different abilities. I will deliver the eight competences in my students because they are needed in this era. I will focus specially in the learning to learn and Digital competence because they are similar to the ones that students have to develop according to the SEP programs.

I think Photopeach exercise will be very useful to my students because they can paste pictures from American culture and when they are explaining or writing a caption for each of the pictures they will learn and have a wonderful time.

I love some exercises where English teachers explain some topics and especially the one where a teacher explain thought groups, I think this will be very useful and interesting for my students because they will learn a topic from a foreign teacher.

I really think that in module 4 I learned about Thought groups which my students will learn as I did; with songs like the one it has a Bon Joviâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s song.

My first poem book site is a place where my students will developed writing skills in a very active way because they will learn more about poetry and will use excellent examples of American or English poets and express it in a very interactive way.

3. NEW TEACHING STRATEGIES DISCOVERED I agree in most of the eight habits of highly effective 21st century teacher written by Andrew Churches and they will be taken in consideration for my English classes.

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I agree in the being visionary part, because in most of my classes I try to add something new to the pages given in this course or look for new ways to teach English using the web.

Since I have started this course I have been teaching with this new tools and especially the writing module have been really useful to me and my students, I agree in the point about learning because many teachers still using their lesson and unit plans from five years ago and like he says to be a teacher, you must learn and adapt as the horizons and landscapes change.

I will combine the eight habits of highly effective 21st century and the eight competences proposed by Jan Figel which are defined as a combination of knowledge, skills and attitudes appropriate to the European context. I really agree with the ones about learning to learn and Digital competence because they are similar to the ones that we need to teach in secondary schools according to the SEP programs.

One aspect that I will take in consideration that is related to the reading is scanning and skimming abilities taught in module 3, this is important to teach because some students want to translate or get the meaning word by word.

4. READING TEACHING STRATEGIES Reading, listening, watching a video and vocabulary are excellents activities because it gives me the opportunity not only to practice my reading, it gives me the opportunity to listen and practice pronunciation. I think when you have this four learning tools, learning become more interesting and it is more useful to learn although you focus in reading abilities. In this site you have the story written which is excellent because you are developing reading skills, but it is more useful when you can listen or you have a video about the reading. You can understand better the reading idea by watching the video, which much of the time is really interesting and short, because most of the stories of this site are taken form actual news and this is something that really helps me to improve my abilities. I consider important that you been graded about your knowledge at the end of every exercise. In most of the sites you have to answer some exercises related to the previous

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activities you have learned in these sites. Something that really helps me to improve my English was that you can find explanations about the reading like: vocabulary, spelling, a matching game and finally an exam where at the moment you know if you are incorrect or right. This kind of exams at the end of the site gives you the opportunity to know if you really understand and learn. I think that when you have a final activity where you can see if you understand or learn the reading, you get more excited about your learning. These are the reasons why I loved this activity the most and I think my students will do too. 5. LISTENING TEACHING STRATEGIES Authentic listening is really useful site but not for my secondary students because it has a really complicated vocabulary and especially in the New York Times Conversations most of the topics do not interest to my students.

For me the New York Times Conversations are rally short and you do not get interested to the talking, I think for this pages we have to watch at least 15 minutes interviews and first get familiar with the topic, maybe a warm up about vocabulary or questions about it will be really useful.

6. SPEAKING TEACHING STRATEGIES

How to describe people using the Voicethread is one of the most useful sites for me. I consider this site the most important because at first you have a tutorial that explains step by step the instructions to use it. This is for me a very useful tool because some times you can open the site but you do not know how to use it and you fed up or do not finish your assignment. I think this happened many times to our students, thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s why instructions are very important to achieve the activity.

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I will use this site in my classes for some important aspects like the pictures, it is very important because you can have and use interesting pictures for teenagers, for example actors or singers that they admire or really like. If we use these pictures students will feel so motivated to talk about this person and they will do the exercises.

Another aspect that is important for me is that you can watch others opinions or comments about the people in the site. I think that if you have the opportunity to watch others comments from your classmates you learn from them and you try to do your best because you can compare your work with others.

7. WRITING TEACHING STRATEGIES

I will improve my writing ability by many ways. First I am going to start a diary because in it you have to write in English every day. I think this will improve my writing because I have to write my thoughts, and this is something that makes you improve and order your ideas and if you can do it in another language it becomes more useful.

Another activity that I will do is to follow all the writing models to improve my English writing. Much of them are useful and sometimes as teachers we do not use them. I will write every day using different topics and trying to use these useful models.

I will improve my English writing and of course my teaching by using the Photopeach and the My first poem book sites, because these sites motivated me to write and express my ideas. I really like poetry and by using the second site I will develop my imagination and of course my writing activities.

In the forums I had only one comment and it was about another comment that I have sent. I think everything was ok because I did not have any bad comment about my assignments.

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I think these forums could be an excellent opportunity to express our ideas and comments about others assignments which is excellent because we have to use coevaluation.

8. ABOUT ICT TOOLS

There are many interesting sites for learning but for my and my experience teaching teenagers I thing the following sites are the most useful.

A book of poems is one of the most exciting sites. It is going to be very useful to my classes and of course to my students because it is a very interactive way of writing. In this site you can paste pictures which illustrate your ideas and give more meaning to your assignments. I think this site is really appropriate to my secondary students because instructions are very easy to understand.

Photopeach site will be very useful to my students because they can paste different pictures and when they explain or write a caption for each of the pictures they will learn and have a wonderful time. This site is also one of my favourites because you can add music which emphasise your ideas.

Creating a story was an interesting and useful site because my students like to express their ideas but some times they are very shy and do not know how to do it. In this site you can create a story which is a great way to boost my studentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s imagination. This site is like the PowerPoint program you have many shapers and pictures and you only have to paste them to crate a comic strip.

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9. LESSON PLANNING Having a lesson plan is very useful, although many teachers do not deliver one, it helps you to know many aspects of your class. Some of the aspects that are important to have in our lesson plan and are similar to the Bloomâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Taxonomy and Critical Thinking are: Knowledge: this is the warm up and the vocabulary necessary to teach the lesson. Comprehension: if the students have understood the activity or the new topic. Application: what they are going to do, I mean the kind of exercise they will do in the class. Analysis: a simple evaluation to know if the students have understood the new topic. Synthesis: evaluate the final product with my lesson plan mail goal. Evaluation: in this case is only for my students, if they can finish and deliver the final product to grade it. I think also you have to write the material you will use in this class.

Conclusion

I consider this experience like unique because at first it was free and most of us do not have enough many to pay a course like this. I really like the sites that the UNAM have looked for teaching us to teach in our classes. I would like to continuo learning by this way because I consider it is going to be the new way of teaching and learning specially in the far away places. I think the most important experience is that I realize that I have the ability to use internet as a tool for teaching.

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Coordinación de Universidad Abierta y Educación a Distancia

My Learning Experience EDUARDO IGNACIO MORENO PÉREZ HERMOSILLO, SONORA

NOVIEMBRE DEL 2009

Did you ever wake up not knowing if what happened was true or just a dream?*

This is how I feel right now… A little confused, but happy. Is this diploma just about to come to an end? Yes, the dream is over and it’s time to go back to reality, but I am not alone, I made some friends around here, who had the same dream and are ready to face the reality with a whole new vision and many new tools to guide the little ones not only in English language learning, but to be good citizens and to be better individuals. Good luck to all of you, my diploma mates.

Thanks to UNAM, CELE and our tutor Alan Sánchez Vázquez.

* Style taken from one of our writing exercises.

CULTURAL LEARNING AWARENESS

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Cultural Awareness is the foundation of communication and it involves the ability of standing back from ourselves and becoming aware of our cultural values, beliefs and perceptions. Cultural awareness becomes central when we have to interact with people from other cultures.

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People see, interpret and evaluate things in different ways. What is good for me, maybe isn’t good for you. We may be capable to see the way we see and act and understand why we do it that way and why others do it their way. Nothing is right nothing is wrong; it all depends on the point of view. Now it’s time to teach our children the importance of respect and understanding the others way of thinking and acting. We must change from “my way is the only way” to “our way.”

In becoming culturally aware, people realize that: a) We are not all the same b) Similarities and differences are both important c) There are multiple ways to reach the same goal and to live life d) The best way depends on the cultural contingency. Each situation is different and may require a different solution.

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NEW TEACHING STRATEGIES DISCOVERED

1. Adapting.

As the right ad says, we must adapt our teaching curricula to fit our studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; needs. We have to look and understand what they need, like and enjoy. Many of the discipline problems in our classrooms are the result of boring teaching strategies.

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2. Being visionary

Many

us,

teachers, who took this

diploma, never ever

before had experienced

learning

trough

internet, even more never

ever had taken a

computer to work with.

But now we realize

how we can use this tools

and web pages to

make

understanding

our classes. At the same

time we opened our

eyes and mind to see

better

other ways to achieve our goals as teachers.

3. Collaborating

Collaborating was a great way to learn and experience others points of view. Each one of us put a piece of the puzzle of learning and that was great and a really good feeling, despite the distance, we can feel that we were together.

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4. Taking risks It was about time to take risksâ&#x20AC;Ś Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m talking about the experience we had using audacity software, chatting with our classmates through msn live messenger, creating comics and fun (sometimes ridiculous) stories. Sometimes with the help of web pages, sometimes we were left with our own creative capabilities and abilities as on Photopeach. Of course, making ridiculous things is a great step to take risks. It was

about time to face the chance to be ridiculous. Now I know that I have to do that more often!

5. Learning Human beings are like water from a river, while is flowing is clean and clear; once it stops flowing it begins to spoil, gets dark and stink. I think that the ones who stop learning are dead people. So teachers must keep learning and adapting to our changing world. We have to expect the changes and use our surrounding technology to work with our students.

6. Communicating.

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The web 2.0

give

opportunities

to be in touch with our

students

through

forums,

wikis,

lot

the

use

chat rooms and other

cyber

structures.

communicate

real

We time

can or

asynchronous way. The general idea is to be reached in one way or another. Any place any time when our pupils need. We had a great experience through the use of forums.

7. Modeling behavior.

The secondary school is still formative, not only informative. So we have the to teach values and give the chance to our students to be reflexive and critics, not only of what is in their environment, but also what they are learning. Every module we finished, we have to be reflexive and think about our own experiences as students. That’s a good exercise to be taken to our classroom and be carried by our students.

8. Leading.

I read

don’t

remember

where

“if

change,

changes”,

think that this is the

world

right time to do

it.

leader of our

students

them to their

goals as both learners

and

citizens.

good

the

become and The

lead tools

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and knowledge are in our hands, now we have to use both and be prepared to change the way our students learn and be a good model to them.

READING TEACHING STRATEGIES

Skimming and Scanning

Skimming One of the Redding strategies is skimming in Spanish we can call it barrida del texto , is to take a close look to the text without seeing it in detail with the objective of having a general idea of the content. This is possible by analysis of illustrations, images, numbers, cognates, the title and subtitle, the text structure and all the elements which can give us a general idea. I think the picture will help to understand what skimming is.

Scanning

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Sometimes you need to get to the point fast. You donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t need to have the general idea and you already know what you are looking for. Then you use the strategy called Scanning

Fact and Opinion

When

thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s

evidence

support

information is a fact.

It is a statement that can be

checked

confirmed.

and

opinion

Meanwhile

something that one thinks o

believes in without

having evidence; even more is

statement.

subjective

Text types

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Informative

Persuasive

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Descriptive

Instructive

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Thinking about strategies used to understand texts A good strategy is to active Prior knowledge before reading because they use their knowledge as a framework for learning new information. A good strategy is to ask questions before, during and after reading because readers ask questions for different purposes including those that clarify their own developing I have taught the following reading comprehension strategies in my classes: a) Activate prior knowledge. b) Ask questions AFTER reading and drills. c) Use context clues to decipher unfamiliar words

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LISTENING TEACHING STRATEGIES

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Minimal Pairs.

One of the best teaching strategies that helped me a lot and was fun also is this one: minimal pairs. One can learn to make the difference by practice. Minimal pairs are pairs of words that except for one phonemic difference sound alike. The one phoneme difference can make a significant difference in meaning between the two words. e.g. beatbear, wet-wit, ten-teen, etc.

Word Stress

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When a word has more than one syllable, one of them is more prominent than other, has more emphasis, that one has a stress. It’s very important to understand English and to be understood.

Tag Questions and Phrasal Verbs.

I enjoyed visiting the

flatmates and face

up to Phrasal verbs.

They are two web

pages who may help

our

understand these two

subjects.

How

many times we try to

translate

literally

from

English

documents and we

can’t

understand

know

and

learn

them?

students

must

Phrasal Verbs.

