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ÍNDICE
1. Rodrigo Barrera
3-7.
2. Abigail Fernández
8-12.
3. José López Rivera
13-20.
4. Margarita Medina Ortega
21-26.
5. Patricia A. Rodríguez Montero
27-32.
6. Victor Hugo Sánchez
33-38.
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My learning experience by Rodrigo Barrera.
This is my final report on how I learned, first; I got really frightened because I received a manual for the English course in electronic format which, had to be read and it was too long, especially when you are about to start the on-line course, so I decided to log in for the first time just to explore without reading the manual. It has been my first experience in an on-line course so, I got more frightened I when I knew that I had to take a diagnostic exam, I thought that it would be a toefllike exam, but with my tutors observing on screen all the mistakes I would make; thank God it was quite different. Later on, I explored the participants section, there was only one picture; probably two, then I went to check the diary which sounded like an activity for teen girls and to tell you the truth I did not know what to do there, until an explanation from my tutor came to tell me what to do. The forums was the next section to be checked; as soon as I finished I realized it was time to close the session, time management would be an important issue; I thought. Perhaps I did it backwards but, In the next session I would go over the section where you play with the mouse “scroll up, scroll down, right click and so forth…”at this point I learned that it was not strictly necessary to read the whole manual to “navigate” the on-line course, that is to say ; first make it work, then go to the manual if there is malfunction. In one of the first readings there was something regarding priorities, time management, and some suggestions about avoiding procrastination, so my hypothesis was correct: time allocation would be a matter of concern, so one of the first things I learned was that I could not work more than three hours in front of the machine, otherwise my neck would really hurt, my eyes would complain, and I would feel sleepy ,very sleepy .
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Boredom, tiredness, would spoil an interesting course, that is why I decided not to take long intervals, I would rather work from two to two and a half hours always going from simple to complex, pinpointing priorities and little by little learning to enjoy my course. My computer knowledge is reduced indeed, somehow I knew I had to demonstrate tolerance , since I was told that from time to time I might lose information, and to cope with things like those, in unit two; I faced real difficulties when sending my scores I felt more worried about learning how to send them than reading correctly, now I realize that my comments were short, although I wanted to say more, or wanted to be more descriptive; but I felt like the “new kid in town” or a bit unsure, speechless, maybe my tutor thought I was too lazy but it was shocking for me, I did not even know if my activities were correctly done or where to see my grades or feedback, once again I had to overcome my fear. Not until lesson four in unit two, did I do a better job ; I also learned that for reading; electronic formats do not essentially differ from paper formats but they represent enrichment. My accuracy was quite good when reading at normal speed, but not really good when beating the clock, in this unit I could learn that for reading; low level and high level strategies are required and that the most common articles or texts are written to instruct, explain, describe and persuade . In unit three, it was interesting to work with minimal pairs, were they useful or not? The unit itself took me to ask those questions to myself and continue on my way to self evaluation which had started since the very beginning, I know that listening is the most difficult skill to develop for most people, however, I enjoyed this unit a lot; maybe because you can play and replay a file as many times as needed. The use of videos to practice listening is well known and it could not be the exception this time. A task that is not easy is “thought groups”, here, once again, my scores were lower that what I had expected, I could notice that listening while using captions is really helpful, regarding culture; I think that pronunciation is an element of pride; I
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mean; the Australian pronunciation is recognizable because the Australians do not want to pronounce like the British or like Americans , they want to remain Australian despite their pronunciation. This unit three was a brand new world for me because it showed me all the possibilities I can explore to improve day by day, definitely, with plenty of time to really achieve a better level. Unit four was hateful, I really felt frustrated, and worried I could not advance at all, working with “audacity” seemed to be easy but it was not. I, along with my classmates faced lots of technical problems and the calendar going on and on, I learned that we needed to be collaborative, and help each other but , the only thing we shared was anguish and anxiety; until special help was given to us by people from CED, later on we could share ideas on how to fix and polish certain activities. Our speaking was not that bad in general terms but struggling with technology was an obstacle not only for the ones that are computer illiterate but also for those who usually work with the machine without problems. Writing in unit five was a lot better, fun and enjoyable, the sites We visited had tons of visual input and it elicited our creativity, I noticed a huge difference from the traditional paper and ink, and thanks to the programs our pieces of writing look nice I would say. Obviously, some corrections had to be done, and some mistakes were made but in my personal opinion ,it was inspiring and it changed the concept I had about writing as a boring activity for those literature lovers. Autonomous learning is an important part of this course, paying special attention to: language progress, cultural awareness and English learning and teaching. In short , I believe that the most remarkable things I have learned / or tried are the following: A willingness to experiment; that is to say, try things out and see how it works, just like “have a go” and take the risk, this is what I did when I logged in without reading the manual, for instance.
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A willingness to ask questions to my tutor and to my peers, always judging when it is appropriate to do so and when it is not . A willingness to think about how to learn; in other words, to think about the best way to read a text ( slowly, quickly, scanning or just for the gist etc.) or the best method of drafting and re-drafting a piece of writing and what model to follow, (news, descriptions, poems etc.) A willingness to accept and look for correction, to be keen to get feedback from my tutor and from my peers and act upon what they told me, here; I must say that it was always constructive criticism. I especially liked when my tutor corrected one of my writings called “you might be going too far”
because she was very specific
when she told me what my mistakes were . In my learning experience I should also consider: adapting, to promote and adapt new technologies to teach and learn into our real everyday necessities and I also learned that when the newest technology fails, the show must go on. No matter if you are in the mood or not. Vision. Look at other’s ideas and envisage how to use them to teach and learn on line or in traditional way. Eventually, blended education ( a mixture between on line and traditional) is growing stronger. Collaboration. It is important to share and contribute with our peers no matter if in the beginning you share only problems, ( as it happened to us in unit four) in the end, for sure, you will share solutions. Risk taking regarding technology, I mean, to see how far technology can take us in terms of achievement . Learning. It means to absorb experiences and knowledge and these must endeavour to stay current. Now a days as teachers; We should know how to use twitter, facebook etc. not only to be updated but also to keep in touch with our colleagues and students.
