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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 Norma Angélica Pérez Pérez
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C ONTRIBUTORS Name
Photograph
State
1. ALARDÍN BERUMEN ANA LAURA
Tampico, Tamaulipas
2. ARREDONDO SOBERÓN CELIA
Matamoros, Tamaulipas
3. ARROYO PEREZ LAURA ANGÉLICA
Puebla
4. BASORIA BALBOA LORENA
Cd.Madero,Tamaulipas
5. DÁVILA PEÑA EBELINA
Monterrey, Nuevo León
6. FLORES NETZAHUATL MARICELA
Xalapa, veracruz
7. JARAMILLO SALAZAR JOSE MARIA
Nuevo León
8. JUAREZ AVELLANEDA AZUCENA
Distrito Federal
9. LINARES GARCIA MARTHA CECILIA
Monterrey, Nuevo León
10. MUNOZ NEGREROS ESTEBAN
Puebla
11. PERALTA TORRES ELODIA ESTHER
---
Distrito Federal
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12. PINEDA ÁLVAREZ EDGAR
Tabasco
13. RAGA HERNÁNDEZ CAROLINA
Tamaulipas
14. SAAVEDRA BLANCO JUAN
Monterrey, N. L.
15. SÁNCHEZ GARCÍA ALEJANDRA
Distrito Federal
16. SARABIA AGUIRRE SAYURI
H. Matamoros, Tam.
17. SOLIS MEDEL MINERVA
Xalapa, Veracruz
18. SOSA LOPEZ MARIA DEL CARMEN
Tampico, Tamaulipas
19. VAZQUEZ GONZALEZ JORGE
Monterrey, N.L.
20. VELASCO GARCIA KARLA INES
Puebla
21. VIEYRA LIMA MARIA DE LOS ANGELES
Tlaxcala
22. ZEMPOALTECA TETLACUILO ARACELI
Córdoba, Veracruz
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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 fifth 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.
Dulce María Gilbón Acevedo General Coordinator
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Tutor’s presentation
During four months Secondary English Teachers from different states in Mexico worked with an extraordinary endeavour in the Diplomado “Communicative Skills for Secondary Teachers”. Even though this new way of learning was a difficult stuff at the beginning, Secondary Teachers acquired the ability to manage ICT tools since little by little they learnt in a great deal. It is really appreciated the way the teachers worked since they have multiple activities like taking care of their family, developing a hard school work, studying a current master, managing a coordination or making a Teacher exchange. For this reason, I would like to mention that the biggest pleasure was the great and incredible reciprocal learning they and I have had during these hard but amazing months.
Norma Angélica Pérez Pérez Online tutor
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Contents
Chapters 1. English language learning awareness 2. Cultural learning awareness 3. New teaching strategies discovered 4. Reading teaching strategies 5. Listening teaching strategies 6. Speaking teaching strategies 7. Writing teaching strategies 8. About ICT tools 9. Lesson planning
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AUTHOR PAGE 1. ALARDÍN BERUMEN ANA LAURA
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2. ARREDONDO SOBERÓN CELIA
17
3. ARROYO PEREZ LAURA ANGÉLICA
24
4. BASORIA BALBOA LORENA
32
5. DÁVILA PEÑA EBELINA
39
6. FLORES NETZAHUATL MARICELA
47
7. JARAMILLO SALAZAR JOSE MARIA
54
8. JUAREZ AVELLANEDA AZUCENA
62
9. LINARES GARCIA MARTHA CECILIA
72
10. MUNOZ NEGREROS ESTEBAN
81
11. PERALTA TORRES ELODIA ESTHER
91
12. PINEDA ÁLVAREZ EDGAR
99
13. RAGA HERNÁNDEZ CAROLINA
107
14. SAAVEDRA BLANCO JUAN
118
15. SÁNCHEZ GARCÍA ALEJANDRA
127
16. SARABIA AGUIRRE SAYURI
137
17. SOLIS MEDEL MINERVA
145
18. SOSA LOPEZ MARIA DEL CARMEN
153
19. VAZQUEZ GONZALEZ JORGE
162
20. VELASCO GARCIA KARLA INES
170
21. VIEYRA LIMA MARIA DE LOS ANGELES
180
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22. ZEMPOALTECA TETLACUILO ARACELI
189
ALARDÍN BERUMEN ANA LAURA
CHAPTER 1 English language learning awareness What language content I learned? I think the best of all is that I have learnt how to develop all my skills. I have raised my reading comprehension skills; my listening ability has improved. In the Speaking Module, I learned how to tell a story, to describe a situation or a place, to describe people, to give instructions, to express agreement or disagreement, to present a short talk, giving opinions, co evaluation and self evaluation. At this point, I can speak better, a little more fluid with a better pronunciation, and I have acquired more vocabulary. It has been possible along the modules, through all these tasks. I have listened to podcasts and news casts and doing so many well designed exercises in those great web sites. Some other aspects I learned are adverbs, intonation patterns, grammar tenses, punctuation rules and so many issues. To go on improving, I will try to get more and more opportunities to use the language.
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CHAPTER 2 Cultural learning awareness I learned to focus my student’s attention to English language and culture, since Mr. Hess advices about it. He was one of the best teachers I had. The English Program 1993 was very explicit about it, too. As reading exercises I did in this course, we should use the real texts to teach our students about history through texts about communities, slavery and historic buildings; geography, as in the text about the oldest important road in the United States; health when we read about some government measures about this topic; life, as when we reviewed some common people and news on TV; events, Science and Technology, from American, British or other English speaking countries. Using web sites I noticed we can employ them for students to learn about families, daily life, clothes, careers, houses and people of influence, about the English speaking community. I met a huge amount of resources to direct pupil’s attention to English language and culture.
CHAPTER 3 New teaching strategies discovered
The course is a splendid model of several habits mentioned at the reading, for example: the masterly way of adapting curriculum and course requirements imaginatively. From interactive exercises to movies and video conferences, there were a lot of funny and consistent learning tasks. At very early stages, you made me realize too, that we have to pay attention to our competences for lifelong learning plus our students' ones; this refers to learning
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habit. You made me reflect every step about applying what we learn in continue learning and to connect everything with our teaching work. As well as, through the modules we adopted a new vision of communication. We have a new image in the use of e-mail, chats and the WWW. Besides, every time you asked how I could use the exercises with my students you developed my visionary skills. That way you increased my creative thoughts. As a matter of fact, in one way or another, all habits are present in a pure form or mixed together.
CHAPTER 4 Reading teaching strategies Unit seven activity was very interesting and a complete reading practice sample. First of all it sent us to explore a site where we reviewed strategies, concept and steps. The text talks about the essential strategies readers use before, during, and after reading. After presenting new vocabulary and using questions, we were directed to set the context and bring previous knowledge about the topic. After that, we read a beautiful text “Build a Robin's Nest!” The activity guided us to encourage students to "mark up the text" by circling unfamiliar words, underlining key words and phrases, and writing notes in the margins. Invite them to underline sentences that reveal answers to the preview questions. I think the task was well planned. Steps made us to set the context, skim, and scan infer, respond to text, make connections and evaluate it. They were very effective for learning. We could get the main point about the need of specific strategies to help readers understand what authors are trying to communicate. The support was provided by the site itself and instructions received from the effective Course System, besides our tutor’s help, always available. The text had enough images for the activity purpose.
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I am more aware of the need to provide many examples and practice with authentic reading materials to our students, as well as opportunities for independent application of the strategies.
CHAPTER 5 Listening teaching strategies Talking about learning a foreign language listening comprehension is the most difficult skill to acquire and some authors even say this skill cannot really be “taught”. About listening module, maybe the most difficult activity for me was the first one from Unit 2. I had to watch videos about events in Australia. I think passages were interesting and relatively short. They represented typical oral language. The difficulty was possibly Australian accent, less comprehensible for me. In addition, pronunciation and native speaker speed in that kind of language, colloquial or real. The speaker didn´t allow me enough time for mental processing of the speech. The language flowed at a faster rate than I use to listen commonly. Instructions were clear but task was complex: choose videos to view; select and complete the multiple choice quiz; read the story notes and then write a short summary (from each). Difficult tasks are usually avoided but I also know tasks should be appropriate to the teaching purpose. In general, listening tasks can be graded according to the speaker, intended listener and content so we should analyze each one of these in order to find ways of making these lessons more manageable and less threatening. For this course purposes and students level, I think that this task could have been a little easier giving more guidance for the summary writing. I could also use difficult challenges to grow my mastering and develop confidence.
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CHAPTER 6 Speaking Teaching Strategies Considering that speaking can be an intimidating enterprise for English language learners I think the most useful activity was the one about “How to describe a situation or a place” in Unit 2. It combines music and imagination. It is a great way for aural stimuli; to give students a purpose for speaking; to assimilate culture; to share feelings and moods. And above all, it is very fun. In the participation of this kind of assignments, the students learn in a very relaxed manner, talking and interacting without noticing they are engaged in a lesson. I have been thinking in using this kind of activity graduating it, according to my student’s level. For example, for lower students I could start talking about kinds of music and asking them to recognize some melodies type. Soon after, I could guide them to evoke a feeling, an image a place or a situation in a few words, maybe one by one to integrate them later. Afterward we could invite the class to ask questions about the information the students have introduced with their answers. That way the students start to express their own experiences or opinions, and the teacher or other students ask them additional questions about them. The idea is to introduce a simple, relevant, but open topic for the class.
CHAPTER 7 Writing Teaching Strategies While writing in a foreign language can be an intimidating experience for us, it was easier thanks to this kind of tasks from the Internet, provided us unique opportunities to develop our writing skills. I can now see, based upon this experience, the endless potential of the Internet.
We were involved in the three typical phases.
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Prewriting activities: we were guided to review the parts of speech in a very original and funny way, creating tall tales with a template from a web site and correcting pieces of writing encouraging us to think critically about it and stimulating writing skills. We answered quizzes about punctuation and tenses; we worked on writing models, too and the use of pictures and movies motivated writing, as well. Composing: we wrote in a semi controlled way the activities about poems and comics. Then we were guided to make decisions about topics and every aspect of writing; using pictures, describing people and places, evoking memories. Afterward we have to review, reread, and anticipate what will come next, reformulate and adjust parts of the manuscript as it evolved. Revision: At this phase, we tried to contemplate the finished draft; revise the organizational of the composition and the grammatical features. Finally we published some texts in a very innovative manner. :
CHAPTER 8 About ICT Tools Nowadays, the sudden increase of knowledge and Internet access seriously challenged the traditional language of teaching and learning methodologies. Most teachers and experts recognize the need for a teaching method using Information and Communication Technologies on English Language. In this Course we have proved these items. The three tools I selected are: From Module 5 Voice thread site.- Excellent activity, we had to look at a picture and record our description of a picture they showed us. This one was one of my favorites; we could listen to everyone’s description and see how diverse our narrative was. From Module 6
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Book of poems.- I chose this activity as a tool I found more useful for my learning and appropriate for my students because it helps us to find out it is not so hard to write poetry and will encourage our students to try and to develop the taste for this kind of literature. Comic strips.- A great site and tool that provides learners fun and knowledge, at the same time. Besides, this kind of activity increases creativity. It offers the students the occasion to use their imagination. We need to help students and learners to become computer literate and encourage them to maintain up-to-date computers and opportunities for computer literacy. It is a great way to learn!
CHAPTER 9 Lesson Planning I chose Madeline Hunter's (Seven Steps) because it is the one I consider appropriate for my context and for the methodology framework recommended by our SEP Secondary Schools
Programme 2006, based on the Model of
Experiential Learning (after Kolb, 1984, “Perfil de egreso de la educación básica”, in Kohonen, 1992:16). The Programme defines how it is desired teachers to teach and students to learn. The framework helps to illustrate how the teaching process is conceptualized in the Programme, and how this conception is expressed in the different sections of each thematic unit. The process begins with exposing students to a text, which can be oral or written, which is based on the topic of the unit, and which contains the language functions established for that unit. Indicators of performance evidence that correspond to interpretation of texts (listening or reading) describe text work, i.e. what students do with texts. This is a stage of concrete experience with a text. (Anticipatory Set (setting the stage)--attention-getter and focuser. This is the previous knowledge of students about a topic. English teachers know this like warm-up).
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The teacher then selects from the text specific language areas to focus on. The points for language awareness in every unit are described under reflection on language. It is important to mention that this is a stage for students to conduct
reflective observation of language, which means that students themselves must try to make sense of how language works. By doing so, students move to a stage of
abstract conceptualization, in which they make generalizations about language. The teacher should seek to promote and guide reflection, and redirect it when necessary. (Statement of Objectives--tell students what they'll be able to do as a result of the lesson. Instructional Input--lecture, but not necessarily lecture: demo, explanation, instructions. Modeling--demonstrate, show what you tell). The following part of the process consists in having students use language through tasks that move from control to freedom. Examples of the productions that are expected from students are described in the sample productions section. (Check for Understanding--watch faces, ask questions). Indicators of performance evidence that correspond to the production of texts (speaking and writing) describe what students do to create texts. (Guided Practice--help students start practicing new skills, applying new knowledge). This is a stage of active experimentation, in which students should have the opportunity to test their hypothesis about how language works. Due to the fact that students’ command of the language is limited, they may experience a number of difficulties at any point of the processes of interpreting and producing texts. (Guided practice. The process consists in having students use language through tasks that move from control to freedom. - Independent practice. Establishing and maintaining social contacts by exchanging information, views, feelings and personal wishes, amongst others).
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ARREDONDO SOBERÓN CELIA
CHAPTER 1 English Language Learning Awareness At this point, of the Diploma Course I have improve my English level due to all the reading, listening, and writing and speaking activities, I have done. First, I learnt to use all the web sites to improve my language skill that is I learned to learn through the internet. I became aware of my learning style. Now I know how to use an online dictionary. Through the grammar, exercises I could finally understood tag questions, and the past and future perfect tenses, which were my weak points on grammar, as well as some phrasal verbs I was not aware of them before. I learned to use the read, revisit and reflect strategy while reading and to infer the meaning of words and first active my prior knowledge before starting a reading. I got familiar integrating the skills of listening, watching a video, and reading at the same time. Now I know why the Americans changed the spelling and pronunciation of some words. Also learned new expressions and words use in British English. I became aware of intonation, word stress, and rhythm, learned that they have patterns. Moreover, how the variation we give to our voice let the receiver know our mood. At this time, I can identify thought groups and use them while talking, that is make pauses. I learned how to tell and write a short story with the models they gave us; it was easy following all the steps.
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I learned to make a recording using the tool in my PC and in the internet sites. Finally, I became aware of my weakness and strengths and that is the main point, so I can work on them.
CHAPTER 2 Cultural learning awareness All the way through the Diploma Course I learned many aspects of the English speaking countries I did not know before. I read and listen to stories about their culture, history, and traditions as the “Amistad”, “The Golden Gate”, and “Robin’s Nest”; through these and other readings, I learned new expressions and vocabulary. The exposure to this kind of themes make me think that language is better acquire when in contact with the culture and tradition of the country the language comes from. I also learned that people from the different English speaking communities have different intonation, deepening of the place they live and that they mark very clearly their emotions with the intonation and stress they give to their speech. To focus my students’ attention to English language I have learnt that they have to be on direct contact with the target language in order to use it on their everyday speech. What I have to do is choose the sites where exercises are according to their level. The vocabulary, the reading, and the listening have to be meaningful to them. At the same time we are learning another language, we can learn and increase our general knowledge. Show my students excited energy, a positive mind about the language and the importance to be bilingual, nowadays.
CHAPTER 3 New teaching strategies discovered As a student during this Course, I discovered not just teaching but learning strategies, especially the ones related with reading, listening and speaking within the sites, I especially liked where we can identify our learning style. I discovered that it is very important to listen to real conversations so we can use to the intonation, pronunciation, and rhythm.
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The relation among the strategies I learned and the eight habits I read are: Adapting: we used sites that were not precisely designed for learning or teaching, so we have to be able to adapt programs to our students’ needs. Being visionary: be creative thinkers with Web tools, they are not prepared for educational purposes, as we did with the e-magazines and newspapers or TV programs. Collaborating: during the course, we use tools like MSN or e-mail, we need to use the power these tools give us to share any information with our students, as we did throughout this course. Taking risks: most of the time, our students have more knowledge about technology than we do, they can learn from each other. Learning: this is what we are doing with all these lessons; working to be better teachers, improving our language and trying to be technologically up date. Communicating:
the strategy most used during the course. Our tutor was
always near to clear doubts and helps us. We as teachers need to be technological literate to coach the activities. Modelling behavior: We are the role model to our students; sometimes they are more time with us than with their families. We used this strategy when we talked or wrote about personal issues. Leading: We are the teachers of the 21st Century and we must lead and coach our students to a meaningful learning so they can use it in the future, which is teaching in competences.
CHAPTER 4 Reading teaching strategies The most remarkable reading was The Amistad Incident by Carole D. Bos, which was in a site called Awesome stories. The site separates the reading into seventeen chapters and one more for recommended sources. The site offers a table of contents and a story summary, to make the reading easier. Each one of the sections including a preface took me to links where pictures and photos of the
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main characters and events of the story are shown, maps and routes are exposed and the most interesting part are the links that takes you to videos of a movie produced with the same title and chronicle. Some other links even show part of speeches given by the characters. It has many links and sometimes it was hard to follow the story, so first I had to read it and then clicked to all the hyperlinks, in order to understand and enjoy the narrative. The strategies I used were skimming; first, I took a general look at the reading to be acquainted with the theme. Then identifying facts and opinions, when I clicked to all the links that were given, while doing this I used scanning to notice the main information of the texts. At the same time I infer the meaning of many unknown words, it was quite easy doing it with the help of the pictures and videos. Other strategies used were to keep asking questions during the reading and visualize making a picture in my mind to help me get a general idea and have a good reading comprehension.
CHAPTER 5 Listening teaching strategies The most difficult activity for me in the fourth module was on unit three: Intonation and rhythm, especially activity 3.1. I found it difficult because there were many sites to look at and many videos to listen to, and at one moment, I got confused. The instructions were clear, but I wanted to understand everything and I had to watch the videos twice to really understand what they want us to learn. It was hard for me because I am aware that I do not have a very good pronunciation, nor intonation or rhythm. However, after listening to the explanation, I came up with the deduction that intonation and not pronunciation is what makes someone sound like a native speaker. The activity could have been easier if I would have been aware that intonation in English has patterns, I had never listen about it before, so that reason made it difficult for me to catch the idea about intonation and rhythm. I know now that I have to listen to authentic listening to get use to the intonation and rhythm of a native speaker on TV programs, because the images help us
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understand better. I realize that I need to listen to real conversations to understand better this point. It is still tricky for me to speak with that intonation and rhythm, so I will need to improve my listening paying attention to those aspects.
CHAPTER 6
Speaking Teaching Strategies
The fifth module was the most difficult for me. I found it stressing because I realize I do not speak the language very fluently, I know that is my main weakness in the language. However all the activities were interesting since they were a challenge. It was useful to record my voice and listen to others; I had never done that type of exercise before. The most useful activities for me were the ones where I had to speak about a period of my life and tell a short story, though these kinds of activities would be hard to use with my students, whose level of English is not very high. Recording their voice would be an interesting way to motivate them to speak. The activity where they can describe a person and give their opinion would be useful to make them speak. Make our students talk is not easy, they are too shy to do it and are afraid of their classmate’s opinion. I have noticed that the only way they do not feel inhibited is when singing, so music and repetition is a good start to make them talk. I think that the competence of speaking is the most important aspect of the language.
CHAPTER 7 Writing Teaching Strategies The Writing module was the one I like most, maybe because I have always liked to write in my mother tongue and I had never done it in English before and I was not too bad doing it. It is the first time I had made a book review and that was an amazing and challenger activity. The main teaching strategies that help me develop my writing were the ones where we had to make up stories; I especially like the ones we had to use our photos and
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music and I think this kind of activity would love my students to do it, as well as the activity with the movies and the comic strip. It was easy to do these activities due to the models they gave us on the different sites; and that is a good strategy to use with our students, the use of models. Practicing writing gave me the opportunity to pay attention to my vocabulary, grammar, punctuation, coherence, and cohesion. We have to be very clear about the skills we want our students to practice, so writing would be an awesome experience for them, and not a boring one. Giving them the steps to follow would help them to come up with something well done.
CHAPTER 8
About ICT Tools
It is quite hard to choose between the tools that we used during the Diploma Course; all of them were interesting and useful. I will talk about the Speaking Module because it was the most complex for me, and the tools they offer us helped me go through the module successfully. ‡
Voice recording software . We had to record a short story about a period of our life we remember most using a voice recording software. It was an amazing experience to listen to ourselves and listen to the others stories. It could be use with my students to practice speaking, not just to tell a short story but also to describe or practice the pronunciation of vocabulary, verb tenses, etc.
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Voicethread site . In this activity, we had to look at a picture and record our description of a picture they showed us. This one was one of my favorites; we could listen to everyone’s description and see how diverse our narrative was.
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Videoconference. I had a videoconference with two of my colleagues and my tutor. This is a fantastic tool; you can hear and see each other. We used
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MSN and Skype and I know there are others we can use to communicate this way. We can use it with our students and make them use it with each other, instead of just chatting.
CHAPTER 9 Lesson Planning After taking a look to the lesson plan models I choose the Multiple Intelligences (Howard Gardner's 7 Ways of Knowing) because I think it is the most accurate with the new program for secondary schools, it goes perfectly with the new concept of teaching by the 10 new competitions or principles to teach. The teachers choose the strategies, the activities and tools, but sometimes they do not work with all the students or groups, because each one of them is different type of learner that is they vary in their type of intelligence. I like that lesson plan because there is participation during the class for each type of the multiple intelligences: Verbal, Mathematical, Spatial, Musical, Kinesthetic, Interpersonal, and Intrapersonal. It also has a relationship with the constructivism theory. The Multiple Intelligences theory is seven ways to demonstrate intellectual ability. Some students learn through seeing, others through listening and many through touching or moving. The plan also has the methodology steps of warm up, presentation, practice, application, and assessment. We as teachers have to modify our own style of teaching according with the type of students we are dealing with. It is more important to recognize that learners are in fact different and therefore they need different types of activities, techniques, or methodology to learn something enjoyable and meaningful.
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ARROYO PEREZ LAURA ANGÉLICA
CHAPTER 1 English language learning awareness At the beginning of this diplomado I realized my language was poor, I could use only basic English but I learnt new vocabulary regarding the computer and information technology, I used some e-dictionaries such as how to say , I took some quizzes , I practiced my English doing some short compositions, I explored some interesting sites such as free English study , I learnt some strategies for reading such as skimming ( a fast reading technique to obtain the gist of a text) scanning( to look for specific information) and other reading strategies . Strategies for listening such as identify the difference between some similar sounds, position for vowels, the falling and raising intonation, some keys to identify the thought groups and natural pauses to be better understood. In speaking I learnt new vocabulary useful to start , how to tell stories, some sequencing words, linking words, tenses, agreeing and disagreeing how to tell a story, to describe people and places, give instructions, maintain conversations and I can chat in the live messenger, I loved audacity and voicethread, and in writing
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some keys to motivate our students to write, some very interesting sites to write such as eduplace to write tall tales ,comix to write and I learnt to identify different styles in writings. In my opinion my level in this language is better now but I have to learn more. I have to study even more!
CHAPTER 2 Cultural learning awareness
The Cultural Aspects I got acquainted with and the importance of my exposure to this aspect of the language for my teaching practice. In my opinion culture is going to be attractive, interesting and motivating for my students, the internet sites that I explored are a good option for cultural information, they can explore these sites (learn through internet) and then in the classroom we can comment about it and practice some American and English traditions, cultural aspects, tell them important aspects about history, I’m going to motivate them to
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enjoy and practice some English and American traditions and get information about education and holidays. I learned some stories like the route 66, I read about the American style of life, education, the importance of communication (most people have a lap even old people). In addition to this I read about styles of dressing in women dressing (they are creative) recently they dress elegant dresses during the day, “the recipe box” is an special place to keep the main recipes for the family, exchanging gifts in Christmas, tying a yellow ribbon for absent people or relatives and the importance of American football and baseball in the United States, I am very interested on English and American culture, some traditions are really great!
CHAPTER 3 New teaching strategies discovered The teaching strategies such as conferencing, debating, electronic-read-around, guide reading, guide writing, asking questions, scamper, small group discussion and cloze
are closely related to the eight habits of highly effective 21st. century
teachers. In this course we use these teaching strategies and they were great, creative, interesting and very motivating. I discovered that Internet is a wonderful tool in the English teaching process, I’m going to apply new reading and writing strategies that I learnt. The tools from the web site are a huge opportunity to improve our classes and get better results. Teachers must be able to adapt the curriculum as the requirements to teach it in imaginative ways , imagination is crucial to see the potential in the web sites , we must be able to leverage captivate and enhance
these collaborative tools and web technologies to
the students,
use the strengths of digital natives to
understand and navigate new things,
teachers must learn and adapt to new
technology,
teachers must be fluent in tools and technologies that enable
communication and collaboration ,
we as teachers will teach values, model
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tolerance, global awareness and reflective practice
and
like clear goals and
objectives, leadership is crucial in learning.
CHAPTER 4 Reading teaching strategies
The most interesting reading for me was “The Golden Gate” it is about a famous bridge in California, in the United States of America, it links San Francisco with Marin Country, it is always painted in the International Orange and approximately nine million people visit it every year. The activity in this reading was “Listen and Read Along” that was part of “Interesting Things for E.S.L Students” The teaching strategies used on it were “Listen and Read Along”, Reading aloud and asking questions, I used skimming and scanning. The effect that these teaching strategies had on my learning was positive, useful and motivating because I could listen to the correct pronunciation of every single word, I repeated them and also the reading was interesting and real.
CHAPTER 5 Listening teaching strategies The most difficult listening activity for me was on Dictations on Line. Com. In this activity I had to listen to the text once and then I had to write it but I got confused, I didn’t identify every single word. In addition to this, I wasn’t understanding punctuation marks and I was really nervous. In my opinion this activity could have been easier with a larger list of used words but mainly if I focused on the specific stressed word, thought groups, punctuation (I
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didn’t know the name of the punctuation marks), natural pausing, some prepositional phrases ( I didn’t know some of them) and clauses. I have taken more dictations and I have applied new strategies obviously I have felt more confident about listenings and dictations.
CHAPTER 6 Speaking Teaching Strategies The activities that turned out to be the most useful for me were “Listen to the music clips, select one and prepare a talk about the places and the situation it evokes” and then use “Audacity” to record it. The second activity that was very useful was “People of influence” in which I prepared a short presentation about someone who has been important in my life. The first activity was motivating because music is nice and every melody evokes different feelings according to our mood. In this activity the student practices different aspects of the language, has fun and enjoys the moment but he learns much more than only vocabulary he also learns about the information technology, intonation, natural pauses, falling and raising intonation, thought groups , etc working in audacity was a challenge for me since the beginning but it was really interesting. Undoubtedly my students will feel excited recording their speech. The second activity, was recorded in Voicethread site here the student has to select one of the people of influence presented, he has to record a comment about him and upload his file at this site using the recording tool. My students can do it. In my opinion my students will be excited doing these activities they are really interesting and useful but they have to do them at home because in my school there are 20 or 25 computers but the students and the teachers can’t use them.