Top Down Listening.

In these places we had the opportunity to hear people from other countries (who are learning English) and their experiences through life. Also we hear pros from communication media. I made a comment about them in my opportunity “They were made for english speaking audience, for those who are english native speakers. So this way, the speed, intonation and vocabulary are for advanced listeners. These materials were prepared by media professionals and in these productions you can see and listen interviewed people speaking naturally. Sometimes you even need to have a knowledge background to understand what they are talking about”. I definitely will go back soon to that web pages.

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SPEAKING TEACHING STRATEGIES

The most useful strategy about speaking is the use of audacity software. It gives you the opportunity to hear yourself as is. I hardly practice spoken English. And little by little, I made progress thank to this software. Telling a Story was a challenge not only to creativity but to face my own fear to hear myself and to be heard by our diploma mates. Also the use of Voicethread.com was really helpful. I felt embarrassed but I think is part of the learning activity and soon I began to feel more comfortable doing new things and by expressing my true ideas. Now, I am trying more often to think and speak to myself in English. I am not in charge of a group of students right now because I am the principal of the school, never the less now I speak to the secondary English teachers in English, can you imagine their faces? They were amazed by thatâ&#x20AC;Ś and so do I. I had invited some of them to join this diploma and some of them are afraid. This year, we are going to do a project totally in English language, of course, using some of the resources that I know from here.

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WRITING TEACHING STRATEGIES

This was the most difficult module to accomplish.

Speaking and listening are

not as hard as writing. Trying to explain other your thought and points of view requires a real deal of knowledge and abilities to write. To tell the truth, I made it real good but that was a thing that I’ve never be aware of. Some of my writing was qualified as good work. I was stunned because I don’t consider myself a writer, not even a medium one. After all, they had a good impact in my diploma mates and I’m grateful to all of them. Indeed was hard experience but an enjoyable one.

My sad poems, a book made with the help of bookr, give me a chance to explore my creativity and to let go a lot of my fear of being ridiculous. The help this page provides, it’s really easy to follow and gives, a hard headed like me, the possibility of succeeding in poem writing.

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I always wanted to make a comic, but I am not good at drawing, but the solution to my problem was given by MAKEBELIEFSCOMIX.COM . A place where everyone can make a comic. The web page gives you almost everything: even good ideas to start with. You can choose personages, color, speech balloons, backgrounds, etc. All of this can be used by an English teacher to make classes more fun and attractive.

Another way to make you pupils to be creative is PHOTOPEACH.COM , where you can create you own story with pictures and still images, add proper music and subtitles and you are ready to go! We saw from funny stories to very sad ones. Plus, you can share your albums with your loved ones, friends, etc.

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At last, but not least. Wacky web tales…a kids’ place but visited end enjoyed by adults. There’s no place like this to make bizarre and funny tales.

ABOUT ICT TOOLS

An image is worth a thousand words…that much is true, but what about an image with movements and audio? The result is an excellent tool to learn and teach English language. YouTube is an online public communications site. The site allows for registered users to upload and have available for the public their videos for viewing. Anyone who goes to the site can view the videos that are posted on this site. The videos are anything from beginner videos to more professional videos. You can put just about anything you want on the YouTube site. You can also watch just about anything on YouTube. There are some great videos out there on YouTube that are very interesting and entertaining and will never be seen anywhere else. No matter what kind of video you want to watch or post, you can do it all on YouTube. There is a wide variety of different videos out there. There are learning videos, entertainment, comedy, action, music, marketing and much more. So there’s something for everyone who wants to learn or teach English.

Audacity is an audio editor and recorder software. But you got to have the AUDACITY to use it as a teaching and learning tool. Yes, from my

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experience this is the best tool of the whole diploma, and thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not only my opinion, thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a fact! Many of our mates talk about it. We were afraid to use it and face the truth, the reality about ourselves speaking. And I think that is a good tool because it can help to improve learning level of both: teachers and students. Although Audacity is not as hightech and complex as all of the other sound recording systems out there, it is very simple to use. It is easy to learn the features that will be necessary for our classes.

Voicethread

basically

Web-based

digital-

storytelling application that allows users to share their stories through audio, images, videos or text. It also allows visitors to make comments on their stories in four different ways: voice with a microphone, text, audio file, or video with a webcam. The stories can be shared with anyone in the world or they can be kept private for selected individuals. I think Voicethread is a great classroom tool and has a great potential in education. It has a user-friendly interface. Creating and sharing a video thread is a simple process and all you need is a microphone or webcam. Teachers and students can upload their images and play with it, talk about it, etc.

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LESSON PLANNING

Planning is to take a look in the future; it is an effort to know what we will do in the near future. The future is uncertain, but we make a plan to minimize the risks of going nowhere and to answer the questions: Who? What? When? Where? How? This way we will have the possible answers and have a direction to aim our efforts. Inside the classroom, planning implies to have a systematic and organized program including all the activities to be performed during a time period. “A teacher never ever has to improvise” told me a professor when I was studying for being a teacher. So we, as teachers, must plan our classes according to our students’ needs but also our teaching objectives and, very important matter, our context. This is my main thought, so with all due respect, in my humble opinion, there’s no a unique way to make our lessons plan. Besides, I don’t consider a model better than the other. Every model has its own procedures and objectives. I think that the models are to be used according to the situation or subject that we want to teach. Remember, human nature is changing everyday, what is good for today may not be good for tomorrow. What is important is to work hard in our lesson plans and to look for resources which can make us better planners.

Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México 350

COMMUNICATIVE SKILLS FOR SECONDARY ENGLISH TEACHERS

My learning experience

Student: Samuel Refugio Ortega Escapite Tutor: Alan Sanchez Vazquez

November 2009

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Summarizing Learning

When I started this diploma on line I did not even know how useful could be, to me it is the first time I have such a great experience. Here I have improved the four language skills in a very interesting way. The web resources help a lot when it is time to innovate to keep our students attention. The first thing I did was to learn how to use a computer surfing the net and losing the fears about technology. But learning English made it worth. Teaching English in secondary schools it is a little hard because there are three classes per week, but here I learnt how to manage time, and how to use technology (I was scare about it), my biggest surprise was to know that all the students are experts about computers. Then was easy to involve them in this new (to me) working way. While I was advancing in this diploma on line, my vocabulary gradually increased, and doubts were clarified, then I could help my students better; for example, I did not use to pay attention to intonation patterns, I skipped them, I thought they were useless, but I noticed, intonation is the music of language, intonation can help us to avoid being monotonous when speaking, if following the right intonation, our message is going to be clearer. Thank to the audio exercises provided from the web I could change my idea about intonation patterns. There are lots of practice pages for every topic, and I can share this information with my class, as a useful tool easy to use, due they can be more interested and learn better. Now technology let them interact with virtual practice gaining confidence and improve their communicative skills.

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Cultural Awareness

I would like to tell you that in this course I learnt that technology is part of the new generation, even they live in undeveloped countries, it is a culture part of new generation, then, we as teachers need to think about it, because technology can help us making our classes more attractive, easier, and better. Definitely there is a big cultural difference among English native speaker countries, but teaching and learning English can help us to be a better nation. About the differences in a multicultural environment (as shown in picture) I would like to talk about the communication, the native English speakers, they express themselves using less words than the Latin countries, and this frequently affects us, because our students as Spanish speakers, use to think in Spanish, after that translate it into English and sometimes sense is missing, and in a real situation it causes misunderstandings. Culturally teachers and students need to pay more attention about it.

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Trough this course I realized the importance of cultural aspects in communication, taking care of them, you will be able to transmit ideas better without interference nor misunderstandings. Multicultural situations could be a magnet to keep our students always interested about learning English because this is a language spoken around the world, it is important to practice more, using unlimited material provided by the media (internet, blogs, platforms, music, TV, web sites, radio stations, etc…) because I can be sure every single doubt could disappear in a web site; but definitely the technology it is a cultural strength of our students, and it easy to them to link new friendship anytime, everywhere. Now it is not important where you are, it is better how much you know.

New Teaching Strategies Here I have learnt different strategies to keep students interest, I noticed at the beginning of this diploma on line, I did not know the right strategy for the right process, but searching the net and following the given pages I found some sites with lots of exercises to practice and improve my English knowledge, only by selecting the correct strategy. I would like to mention a reading strategy I found it very useful, it is the three “R” “Read, Revisit, Reflect” this helped me so much to improve the reading skill and the level of comprehension of my class, now I pay attention to these two aspects because when they are well related our students get big benefits, for example as

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much you read as much vocabulary you gain, and as much vocabulary you have you express yourself better. Some web pages can be used as they are but in others you have to adapt them to your class needs and level, if the 50 minutes class is not enough your students would be able to work after class in blogs, chat or platforms, everything they do has a global perception (is easy to check opinions of the experts from BBC on line); the amazing part is, they were provided with tools and strategies to continue learning and practicing by themselves. I said amazing because all this staff is new to me, but the new generation is very familiarize with ICT’s (Information and Communication Technology) and they are taking advantages of it, so we should take the risk trying to find a good strategy to guide them to autonomous learning. Due our students are getting new competences every topic. Just to mention another amazing reading strategy I learnt here in this diploma on line, suitable for many reading practices was

the net-building direction, I was

paraphrasing its steps to students, 1.- find a suitable building site, to me, it means that we as teachers need to let students free to think about their interest topic to read, 2.- Gather materials, in my opinion, here students need to look for books ,magazines, web sites and authors to search what they want to get, 3.- Build it, in my way, it is when students start reading after a selection they did. I noticed that students always know something of any new developed topic, then we can exploit this previous knowledge to make the exercise easier to our class, like Ausubel said, “prior knowledge should be the first step for every lesson”. Activating the prior knowledge the students can link their personal experience with the given topic and it accelerates the student’s interests and availability about the new information. There is a simple way to search the student’s prior knowledge, it is asking to them “Wh” questions about related things to the new topic. Another useful strategy to make reading attractive it is, to identify main ideas and supporting details, in a text, in this way students take a glance of a new reading, getting main ideas, that regularly are in small pieces of information; due this,

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students find details that reveal specific and valuable information, to clarify ideas about the given topic, then in a second try in a general reading, students are going to be able to understand the message correctly. We need to improve the reading habits of our class to keep them reading everywhere, and increase the national reading average, of 0.7 books per person per year.

Listening Strategies

The mother nature gave tow ears to listen, because it more difficult to listen than any other of the four language skills. Having the opportunity to practice with a native speaker it is an advantage because you learn about idioms, pronunciation, fluency, phrasal verbs etc... But another important aspect of the native speakers is that you learn a lot of cultural aspects that help you to understand better the American life style. In my opinion there are two ways to teach the mentioned topics, one could be inducible and the other one it is deductible. And we must adapt them according the studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; needs to make this topic easier. About intonation, it could be the music, the rhythm, the melody of our speech teaching both better it is helpful, because we can improve pronunciation by focusing on stress. Through music we can lead students to learn faster these topics; but do not forget to keep centered the educational purposes. We should provide models of intonations and our students will be able to learn more about it, to be closer to a natural English pronunciation; because, rhythm and intonation are basic when we speak and when we listen to somebody. I will focus this comment about word stress, rhythm and intonation, in every single exercise there were a lot of things to learn and practice, I noticed stress could be the way to be understood, we as teachers need to pay attention about it, because meanings can change through words stress, because it is fundamental in listening because it helps to identify the real meaning. For example: If you decide to

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emphasize something, you can change the stress from the principal noun to another content word such as an adjective, intensifier; this emphasis calls attention to the extraordinary nature of what you want to emphasize, and there is another, contrastive stress, it is used to point out the difference between one object and another. Contrastive stress tends to be used with determiners. The web sites given are the best tools to reduce the distance between the classroom and the real English speaking life with native people. Thus our student can face â&#x20AC;&#x153;realâ&#x20AC;? situations about listening every day, any topic. From a native speaker we can learn about idioms, pronunciation, fluency, phrasal verbs, intonation, word stress, etc... But another important aspect of the native speakers is that you learn a lot of social aspects that help you to understand better the American culture. In my opinion there are two ways to teach any topic, one could be inducible and the other one it is deductible. And we must adapt them according the studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; needs to make any class more attractive. Both ways are challenging to students. Through music we can lead students to learn faster; but do not forget to keep centered the educational purposes. As much contact our students have with native environment, as much they are able to learn and express themselves better.