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Communication.
I have learned that we must be fluent in communication
technology (such as the videoconference) because it is a powerful tool for collaboration. Behavior. Our
conduct must show tolerance and global awareness, this was
especially seen when listening to other non-native speakers of English and when we realized that the English speaking community is enormous all around the world and there is a view of different cultures , here, I want to make a comment: Famous research carried out by Gardner and Lambert suggested that students who felt most warmly about a language and who wanted to integrate into the culture of its speakers were more highly motivated (and learned more successfully) than those who were only learning language as a means to an end (e.g. getting a better job).In other words integrative motivation was more powerful than instrumental motivation. It is clear that highly motivated students do better than the ones with no motivation at all. I make this comment because I believe that most English teachers would like to be integrated to the culture of an English speaking country. Negotiation. In the first stages of our course I also learned that negotiation is a powerful tool as my tutor herself told us. I mean, negotiation is powerful as long as it is a reciprocal agreement between tutor and students, other than that , it will not work. Leading. Leadership is crucial to the success or failure of any project, so I could learn a little bit of the role the tutor plays in this course taking into consideration that in this new way of teaching –learning, there is no chance for eye contact, nor for immediate correction (among others). Or that Distance should not be taken as a sign of coldness or the tutor’s physical approach and personality is not very well perceived; all of them are elements of change
and are
part of the tutor’s
challenge, that is why She was always using our names, motivating us to upload our pictures, offering help, telling us to ask for help from other students or, even giving us her phone numbers to keep a way of continuous communication. This is in general terms my learning experience and finally,I just want to say thanks to my tutor and to my colleagues.
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DIPLOMADO: “COMMUNICATIVE SKILLS FOR ENGLISH TEACHERS”.
Final report By Abigail Fernandez
When I started this course I had a great expectation about it. What am I going to learn? Why too much time? Will it be worth all what I am about to stop doing on Fridays? But I must also say that I was too much motivated to learn useful things for my daily teaching practice. Today I can say that it was worth all the time I spent on it and all the activities that I had to carry out, and all the nights I had to go to bed late in order for me to satisfactorily complete it. I think that all the lecturers showed a great commitment to their topics and to sharing their experiences with us, and I enjoyed every moment with my classmates who attended this course, because I know that all those who completed this course think something similar to the words that I am writing. Now, I think that it is time to tell you about the knowledge that I acquired in this module, and that it helped me to improve my English language and improve the skills that are involved in learning a foreign language as well. Now after this experience, I have the opportunity to share all this knowledge, uses and practices acquired with my students. For this reason I will explain the most significant aspects and points that I gained in each unit.
Unit I: In this unit, I started to explore the concepts, features and uses about working in an on-line course. As I was solving the unit exercises, I started learning the importance of improving my English language and finally not only I increased my English language knowledge, but I increased my cultural awareness and I learned about the culture of English speaking countries. This cultural awareness was obtained through reading and these readings were about certain cultures or certain social aspects of the above mentioned countries. From my point of view, the important aspects seen in this unit are the English language teaching and English language use so I consider that these aspects are important in making English language learning more understandable.
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Unit II Reading The reading skill is not easy; the importance of being a good reader is to learn to read, in other words, it is to know enough vocabulary, grammar and use of the language to make reading understandable. In this unit, I reinforced two kinds of readings: skimming and scanning, and I understood better the differences between facts and opinions, I also learned the different types of texts: persuasive, descriptive, informative, etc. and I learned a lot of useful vocabulary. Reading is a very important skill and sometimes it is not easy to understand the message of the author.
Unit III Listening I consider that this was an excellent unit. I think that the most important skill in any language is listening. The listening skill involves all the language in general. In real current situations, you don’t have time to prepare the speech, while in academic situations sometimes there is enough time available to prepare it, so it is important to keep on mind all the necessary skills for developing the language properly in our students. In this unit, I answered some listening exercises related to the following topics: top up and bottom up listening, tag questions, and excellent word stress exercises. I listened to speeches and interviews of people from different parts of the world. The intonation and rhythm are important, I could say that before I had the opportunity to attend this course, I didn´t realized the importance they have, but now I can say these features are rather important. I enjoyed the activities about listening to a song and about some interesting listening speeches on the YouTube webpage. Finally, I answered exercises about word stress, intonation, pause and rhythm. All these topics will help me and my students to improve our listening ability in the future, because I consider that practice makes the master.
Unit IV Speaking In this unit, I enjoyed the way I had to record my voice, and I could listen to my classmates’. Unfortunately I had a lot of problems to record my voice, and even though I didn´t have enough time and tools, I successfully finished this unit. I must also admit that I requested my classmate’s help on more than one occasion.
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Anyway, I learned to speak with calm, pause and I realized that it is important to open the mouth at the moment of speaking; this helped me understand what other persons are saying.
Unit V Writing First I want to say that I couldn’t conclude this unit as I wanted, but I learned important points that will help me to improve my writing, and I want to show just that in this final report.
The relevant aspects in this unit for me are: 1. Writing for a specific purpose. When somebody writes it is necessary to have a purpose. I enjoyed writing a poem; this experience makes me feel enthusiastic because I could explain my feelings and emotions that I had at the moment I was writing, and at the end of the poem I felt myself comfortably alive. 2. Another important aspect to consider is punctuation. The punctuation is extremely important because it gives the way to follow and the sense of what is saying. The use of commas, semicolons, periods, pause, etc. are extremely important 3. I also enjoyed lesson six too much. This lesson was very significant to me. This kind of activity is very useful and the students enjoy seeing movies a lot. I think that a good way to take advantage of this is that students see only certain scenes, and that these scenes are used with the purpose that they will learn, reinforce or practice a specific purpose of the class. I liked it very much. After explaining some aspects of each unit, I will detail three main points that are relevant in the English teaching experience in this module. A) How can I incorporate this entire module in my daily practice? I think that all these units are invaluable, not only for the teachers, but for the students as well. I am planning to use these activities with my students in order for them to understand at the end of the exercises the importance of the English language and that they can reach their goal of increasing their language knowledge thorough constant practice.