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CHAPTER 7 Writing Teaching Strategies Writing is an important aspect of the language, it’s a creative process students have to keep in mind some important grammar aspects and the role of words to write in a correct way. For writing I have to use several elements of the language such as grammar, basic sentence parts, punctuation marks, verbs, verbals, adverbs, adjectives, clauses, thought groups, prepositional phrases, etc. In the module 6 for writing I wrote some tall tales using the Tall Tales Site, this activity was useful because to write them I had to write nouns, adjectives, adverbs, etc., I had to know the function of words. Then, I wrote some poems using the ETCC.Instant Poetry Forms and then I used Bookr to publish them with pictures, also I created a comic strip in Makebeliefs comic , using Photopeach I told a story using photos (in my case from the internet) , in Skillswise as well as in the . BBC Words. Making sentences I took some grammar quizzes in different levels, in the Model Bank site I checked the writer’s models , two models of book review, I wrote an autobiographical incident, some elements of punctuation in BBC Words. Making sentences and tenses and in http://teacher.scholastic.com/writewit/ some ideas to start a composition. Writing isn’t very easy for my students but I think using these strategies and tools they can write successfully.
CHAPTER 8 About ICT Tools The Information and Communication Technologies (the ICT) on English language learning are really important, The ICT Tools are very useful, interesting, motivating, creative and funny. I selected the ICT Tools in Module 6 Writing. The activities that were the most useful for my learning and appropriate for my students were:” Activity 2.1 Writing ideas. A book poem (part 1)” , In this activity I
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had to explore the site, create 6 poems in ETCC.Instant Poetry Forms , keep them in a file but the most challenging part was when I tried to illustrate them and publish them using Bookr, after several attempts my online book was ready. The second activity was “Activity 3.1 Creating stories is a great way to boost your imagination”. I had to read about how to use Makebeliefs comic, . I enjoy my comic because it is nice but mainly because It wasn’t easy for me to do, I had to learn how I to send this kind of hypertext to the forum. The third tool was “Activity 3.2 Sharing and using pictures” in Photopeach , in this part I told a story using pictures from the internet . My main learning in this unit was about photos and how to upload pictures. In this Diplomado the English learning was important but
the ICT tools were
crucial, I learnt to chat, to use the computer, to look for specific information in the internet and now I know that English learning must be different, creative and experiential.
CHAPTER 9 Lesson Planning I like this lesson plan model based on multiple intelligences, it is appropriate for my students and our context. The teacher who uses this lesson plan model respects the diverse talents and ways of knowing in his students. Nowadays students don’t need to be sitting in a class doing the same activity, students can be offered with choices of activities depending on their learning styles. It is not easy to achieve because several methods can be offered during the same period to allow students to pick the best assignment for him. The teacher doesn’t have to teach something in eight ways but he has to see the possibilities and decide the most effective learning and teaching tools.
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The theory of multiple intelligences proposes a huge transformation in the way traditional schools are run. According to this theory the teacher should present his classes using a great variety of ways using music, role play, art activities, multimedia (if possible) inner reflection, etc. The Multiple Intelligences theory and this lesson plan model brings a new world in teaching and new horizons in learning. The Multiple intelligences are: Linguistic intelligence (word smart) Logical-mathematical intelligence (number /reasoning smart) Spatial intelligence (picture smart) Bodily-kinesthetic (body smart) Musical intelligence (music smart) Interpersonal intelligence (self smart) Intrapersonal intelligence (nature smart) Naturalistic intelligence
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BASORIA BALBOA LORENA
CHAPTER 1 English language learning awareness When I started this Diplomado my language level was B1 which in that time I considered fine but not enough, the promise was to study as hard as I could to improve my level, and now proudly I can say that I achieve my goal, this process was not easy but that is how the great things work, they are never easy. I learned first how to use the technology to learn English and how to manage my time and I was able to identify my learning style, I discovered that I am an intrapersonal type, I also learned a lot about reading strategies which I found very interesting, because most of the times we put in practice this strategies without even notice, for reading comprehension I can identify the types of text which are instructive, persuasive, descriptive and informative, the most important thing about reading I think is the increase of vocabulary. Another thing I really enjoyed was the listening module because I had the opportunity of improve my listening skills by putting in practice the top down listening, minimal pairs, reading along, the word stress, intonation, pauses, rhythm and use of tag questions. I think the hardest module was speaking because I am not used to hear my own voice, but it was very helpful because I am more fluent in my speaking, all because I had the opportunity to practice by telling stories, describing situations or places, giving instructions, presenting short talks,
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learning how to express agreement and disagreement by giving our own opinion of different topics and last but not least the writing module that I think it was the most creative one in which I learned to improve punctuation and grammar and use different writing models to tell stories.
CHAPTER 2
Cultural learning awareness
Through the different modules I discovered more and more of the English speaking community, let me tell you that I really admire the different sources and methods they use to improve their language learning, this sources are not only design for them, because they are really helpful for non native English speakers like us, I learned how they use the technology to improve the different skills and I also opened my mind and my opinion by reading interesting stories like the once of the Civil War and other historical events, I appreciate more the facts about their daily life. The thing I like the most was the listening which help me to learn about the rhythm and the right intonation of a native English speaker I think all this is extremely important for us as teachers and for our students as well because we are always surrounded by people and situations that involves our own language, in order to practice and improve our English skills we have to be exposure to the culture of native speakers, I think this is the most attractive way to students to learn the language because they can feel identify with the English speakers and they also might accept and appreciate their own culture more, because they always say that the people from other countries appreciate more our own traditions and costumes than we do.
CHAPTER 3 New teaching strategies discovered First of all I think that being a teacher is an amazing and very difficult job, if we fail as teachers our failures grow with our students. We as 21 st. century teachers have
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the obligation to be commitment with these eight habits which by the way I found amazing! Through the modules of this Diplomado I learned not to be scare of changes and try new things which happens to be the first habit: adaptation, I also learned how to be visionary trying to teach using different resources but mostly the imagination, and foment the collaborative work in our students, also we have to take risks don’t be afraid if something doesn’t work the first time we always can improve it, as a teacher I know that not only my students are the learners because each day they teach me new things too, also we have to be a model for them in all kind of aspects if we want them to communicate we have to be communicative persons as well, if we ask them for a good behavior we must present ourselves as a value persons all this with the purpose of leading them to the knowledge.
CHAPTER 4 Reading teaching strategies I really enjoy all the activities of this module because I like to read all kind of texts, the activity I enjoy the most and I found interesting was the one where we had to read while listening I enjoy to access the www.manythings.org web site in which by the way I found lots and lots of fun and interesting activities for my students, I really like the American Stories written by Bierce, Ambrose I think it was very relaxing and entertain way to improve my reading and at the same time my listening, and is amazing how the right environmental music can make our imagination fly even when I think I am a visual person this activity was very helpful and I learn lots of new vocabulary, My students have really appreciate this activities.
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.
The activity was 1.2 AMERICAN STORIES we had to read Ambros Bierce stories and there was an audio mp3 file to listening while reading to the story, in this activity the pictures or other kind of resources were unnecessary because the imagination was the main support.
CHAPTER 5 Listening teaching strategies Reviewing the fourth module of this Diplomado I found out that I had some trouble on the Minimal pair activities, because these are words that have similar pronunciations
and we can have some trouble understanding while we are
listening I like the activities and I appreciate the practice because it is something I must work, I think the activity was presented easy it was me the problem, I think the solution for me is writing down the problematic words and access to the site to practice the minimal pairs until I educate my ear to identify them. Maybe this activity could be presented in a video so we can see a person’s mouth moves while listening to the pronunciation of similar words; another thing that I found a little difficult is the right intonation but my problem is not while listening is when I speak I
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have some trouble to do the right intonation depending on the kind of text, I think this module was easily presented to us I guess is up to us to practice and to transmit all these we have learned to our students because they really enjoy listening music in English and this is a great opportunity to get them involved in other kind of listenings.
CHAPTER 6 Speaking Teaching Strategies I found two useful activities for my students on module five, well I think all the activities were very good but these are particularly perfect for my students, the two of them use the splendid software Audacity which is very attractive for the students for the fact that they can make their own recorders and they have lots of fun listening to their own voices. The first activity was the 1.1 because it is about choosing a period of life and prepare a short talk of an important event in life, first I explained the use of the software then gave them the instructions for the activity and they wrote down some ideas, then they had to practice with a partner telling the story, and as homework they had to practice in front of the mirror and the next time they had fun making their recordings, the other activity I use is similar to the first one but this time it was a free speech, I download some music files and ask them to talk about anything related to the kind of music they liked this was a variation of the activity of describing a place because in my activity the could talk of anything they wanted the condition was speak in English.
CHAPTER 7 Writing Teaching Strategies I enjoy this module because I had the opportunity to develop my writing, I think the activities allowed me to use and let my imagination fly, because is easier to write about topics that are familiar and of our own personal interests, I used and learn strategies like: how to be careful with the grammar and correct pieces of writing which I think is what we mostly do in our classes, It is a really good and beautiful
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idea making a book of poems I think my students will like it a lot, as they did with the comic strip which is a great page and the students practice without knowing! It was great how we use the photopeach to illustrate our writings and it was very useful to learn about how to describe people, situations and places and we did all this always taking care of punctuation and the sequence of tenses but the thing I like the most was the writing models, some of them I have already known but some others were knew and amazing, because I learned how I can express the same ideas in different ways and as I said before I really put my mind to fly in this module.
CHAPTER 8 About ICT Tools My favorite module was the reading because as I said before I enjoy reading a lot these are the most useful activities for my learning and my students: Activity 2.2. Listen and Read Along: I chose this activity because is very interesting it lets the students know and learn about other cultures as well as developing their reading and listening skills, which is important because they learn how the words are pronounced. Activity 3.2. Vocabulary: I think this is an amazing activity because the students can learn about actual topics, and in here they are presented specially to learn because there is listening, and reading involved as well as the vocabulary for the vocabulary. Activity 5.2. Grammar and reading comprehension: In here some interesting stories are presents in order that the students find the reading pleasant another great thing
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is that there are exercises for evaluating the pieces of reading in the same website and the students and we as teacher can evaluate the comprehension. I chose this module as well because of the bad fame that we as Mexicans don’t have the culture of reading, so I think is very important to present this skill to the students in a entertained way as were presented to us in this module.
CHAPTER 9 Lesson Planning I chose the Madeline Hunter’s Seven steps I think is the most clear of all the lesson planning presented on the website because is very specific in what we want for our students and what we have to do for reaching our teaching goals. The first step which is of extremely importance is the anticipatory set or setting the stage, is important because in this step we can get the attention from our students and get them focus in what they are going
to learn. The second step is the
statement of objectives in here we have to inform the students what are they going to learn or what are they going to be able to do at the end of the lesson, the third step is about instructional input, which results to be the explanation or the instructions for the lesson, The fourth step is modeling in here we have the opportunity to demonstrate to the students what we are explaining to them, the fifth step and also a very important one is check for understanding we can do this by watching our students faces and see if the lesson has been clear for them, the sixth step is the guided practice in here with our help the students put in practice what they have learned in the lesson, and the seventh and final step is the independent practice which is pretty much when the students put in practice what they learned by their own it could be as a homework or assignment.
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DÁVILA PEÑA EBELINA
CHAPTER 1 English language learning awareness My communicative competence has progressed in many aspects. I increased my vocabulary as a result of the readings, games, quizzes, exercises, songs, grammar challenges, and all of my listening and writing productions. Also, I reinforced the use of reported speech, subordinate, and coordinate sentences. I have learned to use reading strategies to develop my reading comprehension, such as answering the questions, skimming, and scanning.
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I am aware of some intonation patterns, for example in factual statements where the tone begins to fall if the final word has one syllable, but if it has two or more syllables, the tone drops down from one level to another, and also that when we have a list of items, we use rising intonation. I learned rules of word stress to be understood and listening rhythm as well as minimal pairs and thought groups and that any little change effects the interpretation of the discourse. The videos were useful tools to become aware of these features. My speaking ability has advanced although it is one of my weaknesses. It is the result of recording the productions many times; also I learned to speak with more fluency using conventions of language. My language level is better than before as I have improved my writing skills and I learned to write different types of writing through the creation of stories, the description of events, and simultaneously I reinforced the use of grammar tenses and punctuation. The models, templates and dictionary were helpful.
CHAPTER 2
Cultural learning awareness
I learned that the English speaking community has a great exchange of information about science and technology, and my students will work with the consequences of it in family.
Due to the place of origin, I found similarities and differences in
linguistic aspects like intonation, common words or phrases among many countries where English is the native language. American English differs from English spoken by others such as British English and also there are varieties in pronunciation and rhythmic speech in other countries, for this reason I will offer to my students different pronunciations and I will ask them discover the variations and the Geographic and Historic reason of them. In the sites and different listening activities, I learned that in every English speaking community there are many people with different life styles and activities. To focus my students in this aspect I will question about life styles, behaviors, rituals,
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symbols, values and beliefs reflected in recordings or writings, and then we will compare similarities, differences and origins among cultures. In the sites and different speaking activities, I learned that the English speaking culture gives great importance to speak directly and clearly without evasions. My students will compare some conversations or speeches provided in some web sites. I will use questions to remark the cultural elements as the Golden Gate Bridge like a symbol of a community to live better. I will use photos from people from different countries living in United States to reveal elements of History.
CHAPTER 3 New teaching strategies discovered I must have a variety of teaching strategies and the eight habits of highly effective 21st century teachers as I want to be a good leader with specific and clear goals and in this way be a model of the behavior and values expected in my students. Also, lifelong learning is essential due to new contributions to education. At this point, I need to improve my technological and English competence with interesting and up-to-date material to have resources to improve my teaching as well as provide my students with many opportunities to have experience learning. For example, in the sites I used, I learned that
better results in creating oral and
written texts are related to the use of music. Only a visionary teacher could see the transcendence of using Internet and educational software and take risks to introduce innovations in class.
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I want to adapt technological instruments to allow students to create texts with music, photos, record descriptions or narrations, read articles, do interactive exercises and answer quizzes on line. As a language learner and teacher, I discovered that the Internet is a very good resource to develop our language competences because it provides games, exercises, up-to-date information about different topics in an interactive way. Furthermore, the promotion of collaborative work, through sharing assignments to be co evaluated, or exchanging opinions by means of different software, is fundamental to have communication to offer an adequate support and supervision to students.
CHAPTER 4 Reading teaching strategies The most interesting reading activity 6.2 is the one that integrates several skills such reading, listening and watching. The reading has some elements like a video provided by News agency from Sacramento Country where you can watch and listen to the situation of Foster children. Other element is an informative report that describes the necessity of spaces to house more children and give them protection. The third one is an adaptation from the original story. It includes photos of a happy family and one little girl. The activities to comprehend the text were: First I read and listened the story at the same time, next I watched and listened a video, then I listened and read some clue words and I continued with a dictation of them to check spelling, followed by a memory game to match words with their definition, after that I answered a quiz to complete sentences with words from the previous text, and finally there was open question to reflect and give an opinion about Foster children. The Teaching strategies included the use of technology, due to this application the utilization of other strategies were possible such as watching and listening the video, reading and listening the story simultaneously, the use of images to support the text, learning words in context, also the selection of a text from real life which
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generates interest, dictation, answering a reflective question and inferring vocabulary through an interactive game. I had many opportunities to understand the reading.
CHAPTER 5 Listening teaching strategies The most difficult activity to me was 7.1. It consists in choosing three different listening at a regular listener level. It includes previous questions to focus the attention and answer them during the audio. The activity has three different ways to speak English, diverse topics, a passage description, a reader´s description and details from the audio. My problem was that I did not understand the meaning of several words, some segments were spoken very fast, and it was not easy to interpret them, and I did not recognize the pronunciation of linguistic variant, I had problems to discover the speaker´s intentions. To solve these difficulties and do the activity easier I used the dictionary, inferred the meaning of several words, payed attention to the world stress and intonation. Another strategy was listening many times the recordings. Also I read the text as I was listening to it. I concentrated my attention to the identification of paralinguistic features like tune, pitch, rising and falling intonation to discover intentions and emotions. In addition, to solve my problems I had to read the extra information provided in some boxes and watch the photos to infer meanings. In brief, I think all I needed was more practice and attention to every detail in oral discourse because a bit of it changes the meaning in a very remarkable way.
CHAPTER 6 Speaking Teaching Strategies
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Using the tool provided at the site Voice thread in activity 3.2, my students could introduce another person who could be an artist, favorite soccer player, singer, friend,
or someone they know,
and say his or her name, age, nationality,
occupation, place of residence and preferences. Also they can describe what he or she is wearing and doing. And finally they can give information about daily activities. Besides, they can do the same with a map and they can describe how they can get from one place to another. In addition they can use a video to describe what people are doing in the moment they are speaking, otherwise create poems with a picture, or they can describe a city or a place. Previously, it is necessary to spend time in giving instructions about the use of Voice thread, the registration of each group in this site, log on and record voice with the computers at school, then ask the selection and written description of a photo to be checked by a classmate, and receive feed- back of grammar and spelling. In this moment they can practice orally with a classmate, as many times as possible, to continue with the recording and listening of it, if they do not like it, they can delete and re-record the description. And finally they will publish it to invite friends and family to watch it.
CHAPTER 7 Writing Teaching Strategies The teaching strategies to develop my writing skills have something in common: the stimulation of imagination, sense of humor, emotions, and the reinforcement of grammar elements simultaneously. Also the use of templates and models for each type of writing helped me and facilitated the process of creation of my own texts. Likewise making comments about peers’ productions was a very useful strategy to reflect and enrich my perspectives of reality.
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Besides, correcting a piece of writing allows me to put in practice my knowledge about spelling, punctuation, and grammar, as well as interactive games and quizzes to practice punctuation and narrative style. Moreover, I had many chances to increase vocabulary like verbs, adjectives, nouns, adverbs, proper nouns with the awareness of their distinctions in function. I think that the variety of writing strategies such as the creation of tall tales, comics, book of poems, different types of writing genders, book review, autobiographical incidents, and eyewitness accounts gave me the opportunity to generate, develop, and put in order my ideas according to different purposes, also rewrite, and edit my texts. The employment of writing stories with music and photos was innovative because of the use of technology. Equally the use of fragments of famous movies is very useful to practice grammar and writing with pleasure. But the most important, these writing strategies acquired their value when they were put in practice.
CHAPTER 8 About ICT Tools The site Instant Poetry Forms is fantastic; it gives a list of links to create personal poems. Every web page from the links offers templates that have the directions, suggestions, and an example to write a poem, and then there are some unfinished sentences and spaces to complete them according to the instructions. Finally to publish it, there is a site named Bookr where the poems are copied and complemented by photos. I liked this site as I think it is a good stimulus to develop writing skills and move emotions, feelings, and ideas, and express them in a creative way. Also the students can reinforce their reading skills, increase vocabulary, and improve their grammar knowledge. Makebeliefs comic created By Bill Zimmerman is a site that provides ideas to create comics. This technological tool has some options to choose the number of panels, talk and thought balloons, background colors, some characters, also it has
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options to change mood and directions of them. I selected this site because I enjoyed it and I know my students like comics, too. I think they have fun creating dialogues with the vocabulary and grammar they have learned. “Movie segments to assess grammar goals” is a blog with selected fragments of famous movies to work in class. The activities suggested are based on the videos and provides practice in grammar through different types and level of difficulty. The videos involve many senses as they use color, movement, sound, stories, and are interesting for students.
CHAPTER 9 Lesson Planning I prefer Madeline Hunter lesson Plan, and I would include some more elements of the Group Work format to socialize learning. I think this format has a logical sequence and due to the elements and organization, it is congruent with the constructivism approach in education which focuses on Key competences for lifelong learning. This lesson plan allows the inclusion of a variety of strategies to manage the English language, and it is necessary because of the diversity among students in learning styles. Students´ productions are the result of their multiple intelligences, the development of critical thinking abilities, and instructional scaffolding provided by the teacher and other students. In short, the student’s resources and all his senses will be moved throughout all the teaching strategies. I think I need the elements of this lesson plan format for the reason that it is an objective guide for the process; anticipatory set makes a connection with previous knowledge, and this is possible through something interesting like a song, game, picture, recording, video, and reading. Also, the students need precise instructional input such as examples or models to be a support, and as teacher I must check for understanding all the time and not work upon suppositions. Before the creation of original works in independent practice, students must create oral or written productions with scaffolds like templates or phrases.
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The elements of this lesson plan give students many opportunities and experiences to grow in the English class and be responsible for their own learning.
FLORES NETZAHUATL MARICELA
CHAPTER 1 English language learning awareness In this course I have learned that for developing reading skills is important to apply some strategies as skimming and using of images in order to identify the sort of text and get the purpose; we can also use scanning for finding specific information. Before developing the activity we must remember to ask some questions about the issue in order to reactive students’ prior knowledge for better understanding. To develop of listening skills we have to tell intonation, pauses, stress and the minimal pairs among context, although to achieve a good level of understanding is necessary to practice too much with different styles of native speakers. Speaking ability is the most difficult to develop; however it is possible to increase fluency
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through planning, practicing and recording our own speech. Writing skills can be improved by funny ways as creating comics, short stories or poems.
CHAPTER 2
Cultural learning awareness
I think English language is a very important communication tool around the world. So as a teacher I have to draw my students’ attention to English language and culture. To achieve this purpose I can get them to a video about fashion and emphasize that whatever were models born mostly talk in English because this is an international language. Another way to close my students to English culture is by movies. I could project them a block of any interesting film and then ask my students some questions about details of the scenes in order to they realize that subtitles reading make us to lost some details so is preferable listening to enjoy better the film. Example:
Start talking
Project
any
Stop
about better
block
of
them:
films they’ve
“Jurassic
seen
Park” Analyze the importance to
project
and
ask
Did you see what color are
the
eyes
of
the
dinosaur?
learn English to avoid the subtitles in the films
Perhaps we also can analyze news on TV or a newspaper all together in class in order to get awareness of the different trade, commercial or public relations which link Mexican people to English language and culture countries like USA and Belize. On this media we also could find some reports about tourist places in Mexico and
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we can see there how people use English language to offer their services to foreigner tourists so this could encourages my students to realize that English language makes us able to get a good job.
CHAPTER 3 New teaching strategies discovered All through this course I discovered many teaching strategies that I can use in my daily activities as a teacher. May be the main of all is the huge number of web pages that can help me to teach English in its different aspects like grammar, writing, listening and speaking. I think that the activities I did during the course, like that one in which we filled in the blanks to create a poem or the other one where we create a photograph album with a note in the bottom of each photo, are correlating with Mr. Churches suggestion in his article “Eight habits to highly effective 21st century teachers” because I found that there are activities adapted to different level of learner and this gives the learners the opportunity to increase gradually their knowledge and abilities; activities are innovative too because they use new technology and they also are interesting because they treat about modern topics with any sense in our lives. The idea to share our products in a forum gives to the activities the collaborating quality and this allows to us as students a good feedback by the co-evaluation. Finally I also found those that Churches called Modelling behaviour and Leading in the work of our tutors all the time. They show us always by their words to communicate with us that they were really interested in our knowledge and abilities learning and in our personal problems in order to offer any kind of aid.
CHAPTER 4
Reading teaching strategies
In the Activity 4.1 from the Module 3, the text titled British adult “fear youngsters” is a short report taken from the BBC news webpage that talks about how British adults are afraid of youngsters violence. The text has comparative information about this sort of adult fears among some other European countries. The report
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contains some people opinions about the causes of youngster violence and also offers the possibility of this point of view from adults just is an appearance as a result of the media comments. I think this is an interesting article that shows an up to day topic. In this activity we had to get meaning of unknown words by inferring and deducing. Through the text there are bolded words which meaning we had to infer or deduce. At the end of the activity there are some questions to answer with true/false and the list of all the bolded words to write the real meaning gotten from a dictionary. I think that the updating topic of the text helps me to infer or deduce the meanings. I discovered that helped with the context I could get mostly of the unknown words meaning without a dictionary. I also realize that the questionnaire helps me to understand plainly the content of the report, and the final list of words was a part of the vocabulary I included in my knowledge.
CHAPTER 5 Listening teaching strategies Definitively the most difficult activity I found from module 4 was the 7.1 when I had to watch and listen any video from New York Times conversations web page and then to take some notes to prepare a summary. My main problem was to know plainly what people from videos said because of many factor. The first is my limited listening skill so I could not hear those words which had a fallen down intonation. The second is the rhythm used by speakers so they really speak quickly. The third is the unknown words and expressions meaning so I had not enough vocabulary. The fourth perhaps is that I don’t know much about many issues they talked about so I had some difficulties to establish a good connection between these relates and my personal background. In my opinion this activities are real challenges for listening learners so I think they are more suitable for using with advanced learners. I had preferred to remain a little bit more time with some easier exercises before trying these others or to have had more time to listen them again and again but due to my work I had not enough time I guess, however I feel it was a good
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experience and it helped me anyway to develop a little bit my listening skills, although I have to work hard to achieve a good level of listening comprehension.
CHAPTER 6
Speaking Teaching Strategies
I am going to use this activity with my students because it allows them to improve using of computer tools, also helps them to apply a really endeavor when they structure their speech, and of course, they can be aware of their speaking progress. So I think that one way I could use this teaching strategy is as following: first I would show all the class an image of anybody and ask the kids to watch it carefully, after that I would ask them to write in a sheet of paper a physical description of the one in the image, then they would have to read aloud their descriptions to all the class for checking their pronunciation, finally students would go to the computer to record their own speeches. These recorded files can be heard into the class to analyze their speaking mistakes or errors in order to avoid them next time. To vary the activity we can show images of places, animals or other things and to increase the difficulty we can add detailed descriptions or the sensations that the image produces in the students.
CHAPTER 7 Writing Teaching Strategies All through Module 6 devoted to writing skills I did some amazingly funny and useful activities. I am glad to remind me of that one which I created a poem by ETTC web page just filling in the blanks with nouns or adjectives. It was as easy as the other one activity which I did a photobook mixing the poetries I was created and some images on the “Bookr” web page. One of my favorite activities definitively was the comic made in makebeliefs.com because I had to structure a dialogue with sense, a youthful vocabulary and a suitable combination with the characters. It was so funny! A useful activity to do well structured writings is to review the examples from Writer’s Model web page in order to be aware of what
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important is to start a text with an attention engaging phrasal and to support ideas with facts or anecdotes. I think that all activities I did helped to me to do better structured writings and the quizzes made me realize of my mistakes, mainly grammar in using of tense of verbs, so I have to work hard to make it better each day. Finally, comment from my forum partners encourages me to keep giving my best efforts. Thanks everyone for your sincere commentary.