Writing Strategies

When a person reads frequently the next step it is to produce text; writing is a productive skills and probably the most complex, because, according a survey, when you think more words you are able to say a little bit less of them, but you could write only a few of them, writing is permanent; now teachers should pay more attention about writing exercises, they need to grade and level them correctly to student. If you let students working free may be they will be focus on listening, reading or speaking; writing always it is a challenging activity for students, but, for teachers, it

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represents a good opportunity to boost their imagination and creativity. In module six I found out many activities that can help students to face writing in many different ways, they will be interested in the production not only in the final grade. Writing exercises are a mixture of abilities because always the writer needs to keep the reader’s attention, without leaving such important aspects like grammar, punctuation and vocabulary; to express themselves clear and better. In this diploma on line the exercise “Creating Stories” was great to show us how our students feel when they need to create a text; fortunately the provided web page had an easy way to help students to create something with no fear, because it could be a crazy story, a serious one or any kind. Creating a comic to me it was very enjoyable and fun, but students got the same feelings, because there was their first time creating a comic and it was in English. I saw the enjoyment and pleasure in my class when I gave the instructions to follow to create a comic, first they follow them and create one, but later they were creating more for every situation about school, secretaries and teachers, they laugh a lot and they let their imagination fly. To write in English it is difficult, to write a poem in English it is a little bit more; but with the websites you gave us writing turned easy and simple even a poem, with the “poetry forms” provided , this activity is easier than everybody could imagine, because it had clear instructions, and lead to students step by step, and it provides a lot of clear information and ways about how to write your own poem, this website asks for every kind of word we need to structure our writing, and the students can be creative, can practice vocabulary, grammar and function of words at the time that they are making poetry. When we worked creating a book of poems, this activity gave me satisfactions, because, I like poetry; I know it is difficult to express by writing what you feel, but this web page made this experience easier and illustrated too. To me poetry it is hard in Spanish, but unbelievable now my class and me created some in English, with the media and ITC’s help of course.

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Information and Communication Technologies

This diploma on line left a deep clue, due this tools and accessories I got while developed it. Because through all the modules there were amazing web sites in order to improve their four basic English skills. Information and communication technologies have become a very important combination of tools for our students, and they are familiarized with them because they belong to another generation. Nowadays, our students are related with technology more than us, , and for them the technology is something basic in their life style, the use of the computer it is essential in order to develop all the new activities with our students, because

they use it to listen to music, to do a

homework, to investigate a topic, to get music, to watch a movie, to find a picture, to write a letter, to be in contact with friends or relatives, to spend the free time and just to have fun, they do this and more through a computer. A tool I have already used it is audacity, my students found it very attractive an me too, because they enjoy and have fun when they record and listen to their own voice, they always record more than I asked to; obviously it helps them to improve their speaking skills, thus they are gaining confidence to take any future challenge.

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I am not good about lesson planning, but if I need to choose one I would like to choose the Madeline Hunterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s one because in its seven steps it goes from previous knowledge to the assignment. Step 1, Anticipatory, here the teacher can identify how much do the students know about a topics before we start working, and teacher can make some adaptations to lead students better, and the process itself and result can be the best, it is a recommended part of teaching by Ausubel. Step 2, Statement of objectives, after the first, teachers should set the objective, taking care of step 1, because they need to be link to keep students interested, here teacher knows the focus of it, and he can predict where students could be at the end of the lesson. Step 3, Instructional input, here students get closer to the real topic by some introductory activities or instructions that clarify students what and how to do the exercise, here students start generating ideas about possible solutions. Step 4, Modeling, teachers gives clues and shows how to follow the process to get better results, students are about to live the experience by their own. Step 5, Check for understanding, teacher monitors in variety of ways to identify if everything is clear, and students have understood. Step 6, Guided practice, teachers motivates students to start practicing the new skill, using the learnt things to create a new extended knowledge. Here, in this step there is a similarity with the Brunerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s scaffolding, about learning by structured practice. Step 7, Independent practice, teacher let students alone to practice living their new experience by themselves, in a assignment, homework, quiz, etcetera.

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MY LEARNING EXPERIENCE

By Arnulfo Isaias Palacios Pérez

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I was not very convinced when I started the Diploma to consider it is going to be stressful and hard to understand for the resources provided, I didn’t believe that the web had such information for this purpose. I have improve some of my skills through the links provided and I found an amusement way to learn, the activities formed by interactive resources were amazing (quizzes, drills, explanations, etc) and the challenge to do further practice help me more to identify the grammar problems that I faced. This module was “the switch” to enter a world of technology used to learn English and different cultures besides you can practice

from people around the

world and have fun.

CULTURAL AWARENESS

Basically introducing authentic materials in the classroom’s activities let students to get a cultural attention in an amusement way to learn language. Trough searching materials and choose the adequate items

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to classify them to which part of the class you can use them. For example if you are going to use it as a “warm up”, a “guided practice”, etc. You have to focus on the main aim of the class in order to success learning on your students. Now I have many resources on the web thanks to this Diploma where I’ve implemented movies, songs, articles and more materials, where my students have the benefits so they can learn about other cultures and no just English culture.

The last class I use the extract of a movie to check the comprehension of past continuous, the movie was “Hancock” and my students where impressed and very motivated for the use of the technology (I use a laptop and an OHP). The class was a great success.

One thing to catch my students’ attention is to choose topics that are motivating. It really helps to have a good selection of activities. For reading I selected the American stories site, and I had exercises of scanning, skimming and reading for details and I share this to my students. On the listening part, I took some of the quizzes from the Randall’s’ ESL Cyber Listening Lab site, and applied to my students and they feels comfortable and amuse. By the speaking part, the use of the MSN is crucial, here they feel with more freedom because is a tool that they use it every day, and I could exploit their confidence on speaking more fluency.

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To develop writing, students have can find that doing short tales, comic strips and poems, is a different and fun way to practice this skill.

NEW TEACHING STRATEGIES DISCOVERED

As educators, we must continually reflect on our teaching and update our practice to address the needs of this population, placing a strong emphasis on the human side of teaching. We must continually focus on these students and find effective ways to arrange their learning to help them achieve. As educators we need to realize that education occurs in the context of a social climate. They often lack the ability to interact in social settings with English speaking peers because they are in separate classrooms and often have limited opportunity to interact academically or socially. They often have great difficulty learning the "slang" and social English because they have no one to learn it from. English learners need to learn the words in English as well as the cultural background that gives the words their English meaning. They need to learn words in context to understand the meaning. So this opportunity to use the web as a tool to get involve our students in the acquisitions of the language, is how we as educators have to face with the 21st century learner.

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READING TEACHING STRATEGIES

I have used the reading strategies to myself and to my students in order to approach and make sense of a reading text, after I realized, what are they and how to put them in practice when I got them from this Diploma. I got an idea of these strategies but never so clear after I put them in practice in the tasks of the Diploma. The most important to me were: Skimming, scanning, reading for details, prediction and anticipation and inference. Through the task given I really enjoyed the site “100 Sort English Stories” because in this site I discovered the contextual strategy and it was the door to enter to read for pleasure for me. Since then I have read more and more texts and now I can share with you that I learn with pleasure! The importance of reading can be demonstrated because a student who is a good reader is more likely to do well in school and pass exams than a student who is a weak reader. So what can I do for my students are applying the pre-reading, reading and post-reading strategies? I can mention some that I consider available to classes: Skimming is a fast reading technique. Use it to obtain the gist of a piece of text (i.e. to quickly identify the main ideas in the text). • Scanning is a fast reading technique. It's a way of reading to look for specific information in a text. Scanning can be used to look up a phone number, read through the small ads in a newspaper, or for browsing TV schedules, •

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timetables, lists, catalogues or web pages for information. For these tasks you don't need to read or understand every word. • A fact is something that can be verified and backed up with evidence. • An opinion is based on a belief or view. It is not based on evidence that can be verified. Then reading for simple purpose of reading you can find that texts show different aspects of the American culture and the English speaking countries.

LISTENING TEACHING STRATEGIES

One activity very complicated to me was the 2.1 Top down listening. I consider that my pronunciation is not good but when I found this activity simply I was lost. From the beginning I listened the exercise twice and from the third one I got the idea. When I noticed this I centred on the cultural facts “No all the English is spoken the same” then I realized how different is the pronunciation from one place to another. The word I remembered the most is the word “race” where it seems to be pronounced as “raise” that shocked on my mind that I’m can get a better pronunciation. Another difficulty that I had was when our tutor arranged us in pairs and I couldn’t be in contact with mine assigned, but then my tutor

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changed this and he found me an excellent partner and we enjoyed together all the activities.

SPEAKING TEACHING STRATEGIES

I found the most value resource for develop speaking fluency the recording of voice using audacity. The first time I was a little confused for listen my voice so rude and without pace but then I could realize what I was doing wrong and then I could listen my voice more clear. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d like to give to my students the opportunity of record their voices and focus in the stress, rhythm, intonation and pace of their speaking to they can improve them in fluency. I have to design a simple plan to apply it but surely my students will feel more confident using this technique.

WRITING TEACHING STRATEGIES

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The first thing that a writer do is never stop to write, this is something I tell to my students and when they understand that this is the way to practice writing then it become on a result of learning, through the exercises provided for the websites of the Diploma I found useful tips to put in practice for me as a learner and teacher, the way to develop the writing skills using comic strips was an awesome technique that Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m applying it with my students. At first they use simple sentences and during these days they are using more details like using questions and different tenses and I was surprised with the results than we make a contest of comic strips. By other hands for my developing as a learner, I love the writing with writerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s site where they give different guides to follow step by step in a clear and simple way that I made some of the projects there. I improved a lot with this writings. On the forum I did not have any bad comments and I have the opportunity to make a comment from other colleague but without response.

ICT TOOLS

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The three most useful tools that I consider with more impact because mostly of the tools are useful and fun are in first place “Movie segments to asses grammar goals”. Using movie segments as a strategy to move students to face them to grammar is one success way because the author transports them to an area where they don’t feel comfortable to a secure one. The films are supported with drills and exercises in a variety of levels of difficulty. There is a variety of movies from different levels of accuracy. This is an exactly example of the use of technology that it isn’t for that purpose, arranged to learn a language in a multi-cultural world. OCT 18, 2009

Sleuth: Imperative Forms

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Another good point of this resource is that they are factual and very interested for all kinds of students; therefore it doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t need too much applications of software.

My second choice is the audacity software, a tool a little complicated but after some practice you can get along with it more easily. This tool is crucial to develop speaking when you donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have the opportunity to practice with English native speakers. And this tool offers the opportunity of self-correction too.

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My third favorite tool is the site Adult Learning Activities a site to build your reading and life skills. I really enjoyed the articles there, with several topics to choose and learn about the English culture and also offer links to a great other learning sites. Here you can explore the English customs and traditions in a multimedia atmosphere. You can listen, watch videos or simple read all the stories and do the activities provided. The part where they give new word with listening and spelling is awesome!

These are my choices, but I can list at least 7 or 8 more good tools that I used in this Diploma.

LESSON PLAN MODEL

I was checking the models of lesson plans provided in the link, and I hardly agree with them because to choose one appropriated to my context is kind of difficult. I have to say that taking some steps from each of them, I can arrange one better to fit to my context well. I teach in a suburban population and my studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; needs are different from the

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required in big cities, so I consider mixing some of the models given and arranging one that benefits my classes. I can use the seven steps model format giving a variation in the sequence and insert some clues from the multiple intelligences which it will be like the following.

• WARM UP. - Where the teacher focuses the lesson to come for the students. • PRESENTATION. - This is the actual lesson to be taught, it could be a new lesson or a review topic. Here is the main performance of the teacher, the intervention of the multiple intelligences is crucial in order to have a good explanation and should include: Modelling, TPR, rules or steps and examples. • GUIDED PRACTICE. - This is where the students work always guided by the teacher. It can be a practice worksheet, an oral practice or a game activity. • INDEPENDENT PRACTICE. - Here is the opportunity for students, once the teacher is certain that students understand the concepts being taught, to show what they can do with the language. It can be a quiz, an exam, a presentation in front of the class, or a research project completed over several weeks. • CLOSURE.-Closure is a brief ending activity whereby the teacher asks students to recant some of the major topics covered in class that day. The model here consist of 5 steps only, so I think it differs some from the other models and can be used to my context in a success way.

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UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL AUTONOMA DE MEXICO CENTRO DE ENSEÑANZA DE LENGUAS EXTRANJERAS

DIPLOMA:

COMMUNICATIVE SKILLS FOR SECONDARY TEACHERS

ALMA VELIA PICOS AYALA

REPORT:

“MY LEARNING EXPERIENCE”

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Nov., 2009.

MY LEARNING EXPERIENCEâ&#x20AC;Ś.