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This module has excellent web pages that will help my students to learn and practice the four English language skills, the web sites that I am planning to use with my students are: Study guides and strategies, Self-study quizzes for ESL quizzes, American stories , BBC Learning English, Words in the news, 100 Short English stories, English pronouncing dictionary with instant sound free on line, Free online pronunciation guides with instant sound, Audio for ESL/EFL, Find 20 errors, Describing people, places and things and , answers.com ( a free online dictionary). In my job I have the opportunity to use the Internet Classroom for me and for my students, for that reason I am thinking to go with my students, and all together in the same classroom but in individual form, answer the exercises.
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B) Communicative aspect: This module helped me to express my ideas in a better way, not only using orally, but also in other ways. I had the opportunity to express my knowledge in several occasions and, fortunately, at the end of each unit the teacher would check my work. This module left me, besides of all the knowledge I learned, excellent web pages that will help my students to learn and practice the four English language skills. C) Cultural aspects: The cultural aspect is attractive, I could learn different life styles and different ways of expression, I got pleasure from Australian people and their accent is different, even though I think that the British accent is more enjoyable. The cultural aspect is important too, because this gives the authenticity to any culture or any nation. When I listened to people from different nations, I could perceive the way the citizens see their lives, and what their costumes and traditions are. It is a beautiful part of any language, something everybody has the opportunity to learn when learning a foreign language. I could say that this module was easy but it wasn’t. It is important to show a great commitment to complete not only the module but the entire course. I definitely want to successfully finish this course. Maybe I was not able to complete this module as I expected, but I still think I learned enough as to conclude the entire course. I have to admit that I prefer to take this module in a classroom by the internet but with the physical presence of a tutor, especially for the speaking unit, which was the most difficult to me and unfortunately I didn’t have all the necessary tools to satisfactorily conclude it . I want to say thanks to Karen Lusnia, my tutor, who corrected me all my tasks and had the patience with me and with my classmates when it was necessary. She used her time to explain to us some doubts during the course and always was
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interested in our works. She sometimes asked me about my lessons or about my units.
My classmates were a great support, they helped me more than once, for example if I had any question or doubt, they explained the instructions or the activities to me, and other times I did the same with them. I think we all enjoyed this course too much, because it was good.
Finally, I feel that I have to spread all this knowledge to my students and I am complete sure that my students will be happy with the knowledge they will acquire and with the opportunity of exploring new web sites and with the advantage that could have in their knowledge with these relevant facets. I would also like to mention that all the teachers that did not attend this course, should take the opportunity to take it, because they would enjoy every module and would of course improve their English language, including the four skills and they would understand better the different cultures and several ways of thinking, and when they finished this course, they would be able to share their acquisition of knowledge to their students and, at the end, the teachers, the students, and the institution itself would tremendously benefit. Thanks to all the teachers for sharing all this knowledge with us, and I hope to have the opportunity to take another course like this, or another on-line module; only with the purpose of increasing my English knowledge language.
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A reflection about the course “Communicative Skills for English Teachers”. The main communicative, cultural and teaching aspects I will incorporate into my teaching practice. José López Rivera There are lots of communicative, cultural and teaching aspects in this course which I will include into my English teaching practice in order to help my students improve their English foreign language skills. My reflection will be developed according to the following criteria. First, I will give a piece of information about the course itself. Then I will write about some of the characteristics of the topics presented in each part (unit) of the course and I will point out the English language aspects I will incorporate into my English teaching-learning practice. Communicative Skills for English Teachers is an on online English language course. It is designed and given by The Foreign Language Teaching Center (CELE) of The National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). It is intended to update in service Mexican foreign language teachers of English in order to improve their English language skills. The course is organized around five units and a final report. It emphasizes the four main English language skills plus a little more. Each unit has some lessons and these lessons, in turn, have some activities. The first unit is about learning to learn English through internet tools and resources; the other four ones develop the reading, listening, speaking, and writing skills, respectively. The final report is a kind of reflection about the learning results we (teachers) achieved and the topics that we will include in our everyday English practice.
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The course has many positive aspects. It is very well organized; It makes use of many educational web sites which emphasize different language aspects related to the teaching-learning of English as a foreign language. These web sites have very good and also very up to date information. The information covers many aspects of the English language learning process. Most of the activities on these web sites are designed and performed by English native speakers. This gives the course a very high quality and a sense of completeness. These English language learning activities are very attractive, most of them provide answer keys and have instant evaluation procedures which keep a track of the students’ learning process. The course also makes use of the most recent educational media software which helps to enhance students’ motivation and make the English language learning process more attractive. The first unit helps students to become familiar with some resources and tools for learning to learn English through internet. The unit has three lessons. All of them are very important because I think they represent the corner stone of the course. The activities of the first lesson encourage learners to explore the site in order to become familiar with it. The second and third lessons provide students with a) important English concepts used when doing online activities, especially Mouse Master, http://www.tcet.com/eaonline/index.html . Although the activities on this topic are very easy, they are really helpful for those who start taking online courses like me; b) online information, tips, and topics on how to learn English as a second or foreign language. The topics one can find are study and learning strategies, grammar, vocabulary, reading, listening, writing, composition, kinds of online
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dictionaries, culture and lots of online activities to improve many English language aspects, among others. When I started working with this unit I was a little nervous; I thought I would not be able to do all the activities because of my lacked of computer skills. However, at the end of it, I felt more confident: I could do almost all the activities. From this unit I will incorporate many aspects into my English teaching practice. From the Center for Education & Training web site I will ask my students to do the activities regarding Mouse Master so they can familiarize with the concepts used when doing online activities. I will also ask them to do some activities from Grammar Central of this same web site to learn and practice some grammar points. Finally, they must learn some American culture from American Stories. From the Study Guides and Strategies, http://www.studygs.net/index.htm I will ask my students to explore the topics: learning and study strategies, reading, writing basics, vocabulary spelling, thinking, resources, and the ones they like. This information will help them develop their own general learning strategies to increase their English learning. Unit two is about improving one’s own reading skills and strategies. All the web sites on this topic are very interesting. They all have lots of information and activities to really enhance your English reading skills. Among the topics you can find in this unit are reading techniques like skimming and scanning; identifying facts and opinions, types of texts and their purposes; twenty reading strategies to
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comprehend nonfiction texts and a sample reading lesson plan. All this information really helps you become an efficient English reader and teacher. This unit was kind of easy for me because I have taught English reading comprehension for almost twelve years; so, I could do all the required reading activities because I think I have all the necessary reading schemata to do them. Of course, I leant many topics and many tips as well about learning and teaching English reading comprehension aspects. This information helps you become a better English foreign language reader and teacher. I think there are some web pages that really represent the backbone of this unit topic and which I will recommend my students so they can improve their reading skills. These first two web sites deal with reading techniques: skimming http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/words/reading/techniques/skimming/index.shtml and
scanning
http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/words/reading/techniques/scanning/index.shtml
.