CHAPTER 8 About ICT Tools Although all of the modules have good tool for learning and teaching English language, in my opinion the best information communication tools are in module 6, devoted for speaking. It seems a competition among all of the tools so I have selected for first position Audacity program as a very important resource for recording any speech by ourselves. We can use it for listening to practice getting information, dictation or for speaking to produce descriptions, comment or use it as a speaking assessment tool. In second position I chose Photo Peach because it seems to me super funny. Furthermore, it makes me give my best endeavor in order to connect the selected photos, the logical sequence and the message at bottom of each image. The last tool I selected is the group of exercises from the BBC web site called getting the right tense. In this site we can get an innovative, funny and really efficient joint of activities arranged suitably to develop a whole English class session. The site has got clear directions, previous information in order to activate background schemas, interesting exercises which allow the student to understand right grammatical tense in a sentence, and funny quizzes for evaluation progress. There are available activities for different levels of learners. These are the best ICT tools I selected, however, many of the activities I did through the course are so useful and really convenient for my teaching.
CHAPTER 9 Lesson Planning
2
In my experience as a teacher working with teenagers I have achieved some advances on my students by using of a plan model close to Madeline Hunter’s Plan Model. Of all of the plan models shown in the web site I see in this one the following advantages: It consist of seven easy steps. Anticipatory Set allows engaging and focusing students’ attention in the topic by posters, pictures or any other image joined to any comment or asking question by teacher. After that, Statement of Objectives is necessary to clear up what we expect from students and to encourage them to get the goal. With Instructional Input all the whole class can share and get more information about the topic by discussion and working in teams. These activities might be very interesting for the students if we achieve a real interaction. Modeling is very important weather in the class there are people from different social context so I have to achieve that all of them understand what I want them to do. Obviously I have to Checking for Comprehension all the time. With Guided Practice I help my students to apply their new skills and knowledge in daily activities like summaries, discussions or solving problems. Finally, I use Independent Practice as a feedback to reaffirm the skills and knowledge already learned.
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JARAMILLO SALAZAR JOSE MARIA
CHAPTER 1 English language learning awareness My name is Jose Maria Jaramillo Salazar and I am from General Teran, Nuevo Léon, México. First of all I would like to thanks to all the people who made possible this course was enabled to all of us. Taken this Diplomado for me was an adventure because there were days when I had a lot of work from school and the pressure was a lot to cover all the activities for each module, but at the same time it was wealth-producing because I got many ideas and new experiences in this hard way to be a good teacher. Talking about my learning in this course, I remember than in the first modules I applied a diagnostic test where I got 80 in my final grade, at this point I realized that there was still more that I needed to do about it, to improve it and get better,
2
first of all to increase my level in language and be able to communicate in a correct way and also for my students, who deserve a qualified education. To raise my language level, I worked hard through this course. This Diplomado gave me a lot of new experiences, before anything else for all about learning strategies to present the content or structures to my students in a better form, taking them in consideration, with the principal intention to strengthen the four skills, listening, writing, reading and speaking. I also would like to comment that my vocabulary increased a little more during this time specially when I worked with the reading module. Through some exercises I learnt how to understand English text better using the strategies suggested. One of my goals at the end of it was to raise my reading comprehension skills, because I realized that I needed to develop more this ability, and I guess I did it, beginning to read as a hobby to strengthen the strategies and increase this habit. My listening ability has improved also during this Diplomado because I learned that there are different kinds of listening and in each one the listeners apply some strategies to get a better idea about the topic talking. Also I find out that the intonation while talking is an important aspect to consider because it gives you more information about what you want to say or express. At this point, I realized that teaching and applying all these strategies in class with my students would be also very usefull for my students. A way to improve listening, is practicing more using authentic (material) resources, like movies, news, dialogues, etc. My speaking ability was also improved I guess because I participated and developed oral skills production using the monologues and dialogues planned in one of the modules. At this point, I noticed the importance to take in consideration the stress and rhythm when you communicate with other people orally.
CHAPTER 2 Cultural learning awareness
2
Teaching culture at school in English classes could be funny and interesting for our students. As a teachers we know that our job is not only develop in the students the four skills mentioned before, but also to teach the culture from the country they want to get the language too. During the course taken I got a lot of information not only from United States the nearest country from Mexico, but also from other countries where English is spoken. While I was working on the links provided in some modules I thought in my students, I wanted to take them here with me, to read, to see, and to enjoy the links, exercises and activities, which their main propose were teaching culture. Something I remember about it, it is a popular sightseeing from San Francisco, California, the Golden Gate. Learnt interesting facts about it, it was amazing because if you do not have the opportunity to visit the city you can know through this way. The internet provides us a lot of tools to work this aspect in class, but there are also many strategies we can use to teach this content in class. During the school year there are many holidays we can use to apply activities to work with culture, and if we do not have the technological tools at school we can create some material to teach it. I think that if our students know also about the country they will be more interested in acquiring the language.
CHAPTER 3 New teaching strategies discovered Through the modules worked in this course I realized that as a language teacher, I could discovered that there are many and useful ways that our students can practice English. For example visiting a webpage to get some information about games, fashion, sports, etc. reading an advertisement, listening songs, and also chatting with friends. To comment about it I remember that while I was working I was thinking in my class, wishing to have the opportunity a day not so far, to apply the same activities specially using these technological tools that are so interesting for teenagers, the ones that I work with. As we know our students like to work with computers and are better users than us. If we could make a link through the
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content and things that are interesting for them I guess we would motivate and make them think that learning a second language could be funny and exciting, so they can do it not only using their typical schools items they have used all the time, books and notebooks. As teachers one of our responsibilities is to be according what our students like nowadays. Change the way to work modifying the system or getting out from the routine. We must be able to adapt to the new generation, finding the way to insert any kind of authentic material to our classes, in this way the students really would make a link between the knowledge and the application of it, they will get what the system has required for years, a significant learning. Teacher, we need to be visionary for taking the risk in our way to work with the students, as a teacher our obligation is to keep updated, getting any idea to adapt it in the learning process.
CHAPTER 4 Reading teaching strategies One of the activities done during the module four (reading) it was very interesting. I ´m the kind of person who does not like to read. I think this skill is really useful but I have not developed it as much as I wish. During the process of reading in this module there was a link we must visit to practice and apply some readings strategies. I worked on the story “the lady, or the tiger”. I think this kind of links are so good specially for the people who is not to interested on this ability. The magic of the tale, the sound and the voice of the reader caught me on it. There were some vocabulary I did not understand but I could infer the meaning with the context and recognizing cognates, however. I think this kind of activities worked with technological tools are very helpful to work reading with our students. First of all because we can present the exercise in a different way, and maybe in this form the teenagers would be more interested on it, computers and internet is part of their
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lives now, and on the other hand they would also learn pronunciation from a different person apart the teacher, and in some cases native speakers.
CHAPTER 5 Listening teaching strategies In the module four we worked with listening. It was also a good module because I could practice this skill. But I found there some difficult activities. I think one of my weaknesses is listening, I guess it is because I just practice with my friends and teachers but most of them are Mexican and at the end we finish talking in Spanish. I think also the problem is I do not spend too much time listening songs or movies in English and when I have the opportunity to do it I use subtitles. Something to comment about the problems I remembered that I got frustrated in a lesson because I got lower grades on the exercises. The way I worked on this was: first of all I had to listen carefully with the main intention to choose the correct answers. In fact, the texts were not too long, I consider the problem was the lexical used on them. In the first ones I got regular results but as I was getting into higher levels I was worse. I think the way I could get better grades during the activity was identifying first the unknown vocabulary, or having short pauses during the listening, to get a better comprehension.
CHAPTER 6
Speaking Teaching Strategies
Come back to the fifth module and find out which of the activities turned out to be the most useful for you. Observe its characteristics. Speaking is one of the main objectives for a language teacher trying to develop in class, but as a secondary teacher we face the true reality. We have in class shy and introverted students. Considering my teenagers, and taking in consideration that some of them do not like to practice a lot speaking in front of the class,
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because they are afraid to make mistakes or be the point to laugh about, I liked a lot the activity 3 from the Unit 3 in the module 5. I would like to apply this activity with one of my groups, recording their description in a closed area or classroom with my laptop, like if they were participating in Big Brother, sitting on a couch and talking to a screen. Most of my students do not have a computer at home so I would need to teach them first how they can record their voice using the same program I used, after they did it I could checked their expositions at home. I consider that let the students create, express and comment what they think about a person, besides using a record voice and do it by themselves it could be a strategy for those kind of students, and it could be also very funny.
CHAPTER 7 Writing Teaching Strategies I think writing is the art of let your ideas blow. In my case I guess this skill and reading go together because while you read you are improving your vocabulary and increasing the way of seeing the life and interpreting different social aspects. Writing implies more than let your pen or keyboard print your ideas, this procedure needs to follow some rules, structures and models than will permit your comments understandable and clear. Developing this ability with teenagers it could be sometimes hard. One strategy I have followed with small progresses is to let my students work with projects at the end of a unit, where they can express whatever they want, and using materials, tools, like magazines, pictures from friends, computers, etc. trying to make a link between the things or topics they prefer to talk and the content taught. It’s sometimes a lot of work for the teachers but at the end of their presentations is good to know that they have learnt something.
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In some cases the teacher needs to provide a model can help the students have an idea of the project, of course that during the process the teacher needs to observe, and give suggestions.
CHAPTER 8 About ICT Tools The Information and Communication Technologies are being part of our society. Nowadays is very common to find expert kids and teenagers in this aspect, even better than us. The worst part is that most of the teachers do not want to face with a good attitude this situation, instead of change their working system and try to use the TICs as a part of the process of teaching, they refuse to use them or to learn how to do it. Something we need to understand is that instead of being a problem or distraction for our students, the TICs are new tools to learn a second language. There are many ways we can use them and get better results in the process of learning. Working in class with videos, music, images, graphics, etc. increase our principal objective in class, get the student’s attention, if we can get this, the job would be easier. One of the tools I found interesting to use with my students is to create a web page, where my class could get more links to practice their English, which main objective would be going more than they learn in the classroom. Even in this web site they could find the presentations in power point seen in class, and have a particular tutorship for those ones who did not understand something in class, leaving a message and getting the answers from their teacher or even for a classmate.
CHAPTER 9 Lesson Planning
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I chose the Multiple Intelligences “Seven ways of knowing” (Gardner) lesson plan considering that the learning process goes more than give to our students all the information as we can, with the main objective to cover the units. The principal propose of the education is that our students can do something with this knowledge, in their daily life or it could use it in the future and could help to integrate to a global society. To get all of this is necessary to apply some strategies, but these ones need to be according to the people we are going to work with. In our classrooms we have students that like to learn in different ways, some of them like to work with hands, others are good with numbers, manage or leader people, we have teenagers who prefer to work alone or individual, than working in a team; there are students who like to observe and others who love music. As educators we need to have in mind that our principal actors in the process of learning are our students. The way we are going to present the content must be according to their needs, en this form the process would be easier not only for them, even for us, because their interest will increase in the classes.
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JUAREZ AVELLANEDA AZUCENA
CHAPTER 1 English language learning awareness This Diploma course has represented a unique opportunity in order to get a better knowledge of English language. In my opinion, the language acquisition and performance I got during this course has been transcendental because of the development in my competences and language skills, for example, my vocabulary and my writing has been increasing, I can distinguish between a fact and an opinion, I notice the stress in words (that can change the sense in expressions) I have learned vocabulary, which part of speech (like nouns, adjectives and verbs)
is better to use when I am
writing, and also I have learned to use my imagination.
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My listening and speaking ability has improved. I am more confident to speak with
other
people;
I
also
can
express
opinions,
agreements,
disagreements, comments, etc. I try to understand all kind of listenings, kind of intonations, different speed when they are talking and different listenings with native or foreign speakers.
At this point, I have learned how to use more reading strategies, how to use internet to educational purposes, I can understand better a listening without repeating many times, I can write better, I improve my grammar, spelling and punctuation mistakes, I can think in English and order my ideas when I am writing. To raise my language level, I will speak and write without fear, I could listen my pronunciation, check my Intonation and rhythm, I will use many different resources and listen to native speaker as much as possible, watch English films and television, listen to English music, study as often as possible, do exercises, take tests, and practice intonations and pauses. In short, I´m aware that I need to learn more in order to improve my English language skills and to search my student´s benefit.
CHAPTER 2 Cultural learning awareness The way I could focus my student´s attention to English is through cultural aspects. I think this is an essential skill because cultural awareness students recognize that we are all shaped by our cultural background, which influences how we interpret the world around us, perceive ourselves and relate to other people. In addition,
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students understand of how in other countries their cultures may inform their values, behavior, beliefs and basic assumptions. During this Diploma course I have learned and also it is helped for my students many cultural aspects such as music in English, fashion, expressions that are used for the same idea in the United States and in the United Kingdom, readings about the history of interesting places like The Golden Gate Bridge, and interesting stories about Canada and the United States. Something that caught my attention was an article named “Foster children” because it marks the differences between cultures. Another interesting thing of cultural awareness is to look the differences in the pronunciation of a native speaker and no- native speaker.
CHAPTER 3 New teaching strategies discovered As a teacher, I discovered that we have many resources at internet to use with students in the classroom (being visionary) . According to the eight habits of highly effective 21st century teachers we have to adapt these resources to the age of the group and their abilities (adapting). There are a lot of reading comprehension strategies which can use to understand the reading and at the same time we can teach them values and behaviors we expect from our students (learning). We have a lot of material about listening. We have exams, quizzes, readings, games, etc. with this kind of material we can facilitate, stimulate and control their language learning (modeling behavior) and finally we have different
activities
that
motivate
students
to
improve
their
English
(communicating). For all of this we also have to use our imagination to manipulate their needs of the group we have to have a vision of what we want and to identify the goals and facilitate the learning.
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As teachers we always must be able to share, contribute and adapt everything with learning purposes (leading).
CHAPTER 4 Reading teaching strategies In my opinion, the best activity for my reading practice was 6.2: Reading, listening, watching a video and vocabulary. I found in the site Adult Learning Activities, the text called, Foster children The topic is interesting because everywhere the same problem exists, people use to abuse of their children, the difference here in Mexico is that we don´t have foster homes to these children.
In the basic story, I got a general idea of the text from an image. Here, I found the first strategy. Then, I read the full story and I used information from text to decipher unfamiliar words. After that, I watched the video and more images, helped me to support my text comprehension . I also
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distinguished between facts from opinions, when the report was presented (facts), and also a girl talked about the topic. For learning more vocabulary there were spelling words, a matching game with words from the text, to pick and write answers. As a teacher I can use this text with my students but in a different way; for example, first, I introduce the reading with some questions about what they know of children who are damaged (Pre-read), and then I go with them to learn new words and spell a word. After that, I tell my students to listen and read at the same time (Read), next, I ask them some questions about the reading to have a clear idea what a foster children is (Revisit), then, I follow my students to watch the video and finally, go to the pick and write an answer activities (Reflect).
CHAPTER 5 Listening teaching strategies Before anything let me tell you that listening is for me the most difficult skill, so I need to concentrate a lot in each listening. The most difficult activity in my listening practice was Activity 7.2. Authentic listening because it is different when you listen to a native speaker and when you listen to a foreign one: the intonation, the speed, the stress, the authenticity, etc. are not the same. I also found it difficult because the videos are very long, they use many idioms, phrasal verbs, and some vocabulary that was difficult for me to understand. This activity could have been easier if we could use some strategies to try to understand it previously, for example as a teachers we can make some questions about the topic before listening, we can check the vocabulary as a pre-activity, while we are listening we can answer some question that the teacher has been providing, and after the video we can check the understanding of the students and finally try to make a conclusion about the video.
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I think this could be better instead of only watching the video. Also, I think it is important to listen to real English because this can help us to be better listeners.
CHAPTER 6 Speaking Teaching Strategies The most useful speaking activities for me as an English teacher and as a learner were: •
First of all and I think the most interesting activity was Giving opinions with the voicethread site. This activity was interesting for students and for me too because it was different and the used internet is something that motivate students to work, as a teacher I can focus them to a specific learning according to what are they learning in the classroom.
•
How to present a short talk about someone important in our life. This activity was the most difficult for me because it evoked me a lot of emotions, it made me cry and it was hard to record the file. I wanted to do the same activity with my students and try to evoke the same reactions as mine. I know that everybody has different feelings and sometimes we have to take out all we feel.
•
How
to
express
agreement
and
disagreement
in
a
videoconference. This activity really liked me because we have to prepare a script, but we have to be able to answer what other people may ask. I selected this activity for my students as an oral exam, I gave them a topic and they had to prepare it. Then, in the classroom (because in the
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school we don´t have web-cams) they had to speak about the topic for some minutes with another student. It was good.
•
How to describe a situation or a place with the music clips. This activity was nice and easy for my students. In my case when I listened to the music, I got relaxed and my imagination could fly. For my students this activity was a little bit different. With a tape recorder, in the classroom I told my students to close their eyes, listened to the music and got relax. After the music had ended, they opened their eyes and they had to draw the place they imagined, finally they explained their drawings in front of the class. It wass fantastic how they use their imagination and how they can travel to different and unknown places just listening to a melody.
As a conclusion, all of the activities are useful. It is a good way to improve “my and my students” fluency and pronunciation and of course, all of the activities gave ideas how to work with my students. I think, the more I can learn the more I can teach.
CHAPTER 7 Writing Teaching Strategies During this module I have found many writing strategies to use with my students and to myself. For example: For my students: I liked how to create tall tales, this activity is nice for them, because they practice nouns, adjectives, verbs in the correct form, adverbs and exclamations in a funny way. It is very easy to create tall tales and to read them in the class is enjoyable.
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Another activity I liked for my students was, creating stories using comic strips; this one is very useful like a teacher and like a student. For students is really interesting the way they create a story because the use their imagination, the teacher only gives the topic or the idea according what they are teaching and they have to create their own story. And for teachers is very useful to have this link because it has story ideas and printables to use with them. The video clips are an excellent activity to incorporate students with grammar and writing and to have lots of fun. With these activities we motivate students to learn in a different way, movies always like everybody and catch the attention, they practice listening, writing, grammar, parts of speech, grammatical structures, etc. and for teachers is a good opportunity to use these kind of material with them because we have all the activities done. In my personal experience, I have learned a lot with compositions because I had to use my imagination, my previous knowledge of English and my dictionary, and I had to check my grammar, my vocabulary, my spelling, my punctuation, etc. With this activity, I definitely improve my English writing. I also liked how to create my own poem book and how to tell a story using pictures and music, I enjoyed a lot these activities because they were easy and funny to do, also I had to check again grammar, punctuation, different tenses, vocabulary, etc. I´m sure these activities are going to like students too. As a conclusion, the writing module was the best for me. It was different and I Iearned grammar and how to use this technology.
CHAPTER 8 About ICT Tools It is very difficult to choose one of the modules because all of them are useful for my learning and appropriate for my students, but I will try to select only one of them.
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The most useful for me and my students is module 6, because this one is attractive, different, motivating and encouraging. Movie segments to assess grammar goals are an excellent tool because with these kinds of activities we motivate students to do something they like and at the same time they are learning. With these activities, they practice their knowledge about grammar, listening and writing. Another tool that I have found interesting was the photopeach; this activity motivates students to express their own ideas, their feelings and helps to use their imagination. About grammar, with this activity they can apply what they have previously known, they learn how to find errors and they can improve their writing and as a teacher we can use this material with any kind of skills. The writing exercises we had in unit 5, 6 and 7; are amazing because with these activities we let students to think about themselves, to use their imagination again and in that way, they have to express their feelings, how they are and how they see life. Also they learn grammar, punctuation, vocabulary, etc. To conclude, ICT tools are so important nowadays. The world is changing, the technology is changing and we have to change too.
CHAPTER 9 Lesson Planning I selected the lesson plan of Hunter, “Seven elements of a lesson plan” because I consider it is appropriate for my context. In my personal experience, I always plan my lessons because they compel me to think through my aims and objectives and the various steps in the lesson. If I don´t plan, I don´t have basis for lesson evaluation. For this reason, I consider that I teach in a similar way as the lesson plan of Hunter.
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Anticipatory set.
This is the previous knowledge of students about a topic.
English teachers know this like warm-up. Objectives. It is important to tell students the specific purpose of each and every activity they do. Instructional input. The best way to ensure the instructions are clear is to be direct, short and simple. Sometimes I have to ask questions to check the students have understood, before they begin the exercise. Modeling. During this part, I explain students with examples the purpose of the class, according to what I want to teach. Guided practice. The process consists in having students use language through tasks that move from control to freedom. Independent
practice.
Establishing and maintaining social contacts by
exchanging information, views, feelings and personal wishes, amongst others. Checking for comprehension: During each activity, I have to check if they have understood and after that, I evaluate them to identify what they have learnt over the class, and what they need to work on. The purpose of teaching language in basic education is that students gain ownership of diverse social practices of the language and participate effectively in their life and out of school. As a teachers we have to have in mind that students are individuals who are competent, who have initiative, sensitivity to others and awareness of practical realities as well as sufficient students.
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LINARES GARCIA MARTHA CECILIA
CHAPTER 1 English language learning awareness First of all, I have to say I have learned a lot in this course about this virtual platform. Second, my comments about the resources, I was checking the webpage and the dictionaries were very useful materials for me, because I could improve my skills as a teacher. I printed games, checked spelling and pronunciation. Besides, I found other interesting sites. The most I liked about these sites was the audio for ESL/EFL because I listened interesting news about different topics. To conclude, I will use these sites of the internet in the laboratory or in class as an extra activity or when the students go the interactive classroom.
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In Module 3, I have learned different techniques when I read a text and identified the parts of a text. Also, I loved the readings with audio because they helped me with the stress, and the pronunciation of the words. In addition, the steps of prereading, while-reading and post-reading were really important in a text. Besides, these
readings strategies have
and comprehend more easily.
helped me to visualize
better
a text,
Moreover, I have learned the adequate reading
strategies to improve my reading skills. I have learned a lot of things in this module four, I could recognize more sounds and
the
phonetic
symbols.
They
helped
me
to
have
more
accuracy and fluency with the spoken English. The stories in The Australia network were extraordinary and the minimal pairs. Besides, the thought groups have helped me to understand better the listening exercises and to speak more correctly. Also, in this final part of this unit, I felt more confident about listening skills, because I identified a discourse. I think the most difficult skill in English is listening, but with practice everything is possible. In this speaking module I have learned how to evaluate myself, and how to tell and describe a story by means of a picture, and a music clip. I have to say in this Speaking module at first, was a little difficult because it was completely different than
to
the
other
modules,
but
it has
helped
to
enrich
my
vocabulary. Besides, I have enjoyed practicing my fluency in the websites, Speaking Splendid has helped me to put in order my ideas and to use new words and vocabulary. In this module 6, I have learned how to create stories according to the images on the sites, and how to use templates. These projects have helped me to acquire more vocabulary. Also, I have learned how to create comic strips using my imagination and expressing my feelings in that moment. On the other hand, these kinds of exercises were important because I could check my written mistakes and improve literacy and punctuation in English.
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CHAPTER 2 Cultural learning awareness According to my experience and what I have learned in the modules about cultural learning awareness is that we need to create culture in our classroom, and students share and explore culture values. As an English teacher we can bring material and discuss about different countries, such as social problems. Also, we can invite students to participate in the forums and exchange different points of view. A cultural aspect I learned was about the Federal Holidays in The United States like: Memorial Day and what people do on this special day at Barack Obama’s Weekly Addresses. Moreover, I learned about famous landmarks such as: The Golden Gate Bridge and I also learned about People in America like: Benjamin Franklin. Apart from this, I learnt awesome stories like: The Amistad Incident and other American stories. Another cultural aspect I learned was about the festivities in Australia in New Year Eve like: Mardi Gras, Chinese New Year Festival and the Autumn Racing Carnival.
In addition to this, students can interact with international students and they realized about the importance of the English speaking community. For instance, body language, gestures, and customs and their way of address. To conclude, as an English teacher, I will ask to my students to develop projects and compare both cultures and share their own experiences. I think these projects will make them to reinforce English language skills and it’s a way to draw student’s attention to English language and culture.
CHAPTER 3 New teaching strategies discovered
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With reference to the strategies I learned about the previous modules is that you have to incorporate the new technologies in your classrooms and discover new ways of teaching English through ICT tools. According to the article “Eight Habits” and what I learned through the ICT tools, is that nowadays teachers have to communicate through media such as: e-mail, chat, forums, and videoconference. Moreover, teachers must promote media, to interact with students, provided that teachers use it for educational purposes and for student’s learning. Apart from this, students must participate and get involved in their homeworks in a more independent way, using Web Technologies in order to exchange points of view or for a particular homework. Besides, teachers must create a virtual classroom, where they can plan and design their daily classes. Also, it’s important that teachers and students work together to facilitate, integrate, and engage students to solve problems by themselves. Another point to mention, is that the new technologies in the Education demand new learning models, and new strategies of organization.To conclude, is that the world is changing rapidly and we have to develop an effective curriculum and embrace the new technologies to innovate education.
CHAPTER 4 Reading teaching strategies The most interesting activity for my reading practice was Adult Learning Activities, in this activity I listened and read the Cell Phone Safety text. After that, I watched a video according to the topic and finally, at the end of the video I did some exercises such as: matching words, listen and spell the words. To conclude with the activity, I did a small quiz with reference to the text. The strategies I used in this activity first, I identified the main ideas of the text. Second, I read the the first and the last sentences of each paragraph. After that, I looked for the unknown words in the dictionary and finally, I synthesized the new information of the video with the text.
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Another interesting activity for my reading practice was the report Civilian escapes from Sri Lanka about words in the news. The strategies I used in this activity first, I used content clues to decipher unknown words. Then, I listened the words in bold and read their definitions in order to understand the whole report. To conclude, another interesting activity for my reading practice was the article about The Amistad Incident, the strategies I used first, I read the story summarize and I investigated on the Internet about this famous story to activate prior knowledge. Then, I compare and contrast author’s point of view. After that, I identified and analized the text structure. Finally, while I was reading I visualized images from the story.
CHAPTER 5 Listening teaching strategies Personally I believe, as an English teacher and as a language learner the first step in an effective listening is that you need to learn to discriminate speaker’s voice, pronunciation and intonation. (Bottom-up process) to connect and interpret what you’ve just heard. Also, if you are going to listen a conversation, an interview or a biography you need to have background knowledge of the topic, the situation or context, the type of text and the language it will help the listener to interpret what comes next (Top-down process). In the Module fourth, the most difficult activity for me was Practicing Listening at BBC Skillswise, especially in the quiz section, I had some problems to understand part of the conversations, even though I got a good score. In this regard, the activities could have been easier if I had practiced different levels of listening from easy to difficult and combine listening with other skills for example, reading in order to reinforce grammatical structures as well.