By Alma Velia Picos Ayala

LANGUAGE LEARNING When I started this Diploma I had a lot of troubles because I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have practice with the computers,

so I almost deserted, but I

continued, step by step and finally I am at the end of the way. To talk about my learning progress is an incredible experience, since this is my first course in the web, and the most important, I am really proud to have the opportunity to study in an excellent university like UNAM, with excellent programs and with the best teachers. In the first Module, I learnt how to use the Internet Sites. It was one of the most difficult parts of the Diploma for me, because I

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havenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t had experience with the Internet. There were a lot of new information I almost became crazy, I thought my head will explode, but I began to assimilate all the information little by little and things began to take form in my mind. I could practice reading skills like skimming and scanning and do the quizzes in order to get a better understanding of the texts. In the listening exercises, I realized that we can improve our listening abilities if we practice day by day a wide variety of exercises in order to motivate our students. I also learnt in this module how to identify the thought groups and how to get the main and the general idea in a listening exercise. Module 6 required a lot of effort, because I had many troubles with the microphones. I had to do a self evaluation of my speaking, it was something new for me. Using the rubrics, I learned how to speak with more coherence, using the adequate stress, rhythm, tone and how to interact in a conversation with a good grade of fluency. I loved module 6, because I had the opportunity to write and I realized that is something that I enjoy a lot. I learnt how to do different kinds of writings. I had some troubles with the comics and the photopeach, but finally I did them after many attempts. In general, I learnt so many things but I think the most important is to integrate these activities to our job.

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CULTURAL AWARENESS English is one of the most important languages all over the world, so if we speak English we are going to be able to communicate with people from all the countries, share our experiences, lifestyles and the most important make friends. In the web sites I used, I read about many topics that involve the English Community (sports, crime, nature, environment problems, history, etc.), but there was one in

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special that captured my attention and made me think about the difficult situations of the American citizens during the Civil War. I realized that life is not easy and sometimes we have to take difficult decisions. How people used to live, the dark side of men and the implications of the politics in the daily life. I loved my matesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; stories, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s amazing how a simple photo tells us so many different things according with our personal experiences. I enjoyed a lot the activity with the differences between American and British English. I have to study it again in order to acquire the new words.

In the web we can take a view of people around the world and we can use these sites to make our students get in touch with the real life using different videoclips in class.

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People from all the word, from all ages love tales, and I think it is another way to share experiences and cultural practices in a funny way.

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ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING As a language learner and a teacher, I discovered that I was too static, out of contact with the language. The only situations that I had to practice it were in the school with my students in a very elemental level. Now, I realize that it is really important look for information and look for situations where I can practice the language in order to be a better teacher. I'm sure, my students can do the same process in their own learning process with just a few motivation and direction. If you talk with your students after a test, most of them agree that in many cases they have troubles with the listening exercises. During the Diploma I understood that the answer is in our hands to make them feel more comfortable and motivated. As a language learner and teacher, I discovered that we don't have to be afraid to listen to our voices and that we can improve our speaking as well as we practice. The same can do our students if they have the opportunity. It is quite imperative that we integrate the new technologies (internet, movies, videos...) in order to capture the interest of our students in the classes. We must be conscious that our students grew using computers, cell phones, video games, etc., and that make them feel like a fish in the water using the technologies. Of course, we have to do a lot of work in order to make our schools be equipped with all the tools that

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we need. Many of the public schools have the machines but the problem is that we don’t have any idea of what to do with them or how to use them. That’s why this Diploma gets more importance because you are making us reflect in the imperative that is to make a total change. I have always said that an English teacher adopts different roles during the class, sometimes we have to be strong and kind in order to make our students feel ok in the class but being careful of not to lose the control. In the other hand we have to be very dynamics: jump, dance, sing, play, act, etc., we can’t be statics in any way. To be a teacher is a big responsibility, because we have the opportunity to influence in the life of our students. So, don’t forget that we are working with people and we can make they continue the learning process all their lives, because learning never ends.

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READING There were two activities that I liked most. The first one is in the activity 1.2: read while listening called American Stories, we went into the site and choose two stories. I chose “A Horseman in the Sky” and “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”. The first one,

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tells the story about a young soldier who fight in the Civil War in the United States and he had to take a big decision between duty and his father life. The second one is about a man who was died in the Owl Creek Bridge. Both stories were fantastic and the best is that we have the opportunity to practice reading and listening at the same time. The other activity I liked a lot was Activity 4.1.Reading, listening, watching a video and vocabulary activities. We went into the site Adult Learning Activities and chose Science and Technology and then Cell Phone Safety. I loved this activity because it is quite

complete, first, we have the opportunity to read and listen the story, then .we can play a video about the same topic. Next, we check the spelling and pronunciation of some vocabulary words from the text, make some spelling exercises, a matching game and a quiz. This activity involves a topic that it is really actual and the information it’s quite useful for our safety. There are many strategies that we can use to develop our students skills like: • Activate prior knowledge • Make predictions • Make inferences • Use the text clues to decipher unfamiliar words • Visualize images from the text • Distinguish facts and opinions • Identify the main ideas In my opinion, the strategies 1 to 4 are basic in all type of texts or readings. We always must activate prior knowledge in all the reading exercises. Make predictions, make inferences and decipher unfamiliar words

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are strategies that we have to incorporate if we want to understand the readings.

LISTENING TEACHING ACTIVITIES

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It was really difficult to me to choose one activity, but I finally decided for activity 7.1 listening strategies in the site English Listening Lounge

When I did this activity it took me too much time to do it, because I didn’t have any idea of what to do. So, I began to click on the boxes and I realize they have quite information where we can choose: • Domain • Level • Topic • Passage • Passage description • Readers description • Details • Questions/Q-A/transcriptions And that’s OK, but the problem is that this is a listening exercise and I didn’t have any idea where the listenings were.

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In my opinion, this page has too much information and links that make it difficult to use and It doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have instructions for the user.

What can I do to make it easier? First, I will change the format, I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t like the scheme and the color (it is awful). Next, I will include some instructions for the user in a simple way, because you can go to the links home and there are about 3 pages for read it and honestly it is too extensive. Finally, I will change the letter, it is not attractive for the reader. Listening should be a pleasure activity, where we attention should be focused on enjoy the activity and not to get lose trying to guess what to do.

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SPEAKING I liked a lot activity 3.1. “How to describe people”. First, we went to a site called voice thread. There we had the opportunity to watch an example of a work already done for other people, where they describe someone in a photo, the people in the first exercise are native English speakers, over there we had the opportunity to listen different accents and different points of view according with everyone personality and lifestyles. Next, we create our own work with students from the same group. It’s a nice experience, because we can listen to our partners and check they pronunciation and compare with our own work.

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It’s quite interesting to see how a simple picture can tell a wide variety of opinions according with everyone’s feelings. I would like to do this activity with my students because I can evaluate their speaking abilities and at the same time to know their feelings, opinions and points of view of different topics and that would be helpful to have a better communication with them. In the other hand, they will be able to listen their own voice and their mates voices too, in order to see their achievements, make comparisons, be evaluated by themselves and take decisions in order to improve their learning process. I also liked activity 6. “How to present a short talk”, where we described someone important in my life using audacity program. I liked this activity, because we can express our feelings and we can see our students in a humanistic way and get involved in their lives in order to be better teachers and try to design the activities according with their personal interest and as a result to get students more motive and involved in their learning process.

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WRITING In the activity 1.1 Grammar and writing, we developed a tall tale, I just couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t stop laughing with the funny stories we created. This is a good way to motivate our students to write, practice grammar and get fun at the same time. In the activity 2.1. Writing ideas. A book of poems, we created 6 poems using a format. If I was asked to make

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the poems without this format I couldn’t do it, but it’s incredible what easy it is using the format. Then, we made a photobook using pimpampum site. I really enjoyed doing this activity and of course I really proud of my photobook. I enjoyed so much doing my story using photopeach. I am sure my students will love this site, I had the opportunity to read my peers works and they were really nice too. My daughter helped me with the music and she made her own story and sent it to her friends. In activity 8.1 “Movie segments to assess grammar goals” a teacher presents writing activities based on videoclips, I think is a good resource because we practice some grammar exercises and get fun at the same time. I can say that this module was integrated in two parts. In the first part the activities where focused in developed writing using grammar components. In the second part, there were showed the different kind of texts and their main components in order to write similar texts using our life experiences. When I read my peers writings I feel more in touch with them because we have a view of their

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personal lives and we had the opportunity to interact with them in the forum. I really loved this module because I like writing a lot. When I am writing I feel free, my hands go through the paper without restrictions like if they have wings and I can express my ideas and feelings.

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INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES ON ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING When I got the invitation for this Diploma, I remember it said we must know how to use a computer, and I said “oh, that’s not problem with me, I know how to use a computer” (I have already taken courses of windows, words, excel and power point). But I have a big trouble: I didn’t have practice with internet. I can say that the biggest problem that I have during this course was because I didn’t know how to use the ICT. Of course, I have learnt a lot because it’s like if I have taken two courses at the same time: English and how to use Internet. When I sent my first assignment to my tutor I just told him that I was fascinating to know how many different things we can do in the web and now that I am at the end of the Diploma I am still very surprised with all the options that

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we have for our classes and mean what? I am very motivated to continue working with the iCT and the most important to put them in practice in my classes. I really enjoyed module 6 “writing” and all its activities. The first one, In the activity 1.1 Grammar and writing, we developed a tall tale. Here we practice grammar and writing at the same time. The best of all is that we don’t have any idea of the story. We only choose a title and they ask us some words like a verb, noun and adjective, etc. and we have the final story and we get really funny stories I just have a wonderful time. I enjoyed so much doing my story using photopeach. I am sure my students will love this site. Photopeach is a site where you can make a story using your own photos (or from la web), write a short description and add music. It’s an excellent way where students can share their feelings and emotions in a funny way. It’s like to do a videoclip. I also liked a lot the Book of Poems. I am surprised how easy it is to make poems using this site and the most important to have the opportunity to share them using pimpampum site creating a photobook.

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Definitely,

technology

growing fast day by day and we must hurry up if we don’t want to stay in the middle of the

way.

compromise

So, to

it’s

our

continue

studying to be a teacher for the new generations. We must remember that our students grow up using technologies (cell phones, computers, video games, etc.). Then, to be part of them is natural for the young people and learning can’t be aside of them. We must take the best of them in order to motivate our students to learn more every day.

LESSON PLAN

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When I checked the site and read the lesson plans included in it, I realize that all of them have the same activities, objectives and procedures, but with different names.

In the Lesson

Plan included “Pearl Harbor I took one of the points:

The discuss: Background from the h.w., reading • Madeline Hunter's (Seven Steps) called Instructional Input. • Bloom's Taxonomy and Critical Thinking called application. • Multiple Intelligences (Howard Gardner's 7 Ways of Knowing) called verbal/linguistic. • Multiple Intelligences (Howard Gardner's 7 Ways of Knowing) called ownership. Of course, I have to choose one of them I will take the first one “Seven Steps”, because the information is presented I n a clear way. In our daily work, according with our teachers book we have to plan based on the model of Experiential Learning and it says that “every individual is constantly and actively involved in making sense of the world by constructing (or reconstructing) meaning from the interpretation of personal experiences” (Lengua Extranjera, Inglés, SEP). All the activities began with a text (it could be oral or written text) which contains the language functions, students should focus on it and work with it, the performance evidence could be listening or reading the text. Then, they should reflect on language and do sample productions in order to get the knowledge.

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The lesson plan provided in this site “Pearl Harbor” has all the points it should have according with the Experiential Learning”, because it is focused in a text (written text). The students should read it (performance evidence: reading) and then, do some activities where they can reflect on language, do sample productions and do the final work (speaking or writing report about the reasons of the U.S. for going to the war. In the site I have the opportunity to check another one called Teacher’s Role. Here the teacher wears many hats: counselor, judge, mentor, hundreds of roles and I think the teacher should be really creative in order to plan a successful class and to be open mind to change the plan if it doesn’t work according with the plans, because we have different students and different situations that makes that things that work in a group maybe in another one will be a failure. I think the most important of this unit is to be conscious that we must plan all our classes giving our best effort and we will get excellent results.