They are very good because they help students practice and master these reading techniques. To discriminate between facts and opinions they must go to this page http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/words/reading/fact_and_opinion/index.shtml
so
they can manage this topic. I will also advice them to take advantage of the following page http://www.manythings.org/listen/goldengate.html where they can read and listen along. This web page will help them not only practice reading, but also become aware of some
aspects of English language pronunciation like
intonation, rhythm, word stress, etc. In order to identify different kinds of English written texts as well as their purposes, I will tell my students to visit this page
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http://www.skillsworkshop.org/writing/l1l2texttypes.pdf and get involved with the topic. To learn English vocabulary, I will ask them to go to the following page http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/language/wordsinthenews/2009/ 04/090420_witn_sri_lanka.shtml , where they can also practice some other aspects of the English language like pronunciation, listening, reading, grammar, phrasal verbs, etc. This page is really good. To help my students develop some reading strategies,
I
will
also
ask
them
to
go
to
this
page
http://www.learner.org/jnorth/tm/ReadStrats_20Best.html where they can learn about twenty reading strategies to comprehend nonfiction texts and finally, I will encourage them to read authentic English newspaper articles. To do this, they must
go
to
this
web
page
http://www.englishpage.com/readingroom/readingroomintro.html where they can choose the newspaper they want and read the information they like. Unit three is about listening. This unit has lots of interesting web sites with lots of information about improving English listening skills. I really enjoyed reading the information and doing all the activities of this unit. The topics of this unit are very varied. Among them are the following: bottom up and top down listening, minimal pairs, word stress, intonation, rhythm and so forth. These topics really help English foreign language learners to build a kind of linguistic structure of important sound distinctions and categories against which the foreign language must be heard and understood. I myself did learn many interesting topics about English pronunciation although the time devoted to this unit’s information and activities was very short.
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I will ask my students to go to many different web sites, get the information and do as much activities as possible in order to improve their English listening skills. For example, for bottom up listening they must go to the Randall’s ESL Cyber Listening Lab: http://www.esl-lab.com/ .In this web page, they will find listening activities for three different levels (easy, medium and difficult). The activities are organized around three stages: pre-listening, while-listening, and post-listening. This web site is a very good one for English listening activities. For minimal pair, my students should go to this page http://www.manythings.org/pp/ where they can practice American English pronunciation through minimal pairs. They can also go to this web page http://www.shiporsheep.com/ to practice English pronunciation with minimal pairs. For word stress, I will ask them to go to this page http://www.soundsofenglish.org/pronunciation/suprasegmentals/index.html
read
the information and do the activities. They must also know the eight common word stress patterns in English; so to accomplish this, they have to go to this page http://esl.about.com/od/speakingenglish/a/8wspatterns.htm
and
read
the
information about this topic. For English rhythm, students must watch the following video and learn about the importance of this topic http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=DLOBq2WcINY&NR=1 when learning to speak and understand English. Another important topic to know when listening and speaking in English is intonation. Intonation communicates people’s feelings, or attitudes; it also signals whether an utterance is an assertion or a question. Students must go to this web page http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2bHdXcszJ4 and watch the video in order to learn about this topic. To master this topic, students must watch all the videos related to the topic. Another important topic related to the previous one is thought
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groups. A thought group is a group of words which communicate a single idea. My students
must
watch
this
video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHZIA0-
G1sc&feature=related in order to become familiar with this topic. Finally, I will ask my students to listen to authentic aural texts. To do so, they should go to this page http://video.nytimes.com/ and watch the video they like in order to listen to authentic aural texts and improve their listening skills. Unit four promotes English oral production skills. In order to achieve this goal, the learner has to create monologues and dialogues which he must plan, practice and publish. This unit has four lessons and in each lesson there are some activities which help the learner to improve his own English speaking skills. The topics of this unit are: telling a story, giving instructions, expressing agreement and disagreement, and making a monologue and upload it at the voicethread site. Although most activities were very interesting, they were very difficult for me to do. But why were the activities difficult to do? Because most of them required to be recorded and to do that, it was needed to download two programs: Audacity and Lame, an MP3 encoder. I tried many times to download these files, but I could not do it. I was not able to do it because of my lack of computer skills. At last, somebody helped me do that. However, by the time I already had these two programs I had lost much time and I was lagged behind with almost all the activities of this unit. In fact, my tutor was a little bit annoyed because I had not submitted any activities by the time they should have been submitted. But, once you down load these programs and become familiar with them, they are very good
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tools to enhance oral production skills. Through Audacity you can record the same monologue as many times as you want until your recording is well done. Although the activities of this unit were very difficult for me to accomplish, almost all of them were very interesting and very useful for improving oral production skills.
So,
from
this
unit,
I
will
ask
my
student
to
use
Audacity
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ to practice and improve oral production skills. I will also ask them to use voicethred http://voicethread.com/#u377352.b409.i848804 to practice conversations or making comments on some topics around media. Unit five is about writing. Although there are six lessons in this unit, almost all the activities are easy to do. I enjoyed doing all the activities. The purpose of the unit is to improve one’s own writing skills by using templates to create, illustrate and publish
the
final
product.