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To conclude, you need to pay attention about the different types of listening, because they’re different and each one of them requires certain skills to improve comprehension such as: listening to instructions and listening to care.
CHAPTER 6
Speaking Teaching Strategies
First of all, the activities that turned out to be the most useful as an English teacher were two activities. The first activity was the group conversations using voicethread software, because I could listen myself and check my intonation, rhythm, and word stress. I think these aspects are essential in a speech or a conversation. Besides, you can measure, hear your tone of voice, evaluate your speaking abilities and identify what you need to improve these abilities. The second activity was how to present a short talk, with people of influence using splendid speaking to improve English fluency, the use of chunks of vocabulary and discourse markers which are vital in a context in order to make more interesting your way of speaking. Firstly, I will use both activities in my class. The first one about voicethread software, I will use it with my students to practice, evaluate, and prepare them for an oral speech presentation. Secondly, about splendid speaking I will ask to my students to bring material and investigate about an interesting issue, global warming, globalization, ICT tools. After that, they will bring their topic in Powerpoint and will make a final presentation using the projector. Later, they will discuss about this issue in groups of two. Finally, they will present it in front of the people, in an auditorium. It sounds easy, but it requires a good preparation and time to rehearse, but it’s not impossible. I hope you try these activities because they’re an amazing experience as an English teacher. With reference to the second activity splendid speaking, it’s important before a short talk, conversation, or an oral speech, we need to prepare our students and to
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be aware of they use chunks such as: collocations and idioms, polite expressions, discourse markers, linking words and phrases in order to improve fluency with spoken English. To conclude, as an English teacher I would apply these strategies using voicethread software and splendid speaking. They were the most useful activities and the most interesting according to my experience as an English teacher and as a language learner.
CHAPTER 7 Writing Teaching Strategies First, the main teaching strategies I used to develop my writing ability was to create stories using tall tales looking for words such as: nouns, adjectives and verbs with a good dictionary. Another strategy was to find all the grammar, spelling, punctuation mistakes in a composition and then, correct them. Besides this, writing Instant poetry forms following the models helped me to add more ideas according to the topic sentence of the poems. The strategy I used to write poems was to look for words that rhyme with the last words of the poems. Third, creating stories using comic strips, it’s a good strategy because you can imagine different situations according to the cartoons characters and it’s a good way to develop your writing skills. In addition to this, I practiced making sentences. In these types of activities, the strategy I used to develop grammar was to identify the parts of the speech and then, join the sentences according to the tense. Apart from this, I wrote stories according to the eyewitness account model. In this section, I learned how to develop a topic, write the main ideas, and the use of
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linking words. In addition to this, writing with writers was another exciting activity and strategy, because you can work with famous authors, and improve your writing skills. To conclude, I watched video clips and movie segments, which helped me to reinforce the grammatical structures as well as idioms. Finally, movies with subtitles in English helped me to acquire more vocabulary.
CHAPTER 8 About ICT Tools The first tool that was more useful for my learning was voicethread software in module 5 because I could listen my pronunciation, check my Intonation and rhythm. Also, students can use this tool to develop projects such as: presentations in PowerPoint and word. Another point to mention, you can create images and send your comments about the pictures by microphone or webcam. I selected this tool because you feel more confident while you are speaking, and it helps you to improve your fluency. The second tool that was more useful for my learning was bookr by pimpampum.net in module 6 writing because you can create photos and publish them. In addition to this, you can write interesting books of poems or other amazing activities. Besides, I selected this tool because it can help students to narrate stories and tales. The third tool that was more useful for my learning was photopeach because you can share your own pictures to create visual stories and you can reinforce your writing abilities. In addition to this, as an English teacher, I think pictures can
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motivate students to express their feelings and imagine memorable stories. To conclude, this tool can help teachers to develop their classes and use it to apply quizzes to their students.
CHAPTER 9 Lesson Planning •
Knowledge - recall
•
Comprehension - understand
•
Application - use, practice
•
Analysis - dissect, generalize
•
Synthesis - create, combine
•
Evaluation - appraise, value
I chose Bloom’s taxonomy and critical thinking lesson plan model because it’s the most appropriate according to my students and to the context of the secondary school. In my opinion, students should think by themselves, teachers are just a guide. We must make of our students active and independent learners. These are the steps I develop in my class according to the program of secondary schools.
1. Knowledge-recall. Before you introduce a new topic, you can ask students to bring some material or pictures they are going to develop in class the next day, so that you activate student’s knowledge.
2. Comprehension. Teachers guide their students in their learning process; teachers can provide certain activities, so that students organize their ideas and reflect.
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3. Application. Students should put in practice what they have learnt and participate. Besides, they have to be able to create and perform certain activities.
4. Analysis. Students
should
reflect
during
their
learning
process
and
make
generalizations about how things work.
5. Synthesis. Students should create final projects at the end of the lesson, and they should put altogether what they have learned during the previous lessons.
6. Evaluation. Teachers
should
evaluate
student’s
achievement
and
their
own
performance. Evaluations help teachers to compare and judge how much students have learnt during a period of time.
MUNOZ NEGREROS ESTEBAN
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CHAPTER 1 English language learning awareness My language level has been improving due to the wonderful exercises from the diploma. At this point, I can recognize immediately some new words and vocabulary that I would use in my interaction with other people, due to all the links as well as the readings and articles. I have remembered some other words that I do not normally use with my students. (I usually use my English words according to the students' level... to bad for me.) As a teacher I learned about Time Management. Thanks to the study guides and strategies such as Prioritizing Tasks, Daily Schedule, Weekly Schedule, Creating a to do list, and the Key Competences for Life Long Learning, I am able to organize my time and my teaching style. Also I learned to work and to brush up on my grammar weaknesses. I work on the grammar or vocabulary sections at Free English Study, vocabulary at Brainyflix, and at About.com : Grammar & Composition Now I can tell that before using a text, I will be better organized and my students will acquire better results in their reading. I am aware of if I want to raise my reading comprehension skills I need to read and practice more on every single article from everywhere such as magazines, books, newspapers, and of course the most wonderful tool that we have as a resource of information... the Internet. The way I followed to continue learning and keeping in practice my English skills is by doing all the tasks first by myself and later with my students at the same time. My listening skills have improved because I learned about where to focus when someone is speaking. I can recognize where to stress some words as well as to apply rising intonation and falling intonation. It is important to keep practicing and studying this amazing links that this course offers. My speaking ability has improved because I learnt how to communicate without fear. I just remember some years ago when I was a little shy and my speaking skills were so weak. I was always afraid of speaking and especially in front of an audience. I can tell that I have already improved those skills because I feel that my
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students understand me. I could say that I speak really well, but if the people that are in front of me do not get anything, I would be lying to myself. I will go on listening-speaking activities because that is the only way I can acquire a better level of speaking. Through my mistakes, I will learn and improve my weaknesses.
CHAPTER 2 Cultural learning awareness In these web sites, I have read about health and culture. I really enjoyed this topic, especially holistic medicine such as acupuncture. It is just awesome to gain more knowledge that will help me to improve as a human being and as a teacher in order to share all of this with my students. I learnt that all human beings must have an opportunity to express their ideas and beliefs. We can be right or wrong but at the end we can communicate with respect. I learnt how people make of the English language their language. I really think that people, that use English to communicate, are bilingual and bicultural at the same time, because when you speak
you share
your
education,
your
past
and
what
you
are.
In speaking activities, I learnt and brushed up a lot of information that I have already forgotten. I can say that the English language is a key to open cultures. Culture involves everything such as food, believes, traditions, customs, trends and fashion, and even religion; and of course the way they use the language. I know that culture plays a huge role in languages. Some people are really serious when they refer to certain subjects in a written way, but some other people just write and do not care about values like some people from the American culture. I discovered that with this wonderful language I can have access to another type of knowledge that in Spanish we do not have it available, and as a teacher I have the satisfaction to share my knowledge and my culture with my students. Especially if you are in an international exchange program, and this is because the English language is world wide spoken, so I can learn from other people to teach my students of my country to improve their education.
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I also learnt from module three very important factors about the American culture such as the differences between American and British English. My students and I were so impressed the way Noah Webster had the idea that Americans should learn from American books. He was influenced by Benjamin Franklin that wanted a new system of spelling. They wanted to separate themselves from the British in language as they had separated themselves from the British government. N. Webster wrote books for schools and the first American dictionary of the English language. It established rules for speaking and spelling the words used in American English.
CHAPTER 3 New teaching strategies discovered Nowadays, being a teacher has taken a new path towards education. In the past, teaching was considered to transmit information without taking into account the students conditions and needs. As time passes by, we have seen how the world has revolutionized. If teachers are not aware of this tremendous issue, they will be excelled by their students in all fields and subjects, and of course the teachinglearning environment would be in a great danger. These eight habits, such as adapting, being visionary, collaborating, taking risks, learning, communicating, modeling behavior and reading, are just common tools to face the most wonderful challenge in the life of a teacher. The strategies we covered in all chapters of this diploma can be widely gathered to the habits previously mentioned. The 25 strategies that I would ask my students to understand and use English would be: 1. Exploring new learning environment. 2. Learning to learn through internet. 3. Key competences for life long learning (multiple intelligences).
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4. Advantages of learning English using Internet sites. 5. Identifying my grammar strengths and weaknesses. 6. Facts and opinions. 7. Texts types and vocabulary learning. 8. Intensive reading. 9. Reading for pleasure. 10. Thinking about strategies to understand reading comprehension texts. 11. Top and Bottom down listening. 12. Minimal pairs. 13. Word stress, intonation, pause, rhythm. 14. Tag questions. 15. How to describe a situation, a place or a person. 16. How to give instructions. 17. How to express agreement and disagreement. 18. How to present a short talk. 19. Giving opinions. 20. Grammar and writing. 21. A book of poems. 22. Creating stories. 23. Using punctuation. 24. Sequence of tenses.
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25. Other writing models, movies and grammar. One strategy can usually be useful in one group of students, however, in another group the same strategy would not be working the same, and here is where all the intelligence and sharpness of the teacher must play a huge role among students to develop that learning environment expected. All teachers must have the commitment to acquire all that knowledge that is necessary to educate students. Unfortunately, as technology has grown, the generations have changed a great deal as well. Now students do not care about learning or studying and they are very disrespectful. You as a teacher can love teaching and sharing. However, this career has some of the most difficult tasks, those are to educate and guide our children to get them ready to rule, to control and to save this world.
CHAPTER 4 Reading teaching strategies The most interesting activity for my reading practice was “Health and Safety in construction identifying information.” To analyze this activity I used both skimming and scanning. First Skimming in order to get the gist of what the text is about, and later Scanning to answer the questions required. Using both techniques at the same time gave me confidence and reliability to understand the information I was learning and the questions that we were responding. Also, I would like to point out some other important strategies. 1.
A good strategy is to active Prior knowledge before reading because: Readers
use their knowledge as a framework for learning new information also add to or change their thinking as they discover new ideas and/or information in their reading. 2.
A good strategy is to ask questions before, during and after reading because:
Questions pertain to the text’s content, structure and language. Readers ask
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questions for different purposes including those that clarify their own developing understanding. 3.
It is possible to infer the meaning of unfamiliar words if... readers make
connections when the Context refers to the words that come before and/or after an unfamiliar word. 4.
To visualize when reading to create a picture in our mind is helpful
because: The picture is evoked by descriptive details. Sensory language is used to help readers visualize ideas. Readers create images from text during and after reading. They use developing images to support their comprehension of the text. 5.
I have taught the following reading comprehension strategies in my classes:
Active Prior Knowledge, Classify or Categorize Information, Identify Authors' Purpose and View Point, Identify Main Ideas and Supporting Details, Paraphrase and Retell, Use Context Clues to Decipher Unfamiliar Words, and Visualize Images from Text. I am aware that I use some of the reading comprehension strategies as a reader in my own language when... I get a clear picture of my reading, and I agree with the writer's point of view and especially if I can answer correctly any questions related to the text. The teaching strategies used and the effect they had on my learning according to my experience, it has provided me support in all the tasks especially in presenting the Toefl test. Currently in all universities, it is a requirement to all their students to pass the Toefl. However, these students are struggling in acquiring the appropriate score; so as a result, just a few pupils are getting their final dissertation from university. Using and practicing the previous strategies to face the issues from the Toefl will help to improve and excel those boundaries that teachers and students normally deal with in this Test of English as a Foreign Language.
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CHAPTER 5 Listening teaching strategies Definitely the most difficult activity for me was the one with phrasal verbs. Since I was a student in High School, I had trouble with this subject. I still remember how difficult was to understand the phrasal verb “give up.” I knew the meaning of both words. Nevertheless, what I was not able to get was that why these two verbs together mean something completely different from the original meaning. It was astonishing for me. And surely is for some other students that are learning English. So according to my experience as a student and as a teacher, and analyzing the exercise from this diploma I would not give just a definition of the phrasal verb or say that they can be intransitive, inseparable or separable. In my personal opinion, I would begin giving exercises focusing on the students’ background and context. In Mexico I teach in a rural-urban area; so if I try to use these exercises with my students they will get more confused and unmotivated.
CHAPTER 6
Speaking Teaching Strategies
The activities that I immediately began to use with my students were “How to describe a situation or a place” and “How to describe a person.” Teaching a language, especially English, is a real challenge. If students aren’t well motivated, they are no going to make any effort in studying and reviewing their notes. First of all, I encouraged my pupils to speak about a person they admire by presenting them two different presentations that I made about a couple of basketball players. As soon as they finished listening and watching my presentations, they were really eager to work. Some of them already had the people for their work. I also used my presentation from Puebla. They were so excited because I used the program “movie maker” and “audacity”. It was really fantastic to see how my students react. All of them immediately began to plan their
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work. Even some of them brought a first draft the following day. Of course all of this was possible because almost all of my students have a computer at home. Another advantage is that technology plays a great role in this exercise. Students really enjoy working and interacting with computers. Once again, I would like to remind all of you about the amazing experience I am having teaching English and Spanish in this International Exchange Teacher Program in Dayton, Nevada.
CHAPTER 7 Writing Teaching Strategies All the activities done in module VI from this diploma, where perfectly appropriate for developing and improving a better writing level. As teachers, we have to be well prepared to write correctly and to be able to correct our students’ essays. First of all, the following topics such as “grammar aspects, the creation of a tall tale, a book of poems, and creating stories” gave as a huge feedback of our background that as English teachers must have acquired in the time when we were studying our major. Secondly, the topics such as “Sharing and using our pictures, Describing people, places and things, My first book review, and the Autobiographical incident” let us focus in our weak writing points. It is incredible how much information you can forget if you do not keep a good pace of studying and reviewing. So once again, let’s go to the right track and excel those issues that we have been struggling lately. Let’s not give it up.
CHAPTER 8 About ICT Tools Doing a very exhaustive review of the modules and reflecting the effect of Information and Communication Technologies on English Language Learning, I selected the speaking module. I am completely convinced that the speaking activities really help English learners to acquire that confidence that every learner must have in order to succeed in getting a language.
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The activities selected were “How to tell a story”, “How to describe people” and “someone important in my life”. In these exercises, technology plays a very important role encouraging and motivating students to do the activities. Tools such as “Voice thread”, “Audacity” and “Movie Maker” are just an incredible resource of technology where students can evaluate fluency and topic development. Also, they are able to check their coherence when referring to a picture as an example. These are some of the tools that I found more useful for my teaching experience and very appropriate for my students learning.
CHAPTER 9 Lesson Planning Writing Lesson Plans I selected the lesson plan that refers to The Multiple Intelligences: "Seven Ways of Knowing" by Gardner. •
Verbal
•
Mathematical
•
Spatial
•
Musical
•
Kinesthetic
•
Interpersonal
•
Intrapersonal
This lesson plan has incredible amount of information that refers to all kind of student’s needs and contexts. Let’s
first
analyze
these
Multiple
Intelligences
list.
Linguistic intelligence involves sensitivity to spoken and written language, the ability to learn languages, and the capacity to use language to accomplish certain goals. Logical-mathematical intelligence consists of the capacity to analyze problems logically, carry out mathematical operations, and investigate issues scientifically.
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Musical intelligence involves skill in the performance, composition, and appreciation of musical patterns. Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence entails the potential of using one's whole body or parts of the body to solve problems. Spatial intelligence involves the potential to recognize and use the patterns of wide space and more confined areas. Interpersonal intelligence is concerned with the capacity to understand the intentions, motivations and desires of other people. Intrapersonal intelligence entails the capacity to understand oneself, to appreciate one's feelings, fears and motivations. As English teachers we should and must be able to recognize that these seven intelligences are connected with all students’ necessities and skills. Every human being has born differently. These words are the ones we should always have in our mind forever as tutors, professors and mentors. Thinking deeply, learning and acquiring a language involve all that has been mentioned before. So, before going to work or to teach English or any other language to our students, let’s have our mindset clear and ready to face the most wonderful challenges that as teachers will face. That is why I think this lesson plan model is the most appropriate for my students’ context.
PERALTA TORRES ELODIA ESTHER
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CHAPTER 1 English language learning awareness Well, I know when I started this diploma, I really had problems with structures, vocabulary etc… because with my students only use a reduced vocabulary according their age and their knowledge on English, so I think I got accustom to just writing small sentences or small paragraphs and practicing just the same vocabulary every scholar year. This diploma challenged me to re learn and re practice again the language that I had dusty. On the different activities I had the opportunity to remember words, grammar rules, punctuation, listening a variety of intonations and pronunciations from people who are from different parts of the world; even I got the opportunity that interact with some of my partners by messenger or e-mail to share our experiences or asking about doubts that we had. Summarizing, this diploma let me study for myself and for my students too, who will be happy using these bunch of funny activities different from the boring book as they say.
CHAPTER 2 Cultural learning awareness Through the modules of this diploma I could find some activities to encourage learners like me to practice English and focus attention trying to do it. One of these activities was using pictures or songs to create a story or remember a special day in your life. I think that some of the cultural aspects that I learned during this diploma is to meet some new people from different regions from my country. Through their activities I met some of them reading their opinions and advices; sad and happy moments in their lives; I met some places where they live and some of their relatives thanks to their pictures and comments about them.
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At the same time, I learned different things about some other cultures, information about countries, traditions or even ways of life thanks to the suggested sites where I had to read some texts about this. If this is what you mean with cultural aspects to focus student´s attention, I think this is what I am going to use with them, because I have always thought that learning languages is like to be many people in one as many languages you learn. In this case, learning English let students to get access to another world. Through some sites like “american stories site”, “Golden Gate Bridge”, “100 short english stories” and some others students can learn some other things about american culture and compare with their own; there are sites where students can listen different intonations from all around the world people who speak english too or watch some videos or documentals where they can learn how different families around the world live. This gives them a new perspective about how different is the world outside of their town, state and country.
CHAPTER 3 New teaching strategies discovered I agree with the comments from this site. In my school there is no internet and in certain way that limit us to teach in a better way, especially in English where we got several wonderful sites and activities that could be useful for us as teachers and for our students to learn and practice. Even though, I think I have been adapting some of these activities to my necessities using my own resources. Fortunately many of these activities can be printable or copied and be installed in some other computer to work with them. The most important thing is that the lacking of material or resources won´t stop to me to develop my class. At the same time, these sites are visionaries, letting students like me, meeting web sites where we can collaborate with our own activities or maintaining
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communication with partners from the diploma or some other people through the web pages, where we can write, give opinions or show our stories using pictures. The strategies used in this diploma encourage us to keep us learning all the time, because technology is always changing and as teachers our work is to be part of that knowledge to be shown and taught to our students and use them in benefit of us. Studying by internet helped us to modeling behaviors because this is a modern way to do it and we don´t have anybody pushing us to do our tasks; we must to decide how, where and when to work and just in this way we can understand our students who are sometimes tired and boring with our classes.
CHAPTER 4 Reading teaching strategies For me it was interesting reading some international news in English because that forces me to pay attention on vocabulary, grammar and phrases used to describe situations. In this kind of readings, I acquire new vocabulary and at the same time practice what I already know and remember some others. My favorite reading activity was “100 Short English Stories” where I had the opportunity to choose a couple or readings to challenge myself about my knowledge and comprehension in English. I liked this site because besides the interesting story where you can learn something new about other cultures, you can hear the pronunciation of the words and learn new vocabulary. This is an interesting page because when you finish of reading and listening the story at the end there are several extra activities that challenge you to prove what you learnt about it.
There is a link where gives you the vocabulary used on the
story and take you to a site where gives you the meaning, pronunciation, examples and their function on grammar. There are some other links that gives you activities like questionnaires where you answer short questions, wh- questions and make questions according to some
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answers; There are too, links where dare you to solve a crossword, follow a dictation and complete the same story filling some gaps. All these can be done from the reading, and if you are competent to read and understand the story you are able to solve the whole activities with great results.
CHAPTER 5 Listening teaching strategies Actually, module 4 was not my difficult module, because I think I like practicing the listening skill and that is something that I do when I watch t.v, for instance; I like watching movies with out subtitles and try to understand the meaning and I think it works. Even though, I could say that is hard when you are listening native people talking and using a variety of vocabulary and speaking faster than you are accustom and this is when probably it turns a little bit complicated. I like the sites that lead us to complete the module and it was pretty interesting to listen some other people talking in English, even if they were not native people. That is important and interesting too, because you need to listen different intonations, pronunciations, etc… It was good check the different intonations of English even from U.S.A. too, similar thing happen in Mexico and I think all over the word according to the regions. I can´t imagine how this activity could be easier, but what I think is that I would like to use a similar activity used in module 6, even when in this module we were practicing writing, the activities involved watching and listening some movies´shorts and at the end we could write or answer some questions about the short and check how good we are understanding information from movies or audios.
CHAPTER 6 Speaking Teaching Strategies
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Well, in this module all the activities helped me a lot and were useful for me, as a student and as a teacher, because I had never heard me before and I didn´t know how my pronunciation sounded to others. At the beginning it was hard for me talk about someone without those big silence wholes, so I had been practicing over and over again and finally didn´t like me the result anyway. As a student this was a challenge for me, and I think I improved this skill because at the end of the module these activities were easy for me, and I think this will happen with my students too. At the beginning they won´t be comfortable and maybe it´s going to be a mess, but practicing I´m sure they´re going to make it because I know they like try some things new. I can imagine using activities like this when we make projects at the end of each bimestre, and students have to make a research about something for example, describing animals, talking about health, food or giving advices and using power point software they can explain the topic and at the same time practice and using English; this could be shown in front of their partners or parents who can evaluate them.
CHAPTER 7 Writing Teaching Strategies In my opinion, this module (6) was my favorite; first of all, because as a student it was interesting and funny for me, it let me to create and express myself on its activities that were very useful. As a teacher, I loved it too, because I think that if they were fun and interesting for me, I can´t imagine how good would be for my students too. My favorite was create my own poem book because you don´t need to make so much effort to say something, but at the same time, it is, because they are poems! And you need to think very carefully what you want to say, and not just that, what intention you want to communicate on those poems. It was useful because let to
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students to be creative even with vocabulary as decoration, because you can use your own pictures to make it look good. Before to write about this I had to read all my activities from that module, and I was embarrassed reading my writings because I could notice my own grammar and punctuation mistakes and this is very important when you are trying to express something. The best thing is that I noticed them and I must to be more careful with this things. On the other hand, using comics to talk about something is great, because you are your own writer and artist doing this kind of activities; actually I started something similar in one of my classes, where students using some magazines they cut it and make a story where they have to talk about it to the rest of their partners; it´s kind of different because they need to talk instead of writing.
We
haven´t finished yet, but I´m sure it is going to be great because I notice them enthusiastic. As I said, this module was very creative and I loved it, because I like to create and do something nice.
CHAPTER 8 About ICT Tools Definitely the diplomado was plenty of different activities that are useful for me and my students. If I got to choose three of them, these would be: “Wacky web tales”, “Bookr”, “Comic strip file” and if you let me one more, that would be: “Segments to assess grammar goals”. For me, I´m pretty sure that my students will enjoy to work with them. Wacky web tales will help them to create their own funny stories, where they will talk about everything they want and using grammar at the same time, because this site contains stories already created and just lead us to give some details, which will be given by the students.
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Bookr is wonderful because mix imagery, grammar, imagination etc… that let students to think about themselves and will try to communicate their own feelings and their positions and points of view about their lives. Besides, this activity will let them to use their own pictures and create their own personal book; it motivates to write, to think and to do. “Comic strip file is a fun activity that help and motivate students to say something in a funny way; It is short and dynamic and I´m pretty sure that this activity will keep them occupied and interested. Finally, “Segments to assess grammar goals” it is a very useful activity too that allow to practice listening and grammar at the same time. Students love movies and I´m sure that this activity will give them the opportunity to work at the same time that they are watching something that they love.
CHAPTER 9 Lesson Planning I think “Lesson Plan Model 1” is good for the requirements of my classes, even because it is similar to my didactic sequence that I do every week to follow my classes. I think it contains the main elements that the new Reforma is asking us to cover such as the objectives that I am pursuing with the topic; material that I´m going to use during the class or classes and that include the use of technology like computers, internet, projections etc…; the development of the topic and what product I will get with these activities at the end and work in group to create it. The Lesson Plan Model 1 it is pretty similar on this and I´m sure that all kind of projects mean to get a plan designed to obtain something at the end. Previously of that, teachers must to make a warm up where students are able to give their opinions about their previous knowledge of the topic, that will help us to know what information they already got about the topic and then, we can continue leading
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them into getting more information and using it to create something that reveal their apprentice. As I said in some others modules, it is important to use resources to getting information and create on them students capable to learn by themselves when they have doubts or are interested in something; information is not only on books they must to learn and use all those old and new resources to get what they need and I think this is our real work as teachers.
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PINEDA ÁLVAREZ EDGAR
CHAPTER 1 English language learning awareness To raise my reading comprehension skills I practiced reading through the three steps: Read, revisit and reflect. My listening ability has improved because I learned how to identify word stress, sentence intonation, pauses and rhythm. At this point, I can use falling and rising intonation, phrasal verbs and questions tags. To improve my listening, I practiced reading along thought groups, top down and bottom up listening. My speaking ability has improved because I learned how to plan, prepare and tell a story. I discovered the use of music to generate student oral production, the use of rubrics to evaluate students on fluency, flexibility, topic development, coherence, precision, pragmatic awareness, vocabulary richness, grammar correctness and phonologic knowledge about speaking. Also, I learned to review writing through short texts and how to check grammar topics as punctuation, use of adjectives and tenses, elements of a sentence in an easy way to motivate my class. Finally, I practiced writing following the writers guide and models.