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FINAL

REFLECTIONS……. First of all, I want to thanks to UNAM and SEP for giving us the opportunity to take this Diploma. It was a honor to did it. It has been a hard way to get to the end of it, but how someone says: “If the difficult things were easy, anybody will do it” This Diploma has opened my mind to a new world that I didn’t have any idea of it, there are so many things that we can do using the ICT tools. I want to thanks my peers for the knowledge they shared with us and for giving me help when I needed it. There is one person who I want to give an special mention, his name is Alan. He was always next to us,

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giving support and confidence to continue working. Thanks Alan for all your help. With Love, Alma Velia Picos Ayala

My learning experience By Cintya Lisbeth Rivas Ramirez

7.1 Language contents I learnt.

First of all I realized that always there is a possibility to study, even though we have no time to be at school, nowadays, we can take advantage of the value resources that internet offers, to get personal overcoming and besides this is going to make us develop several abilities. As a teacher, I learnt about the eight competences for lifelong learning students, and I also want to say that three of them are more related with students, these are: communication in foreign language, learning to learn and cultural awareness and expression, other important point is that we have to use appropriate techniques and strategies to teach speaking, listening, writing or reading activities. Talking about reading, it is so important to get students to skim or scan a text, it depends on the objective of the activity, and also to deduce and infer information. Talking about listening, I can say that there are some aspects to keep in mind, as word stress, intonation and rhythm. Talking about speaking, we must apply the word stress, intonation and rhythm in our speech, and also it is necessary to be fluent.

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Finally, talking about writing, it is important to follow a logical sequence and have a good grammar to express what we really want to say and make our text attractive.

7.2 Explanation about some ways I could focus my studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; attention to English language and culture giving examples of the main aspects I learned.

Now that we are teaching English focused on the development of competences, I think it is really important to get our students to develop them by using the appropriate cognitive methodology joined with attractive resources.

I am sure all these aspects will let me teach better, because now I have more strategies for teaching, in my personal experience, I used to get my students to make projects using the movie maker program, now I have the alternative to use the photo peach program, we also make a cd using virtual Dj program, it was a little difficult, now I know we can make it in audacity, in my own experience I can say that all of them are easier to use. I can take advantage of a forum to interact with my students about any topic, or remind them their tasks. In addition, if I need to check some aspects of grammar, I have a variety of internet pages to be consulted, and I also can include some information from them in my lesson plans to make them be more attractive to get the goal to make my students develop competences.

7.3 Explanation about how the strategies I observed are related to the habits mentioned in the text.

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Nowadays science and technology are developing constantly, as a teacher I consider that we need to have open mind to advance with all this stuffs, in the classroom we can find many students with the most modern technology like I phones, laps, palms, etc. We can not underestimate this situation, because many times they know more than us, then if we are thinking that we are a model to be followed, they can be disappointed about us, for that reason we must be updated to adapt ourselves, being visionaries, keeping on learning selecting the best alternative for us among the great amount that today exist, as I mentioned before, I am sure that to be a good leader we have to be always updated, and it is up to us, If we are saying that we have to make our students to learn to learn and learn to think, we have to apply all this first in us. There is no excuse to not to do it, It is evident as we learnt along this course, that the decision is in our hands about what kind of teachers we want to be.

7.4 Identifying the strategies used in the reading activity.

I chose the text of â&#x20AC;&#x153;A murder suicideâ&#x20AC;?

According to this text, I will mention the strategies used.

First, the title is written in bigger letter and different color, I think the intention is to make it be more interesting and attractive, other important point is that this page gives us the option to activate the music button, and as we studied before, it is a good strategy to make us relax and let us focus in an specific moment and space, another aspect is that we can also click on the voice button that allows us to check some parts of the speech like stress word, intonation, pronunciation, and at the same time lets us to be involved with the environment and in the context, I mean it gives us the option to practice reading and listening, of course we can focus just in one of them. On the other hand, It is evident the sequence that the text follows, it has an introduction, a body with a sequence of events in

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order of importance and in a logical way, and a conclusion, as a consequence it leaves us a reflex ion to think about.

In my personal opinion, it is a cognitive process that activate all our senses, and in this way, it is easier to add new information to our schemes, or maybe modify some of them to produce knowledge

7.5 The most difficult activity of module 4.

This is an analysis about the most difficult activity for me of module four and what I would do to make it easier. First of all I will tell you what were they, and they were the activities of minimal pairs that refers to the same pronunciation except for one sound, it was interesting to have many examples in the corresponding link, and in different levels of difficulty, and I say they, because they all were explained in the same strategy, because one just clicks on the button and the pronunciation was emitted, I would have liked to complement this examples with some applications, I mean, the examples as in the way they are, but with a complementary activity like a text that includes them as many as possible, then it would be good to continue with a multiple choice activity where we have the alternative to complete it with the missing words by selecting the appropriate ones from a variety of options that let us think and reflect about them, I also would try to do it more attractive using nice resources like music or a game, for example a memory game, that in one part includes a sentence and in the complement the pronunciation, I believe in this way it would make us assimilate much better, and therefore it would be easier.

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7.6 Reflecting about the most useful activity of module 5.

I think the most useful activity of module 5 was recording myself and after listening to the product, it was the first time I did it, and also the first time I listened to myself in this situation, at the beginning I felt I sounded terrible, but I was getting better as I realized about my mistakes in my speaking way, in this way I had the opportunity to correct many aspects of my speech, like intonation, rhythm, pronunciation, stress and also the speed, because I felt that I was so slow or so fast, It was really useful, because I did not like my way of speaking, and I said â&#x20AC;&#x153;come on! I sound terribleâ&#x20AC;?, but as I said, I improved. In the same way, I had the opportunity to listen to my coworkers and I witness the way they improved.

Applying this with my students I would like them to have the same experience for many reasons, the first one is because in that way they are going to be able to evaluate themselves to correct their errors, besides they are going to be in touch with the technology, I am sure that this experience will be benefit for them, and it will let them to learn about their own mistakes and experiences.

7.7 The main teaching strategies in order to develop my writing ability.

In this course I have learnt many strategies to improve my writing ability, but they are not all, throughout my process of learning and teaching English I have realized about the way I learn, I think the first and the most important is to know how I learn, this allows me to keep on in the same way or modify my strategies for learning, In this way I make sure that I am going to improve my writing abilities by reading text, In that way I am going to be able to know and infer new vocabulary and the way it is used, and besides how to apply it in my writings, I learnt from module 6 many strategies to make a text logical, with a sequence,

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well organized and attractive, and let me tell you that I am applying all this not just in English writings, I also do it in my Spanish texts, and I have got very good result, now I feel that I can write much better, I know that I have too much to learn, and that we always learn something new.

Other strategy that I am going to follow is to be updated by looking for opportunities like this course that let me know not just about what is programmed in the course, if not, from people like my co-workers that also gave me the opportunity to learn from them. 7.8 Three tools more useful for learning English.

Ok, I just can choose three, then let’s back to module 6, here we have a lovely and very useful tool, because as I said before my students used to work in the movie maker program, and now I will give them the option to work their projects in “photo peach” and besides it is easy to get, because one can download it from internet and the results are awesome. The next tool is to work in the page of adult learning activities, from module 4, here we have the alternative to take advantage of writing, listening reading and speaking activities, because of the text’s framework, we can take advantage of music, videos and games that are integrated in the same page. The next tool is to use audacity. From module 5, I had an experience with my students, because we recorded a CD of songs that we sang, to make this project we had some difficulties, because it was a little difficult to use the virtual DJ program, and with audacity it is going to be easier next time. I can mention more but you just ask me for three.

7.9 Analysis of a lesson plan.

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I selected â&#x20AC;&#x153;Multiple intelligences. Seven ways of knowingâ&#x20AC;?

I will argue why I selected this lesson plan, I think this way of planning is appropriate, because it has a similar sequence of the Experiential learning method, that we apply at school, which is a cyclic process of integrating immediate experience, reflection, abstract conceptualisation and action. I think the activities are well organized and also the time to develop them, it is supported in some materials and the context and objectives are well organized in an appropriate sequence to get the students to learn in a significant way, it is focussed to have the students to develop abilities. I think so, because I can appreciate that first of all, the students are going to be set in a context, and their background is going to be activated in this way the objective is going to be set, after they are going to interact with oral and written texts that will give them the opportunity to make inferences, learn new vocabulary, identify new ideas, classify and organize information to learn about the seven ways of knowing, they can apply strategies for reading or listening. Other step will make them socialize when they give opinions throughout a discussion, in this part speaking is going to be applied to compare and contrast ideas. I think it is well structured and planned.

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MY LEARNING EXPERIENCE By Madel Rubio During this diploma, I have learned about some aspects of the language, I have read and practiced with many exercises or activities about reading, listening, speaking and writing, all these with help of interesting websites that I discovered.

CULTURAL LEARNING AWARENESS

Through the websites that I visited and read, I learned about grammar, I read information about famous people and about interesting places to visit around the world I know the explanation about why the Americans wanted to separate from the British after the revolutionary war, and how the Americans published their own speaking and grammar rules. I read about people, about health, about history, about daily habits, about some cities and countries, about technology and safety, all these were possible with the

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interesting readings and listening activities on every module , but not only from the English speaking community, also from people and places around the world. The learning was possible with the information about every topic, people or place that I found on the web, and I think I will continue with these amazing sites where I can learn as much as I want.

NEW TEACHING STRATEGIES DISCOVERED

I read, listened, spoke and wrote activities, exercises and quizzes, all these to understand and learn a Little more. I think I had adapted many activities on different moments in my classes, I am a visionary because I think what is going to happen at class with my students, I have taken risks doing a quiz, expressing my opinion, taking a decision about what to do, looking for a correct activity for my students, practicing a strategy, and recording my voice!! I practiced about reading, the skimming and scanning activities, about special language to different text types, about intensive reading with strategies. About the listening, the importance of intonation and word stress and a little more.

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Sometimes I use a strategy but I don´t think about what I am doing at the moment, I know that when I have time to stop and analyze them.

READING TEACHING STRATEGIES

The texts presented by reading and listening at the same time, separated in paragraphs and repeated sometimes every one of them, were good and helpful to understand the information on the stories. “American and British English” is one of this texts, where I used the scanning strategy, I had enough time to read, identify the main idea and important facts. This was a text to active prior knowledge, to ask questions before, during and after the reading, infer meaning, visualize to create a picture in my mind, identify ideas, compare and contrast ideas, all these to get a comprehension of the reading.

LISTENING TEACHING STRATEGIES

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Activities about improving listening skills and strategies the minimal pairs words were hard and interesting, the most difficult for me were the vowels sound pronunciation. I practiced about intonation, about the stress on some words, identified some tips to do with groups while listening. “English Listening Lounge” was not an easy site for me, because of the different speeds, accents, rhythms, pauses and intonation. And the “Authentic Listening” section was difficult on the same way, I listened many times each one of them to understand some of the information. But there were a little difficult because that was the purpose of the activities, listening authentic language, to improve our language learning and try to learn some more about it.

SPEAKING TEACHING STRATEGIES

Speaking was a complete challenge; I had to publish my oral productions. The first one was a mess, but it was useful to compare my speaking during this module. I liked the voicethread site, listen about come people and record a comment was interesting. I learned that is important to order the ideas and expressions, and to practice about intonation trying to improve my speaking. The audacity software is a good tool to use with my students; they can record their voice, listen and evaluate themselves. It is for everybody, it doesn´t matter the topic not even the level, it´s just to practice and improve every time their record their talks trying to be better.

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WRITING TEACHING STRATEGIES

Write a funny tale, taking care of the grammar aspects, the role of words, writing about names, adjectives, adverbs, proper names, nouns, numbers, food, fruits, verbs, body parts, just to create a funny tale was unusual and a creative writing. Then I wrote some poems, at least I tried, this was possible with a website, in the same way I created a comic, I did not visit these websites before, and now, I know that I can use them to create an activity for my students or with my students. But my favorite was, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Photopeachâ&#x20AC;?, because we only need a story and pictures to create something wonderful. I practiced common writing too, describing people and places to practice grammar, wrote sentences to use the correct punctuation, wrote verbs on the correct tense. I explored different types of writing like biography, descriptive, myth and poetry, bur descriptive was my favorite.At the end of the writing module, I noticed that grammar rules are important, but we also need imagination and be creative.

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ICT TOOLS

Technology is present in our lives, we have it in the house, in the car, in the phone, in the school and the students are familiarized with technology more than us. Technology for the students is essential to live, they use it to talk, to dance, to study and to have fun. That is way they are in advantage comparing with the teachers. This is an important reason to investigate and to learn about information and communication technologies, we have to adopt them and to use them at classes.

I enjoyed discovering interesting websites and that´s why was difficult to choose the best ones, and the most useful. One of my favorites activities were “reading and listening”, was really useful to do it at the same time, I had to be patient to get a lot of information from the activity, and I think my students can learn with this kind of exercises. Audicity, was an extraordinary tool for me, it´s a real challenge, I recorded my voice, listened and evaluated myself, I think is a good tool for me and for anyone who want to learn the language and want to practice to improve and try to be better. And the last tool, “poetry forms” with clear instructions, providing a lot of information and helping about how to write poems, we can be creative, practice vocabulary, grammar, and functions words at the time that we have fun.