I
really
http://www.pimpampum.net/bookr/PhotoPeach,
liked
Bookr,
http://photopeach.com/
Makebeliefs comic http://www.makebeliefscomix.com/How-to-Play/Educators/ and the
blog
called
“Movie
segments
to
assess
grammar
goals”
http://moviesegmentstoassessgrammargoals.blogspot.com/ . This last web site is very good. I liked it a lot. Thus, I will recommend my students all the above web sites to improve their writing skills. Finally, I want to thank my online tutor Karen Lusnia for all the support she has given us. Thank you very much Karen. You are an excellent English online tutor.
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MY LEARNING EXPERIENCE AND REFLECTIONS ABOUT TEACHING Margarita Medina Ortega
It is said that every day we learn something. And thanks to this course I have improved my English knowledge in many aspects. I will try to talk about all of them by organizing this paper according to the course units. Unit 1. Learning to learn English through Internet tools and resources In this unit I could explore a great variety of sites that I did not know. I entered the site to review the use of prepositions and the perfect future. Those exercises helped me to practice and to remember the difference between "above" and "on". I will recommend this site to my students. I think it is an easy and fun way to learn how to use the prepositions. About the cultural awareness, I can say that in the readings I did from the recommended sites, I learned about the CN Tower in Canada. I have never been to this country, so it was very interesting to know about it, the tallest tower in the world. I think that my students can visit this site too, and although they are very young to be able to travel by themselves, they can learn many interesting data about the English speaking countries.
As a language learner and teacher, I discovered that there are a lot of resources in internet we can use to improve our English knowledge.
Unit 2. Reading At the CCH we have taught Reading Comprehension for many years. But the objective of our Program was only to read, our students did not have to know how to pronounce the words and the teacher did not have to talk in English in the
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classroom. Fortunately, this situation has changed and from the last semester our students are learning to develop the four skills in English.
In our old Program we considered reading like an interactive process between reader and text. And we taught to our students to apply certain skills and strategies in order to extract information from a text. Also, our students learned how to infer the meaning of unknown words. But, I think that for our students a different and useful type of exercise will be the one about Text types-circular writing activityMaking a cup of tea. I liked it because in a very easy and clear way they could see different text types: instructive, descriptive, persuasive and informative. I also think that the exercises of reading while listening will also be a great experience for our students. I liked the American stories because our students were not used to listen to the readings. That would be a nice experience for them, they would not only know how to pronounce the words, but also would listen to some sounds in the background that recreate the story. In this unit I enjoyed reading and listening to a variety of different texts and filling in exercises. I could broaden my vocabulary. And I learned many interesting facts about the English speaking countries. For example, I did not know that American and British English were alike, but after the Revolutionary War in 1776 Americans began to change the sound of their speech. So, as a Reading comprehension teacher and learner I will recommend my students the web sites I used. I think they would enjoy reading and maybe they would not consider it boring. We can always broaden our vocabulary and our world knowledge through reading. Our objective at the CCH is to develop fluent and independent readers. We have to teach them how important is to read with a questioning mind.
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Unit 3. Listening Through the exercises of this unit I could improve my listening skills and strategies and also the intonation. I learned that there are top down and bottom up listening strategies.
The first exercise I did was very useful, I liked it very much. It was a bottom up listening: Randall’s ESL Cyber Listening Lab. I could listen to minimal pairs. It was a good exercise for me because I could practice some sounds that do not exist in Spanish. I think it can be a very useful exercise for our students too. I liked that site because it is very didactic and the listenings are on a variety of topics. I think my listening ability has improved because now I am aware of how to pronounce those minimal pairs. In the sites and different listenings, I learnt different things I did not know about not only English speaking countries, but also about some others like Japan and India. I listened to some people from those countries talking in English. It is so good to know that we can communicate with people from other countries and that speak other languages through English. Maybe this fact can encourage our students to learn that language.
As a language learner and teacher, I discovered that when we are aware of stress, intonation, pause and rhythm we improve our listening.
Unit 4. Speaking My speaking ability has improved through the planning, practice and publishing of personal stories. We had access to resources and tools which allowed us to record and publish our activities. First we had to produce a short story, and at the end of the unit we had to review it and see if we could improve it. In my case, I realized
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that I could do it better. All the practice I have had helped me to improve my first work. And then the activity with the Celtic music was very enjoyable. From the music listening I could describe the feelings it evoked. Also, we read an article about using music in the classroom to make our students talk about their feelings too. I think it is a very good way to give a reason to speak. Another good practice was to give instructions. We as teachers always have to give instructions to our students, but may be that we are not as clear as we should be. That exercise was good to be aware that we must give clear instructions. The activity to express agreement and disagreement was very useful too. We could learn some expressions to explain our viewpoint about an important or current issue. Finally, it was a little bit difficult to record my opinion about The Beatles in the voicethread site, but once I could do it I realized it was not that difficult. It was like the activity with the audactiy program. It was not as difficult as I thought, and it feels good to have been able to learn how to use a tool I did not know. In the sites and different speaking activities, I learned that at least in the American schools teachers show their students how to prepare a speech. It is like teaching how to write an essay. They have to include an introduction, the body of the speech and a conclusion. It was quite interesting. That practice helped me to see the importance of producing a more organized speech.
As a language learner and teacher, I discovered that it is easier to learn how to speak when we have a good reason to do it. That is why it is a good idea to use music in the classroom or one of the other tools so our students feel comfortable to speak.