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CHAPTER 2 Cultural learning awareness We can focus our students´ attention to English language and culture through reading comprehension texts, pictures, music, expositions, video and any kind of media activities about some of the important tourist attractions, historical events and relevant persons. In the sites and readings, I learnt that we have the key to access to universal culture, to communicate and share our culture with other people, to be part of the global decisions that have to be taken to improve our world. I learnt that society and education have played a very important role in the history of the English speaking community. Also, I read about American and British English, The Golden Gate Bridge, Cell Phone Safety, Foster Children, Amistad Incident, Fishing and other interesting American stories. Reading is a pleasure and a very important activity to get knowledge to improve our personal development, to know about other people in other times and learn about their experiences and how they solve their problems and organize their lives and their future.
CHAPTER 3 New teaching strategies discovered The use of Internet sites offers us a great amount of possibilities to increase our learning and teaching competences, we have to communicate with our students to know about their needs and preferences. We have to make English class a space where teacher research about students, homeworks, social practices, time
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management, grammar, language abilities, and strategic competences can be done to improve the English learning and teaching process. This strategy is related with the habits of being visionary, communicating , learning and collaborating in the way teachers use the web technologies and tools to adapt the curricula and communicate to integrate students inside learning communities. Read, revisit and reflect involves the habits of taking risks and adapting to activate students’ prior knowledge and organize comprehension skills to motivate them to read as a pleasure. The same relationship happens with the use of music to generate student oral production. Review elements of a sentence in an easy way to motivate the class is related with the habit of adapting curricula and how to teach it, this way class turns into an imaginative and dynamic space to create language while teaching and learning. We can observe the same relationship with the habit of learning, because it has to do with learning how to teach these grammar, sentence and punctuation topics using new teaching styles and resources. There is also a relationship between the use of rising and falling intonation and the habit of communicating, because this strategy provides another choice to stimulate learning through web tools as the use of video tutorials. I observed this way the group of teaching strategies that are an important element to form the habit of leading with clear goals and objectives the process of learning English.
CHAPTER 4 Reading teaching strategies The most interesting activity for my reading practice was activity 1.2. Read while listening. In order to analyze the teaching strategies used, I can say they adapted the texts, which have no images but the mp3 files to read while listening, so this way it was a very interesting experience, it captured my attention and I could know new
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vocabulary and repeat it many times as I needed, I could practice reading and this activity improved my intonation. Talking about the effect they had on my learning, I have to mention that it motivates self-evaluation, because the task was to answer how easy was the reading for me, the support provided was very useful and therefore I realized how a simple tool like a mp3 file with a recorded reading can turn a text into a very interesting story. This activity used two texts and mp3 files to read while listening, the texts were the following: A Horseman in the Sky An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge The two stories were written by Bierce, Ambrose. Each text takes place during the Civil War between the American states of the north and the states of the south. They talk about the way this event changed the life of the main characters. The texts are long with no images but mp3 files which are played, this tool motivates and facilitate reading while listening, because you can repeat, review intonation, and reread the texts as many times as you want.
CHAPTER 5 Listening teaching strategies The most difficult activity from the fourth module was activity 7.2. Authentic listening, The New York Times Conversations section, I chose the conversation between Dr. Mehmet Oz and Ben Stein called Watermelon Surgery, the task was to answer this question: How are these listenings different than ones prepared for English language learners?
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These listenings are different because they show us natural intonation, you can note rising and falling intonation in a normal speed of the language and also the use of phrasal verbs and though groups. This makes this activity difficult.
This activity could have been easier if … 1. It had included the text of the conversation. 2. It had showed vocabulary of phrasal verbs. 3. It had included a karaoke conversation to read while listening. 4. It had asked a summary of 120 words. 5. It had included a tool like another window to write notes while listening.
CHAPTER 6 Speaking Teaching Strategies The activity that turned out to be the most useful for me was activity 2.1. How to describe a situation or place because from one short audio clip I prepared a one minute description taking into consideration the rubrics of vocabulary richness. This was useful because we can use the most simple resources to motivate learning and knowledge at the time we follow a method, control the process and selfevaluate our results. I could use this activity with my students planning a lesson as follows: 1. Give students the rubrics about vocabulary richness. 2. Ask students to listen to five different short audio clips. 3. Organize students to work by couples. 4. Ask students to select one audio. 5. Ask students to prepare a one minute description of a place or situation, this can be real or fiction using their dictionary.
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6. Ask students to follow the rubrics to prepare the description. 7. Ask students to record their story using the windows recording software. 8. Ask every couple co-evaluate taking into consideration the rubrics. 9. Ask students the audio files and the coevaluation. 10. Evaluate audio files taking into consideration the rubrics. 11. Give students the results of the coevaluation and the evaluation.
CHAPTER 7 Writing Teaching Strategies The main writing strategies used to develop my writing ability were the next: 1. Use of templates to create short texts. 2. Find errors and correct them. 3. Use of poetry forms to create a book of poems. 4. Use of web tools like Bookr to illustrate and publish six poems. 5. Use of Makebeliefs comics to create a comic strip. 6. Use of Photopeach to tell a story using pictures. 7. Use of Book reviews model to write my first book review. 8. Add punctuation to texts into sentences. 9. Write about a strange incident in my life using the autobiographical incident model. 10. Write a composition using the descriptive writing model. 11. Use of videoclips to practice grammar in the blog named Movie segments to assess grammar goals. 12. Write comments in the forums. 13. Create stories with pictures. 14. Answer the exercises about the description of people, places and things. 15. Do the quizzes.
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It was very useful the use of the templates to write the first book review, at the beginning, this activity was difficult for me, but later, this exercise taught me many elements to write and interested me. I liked very much to write about a strange incident in my life and the composition using descriptive writing model. These exercises have influenced me to include writing activities in my class and to review my writing abilities. I really enjoyed to say a story using photopeach, it was an excellent activity! I am visual and I liked working with images!
CHAPTER 8 About ICT Tools I chose the following tools from module 4 about listening: 1. Randall´s ESL Cyber Listening Lab, because it is a useful tool to learn
English, it provides listenings on a variety of topics, it has five different audio sections which go from easy to difficult, the sections are: General listening quizzes, basic listening quizzes, listening quizzes for academic purposes, 20 minute ESL vocabulary lessons, language learning and life tips. This site is useful for students that start listening, because it offers short audio clips they can repeat to control the activity and simple written exercises to falicitate comprehension. 2. The site www.ManyThings.org which offers American English Pronunciation
Practice (For ESL/EFL) because it has a Game- Like Minimal Pair Practice using Flash and MP3 files, this is very useful for students to hear the differences between words that have exactly the same pronunciation except for one sound. 3. The site www.dictationsonline.com because you can choose an English
dictation according to different levels from elementary to advanced, this dictations are shorts and it allows students to hear the dictation read four times, first, the whole passage is read at normal speed to listen for gist, then, each phrase is read slowly twice, after that, the whole passage is read again to check the work, finally, the written text is shown.
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CHAPTER 9 Lesson Planning I select the Bloom´s Taxonomy and Critical Thinking model, it is appropriate for my context because I am using the experiential learning focus to teach English which has
four
stages:
concrete
experience,
reflection
on
language,
abstract
conceptualization and active experimentation. Other important reasons for considering this relationship are the next: 1. Knowledge is related with the stage of concrete experience when we
consider the student´s prior knowledge and student´s exposition to the text which can be oral or written, based on the topic of the unit. 2. Comprehension is related with reflection of language when students
observe and understand how language works. 3. Analysis and evaluation are related with abstract conceptualization
when students do their own conclusions and generalizations about language. 4. Synthesis and application is related with active experimentation
when students create texts and test their hypothesis about how language works. This is a stage of oral and written production.
Students are considered to be an active constructor of knowledge, on the other hand, teachers are the more experienced language teachers in charge of creating the conditions for students to approach language and guide the process. Lesson plan has to give students activities to participate and reflect about the social practices of the language.
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RAGA HERNÁNDEZ CAROLINA
CHAPTER 1 English language learning awareness During this Program I’ve had the opportunity to learn many new things, interesting techniques which have helped me a lot to improve my English language and the way I teach it to my students. Since the beginning I’ve realized about my weaknesses and I’ve tried to improve them and It is a duty I will always doing, improving, being updated, learning new things to help my teaching practice. One important aspect because of my vocabulary have been developed was the
Reading module, because I wasn’t familiar enough with readings and the way we could read, for example I’ve learnt how to read easier and check for specific details in order to don’t waste time re reading the text and catch the details we need reading just once. I liked the readings with audio, "A horseman in the sky" and "An occurance at Owl Creek bridge" I think It was easy to understand because the stories were read slowly and with different tones of voices, giving to the stories emotions and also loved the music, It was like hearing a movie, we can imagine the scenarios. Also I learnt about the different text types: Instructive, descriptive, persuasive and informative, and the way they help us to understand the purpose of each text while reading.
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An important aspect of Reading is of course vocabulary, It represent a great advantage or disadvantage taking into account the amount of vocabulary we know, that’s the reason of why It is really important to keep our students practicing, grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation, and giving them the opportunity to reinforce what they’ve learnt in different ways . For example I remembered the summary and report of “Civilians escape fighting in Sri Lanka”, It was another reading with audio activity and It gave me lot of ideas of how to present these kind of activities to my students, first choosing authentic and interesting material because students are always eager to learn something new. I liked the vocabulary at the end of the text. I also saved the site 100 short English stories, I liked it because It’s resented by levels and the readings are interesting, I’ve presented some stories to my students and they’ve loved to hear the authentic audio of what they’re reading. Another important thing I’ve learnt about reading is about the strategies used to understand texts: Activating prior language, to help student connect new information to their existing knowledge base, Ask questions before, during and after reading because It helps to ensure understanding, It is possible to infer the meaning of unfamiliar words if we have a rich prior language that support us to be able to interpret a phrase instead of translate every word, I am aware that I use some of the reading comprehension strategies as a reader when reading for pleasure and these strategies facilitate the comprehension of the text. Also I’ve noticed my progress in Listening , my listening ability has improved because I’ve learnt to listen carefully and be aware of relevant information given. Here I learnt about Minimal pairs, which are words that have exactly the same pronunciation except for the sound. Also I read interesting stories in which I noticed the Top-down listening and word stress.
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I learnt that word stress is really important because It let us understand better and be understood, If we do the appropriate intonation, we may facilitate our students to notice the differences between similar words that sound the same If we o not stress in the correct way. I saved readings for teaching intonation, like British Council BBC, Ted Power, and some interesting videos from You tube about falling and rising intonation, and the use of rhythm, and also I used a suggested song in my class for teaching thought groups: Bon Jovi , “welcome to wherever you are” and they could noticed that If we group our thoughts naturally there will be better speech and It would be easier for people to understand us. Also I had the opportunity to reinforce what I know about Phrasal verbs and Tag questions, which is very useful topic because nowadays we use them very often, in daily conversations, songs, movies, news, readings, and It’s very important to recognize them in spoken speech since they come up all the time. At this point, I can identify the main idea and specific details of speech, conversations,
songs,
movies.
To improve this skill, I will continue listening English broadcastings, native conversations or TV shows that help me to enrich my vocabulary. About Speaking I’ve learnt to give my students more opportunities to practice and have a better speaking development, offering them a wide variety of authentic material and resources to enable them to listen, watch and speak conversations or short dialogues that will help them to solve any necessity they could have to express what they want to. I’ve noticed a relevant progress of my speaking after practicing with my partners, with my teacher and at recording how to describe a situation, place and people, and how to give instructions in an accurate way. Also I practiced how to express agreement and disagreement of different topics.
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At this point, I can speak more fluently, but I will continue improving my speaking by practicing conversations with my partners and being exposed to use the language with native speakers. About Writing , I feel that my language level is better because I’ve practiced and learnt many strategies and have much more resources to help my students to achieve their goals and also to improve my English, like how to create own tales an public them online, which is a funny way to review and practice some English structures like adverbs, adjectives, numbers, nouns, singular, plural, and also how pleasant could be making and sharing our tall tale. Another important topic I saw is how to correct a piece of writing and the importance of giving feedback to our students, because It gives the self-awareness of their slips, a chance to develop their corrections with the new information and learnt from their mistakes, and let them to take more risks in their writing performances because they’ll felt secure even if they are not accurate at all, because at the end will be guidance to correct their way.
To raise my language level, I need to keep practicing and looking for more ways to develop my English in order to have a wide variety of techniques to share with my students.
CHAPTER 2 Cultural learning awareness Being exposed to this variety of cultural content have represented for me a great experience not only to learn many new things but to show them to my students and giving them the opportunity to know about different ways to express their ideas, experiences and emotions in a creative and interesting way, including music, performing arts and literature. Ways to focus my students’ attention to English language and culture:
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-Giving them useful exercises to understand the importance of one´s own culture and also that cultural expression help them to develop their creative skills. For example in the site 100 short English Stories students can look for many cultural elements about festivities around the world and the way people celebrate each holiday- New Year, Christmas, Day of the dead, Easter, Valentine’s Day, etc. Also in the English Listening Lounge there are many listening material for the students to learn about people’s experiences around the world and also they can appreciate that each culture has Its own way of speak and costumes that make It different and special from the others and It is good for the students to have the opportunity to hear and learn about the wide variety of English speaking Community.
CHAPTER 3 New teaching strategies discovered Explain how the strategies you observed are related to the habits mentioned in the text The most suitable strategies for my teaching context are: Visual story: This is the best strategy I found for my students to do it, I was really impressed about how easy is to create a wonderful visual and be able to share It with everyone, the photo Peach site is an amazing way to combine pictures, music and writing of one’s own experiences and also to create stories or represent something and in addition of all students may give their opinions about other’s work in the comment’s section. How to create a Poem book: I’ve applied this activity before but just writing a little poem book in their notebooks, students love this kind of activities, even more when they’re activities they could use to give to their special ones, they do their best effort and try to be the best of the class. In addition of just writing, in this site students will be able to create their books in an easier and more attractive way,
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they could do a special dedication to someone and also they could save, publish and share their work which I think is the most amazing part of this. Creating comic strips: The site is really helpful and It explains how to do it step by step, It’s suitable because I know my students could do It by themselves and It will be a great experience for them because at the time they get fun, they’ll be learning how to use the appropriate structure and developing their creative skills and imagination. Creating tall tales: Here the students may put in practice the appropriate use of structures, like verbs, adverbs, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, exclamations, etc, in order to create a funny tale following a chosen pattern that facilitates a lot the labor. I’m pretty sure that they would enjoy this activity at the time they read It aloud for the rest of the class. For doing these kinds of activities we just plan a class in the computer lab and we may have access to computers and internet. That’s why I found really interesting all these type of tasks and I’ve saved all of them, because I’m sure I’m going to apply them with my students.
CHAPTER 4 Reading teaching strategies
BBC Learning English. “Civilians escape fighting in Sri Lanka” I chose this activity because I think It is very important to have plenty of strategies at the time we need to teach our students new words and how they could to learn them in an easier way. Here we were asked to read the summary of “Civilians escape fighting in Sri Lanka”, where thousands of civilians have fled an area of intensive fighting in the north of the island and Tamil Tiger rebels firing against those fleeing, but in addition of the reading and the picture showed we were able to listen to the text while reading which is very useful in order to notice the stress and
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intonation of each word. Also we could hear the vocabulary and the meaning of it, under each word. These kinds of activities help us a lot at the time we want to transmit authentic and interesting knowledge to our students. I really liked the vocabulary at the end of the text, I would present first the vocabulary and then I would ask them to just listen to the text without reading, after that they would be able to listen and read at the same time, and so on. The site is great, for sure I'm going to use It with my third grade students.
CHAPTER 5 Listening teaching strategies Funky Phrasal. I think this is the most difficult activity because of the topic not for the activity , Phrasal verbs are difficult to understand at all, because they don´t have indicator whether an idiomatic phrase is separable, inseparable, or intransitive, and because in many cases the phrases must simply be memorized, and students don’t like to memorize things that they don’t understand, and things that will vary depending on a given situation, but also I know that students need to practice what is difficult for them, and all depends on the time given for practicing these kinds of activities like “Funky Phrasal” where they need to listen and read a conversation and noticing when they need to use a specific Phrasal verb and why. The instructions of the activity were clear and understandable, also the text selection and length. I think this activity could have been easier if the listening is given with images or video, because sometimes an image could say more than words and could help us to understand better and easier, and also If the activity could have more examples of the same phrasal verb but in different situations.
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CHAPTER 6 Speaking Teaching Strategies
V O ICET H R EAD . I love this online application because it allows students to create and comment on multimedia presentations using voice, video or images. i consider this, the most useful speaking strategy for encourage my students to upload and share online conversations about photos or videos and something really good is that these comments could be made by using voice (microphone or telephone), text, audio file, or video. it is really easy to setup the application with just an e-mail address and a password, and just by watching some examples of how to use it allows us to understand better the process. another advantage is that students will be able to watch their presentations or comments and also the ones made by their partners at any time they access to the site, and that’s very useful because they will be able to notice their strengths and weaknesses at speaking and what things do they need to reinforce in order to develop their skills and have a fluent an accurate speaking, but no matter the mistakes they made, i’m pretty sure they will feel very proud about their presentation and they will want to everyone leave a comment and recognize their effort. i think this is a tool they will find very attractive.
CHAPTER 7 Writing Teaching Strategies About Writing , I feel that my language level is better because I’ve practiced and learnt many strategies and now I have much more resources to help my students to achieve their goals and also to improve my English, like how to create own tales and public them online, which is a funny way to review and practice some
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English structures like adverbs, adjectives, numbers, nouns, singular, plural, and also how pleasant could be making and sharing our tall tale. Another interesting activity was how to correct a piece of writing and the importance of giving feedback to our students, because It gives the self-awareness of their slips, a chance to develop their corrections with the new information and learnt from their mistakes, and let them to take more risks in their writing performances because they’ll felt secure even if they are not accurate at all, because at the end will be guidance to correct their way. Another activity I consider very suitable for my students is How to Creating comic strips: know my students could do It by themselves and It will be a great experience for them because at the time they get fun, they’ll be learning how to use the appropriate structure and developing their writing, creative skills and imagination. To raise my writing teaching level, I need to keep practicing and looking for more ways to develop my English in order to have a wide variety of attractive techniques to share with my students.
CHAPTER 8 About ICT Tools I’ve chosen the writing module and the tools I found more useful for my learning and appropriate for my students are: Visual story: This is the best strategy I found for my students to do it, I was really impressed about how easy is to create a wonderful visual and be able to share It with everyone, the photo Peach site is an amazing way to combine pictures, music and writing of one’s own experiences and also to create stories or represent something and in addition of all, students may give their opinions about other’s work in the comment’s section.
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How to create a Poem book: I’ve applied this activity before but just writing a little poem book in their notebooks, students love this kind of activities, even more when they’re activities they could use to give to their special ones, they do their best effort and try to be the best of the class. In addition of just writing, in this site students will be able to create their own poem’s books in an easier and more attractive way, they could do a special dedication to someone and also they could save, publish and share their work! Which I think is the most amazing part of this. Creating tall tales: Here the students may put in practice the appropriate use of structures, like verbs, adverbs, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, exclamations, etc, in order to create a funny tale following a chosen pattern that facilitates a lot the labor. I’m pretty sure that they would enjoy this activity at the time they read It aloud for the rest of the class. For doing these kinds of activities we just plan a class in the computer lab and we may have access to computers and internet. That’s why I found really interesting all these type of tasks and I’ve saved all of them, because I’m sure I’m going to apply them with my students.
CHAPTER 9 Lesson Planning Bloom's Taxonomy and Critical Thinking •
Knowledge - recall
•
Comprehension - understand
•
Application - use, practice
•
Analysis - dissect, generalize
•
Synthesis - create, combine
•
Evaluation - appraise, value
This is the most suitable lesson planning for my context because I try to develop my student’s creative thinking, which involves creating something new or original.
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Knowledge-recall: In this stage students are going to recall facts or some information, songs and lyrics, titles and names. Here they will be able to remember things they already know. Comprehension–understand: Here the students will be able to provide new examples of the concept or defining words or situations in one’s own words.
Application: In this stage they will be able to apply what they’ve learnt according to principles and rules. They will be able to add examples from their own life or experience to those studied at class to demonstrate a principle. Analysis: Here the students will be able to organize the new information into meaningful and new patterns or relationships. Synthesis: At this stage they will be able to connect what they’ve learnt with other knowledge to form a new and original whole. Evaluation: Here we’re going to judge in an assertive way the student’s work, helping them to notice their weaknesses or strengths and what are the aspects they need to develop for future tasks.
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SAAVEDRA BLANCO JUAN
CHAPTER 1 English language learning awareness When I began this course, I felt confident about my knowledge about English, in grammar, writing, listening, and speaking. Now, almost three months later, I feel fantastic. Language progress At the beginning, I recognized my own level about my English level and named what I have to do to raise it. a) Practice it more. (Speaking with my sons, for example) b) Use some of the terrific web pages provided during the course. c) Read more (It could be hard cause my schedule, but it is not an impossible thing to do) d) Use the music like a useful tool to practice my speaking fluency. e) Recognize the importance of the culture in different countries to understand their language. f) Overcome my own negative feelings and fears to practice more my speaking.
Then I learnt different topics that help with your understanding.
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a) How to recognize the differences between a fact and an opinion. (Which words you have to use in both cases) b) The different text types (Instructive, descriptive, persuasive and informative) and how to realize out the text type helps you to better understand the readings. c) The difference between skimming and scanning like methods to obtain information from a reading (general= skimming, specific=scanning) After that I visited some useful sites that would help my students to learn new vocabulary. They use actual news with vocabulary they already know in order to understand new vocabulary using the context. Besides, the use of actual news about current events increase the student’s curiosity and the chances to remember the new terms for a longer time. I remembered the importance of the stress, pronunciation and intonation to transmit the correct meaning or feeling I am trying to. I learn about the phrasal verbs too (idiomatic expressions composed of a verb and one or more prepositions). And, finally, I learnt to use rubrics to evaluate other (and myself) speaking, and really useful tools to improve my writing.
CHAPTER 2 Cultural learning awareness Explain some ways you could focus your students’ attention to English language and culture giving examples of the main aspects you learned in no more than 200-250 words. You may add pictures, maps, diagrams, etc.
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In all the sites and readings I visited, I learnt the importance of the English like a tool to communicate with people around the world, with different customs and to other cultures, but I learnt besides to that, about the importance of to understand our own culture like a fundamental part of this globalized world. Now, how can I use this knowledge to focus my students’ attention to the learning of English? Well I can mention some good advices I acquired during this course: a) Read about other cultures problems, then explain how these problems are related with our own culture’s ones. (Write about problems there are in our cities and how they seem to other countries’ cities). b) Understand how the correct use of new vocabulary (like phrasal verbs and slangs)improve your understanding and communication with other cultures. c) To listen others countries English speakers make you feel unique and give the chance to value your culture in a proper scale. Besides that, you showed me different terrific sites to improve my performance and I think there are several of them than can make the same with my students like: a) Create Poems b) The writing of tall tales c) Make a electronic poems book d) Create a comic strip Of course, I can’t leave out of this summary the wonderful tools you taught me to use: a) Audacity b) Photopeach c) The story starter d) Movie segments to assess grammar goals
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Many of my students have access to internet, so I hope to use some of these activities like a review of the every day’s work in classroom. I’m pretty sure they are going to enjoy them.
CHAPTER 3 New teaching strategies discovered The strategies I learnt along this course were completely related to the habits explained in the reading “eight habits of highly effective 21st century teachers.” They taught me to adapt the new technology to make my class a little more exciting. They showed me the importance of being visionary. Internet is not an enemy, but your ally in daily routine not only in the classroom but also outside of it. The use of a computer like one more tool besides to the board, notebooks and books; is a great idea too. It taught me to work WITH my students, no besides them. I am not only guidance, but a partner following the same learning path to success. I don’t feel anymore like an enemy to be defeated by my students. Now, I feel like a leader that will show them no just a language, but a culture, values and general knowledge that will guide them in this new globalized world. I have now the chance and preparation to help them not only to learn a new language but to use it. I will never regret to take this course that showed me the importance to keep in constant improve my teaching work. Now I have the tools, thanks a lot for that.
CHAPTER 4 Reading teaching strategies The activity I enjoyed the most was the reading of the Golden Gate Bridge. I really like this story because the text was about an interesting topic with unknown facts (The color, why the name is Golden Gate, the safety protections, all the workers whom they save the life and other who unfortunately they did not). It is about the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. The reading has an
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excellent presentation; you can listen somebody else at the same time you are reading. It includes the known and unknown facts mixed in order to keep the attention to the reading. After that activity, I had a reading comprehension one that did not include the traditional Wh-questions (What, where, when, who, etc), instead of that, it asked me to give reasons and explain facts about t. I really enjoy it because I didn’t have to give “certain” answer; I had the chance to give my own creative response. All these activities mixed, encourage the learner to practice their knowledge. I took advantage of this activity in two ways: a) My comprehension reading exercises are not like they used to be anymore. Now I ask them not only facts, but opinions, personal points of view and, inclusive, feelings about the topic they read about. My students felt nervous and had problems to express their answers at the beginning, but I think they are going better in their reading understanding and development of their writing at the same time. b) They like this kind of exercises because the topics are not only interesting but it includes nowadays facts that make the exercise less boring to the readings I am pretty sure my students will enjoy this activity when I ask them to do it.
CHAPTER 5 Listening teaching strategies Well, I reviewed the full module four and I couldn’t find a difficult activity to me. I knew I had to choose the most difficult so I decided; that could be activity 3.1. I chose that activity like the most difficult because the length. You have to read two articles about intonation, and after that you have to watch 5 video lessons about intonation (rising and falling intonation).
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I think they are really a good support to explain the importance of well pronounce, but the problem is: a lot of information at the same time can become in more possibilities of misunderstanding. Actually, I understood the topic well, but I felt little tired trying to accomplish with all the activities (the videos in You Tube are too long).According me maybe cutting off one of the readings (maybe the Ted Power one) and cutting off two of the videos (lesson 10 b and d)will be a solution. I am little worried about my own opinion. I know these two videos help to learners to practice their understanding about the raising and falling intonation, but they both are more than 10 minutes long. Sometimes a long activity for a person who is trying to learn something new could be more tiring than for one who already has the knowledge.
CHAPTER 6 Speaking Teaching Strategies This type of activity could be really useful in the classroom in two ways. a) To give the students the opportunity of express freely about a popular topic for teenagers. b) To encourage them to speak aloud. Sometimes is a kind of difficult to find an activity that encourage to students to speak in front of their partners. Well, in this unit, I found a very interesting tool: Audacity. I am really happy to know this helpful free computer tool that gives me the chance to record my student voices. They sometimes feel afraid to speak aloud in front others. But they really like to record their voices. Plus this activity, there is another really nice; Voicethread. The chance to record your speaking in an Internet webpage is really useful. They can record their opinion about a specific topic and feel with the confidence that no one is listening at the spot.
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The English learner feels nervous thinking about his mistakes when he is talking. That makes him to use the same structures all the time. The freedom of speak with out apparently supervision gives him the opportunity to prepare a good speech and, besides that, to research about the topic or the vocabulary he wants to use. For me, these two activities will be an excellent chance to improve my work like an English teacher.