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LESSON PLAN MODEL

The appropriate plan model for my context was the Bloom´s Taxonomy and critical thinking, because in the present study program, I have to consider the student to be an active constructor and the teacher is an experienced language user in charge of creating conditions to approach language and of guiding the process. I base my lesson plans on the experimental learning model and I related with the Bloom´s taxonomy. Concrete experience is the knowledge, reflective observation is comprehension, abstract

conceptualization

application

and

analysis,

and

the

active

experimentation is the synthesis and evaluation. But to get a good lesson plan I have to follow a model, but I cannot forget the skills that we practiced during this diploma and I can support them with strategies and with ICT tools. FINAL WORK CULTURAL LEARNING AWARNESS In the different web sites, I read very interesting stories like the “Golden Gate Bridge”, and some other adult reading activities like science and technology just to name some of

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them, those activities change my point of view towards what people do outside of my

country. Then I visited sites that increased my cultural awareness, reading about Maple syrup or the names of some Canadian provinces which I didn´t know in the “Canadian Corner”,” Crazy English”, “American Stories” etc. Usually, when we are doing exercises from the book, my students ask things such as: what does Alberta, Manitoba or Ontario means? Cultural aspects difficult to find in a dictionary, but now, I will be able to add them to my everyday practice. In addition, I read some stories, were people from New Zeeland use hip hop music to express a culture and the voice of youth. Also I´ve read about a place in Australia that people uses to get away from the city, and in the same time, I learned how they protect the natural environment. In addition, because of a reading, I realized how important it is to have insurance if you travel abroad do to unexpected medical emergencies and what are the options in case you need to buy one. Finally, using these sites gave me the opportunity to learn about places difficult for me to visit, since I have neither the money nor the time to travel.

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Written by Tino Sanchez.

NEW TEACHING ESTRATEGIES DISCOVERED In my experience, I found all of the ICT strategies useful. As a learner and a language teacher, I discovered that there are sites real fun to learn from, as well as to teach from. We have to defeat our own old-fashioned paradigms and give technology an opportunity to make things more entertaining. According to Mr. Church´s investigations, what makes a century 21 st teacher succeed are some habits that I will mention next: “that the teacher be able to teach the curriculum in imaginative ways, be able to adapt to his teaching experience, that he/she able to grasp emerging Web technologies and tools and manipulate them to serve their needs, and equally important, to serve as a model of behavior” Since we are expected to teach values. Among other important habits. The relation between 21st century teacher habits and teaching strategies, I observe during this course that there are the innovative tools that we as learners used, for example, listening and vocabulary while watching a video of stories using authentic material. In my opinion it is more interesting than doing it the traditional way.

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Another activity that kept my attention was,

“Sharing and using your pictures

to create a story in photopeach.com” where we created a picture story of what we wanted to share with other people. In this particular activity I learned many things, even though I was behind and I really didn´t have a chance to post comments on my peers work. Definitely this was an activity I enjoyed so I´m pretty sure my students will enjoy it too. Not only but also, another activity I truly enjoyed was: “Movie segments to assess grammar points” I was thinking in advance on how to edit movies on my own, so I investigated that special hardware and software is needed. The reason I say this, is because in my school there is no access to internet, so I will do my own movie segments and be visionary as Mr. Church says in his investigation. In order to be more visionary, we had to become students in this diploma, but it isn ´t enough, we have to keep investigating in our own. There are other tools mentioned as well like: Blogger, Tweeter, Bebo, MSN, Second Life, Wikispaces and so on. In conclusion, we have to bring the 21st century teacher habits to our classroom, school and life and live for them. There is an old saying in Spanish “evolve or die”

By Tino Sanchez READING TEACHING STRATEGIES.

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Throughout this module, I reviewed many reading stories as well as used different strategies like: skimming and scanning, strategies used to get a quick glance about the text and to find specific information respectively. The difference between Fact (something that can be verified) and opinion (belief or a view) I learned from this module among other interesting strategies that I had the opportunity to practice in the stories.” Horseman in the Sky” and “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” written by Ambrose Bierce in American stories.

In my opinion one of the most interesting reading texts was: “computers in the classroom” of Adult learning activities. It was a story where 30 students could use the internet every day; they were young children between Kindergarten and fifth grade, the teacher of the mentioned school said that “students didn´t want to take recess” it means the project must been very interesting. The title hook me because is a dream I have. As I was reading it, I notice that it’s an interesting topic. I agree with the teacher of the text. My students feel the same way about computers and we don´t have internet. “They don´t want to take recess either” When we get a chance to use de computers room. Moreover, the teaching techniques are very interesting also, I had the opportunity to learn and practice spelling new words and practiced listening, There is also a game of matching sentences with concepts which I think is great, I like games and when they are challenging is better. Another thing I like about the site is: the well explained “how to use” support. It´s too bad it doesn´t have many images nor do video but I like it anyways.

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In conclusion, the reading teaching strategies used in the module are very interesting, they gave me the opportunity to reflect, that teaching is a challenge and we must be open mind to new strategies and technology. LISTENIG TEACHING STRATEGIES THE MOST DIFFICULT ACTIVITY In my opinion one of the most difficult activities was “Teaching English intonation and stress patterns” Instructions aren´t too difficult to follow but the text is very long, it has too many definitions difficult to remember, and maybe it is a good idea to have that much information but more summarized. It could have been easier if the material would have been reviewed beforehand and summarized as much as possible, that way the student don´t get so much information that causes him to be lost. It could have been easier, if it had more examples also, and fewer links, usually, if an activity has too many links, a student who isn´t well familiarized with English could be lost easily. SPEAKING TEACHING STRATEGIES HOW CAN I USE THESE ACTIVITIES WITH MY STUDENTS?

I can use these activities with my students as follow: I will spend some time explaining them how to obtain an account in Messenger, I wouldn’t be surprised if they know more than I. as I was saying on my previous work, some of my students´ parents aren´t to trilled about let it them go to do homework at someone else´s house, so I will propose them to share their activities with each other, especially when they have to do group work. So, the first thing I will try to do, will be using Messenger to have communication with each other.

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Moreover, I will propose the project to my fellow teachers, maybe if we get together as a team, we can get the school to pay for internet and be able to work with the rest of the tools proposed by this diploma. For one thing, it wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t hurt to try, maybe by using technology, someone would realize that having these tools is an advantage and will support the project. In the other hand, there are tools that wouldnÂ´t take that much of an effort to get. Like recording tools, we can use the windows recording tool for instance, I think most conventional computers have it. Or else, I can use a regular recorder and for that matter, we can use the cell phone voice recorder. I know for sure that the worst thing that can happen is: Being aware of it and not applying it in benefit of our students. A bigger mistake.

Written by: Tino WRITING TEACHING STRATEGIES

Main teaching strategies used in order to develop my writing. In the beginning of every writing, is always difficult to find inspiration, first ideas are always difficult to find, in my experience, it becomes real handy to use some of the templates to start writings proposed by this diploma, maybe I donÂ´t even have to use the titles proposed, but at the end, reading all of those titles, some ideas will come up to my mind and create my own title and story.

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However, another strategy I found useful when it comes to writing is: the use of melodies that change my state of mind, one thing I found out to be an obstacle when it comes to writing, is: having work pressure, being so worried about something, ideas are just hard to catch. I found out that music will help to relax. Anyway, when things like that happened, I would say it comes very useful to find a few good songs, maybe watch a set of slide pictures about beautiful places, creating a positive state of mind and writing will come out as water from a fluent river. In conclusion, a teacher has the responsibility of teaching, and teaching involves writing, it´s true we are neither poets nor high shot writers but to teach, we must write well, writing is an activity we must master, as close as we can get to perfection. Being aware that perfection doesn´t exist in earthly life. On the whole, I learn that if I want to write, I must learn how to read, but read for pleasure, and make this activity a habit. ABOUT ICT TOOLS (DESCRIPTION OF ICT TOOLS) 1. Reading for pleasure I selected this tool because I think it gives the student the opportunity to travel into the deepest thoughts of a writer, traveling with him, listening what he listens, seeing what he sees, and above all, learn part of what an author knows about his own way of seeing the world. It also gives the student an opportunity of reading along to a speaker´s voice, with in a wide range of interesting topics, having a broad range of tools available.

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2. Movie segments to assess grammar goals I chose this ICT tool stimulated by the sight of watching my students and my children at home rapture by television programs, so I thought to use that in my advantage while teaching English. I used this strategy even before I saw it in this diploma, but know, I have a more clear vision on how to use it in a better way. Editing just the parts that serve my interests.

3. Photo slides( telling stories over photos) I selected this activity do to the reason I enjoy it when I used to my own learning process, I guess I am a person who has more ideas to write while watching images, I found out that some of my students feel the same way. So I was thinking about taking advantage of it, and not be satisfied with the fact of just watching pictures from the internet, but also, having a camera or using the student cellular phones to take pictures and use them to create stories. It would be an entertaining form of learning English. LESSON PLANNING

I selected bloom´s taxonomy and critical thinking lesson plan is because as a language teacher, I consider it has subjects more appropriated to our teaching context, knowledge recall is a goal every language teacher must aim to. Comprehension should be another goal to achieve if we want to have students with a lifelong learning conscience. As it was mentioned by “The European reference framework” I would say, that all of the subjects mentioned in the bloom´s taxonomy plan, have much to do with the key competences for a lifelong learning. Since application would have to do with the way we teachers have aimed the purpose of teaching.

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Analyzing, the methods and synthesizing, the results to come up with an evaluation of learning. In the other hand, I didn´t find a lesson plan that I consider completed from A to Z, There are many things we teachers of basic education have to accomplished. Basic education in Mexico doesn´t have a happy ending, we cannot just dedicate our attention and efforts to teach knowledge. For basic educators the student is not just a simple container that we must fill up with data, we have to take into consideration different aspects such as affect, values, habits, aspects that in a sum, will make a complete person. Capable of distinguish, decide and reason about the purpose of learning. But in the same time making out of a student, a person capable of compete with the rest of the world in terms of knowledge.

FINAL WORK By Constantino Sánchez CULTURAL LEARNING AWARNESS In the different web sites, I read very interesting stories like the “Golden Gate Bridge”, and some other adult reading activities like science and technology just to name some of

350

them, those activities change my point of view towards what people do outside of my

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Written by Tino Sanchez.

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Another activity that kept my attention was,

“Sharing and using your pictures

By Tino Sanchez READING TEACHING STRATEGIES.

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Moreover, I will propose the project to my fellow teachers, maybe if we get together as a team, we can get the school to pay for internet and be able to work with the rest of the tools proposed by this diploma. For one thing, it wouldn’t hurt to try, maybe by using technology, someone would realize that having these tools is an advantage and will support the project. In the other hand, there are tools that wouldn´t take that much of an effort to get. Like recording tools, we can use the windows recording tool for instance, I think most conventional computers have it. Or else, I can use a regular recorder and for that matter, we can use the cell phone voice recorder. I know for sure that the worst thing that can happen is: Being aware of it and not applying it in benefit of our students. A bigger mistake.

Written by: Tino WRITING TEACHING STRATEGIES

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use the titles proposed, but at the end, reading all of those titles, some ideas will come up to my mind and create my own title and story. However, another strategy I found useful when it comes to writing is: the use of melodies that change my state of mind, one thing I found out to be an obstacle when it comes to writing, is: having work pressure, being so worried about something, ideas are just hard to catch. I found out that music will help to relax. Anyway, when things like that happened, I would say it comes very useful to find a few good songs, maybe watch a set of slide pictures about beautiful places, creating a positive state of mind and writing will come out as water from a fluent river. In conclusion, a teacher has the responsibility of teaching, and teaching involves writing, it´s true we are neither poets nor high shot writers but to teach, we must write well, writing is an activity we must master, as close as we can get to perfection. Being aware that perfection doesn´t exist in earthly life. On the whole, I learn that if I want to write, I must learn how to read, but read for pleasure, and make this activity a habit. ABOUT ICT TOOLS (DESCRIPTION OF ICT TOOLS) 1. Reading for pleasure I selected this tool because I think it gives the student the opportunity to travel into the deepest thoughts of a writer, traveling with him, listening what he listens, seeing what he sees, and above all, learn part of what an author knows about his own way of seeing the world. It also gives the student an opportunity of reading along to a speaker´s voice, with in a wide range of interesting topics, having a broad range of tools available.

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Analyzing, the methods and synthesizing, the results to come up with an evaluation of learning. In the other hand, I didnÂ´t find a lesson plan that I consider completed from A to Z, There are many things we teachers of basic education have to accomplished. Basic education in Mexico doesnÂ´t have a happy ending, we cannot just dedicate our attention and efforts to teach knowledge. For basic educators the student is not just a simple container that we must fill up with data, we have to take into consideration different aspects such as affect, values, habits, aspects that in a sum, will make a complete person. Capable of distinguish, decide and reason about the purpose of learning. But in the same time making out of a student, a person capable of compete with the rest of the world in terms of knowledge.