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Unit 5. Writing In this unit we practiced writing in a fun way. We had to create, illustrate and publish our writings. The first activity we had to do was to write a book of poems and publish it to be read by a real audience. At first I thought I was not going to be able to write not even one single poem, but I wrote six. It was a very good experience. I think it will be easier for my students because they are very creative, and they can learn vocabulary and some other English structures to express what they want in a book of poems. I liked this tool, the Bookr. Another activity I liked was the comic strip. It is also a fun way to learn English, and again, I think that it can be a very fun and useful tool for the students to develop their writing skill. To make a slide story with photopeach was another enjoyable experience. It made me think about a story, then I had to think what I wanted to say and how. It was so exciting to choose the music and photos and see my story completed. The autobiographical incident model was very useful too. When I am in front of a white paper sheet I do not know how to start, and I think it is the same for some of our students. That is why this type of activities help to improve the writing skill by practicing writing short texts using personal stories. In the websites I used, I learnt that in the American schools they teach the students how to write. They teach that in an easy and very didactic way. I think that in Mexico, the writing ability is not very well developed, not even in Spanish. I think that the activities to practice punctuation and sequence of tenses are very useful to write well.
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The activity of the eyewitness account model was also helpful to develop the writing skill. I think that everybody in one way or another has been an eyewitness and always has something to write. The other writing models are useful too. The students can see the wide variety of them and they can choose the one they like better. Students can follow those models to learn to write in a coherent and organized way. They can develop that skill not only for their English class, but for their other subjects. Finally, I think that students will also like very much the movies and grammar activity. The idea of the Brazilian teacher is good to learn grammar in a fun way. Most of the students think that grammar is boring and that at the end they will not need it. But if they see the movie clips to learn the grammar elements, they will realize that we need grammar to use the English language properly, otherwise people will not understand us. I think that thanks to this course I improved my language level. I am aware that I have to keep on learning and improving my English language knowledge. It would be easier to improve it if I could live for a while in an English speaking country. But since it is not possible, we can profit all the web sites and tools we learned during the course.
I would like to thank my course mates. They were very helpful when I did not know how to do the activities with the new tools. And also I would like to thank Karen. She has been a very good and patient tutor. All the good experiences and knowledge I got during this course have made me a better teacher. I will share what I have learned with my students.
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DIPLOMADO: “COMMUNICATIVE SKILLS FOR ENGLISH TEACHERS”. FINAL REPORT Patricia A. Rodríguez Montero.
Write a report focusing on the main communicative, cultural and teaching aspects which you and your colleagues may incorporate to your practice. Introduction I work as an English teacher at the CCH Sur. In the previous years we taught mainly Reading Comprehension, but in this school cycle (2010-1 and 2) we focused on the four-skill teaching. We worked in our classroom with Saslow and Ascher’s book Top Notch Fundamentals as a first step in order to know and be familiar with this didactic material. In this Diplomado we have also discussed with teacher Joaquín Meza and Barbara Byer mainly, about the listening and speaking activities on this book as well as lesson planning. As the on-line activities are directly related to our teaching-learning process I will report the interesting and useful sites I would use or recommend to my students in order to improve their, and why not mine, English learning as a foreign language. The activities that every unit proposes are very well planned and focused on a constructive learning: in the first unit there is an introduction and a test in order to know what the purpose of this course is. I must mention that the user will need knowledge about how to work with internet sites, how to upload, download, save programs, files, etc. as well as a good organization of time and planning concern with the solution of the activities. The role of the tutor is crucial in the online courses. He/she must keep in touch constantly with the students, checking not only the solved activities but also sending messages that show the students that the tutor is following their progress. This aspect is fundamental because the student must feel attention and concern from the tutor. Besides, the tutor must have disposition to solve or attend to the
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students’ questions, doubts or problems. This is not easy since they –tutor and students- only have internet to communicate (through e-mails, forums, activities, etc.). Something that our tutor Karen show us with actions was her commitment as teacher and as tutor. She was always there showing concern about us. Communicative aspects One feature that many sites or links have is that you can find a tutorial, in this way the teacher knows the instructions about the activity he/she is about to solve. This is relevant because the teacher can recommend the site to students and ask them to do the activities. (They will know what/how are they going to do). In my opinion one of the flaws that Top Notch has is that in every unit we can find “models” of conversations but these are too short. For instance, in Unit 6, “Clothes”, the dialogue is this: -“I like that dress. –Thank you. –You’re welcome.” There is not integration or “recycling” of the previous knowledge. The students are not encouraged to reproduce longer conversations. In order to practice more their English speaking skill I would ask them to write an introduction for this conversation using dialogues from the previous units. And they can practice it in a videoconference with a partner, for instance. Furthermore, half of the group can use Audacity to record their voice and the other half can listen and comment in the classroom their impression about: pronunciation, vocabulary, intonation, etc. This tool made me think about all the things involved in the recording of our voice: how good or bad is my pronunciation?, how much vocabulary do I possess in order to express a message?, what is the difference between reporting a fact or give an opinion?, how many times do I make pauses when I speak in English?, why does this happen? If we connect this with the rubrics we can reflect upon our communicative competence. The students become aware of their needs, lacks or skills. This can be a good way to evaluate their progress because they can record their voice one more time, compare the previous with the last one and present to the tutor the best version.