CHAPTER 7 Writing Teaching Strategies I can see the next teaching strategies in the module six to develop my writing ability. a) A diagnostic survey. Every teaching process needs to know two main
things. Where is the student right now, and where do you want to take him/her at the end of the process. That not only gives you important information about the students needs but about the actual skills that will support the new learning. b) After that a little review of your grammar doing easy writing exercises. This page, wacky web tales, is nice because you practice your knowledge about grammar (you know, write a noun, now a verb, a color, an adjective, etc) and at the same time you get a product at the end. c) Next, the learner sees a composition and tries to find the errors in there. Good strategy to apply the grammar knowledge d) Then it is writing time. An exercise like the first one (giving single words to form a story) is used now to write a poem. When you have some of them, you can form a digital poems book! Incredible way to encourage your students to obtain a product at the end of an activity.
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e) After that, to create a story strip. Now you can apply your knowledge because in the next activity you write a complete story, but in a funny and practical way. f) In the next activities, the writing becomes more formal. You have to write opinions, reports, stories, etc. At the end you have reviewed several grammar rules at the same time you practice them writing and getting final products.
CHAPTER 8 About ICT Tools 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 really enjoyed all the modules. I can not say which one is my favorite, but I can say which one I can use with my students. That would be module 6, writing. I chose that one not only because it had incredible and funny activities, but because, at the end of every one, you got a complete product. 1.- The first tool I believe can be used in my class is the Bookr. You write poems first using a easy to use software. After that, you make a book, with images. The practical end product makes me selected in first place. 2.- The second one is definitely the comic strip. It’s easy to use, you enjoy using it, and you practice your writing in short sentences. It is my choice not only because
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you write sentences, but at the end, you can print the final product and share it with your partners. That definitely will increase our students’ self- confidence. 3.- Finally I decided for Photopeach. I really enjoy doing my own story supported by my own photos. When my students write something, they are writing about Pedro, Jose, Marie, etc. But with this tool, they can write about themselves. They can tell a story, give an opinion, or tell a joke and all them are framed in a beautiful photo presentation. At the end of the activity, you feel proud showing to others your product.
CHAPTER 9 Lesson Planning I consider appropriate to my context the Madeline Hunter’s Plan Model (seven steps) I chose this one because like a secondary teacher, I think that the student have to discover their knowledge by themselves but with my direction and help. In my class, I apply these steps that are really alike the Madeline Hunter’s one. (Well, I use 10 steps actually). a) Introduce a situation (real or from the book) with a conversation included. b) Make the students to practice the conversation. (Acting it out if I have the chance) c) Guide them to figurate out the objective of the class. d) Read more exercises to support the new learning. e) Guide the students to point out a rule or grammar explanation according to the class.
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f) Answer exercises related with the objective. (From a new text, conversation or situation). g) Encourage the students to invent sentences or situations to apply the new learning. h) Practice at home (homework) using other exercises from the book or invented by the teacher. i) Check out the answer of the students and encourage them to correct the mistakes. j) Apply an evaluation to obtain feedback and set the new knowledge advance. Like you can see, they are very similar. I really like this plan because the students feel more confident when they feel that the new knowledge was acquired by themselves.
SÁNCHEZ GARCÍA ALEJANDRA
CHAPTER 1 English language learning awareness After all the different activities I have done through this course I can say that I have increase my English level as I have reinforced several grammar aspects I learnt when I studied my BA in English. At this point, I can produce simple and quotidian texts. I can describe experiences and events. I can interact with a degree of fluency with native speakers and I can understand clear Standard English (spoken and written). My
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vocabulary has increased while developing reading, listening, speaking and writing activities. I have learnt how to implement reading strategies like skimming, scanning and other resources to do while reading a text in my classes and my daily life. While doing different reading activities I found very useful web sites like American tales where you can do reading activities and start practicing listening. Reading the news site is interesting because you can read and find explanation of specific vocabulary that may cause difficulty for the text understanding. I have also learnt how to have fun while developing writing activities while using some web sites like wacky tales, using a comic in order to tell a story or to combine pictures music and short pieces of writing using the photopeach or the bookr site. It is also interesting the site where you can follow some writing models in order to perform yours. I practice on writing essays, tales and letters. Related to my listening ability I have learnt about the importance on the intonation, stress and rhythm in the pronunciation and while doing a listening activity, and about the thought groups. Because of this my listening is going on well as I can understand better English speeches and I can distinguish or identify when an idea has finished or not. With this my speaking ability has improved as well because I learned to put in order my thoughts and use the ideas clearly so I can speak with more fluency and understanding and I can express myself in an understandable and coherent manner. I learnt about the importance of using thought groups while speaking. I found interesting to practice speaking like recording yourself using a wide variety of ideas. To keep on increasing my language level, I will continue practicing as much as I can. I will read literature, articles and news in English. I will listen to English music and watch English programs, reports, interviews or movies on TV. I will surf on the net looking at the different sites I have visited lately in the past week,
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looking for more English information (text, articles, news), and I will take some test where the sites have them. And most important I will have fun while doing all of this.
CHAPTER 2 Cultural learning awareness Through working and exploring the net I could realize that there are many interesting sites where my students can find interesting things about English language. While attending to the culture I can focus my students’ attention by linking some movies with American History, for example the picture “Cars” and the history of the route 66. This is a short reading that I found in the net while working in the Reading Module. It is simple and easy to understand for the students. With this reading students can work by drawing in a map where this route crosses The United States. There are many activities that they can do based on this short reading. On the other hand students’ attention on the English language may be kept by working with songs, activity that they enjoy doing by themselves. It is just a matter of creativity to use what they are interested on into the class in order to study English language. The aspects related to the English culture I learnt is the fact of the differences between American and British pronunciation. The use of thought
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groups in the speech and the simplicity while pronouncing strengths of words in the discourse as they do not pronounce all the words with the same intonation.
CHAPTER 3 New teaching strategies discovered As a language learner and teacher I discovered a great variety of sites that I can use in order to improve both, my English level and my English classes at work. While reviewing the site Free English Study by clicking on the links I went to the eslfocus.com where I found some information that help me to improve my English level. I practice in that site the conditionals and I took the quiz on that site. It was interesting because you can get your grade instantly and you can see on those questions that you were wrong and check the correct answers. This is a tool that I can also use at the classroom with my students because there are some exercise based on basic English like in About.com site where you can find grammar exercises about the structure of a sentence. You can find activities like identifying the verb, the object or the subject into a sentence. With this kind of activities teachers may after identifying their goal they facilitate the learning for students. Taking the risk is one of the eight habits of highly effective 21st century teachers. I am also aware on the different reading comprehension strategies I am able to use in class and in my everyday life as well as many interesting web sites I can use in order to increase my English performance and my teaching efficiency. By Being visionary teachers may use Web technologies to serve their needs. Related to the use of the songs in class I realize that they can be used to learn and to teach intonation, stress and rhythm, and to improve listening skills. By doing this students can get to be life-long learners they would be continuing absorbing experiences and knowledge.
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I know that sequence and practice in speaking is important about speaking improvement and that while developing listening skills students will also improve their speaking. Teachers must be anywhere and anytime they must facilitate communication and collaboration by using technologies. While adapting software and hardware that is not designed for teaching purposes teachers may use material like movies in order to teach not just language but values and they may model students´ behavior with this. Related to the writing activities I found that there are many funny options to start and practice writing. And that writing could be a very enjoyable activity for everybody, students and teachers. To improve writing is not necessary to write long pieces of work students may reflect their language knowledge by writing short texts, like the one I practice in the photopeach. I know that a teacher must update all the time. As students needs change teachers strategies must change as well. So it is important that teachers take the risk to incorporate new technologies into their professional practice. As the Eight habits of highly effective 21st century teachers’ reading says, teachers should be visionary and to correlate different disciplines in their everyday classes. Teachers must be prepare to captive learners by using material made for different purposes to the ones of teaching a language, and adapt them to their needs. In this Diploma course I have learnt how to make my classes more interesting for my students by using all the hints I found through each module.
CHAPTER 4 Reading teaching strategies After reviewing the third module I recall the different readings I did and I get to the point that I enjoyed most of them, especially the ones related to history events.
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The American and British English and the Golden Gate Bridge readings, for example, are two readings related to history. In those activities I had the opportunity to read and listen to the reading in this way I could reinforce my pronunciation. I consider that this kind of activities can be very helpful in class while working with students that do not have many opportunities to get in touch to the English pronunciation. The Golden Gate Bridge is a reading that describes an important moment in American history as it tells you about the construction of the bridge that connects San Francisco to Marine County, California. It describes the reason on the chosen color, that was because the color (international orange) went well with the surroundings, but most important is the fact that that color is easier to see in the heavy fog of the place. It was also the first time the hard hat was used in order to protect workers. In this activity I was listening to the reading and reading at the same time. With this I could practice my English pronunciation as I could listen to the words twice. While listening and reading I visualized images from the text. I create a picture in my mind about the construction of the Golden Gate. Before I did the reading activity I make some suppositions about the content of the reading from its title. I thought that the reading was going to be about some history related to this bridge, fact that I would confirm later while doing the activity. I could also active prior knowledge before reading as I knew that the Golden Gate Bridge was in San Francisco. Those are some reading strategies I used while doing this reading activity. I think that this kind of sites can help students to learn vocabulary by listening to the words pronunciation and visualize the words into a text. It is an enjoyable activity as they can listen to and read the text, and to learn about English culture and human values as well.
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CHAPTER 5 Listening teaching strategies The most difficult activity I did in the fourth module was the activity 1.1. This was one of the first listening activities of the module where I did the different audio sections general listening, basic listening quizzes, etc. These activities were difficult since I had to choose the text I was going to work with. There were many titles in each section, so first I had to decide which one I was going to choose. Once I chose the topic I found difficult to listen to the text and to read searching for the answer at the questionnaire in each section. I had to listen to the text two or three times before to answer the questionnaire. It was not I could not understand the listening but to link what I was listening to the questions and then to answer them was the difficult point in the activity. I think this first activity I did in the Listening module was difficult also because I had had practice few listening until that moment, so I consider that practice in everything is important to improve your skills. If a teacher is going to work with this material in class or the students are going to practice with it by themselves, the activity could be easier by giving them two or three specific topics to work with, in order to avoid them to be lost in too many topics. I know that it is important that student make their own choices to work with but it is also important that they do not feel frustrated with too much information they could not handle at once.
CHAPTER 6 Speaking Teaching Strategies
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The most useful activity in the fifth module was the recording I did related to an important event in my life. This activity was recorded using audacity program. This was a free activity where I could talk about anything I wanted related to my life. I had to write some ideas first, without writing the complete text, and then I put in order my mind and started talking about that important event in my life. The idea of recording oneself is very interesting and useful to improve pronunciation. Even though this kind of activity done by the first time is a scaring idea, as we are not used to listen to or own voice. This kind of activity has a wide range of use in a classroom. I can ask my students to record themselves in specific activities we do during the course. The last unit of the second level of secondary education, for example, is related to past events. In this unit students may record themselves and present an oral story, making an audio book. This could be the last part of a complete work where students design their stories. They may combine their story with some pictures that illustrate their narration.
CHAPTER 7 Writing Teaching Strategies The main teaching strategies I used in order to develop my writing ability was to read and to follow the writing models I read in the sixth module. In the Model bank home there are several writing stiles that guide you in order to know how to write a piece of work, like an essay, a letter, etc. To follow a model is always helpful in order to start writing. You can follow the instructions and see and analyze the examples provided and in this way you can write your own piece of work.
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You can go step by step in writing by following a model. Another strategy that I consider useful to improve my writing ability is the use of pre-established formats. In eduplace.com site students can reinforce the knowledge of English language as they are asked to use a specific kind of word, a noun, an adjective, etc. in this way you are aware on the word function and if you have any doubt about the function of any word there is a section in that site that explains it for you. So following writing models and being aware of words functions are the main strategies that help me improve my writing ability.
CHAPTER 8 About ICT Tools The effect of information and Communications Technologies on English language learning The module I chose is the sixth module where I did several writing activities. From that module the three tools I consider more useful for my learning and appropriate for my students are the photopeach, my first poem book and the wacky web tales in class. The photopeach is an enjoyable tool where students may manipulate the media in order to make some works. In this tool you can choose some pictures that are going to illustrate your work. The pictures you are going to choose may be gotten from the web or from your own photo gallery. After you choose the images for your work you start writing short sentences to describe your images (you have to decide on the finality of your work first). Finally you may add some music to this work. The music is provided for you in this web site. My first poem book uses some short writing that is made with some formats given then you go to the pimpampum web site and choose some images to illustrate your book and then you paste the writing you did previously. In the wacky web you start writing on some predesigned formats that ask you to write specific words by asking for it function (a noun, an adjective, a color,
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etc.). After you finish filling in the blanks you go on to see the complete work. Once that you are visualizing the complete work you can look at the correctness on the use of the word you used and you decide if it is coherent or not. I chose these three specific tools because I had no idea on how fun you can have while doing writing activities. Those activities were completely new for me and I think they can be very interesting for the students.
CHAPTER 9 Lesson Planning The Lesson Plan Model I selected is the Lane Hunters’s (seven stops). I selected this lesson plan model because I consider it well established and clear step by step, bedside that it is the one that adapts better to the requirements of the new Study Program for secondary level. First of all I consider very important to get the students’ attention before starting any activity. If a teacher does not have students’ attention there any learning process would not be possible. Then it is always necessary that students know the purpose of studying what they are just about to start. For humans in general is important to establish their own objectives in every activities. What are they expected to do at the end of each lesson is very important. After stating the objectives of the lesson is important to give clear instructions around the activity students are going to do. Modeling is necessary when you are learning a language as it is easier to follow models that to listen to long explanations without any model. To show a text to start the lesson is also important in order for students to have a model to follow.
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After giving instructions and show students what you are talking about is always important to check if they understood what teacher has just explained. This would allow avoid misunderstanding that could affect to reach the objective of the lesson. Once students have analyzed the text it is time for some guided activity that will start students to a freer production. Finally it is time to get free students to apply what they learnt in the lesson and to demonstrate if they cover the lesson objective established at the beginning of the lesson.
SARABIA AGUIRRE SAYURI
CHAPTER 1 English language learning awareness
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Once I read a quote saying that ¨Everyday is knowledge and that becomes power for everyone¨. During this diploma course, I have improved my teaching competences and I have learned techniques to look for new and better ways to develop lifelong learning experiences. As teacher, we have the challenge to develop a range of key competences in order to create meaningful learning situations for our students, starting with knowing about our learning style and a better way of managing time. Technology is an advantage these days and an opportunity for creative English lessons, practicing grammar exercises on the great variety of internet sites that exist taught me that practice make perfect: I improved my knowledge on active and passive voice, relative clauses, clauses and phrases, embedded questions and more. I found out that in order to improve vocabulary and my reading comprehension skill I need to read not only topics related with my work but also those that can make me dream, imagine and have fun. Since we usually speak English only in the classroom, the speaking area was one of my weaknesses but working on fluency, flexibility, coherence, and precision, let me be more confident while talking. Considering that for many of my students I am the first and only contact with an English speaker, it is important to work on every aspect needed to satisfy their needs and demands.
CHAPTER 2 Cultural learning awareness The purpose of teaching language in basic education is that students gain ownership of diverse social practices of the language and participate effectively in their life… It is necessary that students acknowledge the role of language in the construction of knowledge and cultural values, and develop an analytical and responsible attitude towards the problems of the world. 1
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Secretaría de Educación Pública. Programa de Estudios 2006. Lengua Extranjera Inglés. p.13.
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As teachers and students it is needed to interact with the cultural aspects of the country where the target language is spoken. On Module 2, I read about Canada. An article about Ottawa- Hull´s development and I found that I can use the written text for my third graders students on Unit 1, Memories. Students can recognize and understand academic texts like historical articles in order to compare with the rest of the class their own interpretations. They can read and complete a time table. Working on reading strategies, I read the text He goes to war to save his baby. It was a very kind story to make students notice the importance of family and about planning the future but also I can use the text for students to notice the use of do as an auxiliary verb in questions. I learnt that reading open our eyes, our soul and our hearts and I am pretty sure that my students will value the content of all these stories as an academic resource and as preparation for life.
CHAPTER 3 New teaching strategies discovered According to our Official English Programme, the priority and main challenge is that all students in secondary school receive English lesson of a high quality. Andrew Churches listed eight habits to follow in order to be highly effective 21st century teachers. Following the activities on this diploma course I highlight our responsibility of improving our knowledge, abilities, and competences in order to design meaningful learning situations. Learning is the fifth habit, saying that we must endeavour to stay current, learning to adapt as the horizons and landscapes change. We start the process when students are exposed to the language through written or oral texts creating individual or group experiences. C ollaborating and gradually achieving autonomy. Adapting curriculum and its requirements, or the
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software and hardware available, leading because leadership is crucial to the success or failure of any project; of course everything in benefit of the learning community. In order to be a quality teacher I need to work hard to offer the best approach to the language. As a person who can play a role model in their lives, I need to pay attention to every detail so I can be a positive role model. Called Modelling
behaviour, teachers need also to model tolerance, global awareness, and reflective practice, looking both inwards and outwards ourselves. I discovered the richness in common situations in which teachers and students can build new knowledge taking risks without losing the goal of the activity but giving them the opportunity to participate on their learning process; communicating the expected outcomes or evaluation requirements and being visionary looking across the disciplines for learning situations.
CHAPTER 4 Reading teaching strategies “The more we read the more we understand and the more we enjoy reading.” The text “The Golden Gate Bridge” and “The American and British English” were the texts that I liked most from unit 3. Both texts offer information that can be verified and some that it is a belief or a viewpoint of a particular person but the unit’s content mentioned that mixing facts and opinions is very common on writers productions which I believe is the kind of situations that promotes better life-long learning experiences because motivate readers to reflect on the information included on the text and to produce their own point of view, it can also motivate on further look of information related with the topic as a result of reading with a questioning mind.
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In my opinion this was the most interesting activity on module 3 because reading is how we can know and learn about other cultures. The activity was about reading both texts and identifying the most interesting in The Golden Gate Bridge story and if we had learnt new facts in the American and British English story. The teaching strategy used in this activity was fact and opinion. I learnt to look for key words used to express facts: discovered, demonstrated, according, confirm and also for the key words used to express opinions: claims, argues, view,
suspect.
CHAPTER 5 Listening teaching strategies On the fourth module, the concept of thought groups was the most difficult activity. First, I wrote the following three tips as a guide when working on this topic in order to be comprehensible when we speak or to give ourselves space to breathe:
1. Pay attention to punctuation and grammar. They tell us where to pause. Grammatical unites helps us to sound naturally and easy to understand by our listeners. 2. Remember to not break up short statements. Don´t break single ideas. 3. Break statements into sorter thought groups when we need to speak slower. But when I was doing the dictation activity it was difficult to either to follow punctuation, grammar or everything at the same time. Then, my tutor told me that is better however to pay attention where you made pauses. Finally, I went back to review the unit and to practice a little bit more. Practice makes perfect! This means that the more we practice, the better we will become. If we want to become great, then we should practice as much as possible. I believe enough practice is the way this activity could had been easier.
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CHAPTER 6 Speaking Teaching Strategies On the speaking module, the activity that turned out to be the most useful for me was the activity called How to describe people using Voicethread. Considering that Voicethread is an online media album that can hold images, documents and videos and allows people to make comments using voice, text, audio file, video and share them with anyone they wish. I would use this type of activity with my first graders students by asking them to record a picture´s description of what people is wearing. E.g. This is Pablo. He is a nurse. He wears a blue shirt, blue pants and white shoes. The Voicethread has a feature called doodle. Doodling allows people to draw or write while they are talking. Another way of using this great tool with my students is by having the class working on pairs, then the teacher request to each team to look for a picture and record its description on the site, once everyone has their recordings ready, then the teacher will assigned recordings to each team, then the students must click on them and listen carefully in order to draw everything they hear, to socialize the products every team show their drawings and the original pictures in order to compare the products. A variation to the activity can do doodling to add items to a picture that is been described by a student.
CHAPTER 7 Writing Teaching Strategies
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What a great tour on creativity world! There are amazing art pieces created by my colleagues on this diploma course. I am surprised and also proud of my own productions. This was a great experience to explore our creative side. As writing is associated with grammar, I worked on my writing ability focusing on linguistic aspects of the language, for example using adverbs in order to say more about a verb, also practicing with adjectives to say something more about nouns and punctuation is another important aspect when writing. It was very productive to practice making sentences and putting them together maintaining coherence and logic. Now I know that there are different stages of writing. First, we need to list our ideas. Next, is it helpful to write rough notes, then we can produce a first draft, after that it is important to check our own work for mistakes or also called proofreading and finally, get the final copy. I also learned that before beginning a piece of writing it is useful to think about its format and structure. Once we have the final copy, it is also a good idea to ask someone else to look over what we have written. Experience will help us to develop our own style but always we must enjoy the process.
CHAPTER 8 About ICT Tools Information and Communication Technologies on English Language Learning requires a particular commitment from learners and teachers. Education authorities
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have made a great effort to integrate them into our public basic education. It is time for teachers to acquire the needed ability and integrate them into their practice. If we review Module 6 productions, this is the best example of the effect of using them when learning a second language. There were amazing activities using ICT tools. If I need to select three tools that can be appropriate for my students I would select: The Wacky Web Tales site, Make Beliefs Comix for Educators and Photopeach as the best promoting literacy. a) The wacky web tales site is a great tool to start developing the writing ability.
This site offers a great selection of tale titles to write about. This site is geared to practice vocabulary, verb tenses, and more. After filling in the blanks they can read their tales to the class and have a fun learning experience. b) Make beliefs comix for educators was selected by the UNESCO as one of
the world´s most innovative web site in fostering literacy and reading. Write a cartoon strip can be a great tool for someone who is learning a second language. c) Photopeach is a site to tell stories over photos. Learners can use photos or
material from the internet to create a story, a descriptive line can be added to communicate a message to the people reading and watching the story.
CHAPTER 9 Lesson Planning
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Madeline Hunter´s (Seven Steps) lesson plan model is the one I consider appropriate for my context. Our present curriculum was designed using the model of experiential learning. The four elements of experiential learning are: concrete experience, reflective
observation, abstract conceptualization and active experimentation. First, some warm up is needed in order to get learners attention, (anticipatory set). It is important to tell students what we expect from them at the end of the lesson, (statement the objectives—tell students what they´ll be able to do as a result of the lesson). The process begins with exposing learners to a text based on the topic of the unit. This text can be oral or written and contains the language functions established for each unit. The stage of concrete experience with the text describes text work, (instructional Input--lecture). The teacher then selects from the text specific language areas to focus on. This is the stage for students to conduct
reflective observation of language, at this point they move to a stage of abstract conceptualisation, in which students make generalizations about language. The teacher should seek to promote and guide reflection, and redirect it when necessary, (check for understanding). The following part of the process consists in having students use the language: active experimentation, through tasks that move from control to freedom (guided practice and independent practice). We must remember that teachers may consider their students needs and their personal teaching style when planning their lessons.
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SOLIS MEDEL MINERVA
CHAPTER 1 English language learning awareness During the course, I have learnt to pay more attention to the grammar structure (use of adverbs, adjectives, prepositions, punctuation, etc.).
To improve my
listening, I had to take care of the type of situation, the non-verbal clues provided by the video (when I had the opportunity to look at them)the important points, the right order or sequence, the linking words and word phrases ( for the instructions) and all the detail that could showed me the intentions of the speaker, and the information I could get from m personal background. The speaking exercises gave me to chance to notice the conversations rules are quite important and the issues like correctness in pronunciation, the accuracy and fluency are quite important to produce comprehensible language. The interaction effect during a conversation or speech also provides with meaning that most be intelligible by the listener and given by the speaker, in order to engage in a real interactive linguistic process. Reading process was another aspect that I developed through this Diploma course and the strategies given were really useful, as skimming, scanning, activate prior knowledge, ask questions, etc. The writing abilities involves several mental activities: thinking, drafting, revising procedures, organization of details, cohesion and others, but with the help of the exercises on line, it was easier to understand and put in practice the ideas; all through the given exercises on the websites, the help provided by the Diploma course, and also practicing with the aid of the ICT by myself. To develop my abilities, I had to organize my time and activities to get some time to take advantage of the ICT and also an autonomous learner again. It was
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necessary to apply all my senses while doing the listening and speaking exercises, take notice of the time and computer’s programs. I discovered my lack of phrasal verbs, idioms and fluency in an average stage but I also recognized that my English level let me evolve as much as I want or need. Finally, I admit that the www is a powerful tool that will help me to overcome my weaknesses.
CHAPTER 2 Cultural learning awareness I will list the aspects I believe are the most important to share with the students and the importance to learn it without doubts about their own culture: Why to learn English? Because…. •
It is a tool to communicate ideas all over the world.
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You can learn lots of things about people, their beliefs, their lives, their living, their feelings, their ways of solving problems and their history.
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You can have more opportunities to get a better job.
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As music, it is the new language to share you with people abroad.
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You enrich your mind by learning a new language.
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Learning English is not the way to lose your identity, it could be the way to learn more about your own culture.
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Learning a new system to communicate open your mind and heart to new experiences.
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CHAPTER 3 New teaching strategies discovered EIGHT HABITS… It is motivating when you recognize that your ideas fit with others that come from researchers about educational issues, and it is really amazing when you discover that these ideas have been in your mind for a long time. In my previous reports, I said that the internet is a powerful tool to teach English, that websites could give me the opportunity to have a look over other’s experiences, that the ICT could help teachers and students to build up learning abilities, to motivate both to increase vocabulary, grammar aspects, cultural viewpoints, to stimulate the teaching and learning techniques… The Eight Habits by Mr. Andrew Churches have developed that we must be prepared for the change and to take the risk of becoming a learner again, and an effective learner is not complete if the technologies, specially the ICT, is not used to dive or fly all over the world.
CHAPTER 4 Reading teaching strategies The activity I selected from Module 3 is about the American Robin and its life. I find this text amazing for teaching and reading strategies. This text permits to put in practice almost all the strategies: skimming, scanning, to make predictions, to connect ideas, to activate prior knowledge, to find details, to make inferences, to use images, to recognize cause and effect relationships, to sequence events and to synthesize new information. The applied reading strategies gave me a sought to my own reading performance, and revealed that all types of texts involve a process to construct
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meaning, and all readers can have a bit or an amount of knowledge, information, experience, culture, etc. that provide a platform to a final understanding. This analysis about the way I face the reading activity, gave me the opportunity to clarify the difficulties found in a text, and to visualize strategies to build new perspectives to the meaning beyond a text. The cognitive complexity of the reading activity shows that I must be aware of my
strategies and how efficiently I can apply them; because the fine goal of a
reading process is to construct meaning, and to lead the reader into an interactive knowledge of the world; to begin a dialogue with the author, to promote the joy for the reading, and encourage people to be an autonomous and active reader.