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COORDINACIÓN

EDUCACIÓN A DISTANCIA

“Communicative skills for

secondary teachers” “My

learning experience”

By : ALMA MARÍA DE LOURDES VELÁZQUEZ FLORES Noviembre 2009

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Para empezar un gran proyecto, hace falta valentĂa. Para terminar un gran proyecto, hace falta perseverancia Saber no es suficiente; tenemos que aplicarlo. Tener voluntad no es suficiente: tenemos que implementarla. (Goethe )

MY LEARNING EXPERIENCE We almost finish this course and I want to mention just some advantages from studying and learning English on free access internet sites, I mean on line : First, all of us can advance in our own pace. Second, in these sites they have a lot of funny activities and games so, everybody can have fun. Third, some of them are instant graded and received instant feedback. Four, itÂ´s an interactive, fun and self correcting way to practice, learn and improve our grammar and reading skills in English. I worked in several sites and found meaningful activities to develop my reading, writing, listening and speaking skills, I also worked with grammar aspects , in order to learn, practice and improve my grammar weakness points in a funny way. I wished I had more time to work in it. It was easy to do some attractive and interesting activities, I think, they fit to all kind of studentsÂ´ learning styles, especially for teen agers.They have several types of exercises and topics from basic to intermedia levels. I enjoyed doing the activities. Reading is an important aspect of learning a foreign language, thus reader interacts with the text in order to extract the required information from the text in the tarjet language.

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We have to apply certain strategies, depending on the purposes we have when we read a text. I learnt and worked “skimming” and “scanning”; I also learnt about parts of a text, and identified the main point in the piece of discourse. The process to become the passive vocabulary we have into an active vocabulary required time and effort that takes time to reach an appropiate level, since words are necessary to understand any text. In these websites I learnt that everybody can

learn vocabulary by listening, relating,deducing, reading the definition of a word and for the context . These sites help students learn vocabulary by the variety of real examples of texts that native speakers use in their everyday life. Besides it has pictures and a definition in English of the vocabulary used in the text, that helps to understand the information we are trying to comprehend. In some sites, we can find recent information in the world, that keeps us up to date. When I began reading some interesting and touching articles, I couldn't stop reading until the end. I wanted to know more about it, it really was a pleasant way to improve my reading skills. I didn’t know about the 20 strategies for reading comprehension, I had

taught just 4 or 5 of them with my students: Activate prior knowledge. Classify information. Make predictions. Sequence events.

Cultural Awareness

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The English speaking community as human beings, has hopes, dreams and goals in life. They have family, relatives and they wish the best for them, they also have problems, challenges, depression and bad times., as everyone else. Throughout the sites and materials I checked and worked in this Diploma course, I could take a look and understand a little bit more through written texts and stories about their oppinions, facts, ideas and attitudes in everyday life. In general, they use their language to express oppinions and personal comments in a polite form. However, human behaviour, and in consequence, human differences, are so big and important when we talk about customs, values and beliefs, and ways of interacting with other people. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s why, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s important to learn, teach, recognise and respect people who possess different values, customs and traditions. It also means that if we want to be effective communicators, we must have greater levels of cultural tolerance. As educators we must avoid to stereotipe people, thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a bad custom that interfieres with communication.

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This Diplomado course gave us the opportunity to work with cultural images and symbols of the English speaking community, as well as authentic reading material from the target culture, and to compare these materials with others in our own culture. Activities intended to reveal information about the lifestyles current in English-speaking cultures, and also to encourage comparison and discussion of how these options or patterns may be similar to, or different from, those in the students' culture.

Teaching strategies I read the article â&#x20AC;&#x153;Eight habits of highly effective 21 st century teacherâ&#x20AC;? and I have discovered that it is related with the sites and activities I have done here. There are many useful tools and strategies to use in my job since now. Using this information, now, I can teach my students with a variety of meaningful activities for all type of learners (taking in account the multiple intelligence they possess. In this websites they actually can listen as many times as they want, a text; in fact, they can read while they listen. They can interact, repeat and do as many activities as they want, they can received instant evaluation or correction. In these sites they can improve their listening skill; they can discover the benefits to use "chunks" in every day life to improve fluency and accuracy in speaking.

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Practice and learning English with the tools we have now in the internet, can be easier and an enjoyable experience. I also worked with the movie fragment, and I think is really useful, but perhaps we have to modify and adapt some activities suggested there.

In this way we are adapting the curriculum or the

requirements to teach to it in imaginative way( as the article says). Teachers are trying to

variety

adapt software and hardware into tools to be used by a of

age

groups

and

abilities.

Only if we see and use the tools and web technologies, we can our and their needs for a better and higher level of education. For me this is the first aim a teacher of the 21 st century must have in mind â&#x20AC;&#x153; Have a vision of what you want and what the technology can achieve, identify the goals and facilitate the learning.â&#x20AC;? With the help of our students.

The article recommend and expect the human being of the 21 st century to be life-long learners, stay current.

This Diploma course gave us tools

and technologies that

facilitate communication and collaboration.

the article also says about continue teaching values. There isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t enough to give information, to set students to a higher level of

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knowledge, we must model the behaviors that we expect from good citizens of tomorrow. We also must model tolerance, multicultural awareness, respect and responsability

with the

environment and mankind.

Being a teacher is synonim of being a leader, with clear goals and objectives. â&#x20AC;&#x153;A positive leadership is crucial to the success or failure of any project.â&#x20AC;?

TEXT : Foster Children Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s about the story of some children who can no longer stay at home, because a parent is not able to take care of them properly, or they are moved to another home to keep them safe, so, the child

becomes

foster

child.

There are not enough foster homes for these children in

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Sacramento, California;

they have to be moved far away.

I liked this site because you can integrate several skills besides reading, listening and watching a video, a short and full story and you can do some extra written exercises or activities for further and deeper comprehension; and finally you can see your score. Teaching strategies: 1. Prior questions. Because with this information I can realized their previous or prior knowledge / information they have:this way I can help them better or prepare the lesson with the appropiate activities for their English level. 2. New vocabulary. Because some students feel more confident when they know the correct meaning of new words; and if we use techniques to increase vocabulary at the same time, we can " kill two birds with one bullet" (I'm sorry, I don't know the exact translation in English for this expression ) 3. Titles, subtitles, pictures, tables, graphic elements, organization. Because this text resources help us a lot to understand an article, since we put in practice different types of graphic elements that give us information, not only the words. 4. Read, revisit, reflect. Because only when we reflect about the language or the use of the language, we appropiate it, we really learn something.

Difficult activity in module fourth. There were two difficult activities in this module, the first one was to hear the differences in the minimal pairs because some sounds are more difficult for me to understand and to pronounce them. These pages gave

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the opportunity to listen and practice them in several ways but, I think it could have been easier if the site would have some instructions or recommendations to facilitate and take advantage of this useful internet tool, before working on it, for example: - Listen several times each pair. - Repeat each pair giving a sentence for each pair. - Write some sentences using the minimal pairs and pronounce them aloud. - Listen to and try to imitate the sounds several times. - Work in this page, at least 5 minutes everyday. - Record your own voice, then listen to it and correct your pronounciation. - Repeat the limericks and tongue twister (from that pages) several times and record them, then listen to them. - Give more time to work on these pages, some of us need more than two hours for finishing the exercises. The second activity more difficult for me were some exercises of dictation. The sound recording and volume were different quality in every dictation exercise. I think it could have been easier if it would have some pre and post-activities like these: - Say the name of the topic. - Repeat recording at least 3 times. - Have the option for listening to it at a different speed (for writing). - Present additional exercises or activities to reinforced this skill.

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SPEAKING TEACHING STRATEGIES THE IDEA OF DEVELOPING OUR ORAL PRODUCTION SKILLS THROUGH MONOLOGUES AND DIALOGUES THROUGH RESOURCES AND TOOLS LIKE VOICETHREAD, AUDACITY, SPLENDID SPEAKING AND TELLING A STORY; GAVE ME SELF-CONFIDENCE TO EXPRESS IDEAS, THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS.

THE MOST USEFUL ACTIVITY FROM MODULE

FIVE FOR ME, WAS

FIRST, READING THE ARTICLE CALLED “IMPROVE ENGLISH FLUENCY WITH CHUNKS!” AFTER READING IT I COULD REALIZE THAT LEARNING SOME USEFUL EXPRESSIONS HELPED ME TO SPEAK GIVING A CLEAR IDEA IN EVERY SENTENCE

ENGLISH

I SAY.

THE SECOND ACTIVITY WAS: TELLING A STORY, IN THIS PAGE I LEARNT IMPORTANT STEPS, PHRASES AND LINKING WORDS TO TELL A STORY OR AN ANECDOTE.

THE THIRD MOST USEFUL ACTIVITY FOR ME WAS: “HOW TO DESCRIBE PEOPLE” AT

VOICE THREAD SITE , IT WAS VERY EASY TO WORK IN IT,

AFTER SEEING THE TUTORIAL.

IT HAS MANY TOOLS AS RECORDING

VOICE, WEBCAM, EDITING,AND IMAGES.

I think my students can take advantage of these tools for improving their speaking skills if they use and practice with the activities mencionated in these internet resources.

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Writing teaching strategies.

You were right when you said this unit would help us to create text in a fun way, with images. I learnt to use tutorials and templates to start writing, illustrating and publishing my written work. I also review some grammar related topics such as the elements of a sentence, use of tenses, and adjectives. Writing is not an easy issue for many of us, but, after using â&#x20AC;&#x153;Tall taleâ&#x20AC;? I began to believe that I could do that with that kind of help and it was interesting and funny at the same time.

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After that, I worked with poems ( I thought it was impossible for me to do that), it was difficult but I could do it. When I checked my work and my partners’ I discovered with pleasure, that we all have a hidden poet (or poetess) inside us. I liked my partners’ poems.

“Makebeliefs comic” was hard for me, and I couldn’t be funny at all, but at least I try to leave a possitive message for teenagers. When I finish this course I will give a second chance working with “Photopeach” because I couldn’t spent more time managing this site and I think it’s a good tool for my classes and for my students’. Telling a story using pictures ( your own or from internet) it’s a great, creative an d rewarding activity for us if someone read

and

give

us feedback of

our work.

Through the BBC Games (words skillswise sentcence), it’s an enjoyable way to learn and reinforce our knowledge of grammar, punctuation and verb tenses (all of these topics are very relevant for the writting skill in English. You can choose the type of text you want to work with.

I also work with an interactive bank of writer’s models for improving my writting.

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I C T tools

I want to begin with listening and reading. You can wok them at the same time using these wonderful tools:

Listen and Read

Along which is part of Interesting Things for ESL Students , and Adult Learning Activities, and 100 short English stories; you have interesting readings and you can read while you listen, then you can do several exercises for evaluate comprehension.

Related with speaking, the first step is to learn some useful expressions to help you to speak fluent English, being aware with and taking advantage of the use of â&#x20AC;&#x153;chunksâ&#x20AC;? . Then, learn more useful expressions and steps to tell a story, practicing in a mirror. And finally, use all the useful resources of Voice thread site ( this site help to speak more fluently with visual aids, recording tool, others helps).

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For improving your writing, you can try the BBC Games

(words

skillswise sentence), itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s an enjoyable way to learn and reinforce our knowledge of grammar, punctuation and verb tenses (all of these topics are very relevant for the writing skill in English. And the last but not the least, Movies and grammar, you can incorporate video clips to grammar and writing. Using some movie segments we can teach culture, the usage of the language in real situations, we can repeat sentences, whole phrases, stress, intonation, prepare some role playings, creative writing , we just need to use the appropriate scene and exercises.

All the tools in internet are useful for different learning styles students and for all needs.

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Writing Lesson Plans-Report

Madeline Hunter lesson plan format: 1.- Anticipatory Set (setting the stage)--attention-getter and focuser. ---- I generally plan my class with a picture, drawing, dialogue or something to try to get their attention to the topic of the lesson, and at the same time I can check previous knowledge, vocabulary, predictions of the situation, context. 2.- Statement of Objectives--tell students what they'll be able to do as a result of the lesson. ---- Then, I write the objectives or purposes of the theme, stating in a title, map word, map mind. 3.- Instructional Input--lecture, but not necessarily lecture: demo, explanation, instructions ---- I can use a written dialogue, text, paragraph, video, song , a text exercise. 4.- Modeling--demonstrate, show what you tell ---- Read aloud, underline important parts, copy phrases or sentences. 5.- Check for Understanding--watch faces, ask questions ---- Ask for comments, rules, main ideas, hypothesis, ask them for a summary, grammar synthesis. 6.- Guided Practice--help students start practicing new skills, applying new knowledge ---- Solving, completing some written exercises, coevaluation.