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The activities on Unit 3 “Listening”, lesson 2 called my attention: the way words must be pronounced and with the correct stress and intonation. As I mentioned, now I am more aware about their importance and benefit. For instance, the intonation in an information question is not the same as in Yes/no questions: we must take into account the falling and rising intonation. As the book we use in the classroom does not have constant exercises on this, Sounds of English: Word Stress, Word Stress: the eight common word stress patterns inEnglish, ESL Intonation: Stress Types are great sources for practicing the rhythm in English, among others. Why? Because the way they speak will have a more effective communication since the language aspects mentioned above give “intention” to the spoken message, i. e. in a sentence, the stressed word encloses the main meaning. As English does not have graphic stresses (such as in Spanish or French) the site uses the stressed syllables in CAPITAL LETTERS so that the learner can, at least, visualize how to stress correctly the word. The comic strip is another excellent tool to communicate something. Creativeness and intelligence are important “ingredients” the students should possess: what is the comic about?, what are the words that best fit in the message? As they do not have enough space to write they should be concise, brief and smart. What about a students’ comic exhibition at school? The teachers and students could know more about their mates and again, the affective and social aspects are present in the English class. Cultural aspects In sites like AUDIO FOR EFL/ESL our students can get in touch with American cultural aspects such as agricultural production (cherries), health reports, famous American people as well as writers such as Edgar A. Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Kate Chopin, among others. This site offers many possibilities on topics and different levels. For instance, I found “Why you shouldn’t smoke” appropriated to my students. Literature always promotes knowledge about the culture and the language you are learning. Another links that stand for culture are: The Golden Gate Bridge and American and British English because the learners
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read and listen to them at the same time. The teacher can ask them to bring as homework the most important sentences or the information that called their attention. Australianetwork.com
includes several texts on culture: geography,
biodiversity, political moments in different parts of the world, etc., and as we were asked during the course, the teacher may assign a short activity focused on a cultural topic. The aural texts the teacher can find at the BBC Learning site are good enough to listen to a different pronunciation from the American. Teaching aspects Most students always show an interest about how good/bad is their pronunciation. Students can practice it somehow in the classroom but it is not enough. The teacher can ask them to visit the following site: Randall’s ESL Cyber Listening Lab., Here they can find in “shiporsheep.com” easy exercises about words that are written and pronounced in a similar way, i. e. bat/bad. The support in teaching is that the words are represented with drawings, and in this way they can easily learn more vocabulary. The teacher can evaluate vocabulary by showing them just the pictures and listen to their pronunciation. In the site “100 English Stories” the students can find aural and written texts about diverse topics and while they read the story they also listen to it. They can become more aware of English pronunciation, stress and intonation. At the bottom of the page they can work with vocabulary, cloze, questions about the text and dictation. When learning vocabulary it is important to do it by context. At BBC Learning English. Words in the News again, our students listen to the text but also you can find words in bold, this means that these words may have more than just one meaning and the students have to be able to choose in a dictionary the better one.
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Teaching and learning process can be seen also with the interaction between the participants: it has many forums in which the students interact because the tutor can check the work as well as the rest of the group. Most forums require comments about the activities done by the classmates. This enrichment allows a lot of learning because everybody can see each other’s work. The topics on unit 5 also let the participants know more about social and affective aspects of the group, something that our Educative Model/Focus at CCH seeks for. As I mentioned in the Introduction, the Forums are “classrooms” were our students can interact. An example of this is with My visual story’s activity. The students can do a presentation about a topic they previously chose. As they must upload
their
images
and
insert
captions,
they
are
doing
a
creative
product/homework. Besides, they can work with a similar topic and they can play it in the classroom. Everybody can see richness in the diversity of the final works. The affective aspect of the class is also reinforced because everybody can write an opinion about the work. If someone does not know what to do or has some difficulties, the most trained can help them. I really liked and will use this tool on my next course. Teaching can be check with the several quizzes in the sites: the students feel that their progress is being evaluated, and the teacher complements the class. Another site I love is in Unit 3: Interesting Things for ESL Students: Minimal Pairs. Here the students can listen as many times as they need two similar words in order to distinguish the sound that makes them different. After that, they listen to the word and select it with the mouse: they can see their right or wrong answers in the same moment and of course, their score. This enhances their confidence in listening skill. The correct spelling, writing, and use of punctuation marks can be reinforced with the link: Graded English. Here you can find language dictation free online. In my experience I can say that it was exiting and academic. Punctuation in English is not the same as in Spanish and if we want our students to write academic reports
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this is a good start. In this site the students can begin to practice the use of question/exclamation marks, period, colon, semicolon, etc. Moreover, they practice the listening and writing skills, spelling and they also get more cultural knowledge. The teacher can suggest as self-evaluation the quizzes about “what is a sentence” found in www.bbc.co.uk because the students can listen, answer and save their score in a file, then, send it to the teacher. Conclusions I must confess that I am not so convinced about the advantages of the online courses. I prefer the classroom interaction between the teacher and his/her students. In the classroom students can ask in real time and their questions, doubts, etc. The group discussions that take place in the classroom are more effective because everyone can participate and get an answer at the moment. But in this Diplomado my perspective changed. Now I am certain that well-selected web sites and well-planned and directed activities may support and promote knowledge beyond the classroom.
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My Learning Experience. Víctor Hugo Sánchez.
First at all, I would like to mention that this was a fantastic experience! Distance learning and e-learning will surely be two effective tools for students in the future. At the beginning it seemed to be difficult and I was unsure about the effectiveness of this method. Not having classes and being always revised by a tutor sounded completely new and strange to me. I had no previous experience in studying via internet. I surely missed the help and attention of a teacher in person, but on the other hand I found in Karen Lusnia –my tutor- a valuable help and a reliable support through my way in this new experience. Three main areas which covered throughout the on-line course: Language Progress, Cultural awareness and English Language teaching and learning. All of them were directed, in general terms, to specific objectives in order to develop skills and help participants to improve their knowledge. All of them were integrated in four Units (2 to 5) blending the four skills any learner of English must develop: Reading, listening, speaking and writing. My first contact with the on-line course was Unit 1. This is an introductory Unit devoted to develop internet and computing skills necessary to fulfill the tasks assigned in each lesson of every Unit. Meeting the rest of the participants and having my first contact with my tutor was awesome! I felt very happy when I uploaded my picture and looked at those of my cyber-classmates. I read the article about time management and it made an important impact on the way I planned my activities. Time is not only money; it is also means the opportunity to enjoy other things in life! After that I did my diagnostic exam. It is a valuable tool to check you present level and make a comparison at the end of the cyber-voyage. I was not only ready but anxious to start my engine, as they always say in racing competitions. I must