CHAPTER 5 Listening teaching strategies The most difficult activity for me was the listening section, at the BBC Skillwise, and solving the quiz about what to do in case of having injuries at work, because sometimes, when I read a text, I don’t pay enough attention to details. I used to apply the skimming strategy and many times I forget to use the scanning. To avoid this mistake, I must use the “ask question”, “classify or categorize”, “identify main ideas and supporting details” and also “scanning” strategies. This activity showed me the importance of the cognitive processes while reading, and how the students, as me, read fast, losing the details that sustained the whole text. I am sure there is no way to make it easier, because the activity was easy itself. The difficulty comes from my lack of ability, then, I must face the task and learn from my mistakes.
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CHAPTER 6 Speaking Teaching Strategies “Someone Important in My Life” gave me the opportunity to think, organize ideas, select vocabulary, and open my heart to share a bit of me. Feelings are difficult to write about, and if you have to say, record, pay attention to time while recording, do it in a foreign language; it could seem hard, but not impossible. I think I can work this type of activity with almost all the content of the English Program with my students, because it will permit them to link the four basic skills. Fist, to write their ideas on paper; organize their thoughts and be careful with grammar, after to read it and pronounce before they could record it, and then listening their own voices and how they used intonation and stress. To list some of the themes they could work with, I will say: recording memories, (legends, short stories, personal anecdotes, short drafts about History, etc.); recipes; letters to plan some vacations and predictions about their future, for third grade. For second grade, it could be great to describe their families, an animal or themselves; to give advices about health, to make a list of warnings; to describe their opinions about clothes using comparatives; to describe their houses, and to say an experience about their lives. We could use this exercise as the project for each period of evaluation and they will have their own evaluation sheet with aspects related to the activity realized.
CHAPTER 7 Writing Teaching Strategies Writing is a communicative process that puts in practice all the abilities used to manage with a language. Though I didn’t have many comments on my works, I could notice that it is difficult to type what you want to say. It is necessary to think in the audience, the type of text you want to write, the events you are going to
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detail, the vocabulary that would fit better with your ideas, the sequence of the discourse, and the conclusion you want to share with your possible readers. I had to follow some steps: 1. Choose the topic. 2. Select the type of text I would write. 3. Organize my ideas. 4. Take care of the grammar aspects: sentence structure, subjects, verb tenses, adjectives, etc. 5. Write a draft, and after reading it. 6. Make changes according to the mistakes I found. 7. Make a final version. The teaching strategies that have helped me with my writing activity are: Adapting: Sometimes you cold think your text was interesting but the students found it boring and you have to change some ideas or even the whole text. Taking risks: Perhaps I am not in fashion with the ideas of young people, but if they see you are trying to involve their likes, feelings, and thoughts to your class, they could be more interested than before Learning. I am always learning about the way they learn, and explore with the English language. They show me the level of advance they are having and how they use the ICT nowadays. My duty is to share my previous experiences and new ones I have been taking through them, and facilitate and stimulate their own knowledge process.
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CHAPTER 8 About ICT tools I found the ICT surprising for the teaching and learning strategies; there are many tools that can help me and my students to success in the development of the daily activities’ classroom, but I will list only three: 1. The website from the bbc.co.org (learning English) because I can find
cultural topics to learn, to discuss and compare with ours; task-based exercises founded in the listening, speaking, reading and writing abilities. 2. The Movie Segments to Assess Grammar is another wonderful tool,
because it shows recent and entertaining pieces of movies with very interesting grammar exercises, and also I can use them to practice the listening, speaking and writing abilities, adding exercises of my own, with my students. 3.
The dictionaries on line to help the students and me, to overcome vocabulary difficulties, and also to enrich our personal glossary.
These three ICT tools will permit me and my students to work projects along the English course in our Secondary School; to promote the self learning without the teacher’s presence; to have a look on different types of exercises they select according their likes; to enrich their knowledge, and mine too, about the English culture and History; to overcome difficulties about grammar issues, to enrich the vocabulary; to practice with the four basic skills to develop our linguistic practice of the English language, and to guide ourselves to an autonomous self learning process and understanding of the language content in general.
CHAPTER 9 Lesson Planning
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I found the Group Work lesson planning, suitable for my teaching and learning class process, because it lists the steps clearly and coherent to develop all the communicative abilities and competences, set in the 2006 Mexican Program. Besides, it is necessary to let the students to work in small groups to practice among them, allow the partners to show their creativity and integration to a group, to promote values while working in the teams, to permit the students to distribute the tasks according to the personal skills and also to give them a comfortable time to work by their own. This type of lesson planning gives the teacher the opportunity to see the students’ potentials, to support them only when they need help and the most important, to offer the students the chance to take control of their own learning and become an autonomous, conscious and advantage user of the English language.
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SOSA LOPEZ MARIA DEL CARMEN
CHAPTER 1 English language learning awareness Learning English through this Diploma Course by internet has been helpful for me. I have learned a lot reading and exploring the recommended web sites. As an English teacher and learner, my language level has been increased , it is an independent level, because I am able to express my ideas, ask for and give information, continue a conversation. In tis Diploma course, I learned how to sail through internet using “Dictionaries in web pages”, where I found the great variety of tools like the meaning of the words, their use, with examples and overall hear their sounds how many times I want, this was new for me, I had not used it before, this has been very imprtant for me because now, I can apply it with my students. I learned the difference between “a fact and opinion”, what was new for me, now I know that fact is something that can be back to and oponion is a someone’s view point and could be true or not. Other new thing for me was “minimal pairs”, they are similar words with a different sound. Also, through the activities I did, I developed my listening skills applying strategies like reading,
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listening, reflection on important aspects of the topics, in order to know what important is the correct intonation for communication, identifying “falling and raising intonation”, they can help us to understand speaker’s feelings I have learned that “W ord stress” is important to pronounce the words correctly, and that “Thought groups” are pauses to breath that a person does when is speaking and the listener can use to understand better, that was new to me. At this point, applying what I learned, I can understand better videos, songs and conversations, I know how and what to pay attention in from listenings. About my writing skills, I learned how much important is the correct use of grammar like “nouns, verbs, order of the words, tenses, punctuation” by reading, analizing and practicing with exercises in which I could check my results and all of these have been helpful for me to do my writings. To improve my English, I will continue working hard on songs, videos, texts, vocabulary, intonation and all what I can in order to be a better English teacher, and I can find all this in the great tool called internet.
CHAPTER 2 Cultural learning awareness Foreign language learning is comprised of several components like gamatical component, communicative competence, language proficiency, etc. And in this Diploma course, I have learned several interesting facts by reading, listening, and watching videos. The knowledge of customs, beliefs and systems of meaning of another country is an integral part of foreign language learning and I have increased my Cutural knowledge through of them, which has a great importance to me because I am teaching English Language to my students in the Secondary School and it is indispensable to have the knowledge in order to teach it.
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In my REFLECTIONS I wrote that in the web sites I used, I read interesting stories, international news, watched videos, listened songs and Students in Secondary School are teenagers who like to learn in a funny way, they like listening to music, watching videos and reading interesting facts to them, and in this course I found out many web sites where there are a lot of useful material waiting to be used in my classes. For example, I read two texts called “The Golden Gate Bridge” and “American and British English” which have beautiful images and the infromation in each one is interesting, I could use them at the begining of the school year for third grade students because the texts are in past tense and this is the first topic we work according to the National Program content. And there are other ones very helpful to me that I could use in my classes because they cover what the Program indicates. Also, I wrote in my REFLECTIONS that there are many people who like to read and so they increse their culture about English Speaker community and now I know that in the internet I can find many important and interesting cultural information that I can use like material in diferent ways according to what I need in my classes.
CHAPTER 3 New teaching strategies discovered Teaching strategies are indispensable to teach, not only a foreign language, they have to be applied to teach and learn any subject. In this Diploma course I learned several strategies that I did not know before. All of these strategies are definetely to close related to the eight habits, they have many aspects in common. As an English Language learner and a teacher, I discovered that there are many technological resources that I must be able to adapt into tools according to the age and abilities of my students, what it is mentioned in the eight habits as “Adapting”, “Being visionary”, and “Collaborating”.
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In my REFLECTION notes, I wrote that I need to apply several reading, listening, and learning strategies in order to improve my reading, listening and writing skills, to reach a better reading and listening comprehension and speak clearer, pronouncing the sounds correctly, with a good intonation in order to be better understood in what I say by listeners, and this is mentioned in “Learning” from the eight habits, because a Teacher always must continue to absorb experiences and knowledge. Also, I wrote that as an English teacher, I have to improve my writing, grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, listening, strategies in order to be applied them in all the possible moments to be a better English teacher, and so my students can learn in a better way in classes every day, and this is related to “Modelling behavour”, “Communicating” because a teacher is a quiet personal inspection of teaching and learning. Finally, in my REFLECTIONS notes, I mentioned that I think that all what I learned througt this Diploma course, I will apply it in my classes, and this is related to “Taking risks”, I will take risks applying my new knowledge and trusting my students.
CHAPTER 4 Reading teaching strategies Activity 5.2. Grammar and reading comprensión. Story: “Sara went shopping” This is the most interesting activity for me, because it is a complete reading activity. It has a wide variety of tasks, which obligate you to pay attention in it when reading. You have to do these exercises: A(Yes/No), B(Wh-questions), C(Ask questions), D(Open questions) , E(Dictation) and Vocabulary. Also, mention at least one cultural element thay you found in the story. I think, these teaching strategies are adequate in order to achieve and evaluate a good reading comprehension.
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The support provided is excellent, this story has the option of listening the story while you are reading, so you can improve your listening at the same time and repeat it how many times you want or need. About the story. This is a descriptive story which narrates a typical and common day in Sara’s life. She is 30, and lives in Pasadena with her husband and children. She got up and went to Barget, a department store which was having a holiday sale. She bougth a toaster and on her way home, she stopped to buy some nonfat milk. She got home and her children were still sleeping, she woke them up and made a nutritous breakfast to them.
CHAPTER 5 Listening teaching strategies The most difficult activity to me from module four “Listening” was the activity 1.1. In this activity I had to listen four different stories and answer some listening comprehension exercises. The selection of the stories were adequate, according to the level we are working on, interesting and helpful to what want to be achieved. The stories were about a person describing how the mail is in his neighborhood, other one was about an accident where a school van was included with an oil pipe, other one about a nurse giving instructions to her co-workers at the end of her turn, and other one about a call phone leaving a message. The exercises were complete and interesting. In my opinion, these tasks were excellent, they were adequated to evaluate the compehension of the stories, the instructions were to clear, I did not have any problems in them. They were activities planed so well. This activity was so hard to me because in the listenings there were people who spoke so fast, and also, there were many unknown words to me,
which
obligate me to study harder to improve it, but in that moment, I had to listen to the stories seven times at least in order to be able to undestand them.
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Also, I have to be honest, listening is my weakness ability, so it is the one I have to practice harder than the other ones. I think this is the only way in what these kind of activitites can be easier to me. I have to work on listening songs in Enlgish, watch films, news as much as I can.
CHAPTER 6 Speaking Teaching Strategies Reviewing the module five, I think all of them were useful to me, because I improved my writing and speaking at the same time together. These activities were interesting, funny and new to me, overall because I had to record myself in different activities, what I liked them a lot. I had to practice my speech several times before recording, but I had to choose just one activity, and I found out that the activity five turned out to be the most useful to me. This activity encouraged me to think carefully in the person whose I had to write the report about, because I had to mention his-her qualities and the reason why had been important in my life. This activity obligated me to look up in a dictionary the words I needed to describe the personality, qualities and actions which I admired about this person. I wrote my report about my mother, what motivated me to do my best because she is a special person to me, so I like it so much. I think, this is an activity which motivates people to write and practice speaking because is about a special person chosen by themselves, which encourages them to do their best, investigate vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation in order to do the activity well. In my opinion, I could use this activity with all my students of the different grades, because it covers topics of the Official National Program, or in any moment like a project work with the only main to improve their skills.
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For example, I could use this activity with my students of First grade, when they are learning to describe people. Maybe, it could be the project work that we always do in each period of the school year. At first, I will explain how they need to write their description about a special person in their lives. Then, I will tell them the instructions to download “Audacity” in the computer lab. After that, I will tell them that they have to practice their description in front of a mirror in order to they get ready to record it. Next, they will recorder themselves in the computer lab and finally, they will have to make a comment about their work. I think they will like to recorder themselves and this motivates them to do it again.
CHAPTER 7 Writing Teaching Strategies In this module, I had the great oportunity to read some of my partners’ stories and this was an amazing experience for me. I could find out that all my parteners are good at writing, they wrote interesting and in some cases funny stories. I am glad to learn from my partners when I was reading their stories or interact with them doing this kind of activities. About the activities I did, I can mention that I enjoyed them so much. I worked on the use of adjectives, verbs, nouns and adverbs by reading and practicing exercises, which were useful for me, because I reaffirmed my knowledge on them. I could practice gammar related to tenses, order of the words, spelling and use of vocabulary by reading, reflecting and focusing on main important points of each one. Also, I could improve my knowledge about punctuation by practicing in sentences and questions, and all of these elements are basic in order to produce any kind of writings. One of the activities that I enjoyed more was “A book of poems”, because writing poems always have been a difficult activity for me, but in this case, I followed the models given and this made it easier for me, and I had to think carefully in the adequated words in order to make rhymes.
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This module was very useful for me, because I applied the strategies mentioned before, in order to produce texts which I talked about specific moments or incidents in my life.
CHAPTER 8 About ICT Tools Definetely in this Diploma I have found out a wide variety of novel activities which are very useful and helpful for English learners. In my personal opinion, all the activities I did in this course, using the tools that internet offers, were funny and overall they were full of teaching with adequated strategies to achieve the aim wanted. Through the seven modules of this Diploma, there were many activities that I liked a lot, but if I have to choose three activities of just one Module, I think the activities of the Module five “Speaking” were interesting, and helpful for my learning and they can be useful for me in my classes. I think my students can do them and help them to improve their abilities. In our official National Program, it is very important that our students can communicate e interact with others, express their ideas, opinios, etc. so these ICT can help a lot to reach our aim. One of the activites I selected is the activity 2 “How to describe a situation or place”. In this activity, students must select one audio of three, and describe what they think or feel when they listen it, practice the description and then, they must record theirselves using Audacity. Finally, they must listen what they recorded and make a feedback about it. Other activity I selected is the 3, which students must use “Voicethread”. In this activity they form part of a group, but individually each one must describe the same photo of a person. This activity is helpful overall for First Grade students, because this is a topic included in the Official National Program, it can be used like a project work.
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The last activity I selected is the number 6 “Someone imporant in my life”. In this activity, students must think in a person who has been important in their lives and why, this activity is good because they have the oportunity to icrease their vocabulary in order to describe the person they chose in order to write their text and practice it and then, record it using “Audcity”. In these ways students can practice and improve their skills easily and in a different way that they use to do every day in their classes.
CHAPTER 9 Lesson Planning The one I selected is Multiple Intelligences
“Seven Ways of Knowing”, because
we all are different, we have different likes, kinds of living and so we have different ways to learn according to our abilities. As teachers, it is important to keep this in mind; every class we must plan it carefully, thinking that all our students are different, so we must include in our daily work, a variety
of activities for our different students to help them learn and
practice what they learn in an easier form for them. All the classrooms are full of students who need we apply Multiple Intelligences. We have students who... -
like to communicate in any momment. They are “lingustic”.
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analize, follow procedures and solve problems easily. They are “logical mathematical”.
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are lovers of order, use of patters of space to work. They are “spatial”.
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are to active, they like activities which hey can move. They are “bodilyknesthetic”.
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like to sing, listening to music, compose, etc. They are “musical”.
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are sociable, like to interact with others. They are “interpersonal”.
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are able to work and learn by themselves. They are “intrapersonal”.
This is a real situation that we have every day in our classes, so this is the reason why I think this is the most appropriate lesson model to follow to aplly with my students.
VAZQUEZ GONZALEZ JORGE
CHAPTER 1
English language learning awareness
Having reviewed my self evaluations, I noticed that I have had changes about teaching readings, for example, I now use short texts to practice reading comprehension in the classroom, which I rarely did before. Also, I am more aware of the various reading strategies I learned in this module, (pre-reading, during, and post-reading strategies). As for listening, I have heard different conversations of different people in the world where English is spoken and I am more able to distinguish among various accents. In addition, I am sure that my vocabulary as increased not only as a result of these listening tasks, but also in the other tasks
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Doing the different exercises about phonetics, my pronunciation has improved, because I learned to distinguish the word stress in a sentence, and I have taught students how to pronounce correctly the different words in English. Writing was the most difficult part for me because we, as teachers, only teach our students to write short stories, but it was a great experience because I needed to have a task, and with this task, I had to write in a different way than I used to; for example, write a commix, a poem, describe pictures, and describe events in a picture. All of these have changed a lot in my everyday teaching. Finally, my grammar has definitely improved. Now, I know more about writing correct sentences, both simple and compound. My knowledge of the English verb system has increased.
CHAPTER 2 Cultural learning awareness In module 2, I learned about the CEFL (Common European Framework for Languages) which was something completely new to me, and I learned to evaluate myself within this framework. Also, I learned that, nowadays, technology is used in many different ways to help our students learn more efficiently and rapidly. In module 3, I became more aware of various reading strategies, for example, skimming, scanning, and searching for specific information. Through the reading passages themselves, I learned more about the American culture and history. A very specific example that comes to mind is the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, where workers had to be insured against accidents. In module 4, my listening skills improved greatly as some of the activities were not guided by the text; therefore, I needed to pay a lot of attention. I liked, in particular, the use of songs to teach English. I remember, specifically, one U2 song where the singers sang very flatly. This contrasted with another song, whose name I can’t remember now, which was sung using very distinct intonation patterns.
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Module 5 was particularly very enjoyable because we became aware of various interesting styles of writing, like poems, picture descriptions, comic strips, etc. When facing with the dilemma of writing poems I was nervous at first, but soon, I was very confident that I could do a good job. I really liked writing these poems. Right now I am using every opportunity I have in my classroom to raise my students’ awareness of these language and cultural aspects. For example, I am using various technological devices to improve my teaching—the Internet, a projector, power-point presentations, and audio-editing software. Also, I recently had my students write their own comic strips. It was both fun and educational!
CHAPTER 3 New teaching strategies discovered An adapting teacher must use the various reading strategies mentioned in the module, the different kinds of texts, and the technology available in order to benefit the student and within the limits and resources of the classroom. As we are aiming at having life-long learners, we must first become one. Therefore, I need to apply all, or as many as I can, of these reading strategies myself. I need to become accustomed to new technology forms and learn to use them effectively. Taking risks is an essential part of a teacher. When going through the goals of Module 3, I remembered experiences where I had to surrender to my students’ technological and other kinds of skills. For example, teaching in China, I found myself helpless when manipulating equipment due to the language. I had to rely on my students’ help.
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The concept of modeling behavior is a very appealing one to me as I believe that we are examples in front of our students, not only of matters related to English, but also of human values. The strategies I learned in this module relate to having clear goals and objectives, as this is one of the characteristics a teacher, in the role of a leader, must have.
CHAPTER 4 Reading teaching strategies The most interesting activity in module 3, was the one that explained the different types of reading: instructive, descriptive, persuasive and informative. Now I know that each type of text uses different kinds of language. I understand that these texts have different purposes and different styles. This was an eye-opener for me, because before learning about this, I used to read almost every text the same way, applying very general reading strategies. Now I know that, for instance, I need to use both skimming and scanning practically with every text. Also, I need to think about what I know on the subject before I even start to read, which is a pre-reading strategy. There are other types of reading strategies that relate specifically to each kind of text. For example, when reading an instructive text, you need to analyze the various steps involved; when reading a descriptive text, you can form conceptual maps in your mind so that you can picture the story or the description better. When reading a persuasive text, you need to follow it up with some kind of action, and so forth. What’s most important is that I have been able to apply these same strategies in my own classroom, getting better results from my students each time.
CHAPTER 5 Listening teaching strategies
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For me, the most difficult activity was the one about top-down listening. It is difficult for a number of reasons: speakers’ accents, speech rate, content, etc. I believe several things can be done to help students cope with this strategy. First, vocabulary terms can be introduced before listening to the text. This way, the student will become familiarized with the topic and thus, be able to understand more easily. Second, listening while reading can help. A text can be provided at the student preference. That is, with a click of the mouse, he/she can bring the text to the screen and when he/she feels more comfortable, he/she can make it disappear. Third, if it is possible to select pieces of listening along with video images, it will be much easier for the student to process the information. A picture is worth a thousand words. Fourth, the spoken passage can be broken down into smaller sections. Once the student understands those sections, he/she will be more able to deal with the bigger passage. In other words, this is like a combination of bottom-up and topdown approaches. Finally, as VOA (Voice of America) does it, the whole passage can be spoken at a slower pace. Once comfortable with the speed, the student can then deal with the normal or faster version more successfully.
CHAPTER 6 Speaking Teaching Strategies Having reviewing the fifth module, I found out that all the activities are important, but there were two activities that turned out the most useful for me, in order of importance: the activity 2.1, in which in which music is used, and activity 3.1, the voice thread.
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In activity 2.1, we know that everybody likes music, and when we listen to it, we have the opportunity to imagine, to travel, and to express our feelings that music evokes. Using the imagination of our students and different kinds of music, we will find out besides their personality that they can talk freely about what music evokes. I used 3 different melodies in four groups (2 groups listened the same melody) I noticed that these two groups the melody (soft music) evoked the same feelings in most of the students; the other three groups the melodies were a rock, salsa, romantic, the opinions were different in most of the goups. In activity 3.1, they talk about two very important tools. One is the Voice Thread, where we can listen to a model speaker, record our own voice, and correct our mistakes. The other tool is the audacity program, very useful for students and teachers, with which we can model for our students. Again, they can record themselves as many times as they wish and correct their mistakes.
CHAPTER 7 Writing Teaching Strategies Writing was one of the most difficult tasks for me in this diploma, but when we used the different strategies, they took me step by step to write properly. Firstly, in activity 1.1 in which we had to fill (several times the parts of the speech, colors, numbers, famous people, etc.) the blanks and at the end, we had to click a button to see the wacky story: in this kind of exercise we just write some few words and a complete story was writen. Secondly, in activity 2.1 the strategy was changed, to write a poem, we had to write a word to complete a line of a verse and we had to think more about the meaning of the sentences or if it had good sense; although it was a short poem we had to write about 15 lines per poem. We wrote about 6 different poems and publish them in a book poem.
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Thirdly, the strategy was changed we had to describe and narrate a series of pictures about an event. After that, the stategy was changed drastically, now we had to write a personal experience, the only motive we had to write was our own experience, now we had to think and write step by step in a chronological order our experience. Finally, one of the most difficult tasks was to write a book review, and to write an article for a newspaer; these were difficult tasks but we learned step by step how to write using the different strategies.
CHAPTER 8 About ICT Tools Information and Communication Technology (ICT) took the main rol in this diplomado because all the activities we did we used different ICT’s. (Information and Communication Technologies). It was a very difficult task to select a module, all of them were interesting, and none of them lacks impotance. I chose module 5, Speaking, and the Tools are: Audio system, VoiceThread, and Audacity program. A computer cd drive, a cd player, a tape recorder, etc, are different tools we can use in the classroom to listen to music, to a conversation or to a story. After the students listen to music, a conversation, we can ask them to talk about what they heard. I selected these tools because they are very useful for every English teacher because most of the classrooms are equiped with this kind of tools. The VoiceThred program was another important tool in this module; I selected this program because it is useful for both students and teachers. I can look and descibe a picture and record my voice, and I can hear other students talk about the same picture in a different way and others can listen to me, thus we can increase our vocabulary and hear different types of pronounciations too. The Audacity program or any other program with which you can record your voice.Students record their voices and hear their mistakes and try to correct them,
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they can record in mp3 format and send it as a spoken message by email. I selected this tool becasue students have fun speaking or singing a song.
CHAPTER 9 Lesson Planning Writing Lesson Plans Multiple Intelligences: "Seven Ways of Knowing" (Gardner) I think this model of lesson plan is the most complete to teach languages because we can develope the seven intelligences of Howard Gardnder. Each one of the parts of this lesson plan involves with one or several of the intelligences. For example, when we start the lesson, we generally present an everyday situation, instead of use only a text, we can use pictures, videos. Thus the visual intelligence is invoved. In a video, we can also locate to the students in time and space, when happend certain event, (Visual/Spatial) When we teach “commands” the student has to make a physical movement. In this case the bodily/Kinaesthetic intelligence is involved. Conversation
is
very
important
in
the
language
class
and
the
Intrapersonal/Introspective intelligence takes a very important role in our classes because he/she has to practice and interact with a partner. The most important of the intelligences is Verbal/Linguistic because it has to do with words, spoken or written. Speaking and writing is involved in this lesson plan model because when we ask to the student to write and describe a picture this intelligence is involved. I like this plan because the lesson is varied and gives the importance to the different intelligences of the students.
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VELASCO GARCIA KARLA INES
CHAPTER 1 English language learning awareness WHAT I HAVE LEARNT This Diplomado has been so helpful and worth it because I have learned many things as a teacher and as a student, I also had the opportunity to share experiences, comments, ideas, thoughts and learn from the tutor and my classmates. I have learnt to contextualize the words in the texts, guessing meanings, use the top-down intonation and rhythm while speaking. Now I know some differences between the American and British English. I learnt to use reading techniques like skimming and scanning to get the idea or specific information from an article. I know how to stress words in sentences to make them sound more naturally,
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intonation of the tag questions (to make them sound louder or lower according to the intention); I enjoyed learning about phrasal verbs and acquiring new vocabulary and more over how to use it. I learned how to give instructions, how to describe people, places and things. The correct pronunciation and the rhythm in your speaking make the difference to be understood. The recording activity was so powerful in the developing of my speaking because I could learn from my mistakes. I think my writing is getting better and I have acquired some techniques to use them in my classes like comic strips, creating books, videos, photos, compositions, summaries, etc. I learnt how to catch the attention of the readers. However I feel that there is so much to continue learning because we always are in a process of learning. I have to improve in so many aspects of the 4 abilities. My weakness is the listening, because I still can not understand everything what is been said, so I will have to be working in this ability in order to improve in the next future, I have a powerful tool – the internet- to do it and the pages in the Diplomado too. Talking about the other abilities I think I have to get better in vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation. This has been an amazing experience of learning and sharing.
CHAPTER 2 Cultural learning awareness FOCUSING IN THE ENGLISH CULTURE LANGUAGE The learning of English language is a process that includes the acquisition and reinforcement of the four abilities. Besides, the culture is an aspect that goes with this procedure. For this reason, is important to take into account different activities to make our students be in contact and learn something about the culture, habits, customs, idioms, music, native speakers’ pronunciation, different accents, etc.