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7.- Independent Practice--turn them loose to work on their own, homework assignment, etc ---- Compositions, booklets, letters, cartels, adverstisements.

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MY LEARNING EXPERIENCE Module 10. Unit 10. By Jesus H. Zepeda

First of all I have to share with you about the difficult but great and interesting time I had working and learning along the different modules and in each unit.

Through each

activity I found and I faced myself but also a lot of activities to share with my students and to help and make them learn while they have fun as same as I did.

During the sessions I learnt to organize my time to learn and to manage time to have enough time to study and to improve my skills. I think I am an organized person, I discovered a planner to organize my work time, my leisure time and find time to study and to complete the activities to complete the Diploma. I am going to share with you a little bit of the things I discovered and I found and how I was learning and improving my L2 skills.

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CULTURAL LEARNING AWARENNES

When we learn a language we have to learn at least a little bit about its culture because in cultural facts we can discover how and when to use some expressions and why are used. Therefore is very important to be aware when we are trying to communicate in L2 because we could cause a trouble if we do not know about it.

When I started to learn English I noticed

about

the

different

sounds and pronunciation between American and British English and when I asked for help to know why the difference nobody could tell me. Now I can share and teach to my

students

about

that

difference because Americans started to change the sounds after the Revolutionary war in 1776 because they wanted to separate

from

the

British

language as well as the British government. Many persons were interested and Benjamin Franklin proposed a new system of spelling. Noah Webster told American should learn American English trough American Books, he published the American Dictionary of the English

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Language in 1828 where he established rules for speaking and writing. An important change is to that every part of the word should be spoken and that is the reason both languages sound different when once they were the same.

It is important to know the importance of using cultural facts and events to teach English because we are offering more options to learn to our students and at the same time we are exposing our students to different cultural issues is a way to increase their vocabulary and when they will speak or write they could have more sources to express their ideas and feelings using a wide range of different and current vocabulary.

NEW TEACHING STRATEGIES DISCOVERED

During the past months, I was learning a lot using the different sources in the Diploma. I am a young person, I like to surf the internet and to offer my students attractive and interactive activities to have the most significant learning. Therefore I found a great range of strategies to share with my students.

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Using internet I can give my students the power to learn by themselves but helping them to only work with the suggested site and not to use or visit different sites to lose the purpose of the activity.

For instance, I can talk about the different sites to learn grammar as manythings.org, bbc.co.uk, dictationsonline.com, esl-lab.com and others interesting sites that offers attractive, colorful and interesting activities to make our students learn.

In youtube.com I found a lot of videos to share with my class and to offer at the same time the opportunity to watch, read, listen, speak and learn.

In sites like pimpampum.com, students can present their writing activities and share with their families while they are learning to use ICT tools.

The most important thing in this part is that I discovered in the internet a great source of ideas, materials and activities to make my teaching process more attractive, creative and interesting but without forgetting the most important thing during the process is my students and me. I mean, without internet, a cd player, a projector I can teach English, the

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most important thing is the attitude to teach and learn and the motivation we show and our students have during the classes.

READING TEACHING STRATEGIES

When we read it is important to know the most of the words in the document and how to get the main idea of the reading exercise or if it is necessary to get specific information from the text. While I teach to my students I tell them about the importance to know how to read and how we can lose a job, an interview, to lose the opportunity for a scholarship, an invitation for a trip, etc. That’s why is very important to develop reading skills and teach to our students how to “surf” in a text without losing the way to go out of it.

Thus, we could find in skimming and scanning the best ways to teach our students how to “swim” in different texts.

Skimming is used to identify the main ideas of a text. When our we read a newspaper, magazine or book we don’t read each word, we

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give an overview to find and interesting article or part of the text to read.

We can skim when we use headings, summaries, titles, subheading or even pictures. This type of technique is used when we ask to our students: dates, names, addresses, last names, places.

In the other hand, we scan when we look for key words or ideas to get the specific information. It involves moving our eyes down the page trying to organize numbers, letters and words.

Furthermore, it is important to read and teach our students to work with the different texts in order to find the right method to use when reading: instructive (the text gives advices or tell us how to do something), descriptive (give us a picture about what is talked, give

our imagination more clues to create the object), persuasive (the text wants to make us do something) and informative (the texts share with us advices or tell us about something).

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There are some ways to improve our reading skill, practicing through intensive and extensive reading, reading for pleasure.

We can warm ourselves and our students before reading asking, showing pictures and talking about the topic to read.

We can develop this skill while we listen and read along the listening at the same time they improve their pronunciation, rhythm and intonation. And this is a great technique to use in our classes.

LISTENING TEACHING STRATEGIES

As well as the reading strategy, listening is an in-put skill and is necessary to develop it and use a set of strategies to listen well.

Top-down listening and bottom-up are two types for listening.

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Before the diploma I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know about these types of listening even when I practiced them.

Top-down listening is practiced when we ask our students information about the exercise before listen it. They can get information by the previous lessons, the pictures in the exercise, trying to guess the meaning of the words or the complete text even when they donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t understand or they canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t handle the vocabulary. Students can practice this type of listening when they order or sequence pictures, finding the place where the conversation takes place, finding names, the relationships between the speakers.

Bottom-up listening helps to students in lower levels and take them to get successful results, they can practice this type of listening by comparing, listening some more times, identifying the separation in the sentence, the intonation and to infer the mood of the speakers.

Practicing these techniques all the learners can develop their listening skill and they difference the words even when they sound similar, therefore is important to practice listening the minimal pairs and offering to our class enough practice to do it, fonetiks.org is an excellent site to practice and learn about it.

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Besides, is important to learn and teach how to give the correct stress (tonic, emphatic and contrastive) to the words identifying the unit the right syllable to stress.

The intonation offers to the learners another way to identify the rhythm in order to get more and the best information from the text.

When we teach we have to use a lot of different materials to help our skill to be developed. A few years ago it was difficult to have or use materials to teach, they were expensive or traveling to get them was almost impossible. Nowadays using the internet is easier and faster to get them or even produce them.

Also, we can use authentic materials such as movies, lyrics and music, TV series, soup operas, TV commercials can be used to practice the techniques just explained.

SPEAKING TEACHING STRATEGIES

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This skill is related to the listening skill, if we speak in a right way we can listen in that way. When I was acquiring and learning L2, I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know or notice about the differences we have to do when we speaking.

As well as writing, there are some rules to create right sentences. We are going to improve our speaking skill meanwhile we are exposed to the English, I mean if we read, listen to music, watch some movies and TV series we can improve and identify the next things in this skill.

Speaking is like creating music, we need to use the right notes high, low and intermediate notes, in this case, words. Noticing about our speaking we can communicate the right message and express our feelings and to help our listeners to understand it.

When we speak is necessary to raise or fall our words according the purpose of our speech.

Falling intonation is when our voice falls at the end of a thought group or statement, it communicates certainty, completion (bold letters shows where to fall):

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- I study English, - I study in Nayarit

Rising intonation is when our voice rise at the end of the thought group or statement. We have to use when we want to communicate uncertainty, lack of finality and we need or want to add more information when we are speaking.

In this sentence we can see how to rise our intonation (bold letters shows where to rise): - I get a 10 in my final test, IsnÂ´t it great? - We need sugar, water, cdâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s, plastic dishes for the party. It is also important to identify the thought group, it means a single idea in a paragraph but together create the complete idea and the complete paragraph.

We have to pause our speaking to give others the opportunity to participate, to analyze our idea or question and to have a better communication process.

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If we don’t notice about our speaking and we don’t practice rising, falling, stressing, intoning, giving rhythm and pausing our speak sounds strange, weird, boring and we could sound as a robot.

WRITING TEACHING STRATEGIES

When we write we are using the grammar experience we have acquired and when speaking we put together to create statements, to express ideas and feelings in a graphic form.

secondary

Teachers,

should

know

grammar rules and grammar aspects in order to teach and to correct our students’ homework and other evidences.

Because of this we have to aware of: - Punctuation (capital letter, commas, semicolon, dot, etc)

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- The subject and the verb should agree - Use the right tense according the idea we want to express - Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t use words are unnecessary. In our places of work we need to prove to our authorities how our students are working and how they are improving their skills and their process in the second language acquisition. If we offer to our students the right environment they can create great pieces of art and the will feel more comfortable to express their ideas and feelings and they can even take risks. We can motivate our students to write and use different techniques like: -

Poetry Stories Time lines Descriptions (pictures, events) Autobiographies Short novels Posters Brochures Comic strips Manuals

And when they are creating those material students can use their environment to have more ideas to express: - Family and friends - School - Hopes and dreams

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Beliefs Daily life Fears Goals

We have to advice to our students to try their best and try to create great jobs, because their writing exercises will be with them long time, they will be a probe about their process and the improvements they have made to their skill.

ABOUT ICT TOOLS

The first activities presented were planned to offer help and guide us though the different tools and new things we could discover. I found really interesting the Key Competences for Lifelong Term by Jan Figel. He talks about 8 different competences we should acquire and improve along our lifes: 1- Communication in the mother tongue 2- Communication in the foreign tongue 3- Mathematical competence and basic competences in science and technology 4- Digital competence 5- Learning to learn 6- Social and civic competences 7- Sense of initiative and entrepreneurship

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8- Cultural awareness and expression All of them can be developed and prepare and organize a better citizen who can face anything in his life. In the modules I found a lot of activities to plan different activities to prepare my students and to help them to acquire and/or learn. The 8 competences can be taught together and as well as developed. But we have to know our students to help them and it is important to â&#x20AC;&#x153;classifyâ&#x20AC;? them and find the right activity, text, test, lesson to teach and to offer more options to learn. So, we can organize our students according to their different intelligences: -

Kinaesthetic Logical Intrapersonal Visual/Spatial Linguistic Interpersonal Musical Naturalistic

When we know these different intelligences we can understand better to our students and their behavior and response to our planned activities and to our classes. In

case

interpersonal person and I can learn thru Kinaesthetic and Musical activities.

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Internet offers a great variety of sites and therefore a variety of activities to learn, that’s why I learnt about my way to learn but also to teach. It is important to surf the internet carefully and to analyze the different activities and find the right activity according to the lesson, the topic and to the students we are teaching. We have to advice our students about the possibilities internet have for them but all the disadvantages they could find. First they should know about the different accents and “English” they are going to find. As teachers we have to guide them but let them explore to learn in a independent form. In this way we can learn with them while they know and learn English we can identify our strengths and weaknesses and try to improve and correct all those errors we have when we speak, write or teach English practicing the different suggestions I learnt we have to:

1. Speak without fear 2. Use all your resources 3. Surround yourself with English 4. Listen to Native speakers as much as possible 5. Watch English films and television 6. Listen to English music 7. Study as often as possible 8. Do exercises and take tests 9. Record yourself 10. Listen to English Learning and practicing the 10 suggestions we can have a successful learning.

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We can use the tools we have in the school to achieve and develop the previous techniques.

Nowadays is almost impossible to avoid using the cell phones in class, but we can use them as tools to learn, they can take pictures to describe them or to create stories order or sequence them, they can record their voice and listen themselves, they can share mp3 files and listen to find ideas, feelings, purposes, etc.

LESSON PLANNING

All the previous information doesn’t work without a correct plan. I understand a lesson plan like reading or following instructions to find a treasure during the process we can get lost, we can make mistakes, we can change direction, we can lose members or join new ones but at the end following the directions we are going to discover the treasure.

When I started to work, I didn’t plan my activities I didn’t know how to do it and my classes were difficult, boring for my students and even for

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me. The time wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t enough sometime I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have enough time and other times I had a lot of free time.

Lesson plan is a special skill that is learned in the same way as the others, through practice and practice. When we know

our

students,

when

know

our

programme the contents we should teach, when we have identified the tools we have to teach we can put them together to create that treasure map.

We have to offer a thing for everyone, for each learning style and for each class. We have to be aware about the process and be ready to change, modify and adapt the plan if is necessary to offer a better process when the activities established didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t work.

When planning we have to establish the main aims and the subsidiary aims to achieve, the activities to achieve it, the materials to use, we need to organize the time for each activity and to organize our students according the activity to work. It is very important to clarify in the plan about the way to evaluate and the evidence students are going to produce.

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Finally I have to tell, we are like a chef, we have to get all the ingredients and use them correctly to get the dish and to have the opportunity to enjoy not alone, share it with our students.

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