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confess that I felt I was too grown up to keep a diary but I accepted it as a part of the course. With the turn of the months I found this study diary an extremely valuable tool to keep track of my own progress. Unit 2 is about Reading. It is an interactive process between reader and text where, as a participant, I interacted with the text to recreate a meaningful discourse. This skill is especially important in my language progress. Through reading I am able to extract the required information from a text. Acquiring vocabulary is also important and reading is the best way to find unknown words. Getting some lexical knowledge helped me to improve my cultural awareness. Words lead to concepts, ideas and in a broad sense to culture. Now I think I can help my students to read in L2, strategies like deducing and inferring meaning from unknown words are necessary to understand the text, and after this cyber-experience I am a more fluent and independent reader. In class I will surely use a number of skills and strategies to facilitate comprehension. My students will read interesting texts, listen and read along, fill in exercises and work with reading strategies. February came and the Unit 2 came along. This Unit is entrusted to Listening. During the development of this Unit I improved my listening skills and strategies by means of top-down and bottom-up listening as well as listening for stress and intonation. The first listening I chose was The Ancient Olympics. The second listening was the one where the speaker describes some of the differences between the US and UK education systems. Both of them helped me to increase my cultural awareness. The speaker explains clearly with a wider range of vocabulary which helped me to go further in my language progress. The third one was Living in Oxford. The speaker is a Croatian woman, who talks, with British accent, about living in Oxford, where she went to study English. In the sites I learnt about British culture, different cities in England and the music of spoken language. After
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studying this Unit now my motto is: Paying attention to details is the key to understand. A brand new concept for me was thought groups. Related to the concept of intonation; it has to do with where we make pauses when we speak. This is necessary to keep related words together so that we are comprehensible when we speak. My listening ability has improved because I learned about thought groups and the rhythm of the spoken English. As a language learner and teacher, I discovered that I can divide the speech in chunks called thought groups. At this point, I can understand better a variety of listening tasks. I will integrate this concept in my English language teaching to make students aware of pauses, listening for details and activating background knowledge too. To improve my students listening skills I will try to bring to the classroom actual conversations and real English, spoken at normal speed. I will also pay more attention to the rising and falling intonation in order to teach this to my students. The tough section of the course came at the beginning of March. It was unit 4: Speaking. Technical difficulties were present in this section. It was necessary to merge my language, personal and computer skills in one single project. It was really demanding! I downloaded Audacity program and an MP·Encoder. After installing the programs and made some test I made my first recording. I tested my microphone and commenced my speaking challenge. As a participant it was necessary for me to practice speaking in order to improve my oral production skills through monologues and dialogues. Those tasks must be planned, practiced and published in forums. My language knowledge was at stake and after finishing this Unit 4, I felt an actual language progress. Oral production is one of the skills most difficult to develop because the lack of opportunities to interact with native speakers. This cyber-challenge gave access to resources and tools which allowed me to practice and record my activities. My first recording was about Celtic Music where I could produce a simple talk on a topic which is of personal interest. I also had access to a website called Voice
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Thread. The site is spectacular and full of awesome traits! I uploaded my comments about the Beatles and listened to other member’s comments. In the sites and different speaking activities, I learned that even native speakers in the English speaking community need to improve their vocabulary and be prepared to give a talk. At this point, I can speak in a proper way and prepared since when you need to record something you must do it with careful preparation. I also understood how to tell a story, how to give instructions and how to express agreement and disagreement. To improve my speaking, I will be aware of my mistakes by recording my talks and revising them. As a language learner and teacher, I discovered that you must be prepared for speaking when it is directed to a public, for instance your students or colleagues. I probably think the way I speak is understandable but I needed the feedback in my colleague’s comments. When you communicate orally with other people, you need to pay attention to several aspects of your speech. As an English teacher, it is necessary for you to have the ability to describe experiences and events to your students. On the other hand, it is my obligation to help my students find an appropriate way to express in L2 their dreams, hopes and briefly gives reasons and explanations. I had a great learning experience on March 12 th. It was off-line. We received Karen Lusnia our tutor in our classroom to show us how to download, install and work with the Audacity program. Everybody helped around and we had a great time. We shared our knowledge and experience to help each other. Then I realized that it is very important to plan, practice, record and send your activities to your tutor and other participants. Learning is not only finding programs and cyber-tools in a given site, but it is also important to arrange sessions in order to discuss with other colleagues. I did not feel isolated anymore. Now I know I am part of a learning community. The last unit of the course, Unit 5 is consecrated to Writing. After experiencing some trouble with speaking I found this section fun and enjoyable. In
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this unit I had a nice experience writing in a fun way. I created, illustrated and published my own writings. When they were uploaded to websites and forums, I hoped they might be read by a real audience. Not all was fun, to achieve language progress, l also reviewed some grammar topics such as the elements of a sentence, use of tenses, use of adjectives and other aspects that I as teacher and language learner have to keep in mind when correcting a piece of writing. I feel my language level is getting to a point close to my goals. Throughout this on-line experience I have grown in several aspects including my English. In this unit I improved my writing skills by practicing writing short texts. I created a book of poems, a story and other writing models. In the websites recommended by my tutor, I learnt there is a big community of English teachers and we need to keep in touch with them to share experiences. As a language learner and teacher, I discovered a brand new world! The video sources and clips are great! They are full of fun and attractive as well. I will try them in class as soon as possible. My classes will surely improve. My students and I will enjoy them together. At this point, I can feel a bit more secure about my performance in class; and to raise my language level, I need to keep on preparing myself in the use of new technologies and all sources nowadays available. It is important to use proper punctuation when you write and paying attention to sequence of tenses. Movies and grammar are compatible, the same as movies and fun. Summarizing, the official objective of this cyber-adventure was to get acquainted with some resources and tools for learning to learn English through Internet. It also aimed to take my English knowledge to the level B-2 of the European
Community
Reference
framework.
The
course
comprised
communicative, cultural and teaching aspects which I can surely incorporate to my teaching practice. During this learning experience I made a sort of reflections upon those issues. In the last four months I devoted time and effort to analyze and complete each section, guided by my tutor and I shared this experience with other participants: my colleague teachers.
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It sounds simple and looks easy when a work is completed, but arriving to a destination is not the important part of a voyage. When you are on your way, there is also a time to make decisions, to do tasks and to achieve goals. Step by step I went all the way and I feel satisfied with the results. My learning experience took me to a higher level not only as a teacher but also as a person. I discovered new worlds through the websites I visited. I also got new skills and was assigned different challenging tasks which reinforce my skills and helped me getting new ones. My final mission is to deliver the message to my students and help them improve as English learners. Fortunately, now I am better prepared for that mission.
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