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Talking about cultural aspects, I learnt how to pronounce different words, expressions and phrasal verbs. The intonation and rhythm internet classes were very helpful because now I know how to stress words in order to intensify the meaning of the sentences; I also learnt that rhythm must be present in conversations for not making it tedious. Top-down intonation in English language makes the difference when you are talking due to the powerful tool as a part of it mainly to transmit the correct message. Some parts of the history in the US were learnt, an example of this is the history of one of the biggest bridges in this country as well as how the emergence of the first book in the US to learn English different from England and how it was becoming quite distinct in order to be independent in this aspect too. I realize of the use of some phrasal verbs and I understood that they don’t have a literal meaning and sometimes as students we want to translate them, which is not correct. To focus my students’ attention first I need to motivate them and push them feeling like learning the language and make them know the importance of it, in our daily life. Once they are aware of the goals, I should use some dynamics to catch their attention in the class. After that I must use activities like the ones learnt during this course like: article readings, songs, audios, clips of movies according to their age, audio-stories, news from radio and TV, magazines, pamphlets, TV programs, reports, to make them create comic strips, which is a very interesting activity for them. I must let them use the language with their peers, sharing emotions, feelings and comments. The use of games in the learning language is another important tool to excite students in this process, because they are a way of taking them of hand trough the acquisition of the language. As teachers we have to look different activities for our students that let them be in contact with the culture of the target language. In the next outlines I’ll try to
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visualize the main activities learnt during this Diplomado that can be used for my students, taking into account that they should be extracted from the daily life. USEFUL ACTIVIES TO USE IN THE
Students learn
LISTENING
expressions, idioms, vocabulary,
* News
WATCH
READ
*Movies
*Books
TALK
LISTENING *Songs
SEARCH In the Internet different Articles,
Examples: * Differentiate pronunciation
You
learn
about
Let you share
Makes the class
Offers a wide
the
history
and
opinions,
funny and let you
variety of topics to
the
experiences and
be in contact with
know.
culture
of
CD Rooms Articles
Movies
USEFUL
Internet
MATERIAL
Songs
pages Books Newspapers
Tales
CHAPTER 3 New teaching strategies discovered Andrew Churches mention the importance of the Technology in the 21st century teachers’ life because we have to be adaptable to society’s time and we have to be
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in a constant change according to the students’ needs. As teachers we have to take advantage of the technological tools provided in the internet and use them to enhance learners trough the English Learning. In this Diplomado we learnt how to be 21st century teachers because all the time we were in contact with the technology and we used it to learn more about the language and strategies to apply them in our daily labor; to communicate, to give comments and opinions, making contributions and sharing experiences, we were inventors of stories (in the writing and speaking form), comic strips, video stories, we made presentations, wrote book poems, reviewed books, answered tests, etc. We had to adapt some of these significant activities to our students’ context and we will have to continue doing it. The characteristics mentioned above, are the ones required to the teachers of this century –the 21st- and we were involved in those ones, so from now on we just have to use and adapt them to our classrooms in order to improve the learning.
CHAPTER 4 Reading teaching strategies The most interesting activity in module 3 was the Activity 7.2. Reading and understanding an article from a newspaper. Name of the Newspaper: the observer. Article: The gem robbery. It let me know how to use different strategies to understand the text and other ones to activate my previous knowledge and make inferences and generalizations about the facts. Due to the strategies used I still remember the text because it had a good impact in my learning.
I used the following strategies in “The Gem
Robbery” article: a) Identify main ideas and supporting details to understand the main point of the reading. This is very important so in this way we could start a brain storming to get information and then use some other strategies; b) classify
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the kind of text, if it is informative, of entertainment, descriptive, news of sport, social life, politic, etc. c) make generalizations to get some clues and make inferences about the burglars, How they looked like? How did they get into the jewelry store and commit the robbery? How they escaped from the police officers? if the students think they could use some others vehicles besides of the mentioned ones in the article and if they had more accomplices, etc; d) draw conclusions of the reading after doing the predictions. In the classroom students can compare and contrast ideas with a partner or with another team if they are working in teams, so in this way they could check what the others think about and may make new conclusions.
CHAPTER 5 LISTENING TEACHING STRATEGIES The most difficult activity in the module 4th was the Activity 5.1. Practicing dictation. It was difficult because I didn’t understand all the words so I couldn’t write them all in the correct form. Some of us still don’t have the capacity to understand all the words because some of them are very likely in pronunciation, so we have to carefully pay attention to catch the correct word. I think the activity could have been easier if the audios had gone from the easy to the difficult, I mean, in the first one a speaker who talks slower and in the second one hear a person with more fluency, speaking faster. But we have to continue doing exercises like these ones in order to get more practice and develop our listening skill. It was also difficult because I was not used to practice the different punctuation marks, even tough I didn’t know the name of two of them, so during the dictation I lost time trying to guess the meaning of these signs and when I wanted to write the words they had been said. My purpose about this situation is to continue practicing dictation and do exercises with my students to have them be in contact with this kind of activities.
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CHAPTER 6 Speaking Teaching Strategies The 5th module was so interesting and full of learning; all the activities were very significant for me. All of them are very useful, but I found the activity 1.1 Telling a short story a very strong element for my work. I think this activity could be used with my students, especially because they are learning the past simple tense, so I could ask them to prepare a short story and after being ready tell it to one of their partners, while they are doing this I could record different conversations in order to show what they are saying. The recordings could be used to reinforce different aspects in the speech like pronunciations, rhythm, fluency, grammar, use of time expressions, clarity, etc. This same activity could be done time later and analyze the same aspects, so the students could check their progress and realize about what they have improve and recapture aspects in those that they have to improve. I think the recordings could have a very good impact in my students because they might find them attractive and funny and therefore learn while they are having fun. They also could be used as a way of evaluation.
CHAPTER 7 Writing Teaching Strategies Writing strategies to improve the ability The writing module was full of interaction with technology because I used it to create books of poems, funny stories, review of books, and so on. I really enjoyed it. The main strategies used to develop the writing skills were: a) using punctuation, which is a strategy in which I will continue working due to its importance in order to transmit
the
right
message,
and
don’t
generate
misunderstandings.
b)
Punctuations provide the necessary tools to make writings comprehensible and interesting for others.
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About writing stories, I used the strategies provided in the models in order to catch the attention of the readers, uptoday I know that as writers we shouldn’t forget to write the title, we must start with attractive questions, give an introduction of the topic, then continue with the development of the story and finally give a conclusion and a personal comment. Creating stories through comic strips is a very helpful technique to improve the creativity and to impel free imagination, but we have to be careful of the correct use of words and spelling, take into consideration coherence in the sentences, so in this way our students could correct their creations and learn from their mistakes.
CHAPTER 8 About ICT Tools The 3 most useful activities All the modules were very attractive and have helped me to improve in the different aspects of the language, but one of the most exiting was the 6 WRITING module, because I had the opportunity to use my imagination and creativity to create works, also because I was in contact with technology all the time. The next 3 activities I’m going to mention, I think they are appropriate and attractive for my students because they are so amazing and provide us a wide range of different uses; they also push the learners to be in contact with the Internet and learn while they are having a good time. a) My funniest tale , activity 1.1. Here the students have to know different
words like adjectives, nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, expressions, etc, so in this way they would be able to create very funny stories. With this tool, students are forced to search, investigate and study the words because is just the only way they could do the activity. b) Book of poems, activity 2.1. A very useful tool provided in the internet in
order to make an enormous effort to give the best of you, to publish your creations, so others could see them. It gives you the opportunity to use
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different pictures according to your texts. With this tool you can create a competence atmosphere with the purpose of been the best in these types of activities and students also have the opportunity to check their progress and evaluate themselves. c) Visual story , activity 3.2. The Photo Peach web offers a wide range of
using it to create stories, comments, give instructions, summarizing movies, texts, etc. using different elements like photos, pictures, draws, music and the most important you can sing your work and make comments on it. Is a very funny tool to catch the attentions of the students. d) Comic strips . Very interesting page and tool that offers you the possibility
to learn while you are having a very good time. Here my students could be the creators of very original, fantastic and misterious stories. This page provides the opportunitu to use your imaginations and prove yourself in what have you progressed.
CHAPTER 9 Lesson Planning An appropriate Lesson Plan for my context teaching. After reading the different Lesson Plan models, I think all of them are very applicable in the learning-teaching process; however we have to take into account the context where we are working if we are going to use one of those lesson plans with our students. For this reason I think that the most suitable Lesson Plan is the Instructional Scaffolding by Jerome Bruner. I chose this one because first of all, my students should have the desire of learning, so as teachers we have to find different activities and dynamics in order to motivate them in the learning, so when they are anxious of learning they will feel like doing all the activities planned. Jerome Bruner mentions the importance of considering the right level which is something crucial in my Lesson Plan due to the low level my students have, as a result of being in a Telesecundaria modality, where most of the times, the teachers are not specialist in the English language. Due to this, sometimes it is difficult to work with the level of knowledge and speaking ability, as students they are
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supposed to have, so here I have adequate the activities and use strategies to get them better in which they lack of. Once they feel confidence and have found the meaning of learning English, we have to let them work by themselves but paying attention in the guidance we offer them and be careful in all their productions (speaking, writing, reading and understanding in the listening). To reinforce values like tolerance, democracy, respect, solidarity, empathy, justice, etc. I think that the collaborative/cooperative work in teams is a powerful strategy to enhance the acquired knowledge and let them use their abilities in a free way without focusing in the mistakes. Sometimes my students are afraid of committing mistakes and don’t having the correct pronunciation, so with the work in teams they get confidence because they know they are working with people of their same age. Besides the stuffs mentioned above, it is obvious that all the lesson Plans have to include the purpose, the time, the main topic, the competences to develop, the materials to use, if will work all together, in peers or in small groups, it has to be included the setting stage, the development and the evaluation. Scaffolding process must be a constant in the daily labor of the teacher, where he/ she should be aware of the different steps that conforms learning pushing him to be up today and constantly be evaluating the work to see the progress and the difficulties to improve them.
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VIEYRA LIMA MARIA DE LOS ANGELES
CHAPTER 1 English language learning awareness About the language content I have learnt is the wide range of vocabulary and the importance of each word in context. I learnt how to increase it inferring meaning, find synonyms, redacting my own definitions by mean of readings. I learnt also different types of text and reading comprehension skills. In oral speech I have learnt important aspects as stress in words, rhythm, intonation, minimal pairs since they indicate emotion, seriousness, irony, sarcasm, etc. In speaking, I learnt how to organize my discourse according to my intention. If I want to tell a store I have to take in account sequencing words, linking words, use a variety of verb tenses, and specific vocabulary. I learnt how to describe places or different situations, to give instructions, phrases expressing agreement and
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disagreement, for giving and asking for opinion for making the discourse coherent and concise. In the grammatical and linguistic aspects of the language, I practiced the parts of the speech as nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs when I wrote poems, a comic strip, descriptions of people and places.
Writing a book review, an
autobiographical incident and an eyewitness account following models that indicate how to structure a writing text made me more reflexive about what I want to say or express. Definitely, for raising my level in English language, I need to practice constantly many points in the four skills of the language as vocabulary, grammatical points, pronunciation, oral and written production, etc. This practice should be in class with the Students and out of the classroom. I need to select carefully the resources on internet that will help me to master the four abilities in English language and I have to read English texts at least once a day for being familiarized with culture.
CHAPTER 2 Cultural learning awareness The cultural content permit the students explore the language in a different way. Through the culture they can learn about customs, habits, styles of life and different ways of think. Students will want to know about celebrations in other countries like Halloween, Thanks giving day, Christmas. They will love to know the food, clothes, tv programs, songs from other countries.
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For example to better pronunciation, it is very useful to sing songs for practicing common expressions, intonation, rhythm, thought groups, etc. Watching films is very useful for familiarize students with foreign cultures and for learning grammar in a funny way. For example using the Video segments in class.
Teachers can also attract the students’ attention reading newspapers, or magazines on line. They will be informed about what is currently happen in the world and can read articles that surely interest them.
This way Students can compare other cultures with the own one and appreciate it and learn a lot. The cultural aspects I have learnt from the beginning of this course are for instance, the history of the Golden Gate Bridge, the foster children, cell phone security, holiday celebrations, American TV programs, instructions in an airport, news in important American newspapers, differences between British English and American English, social problems with teenagers in Britain, the style of life of famous people, plots of some American Films, songs, etc.
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The most interesting has been the way English language is used in each aspect of the life of people.
CHAPTER 3 New teaching strategies discovered According to the characteristics expected in a successful 21 st century educator I can relate to this some strategies. As a teacher I have to choose the Internet resources that better adapt to the topics we have to cover. There are interesting educational sites for practicing the following issues: grammar with the video segments, pronunciation with the minimal pairs, word stress, etc., reading comprehension with quizzes for students evaluate themselves their progress providing sites in which students can read and listen a text and take the most important information. Also Students can work effectively with the templates creating their own poem books, descriptions, comic strips. Teachers must monitor their work as guides and collaborators. We can use the e-mail in order to send their homework for being checked by the teacher and have a better communication for any doubt. We can create Forums for discussing topics making reflexive Students and feeling confidence for expressing their ideas. Teachers must have clear the objectives of each lesson and evaluate the effectiveness of each technologic tool provided for the Internet.
CHAPTER 4 Reading teaching strategies The most interesting activity for my Reading practice was that in the site Adult Learning Activities in Unit 4 Intensive Reading which include reading, listening, watching video and vocabulary activities because I think this is a very complete activity. Also thinking in my students, this activity is very useful for them since covers many aspects at the same time and I am sure it is attractive for them.
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At first, we can read the story, then we can watch the video what keep interested to the reader, after that, we can evaluate ourselves doing the activities which are listening to a word and then spell it, matching words with their definition, read questions and pick an answer, write an answer for a question related to the story we read. Finally we can see our scores. The text in this activity was about Cell phone safety when people are driving a car. It talk about the accidents that may occur when people is talking on the phone and driving at the same time. The text concludes that people hope the information about accidents lead to laws about driving and using cell phones. This activity can cover many aspects in learning English, specifically in reading, as learning new words, listening words, spelling words, checking text understanding, reflection of the topic and because of the audio, video and an interesting and current topic reader really enjoys the activity.
CHAPTER 5 Listening Teaching Strategies In my opinion, one of the most difficult skills to master is listening. In this course we had excellent activities that undoubtedly help me to improve this skill but I chose Activity 7.2 Authentic listening as the most difficult listening activity. We had to watch a video, listen to a conversation of a native speaker and take some notes as we were listening in order to prepare a summary. As the conversations were with real people talking in a real situation about their professions, their discourse was very colloquial, fluent and fast so it was much more difficult to understand than a conversation prepared for learners. I just could understand little parts or isolate phrases. I think this activity can be easier if listener have the chance to read the script after listening to the audio once.
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It was difficult for me understand the complete conversation even I recorded several times the audio, but I also think it was the point of the activity: We had to identify the difference between authentic texts from those prepared specifically for language learners.
CHAPTER 6 Speaking Teaching Strategies A very interesting activity for practicing speaking is that in Unit 2, Activity 2.1 How to describe a situation or place., This activity is very interesting because starting of music clips Students can evoke places, situations, memories, etc ., and record their voice using a recorder software. As they are listening to the music, they can develop their imagination and they will try to use the most convenient vocabulary, like adjectives, in order to make descriptions. A complementary activity would be listening to some recordings in class and make comments on the work of some students. The activity in unit 5 about expressing agreement or disagreement is also excellent for doing with our Students. We can adjust the activity doing it in the classroom instead of in a videoconference. The videoconference is excellent option but at the school we do not have this service available. So we can organize the group in pairs or divide the class in two groups for giving opinions and discussing about a current issue. These activities could be excellent for practicing with our students and for our own practice as teachers. We should not forget to give feedback to the Student for making a very meaningful activity.
CHAPTER 7 Writing Teaching Strategies In each unit of Writing module I found really valuable material for working with students and for my own improvement. Especially in this module I had the chance
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to explore many Internet resources that helped me to be more aware of what I am writing. Besides I could learn different types of texts and practice on templates or following models that guide me to be concise and coherent in my writings. The activities were fascinating and useful, for example, we had to write a Tall Tale in which the role of the words in sentences was determining and it was a wonderful tool for practicing parts of the speech. I also enjoyed making my own book of poems and publishing it. The site of instant poems has a variety of templates for boost the imagination making poems. Related to boost imagination an interesting activity is creating a comic trip, telling stories using pictures. It was a very enjoyable task to use the photopeach page and see the work of other peers. Writing is a difficult task since writer has to use precise words and follow an order in the text (introduction, body, and conclusion). In Model Bank I had to chance to prove
with
different
writer’s
models
(book
review,
eyewitness
account,
autobiographical incident)and practice several aspects involved in writing as punctuation, verbal tenses, and parts of speech. Beside I knew other different types of writer genders (myths, news reports, folktales, etc.). Finally, I explored the site of Movie segments to assess grammar and I realized the importance of incorporate video clips in grammar and writing for making easier learning grammar.
CHAPTER 8 About ICT Tools Along the development of this course, I have found excellent material and web sites to improve the main language skills. The great range of activities and exercises that we have done shows that technology applied to education is an excellent option for teachers in order to better our teaching practice.
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I chose Module 6 that contains many interesting activities for improving writing. In my opinion, practicing writing frequently is an excellent strategy for the acquisition of the language. In the Web site Wacky Web Tales we could practice grammar aspects such as the role of adjectives, nouns and verbs in sentences creating a Tall Tale using a template. I consider very important to practice the parts of the speech and this activity is useful and fun at the same time. For the same task, we had available the page of Instant poetry forms in which we keep on practicing parts of the speech and we can also write in a creative way. The result was creating a book of poems. I felt so excited and proud of my own work and using this activity with our students will be fantastic and beneficial. Finally, in the blog Movie segments to assess grammar goals we found excellent written activities sent by other teachers for doing different type of exercises that undoubtedly will help the students to improve their grammar deficiencies. This proposal is really interesting and functional since student will encourage learning grammar by the means of films.
CHAPTER 9 Lesson Planning Planning is crucial for teachers that want to have a successful class and provide the students a meaningful knowledge. So, the models presented are very complete and appropriate for teaching English. But Teachers have always to find the most convenient way to make students profit lessons and obtain the best results. The context in which we are involved is a very important aspect that Teachers have to take in account for planning lessons. I chose Group work (cooperative learning) model. I consider that Student work better in groups because they have the chance to exchange opinions and help each others. Especially in English class, Students feel ashamed when they have to participate. I have realized they feel more confident when they are working in group
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or even in pairs. So I frequently form groups for making easier the work. Students in a same class have different level of knowledge and understanding, so working in small groups, smarter students can support and help those students with low level of understanding. In my opinion, this model is excellent for making an active class and teacher just guide the work of each group and is easier to have the control of the whole class. These are the 10 steps that we have to follow in the Group work model: o
Set the stage
o
State objectives
o
Give instructions
o
Check for understanding
o
Group work
o
Guided practice
o
Discussion
o
Regrouping
o
Summary
o
Assessment
When Students finish the activity, each Group shows the final product to the whole class in order to make comments.
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ZEMPOALTECA TETLACUILO ARACELI
CHAPTER 1 English language learning awareness When I started this diplomado I had a basic user level 2, it means, I could communicate with other people on a basic level talking about personal information, asking and answering about family, job and other common topics. I learned a lot of things, my vocabulary has increased reading different kinds of texts, listening real audios from the radio or from other pages on internet. I learned new vocabulary when I read these texts and when I listened the videos or the radio, also with the movies fragments. I remembered grammar structures as subject and verbs concordance in different times, adjectives, and I learnt more phrasal verbs (That is one of my weakness and I need to practice more their use and memorize the meaning) but studying these contents was funny and easy to do it, I was not boring or worried about that. I also learned about listening strategies, it is necessary to listen to the radio or the conversation very carefully and pay attention in intonation, stress words and stress syllables that are new concepts for me. The way I learned the contents is amazing for me because I did it having a lot of fun, through a funny way and interesting exercises, topics and pages on internet. At the same time I was learning the contents I was learning more about how can I improve my computer use with all the tools that I can have to teach English.
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CHAPTER 2 Cultural learning awareness Learning a foreign language does not mean learning just pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary. In fact, learning a language is learning a culture, language is a part of a culture. For example if we are teaching greetings, we can see that there are different ways to say hello and it depends of the cultural environment, in some countries is correct to shake hands and in other countries is common to hug the person. Before the diplomado, as a teacher, I did not pay attention to these cultural aspects, but now I think that cultural awareness let students understand differences between people from other countries after we finish reading a text, acting a role play or watching a movie. We must remember that we teach a language to communicate our ideas, emotions, thoughts, to complain, to suggest or to apologize and we have to do these on the correct way depending the cultural context we or our students are.
CHAPTER 3 New teaching strategies discovered The text “Eight the habits of highly effective 21st century teachers” is clear, we as teachers, must have knowledge but also attitudes and abilities to improve our classes using different strategies and technological tools we have as internet. In the third part of my self evaluation, I wrote that I discovered Internet as a useful tool to teach and learn English. I learned a lot about the use of my computer, the tools of the technology that can permit me improve my English too and finding other teaching strategies. I loved to create my video and poems, and these activities that in a first moment I thought were difficult with the clues and instructions given they were so easy.
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These comments of my self evaluation are related with some of the habits of highly effective 21st century teachers, they are related with adapting, collaborating and communicating because they mentioned about the use of technology as a tool to teach English, teachers need to know how to use it to do their classes more attractive and interesting for students. Also, I agree when they mention that teachers are a model for students, and teachers must be more comprehensible and they need to be closer to the students, listen to them and talk to them. Personally, I try also to reflect on my practice, how I did in my class and how can I improve it.
CHAPTER 4 Reading teaching strategies
I consider that the most interesting activity was in module 3 and it was “Activity 2.2 listen and Reading along” because with the elements presented, I could read and listen to different texts at the same time, but also, the activity provided me the opportunity to know and learn about other culture that has taken an important place in the foreign language teaching and learning. I could appreciate the importance of learning the cultural aspects through readings and this is sometimes, teachers are not aware. The texts that were two stories presented in this activity were not long, they were interesting and I could learn something more about the topics proposed, for example, I read the text “The Golden Gate Bridge” that presented dates, story and the point of view of a country with this icon. The task was not difficult to do because it was that I had to answer three simple questions about two readings “The Golden gate Bridge” story and “American and British English” story and the questions were about the most interesting that I found in the texts and what I learned new with one of the texts, but also they required that
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I thought about what I read and what I thought about the text to give an opinion about that. This activity allowed , first at all, that I could practice my listening and after that I had to use a reading strategy, skimming to have a main idea of the text, proposed in a previous activity, then, I read carefully and look for unknown words in the dictionary, it means, I learned also, new vocabulary. I think this activity was a very complete English exercise.
CHAPTER 5 Listening Teaching Strategies I reviewed the fourth module and I want to say that I had some problems with “Activity 6.1 Phrasal Verbs”. I recognize that the site provided in the module is useful, there are many phrasal verbs on it but that was my problem, the information was huge and I just could review a small part of the exercises about this topic. On the other hand, I think that the site “face up to phrasal” provides more specific information and exercises that I could do without problems. It is hard to say how the activity can be easier because this topic has a big extension, however, I consider that this contents could be easier with exercises presented in other modules, like the used in the web site “BBC skillswise”, with a factsheet, games and specific exercises, because I can memorize some phrasal verbs and I can play and do some exercises with them. I think also that in this module a movie segment could be used too, because with this I can practice listening skill and grammar contents.
CHAPTER 6 Speaking Teaching Strategies I consider that there are three activities from this diploma course that can be very useful in my practice.
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On the first place I can mention Activity 2.1 from Module 5 that uses music clip to create stories because even though internet is not available in a school, I can use a tape recorder. With this activity, students can remember a situation or a place and this activity can be interesting because almost all the people love the music; they can evoke something with it. Other activity is 5.2 from the fifth module (Speaking) where students can talk and discuss with a partner during a conference session giving opinions, practicing a dialogue or talking about a topic with a student from other school in other states of Mexico, using a tool (Messenger) that is available for many of us. The third activity I want to mention is the Activity 7.2 from module 5 using the voicethread site because it is so funny and can be interesting for my students (It was for me) to record their own voices talking about something. I chose these activities but I can say that many other activities presented in this diploma course can be useful in my practice and I want to say that I will apply them.
CHAPTER 7 Writing Teaching Strategies The sixth module (writing) used some teaching strategies that allowed me to achieve the objective that is improve my writing skills by practicing writing short texts. The two first activities give us some sites that provide elements that can be useful for the user, to create texts. For example, to create a tall tale the module presents what is this, give some example and then the user is ready to create his/her own story writing some words (not a complete text), and this is the same strategy when I wrote a poem. By the way, with this activity, I was not sure I could do it, because I never wrote a poem in Spanish and obviously never in English, but it was too easy with this tool.
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Then, I did other funny activities in this module, I created a comic strip, and I could present my story using music and pictures. The grammar contest is important in writing too, and I reviewed some of them such as sequence tenses, adjectives and some elements of punctuation as well as the use of movie segments to review and teach grammar. The last activities were focused on writing some texts using different models that were useful to do it.
CHAPTER 8 About ICT Tools What was the Information and communication technologies effect on English language learning? I select from module six (writing skills) three tools that I consider the most useful for me and my students. The first tool is the site where I could create “books” using images and write something in it. In this diploma course, the activity was to publish a book with poems but with student I can use also to create short texts, for example students can describe themselves, write a short story about different topics or publish whatever they want in English. The second tool I chose is was the site “makebeliefcomix” because with this tool the students can create in a simple and easy way a comic writing a short conversation and they will be motivated with this, I really enjoyed it and they will enjoy too. Finally, the third tool was the site “photopeach” where students can create videos with pictures and music writing about their family, a short story, describe a trip or tell their feelings and thoughts.
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CHAPTER 9 Lesson Planning I chose one lesson plan model that was the multiple intelligences (Howard Gardner’s work) 7 Ways of knowing and I chose it because
I try to give the
opportunity that the most of my student can learn and I am convinced about multiple intelligences has had a profound impact in education. He said that the intelligence as a capacity to solve problems that are valued in one or more cultural setting and he presented a list of seven intelligences two of the (linguistic and mathematical) have been evaluated in schools, but other people have not they are intelligences associated with arts and personal aspects. I think that this lesson plan is the appropriate for my students because I have students now and they learn in different way, some of them can be verbal, others can be kinesthetic and I need to prepare a lesson plan that involves all or almost all kind of intelligences. In the model there is a missing intelligence that was kinesthetic but I can modify the plan to design an activity and covering this intelligence. Another reason is because in secondary schools we are working with competence approach and the basic concept is that we have to teach our students how can they communicate in English for example how can they introduce themselves, how can they order food in a restaurant or how can they get a place and the lesson planning is about that, and is not giving a grammar classes as I had when I was a study. I consider that this model can help me to create a more diversified student’s learning experiences and can achieve that students are motivated through my work using different tools used in the diploma course.
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