COMMUNICATIVE SKILLS VOLUME 4B by Sandra Hinojosa

4B 1

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 Sandra Hinojosa Flores

Contributors

Photograph

State

ARREOLA MARTÌNEZ MARÌA AGLAHE

DISTRITO FEDERAL CABALLERO MARTÌNEZ MARÌA TERESA

EDO DE MEXICO

CARDENAS MENDOZA JACQUELINE

EDO. DE MEXICO

CARDOSO ALMARAZ PATRICIA

DISTRITO FEDERAL CARO SÀNCHEZ CLARA ORTENCIA

DISTRITO FEDERAL

CHAVEZ AGUIRRE TERESITA

DISTRITO FEDERAL

CONTRERAS LEÒN SUSANA

DISTRITO FEDERAL COSIO SALAZAR BENILDE LYSENKA

DISTRITO FEDERAL DE LABASTIDA ESPINOSA LUCIA

DISTRITO FEDERAL

GUZMAN ESPINOSA JOSE JAVIER

DISTRITO FEDERAL

LOPEZ GOMEZ NAHUM

EDO. DE MÈXICO

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 fourth group participants who share their enthusiasm, surprise, stress and even frustration struggling with new technologies during their learning process, but their willingness to face the challenge as well.

Tutor’s presentation The present on line book is a summary of all te aspectos learned in Diplomado “Communicative Skills for Secondary teachers” Through its pages, we can review several themes in nine units. 1

It is divided into two parts: Volume 4 A which includes chapters 1 to 6 and Volume 4 B which includes from chapter 7 on. On chapters one and two, teachers describe their experiences about language learning awareness and cultural awareness as well, they share pictures and photographs. Chapter three, represents the new strategies that teachers consider useful and important for their daily labour. Chapters four, five, six and seven shows the main strategies developed during reading, listening, speaking and writing modules. On chapter eight, we find a creative and innovative way of teaching and learning. Teachers comment about the use of technology and share their particular situations. Almost at the end of its pages, on chapter 9, teachers talk about lesson planning, its importance when giving classes and their positive effects. Finally, chapter 10, represents the experiences about the complete Diplomado and the reflections made by some teachers. It was not posible to include all af them but the most representative are here. This on line book, represents the efforts made by the teachers of group four, the daily battle against time, family and personal situations. I really appreciate their hours of working and the time we spent together, it was a fortune to meet all of you. I learned a lot. Of course, I cannot finish this presentation without thanking the Professors: Ma. Elena Delgado, leticia martineck, Karen Lusnia, Erèndira Camarena and Dulce Ma. Gilbòn, the ones who really made this dream came true.

Sandra Hinojosa Flores

Contents

Chapters

Pages

7. Writing teaching strategies…….………………….10 8. About ICT tools……………….…………………………..32 9. Lesson Planning ……….…………..……………………57 10.

Final learning experiences………………..81

Welcome to Volume 4B volume 4B !!! See you soon

WRITING TEACHING STRATEGIES By Marìa Aglahe Arreola Martìnez This module was very helpful because it gave many ways of writing so I could follow a model such as the book review, autobiographical incident, eyewhithess account, etc. In this models where possible to see some examples to get an idea of how to write. There were another main activities for me which I liked so much as the comic strip. This activity was very funny for me because I had to use my imagination and creativity to make the comic, but

one of the most

complex activities was to create a book of poems, although there were some poetry forms it was necessary to rhyme the words or look for the most suitable words or even phrases. I consider that the blog named "Movie segments to assess grammar goals" is very interesting for students for the reason that they are more interested in this kind of activities also videos provide them opportunities to see where different grammatical structures and types of discourse are used. The students can see, as well as hear.

Writing teaching strategies By Marìa Teresa Caballero martìnez The comments of most of my classmates about the writing activities done during module 6 were focused to the main areas of the language we usually correct in our students´ such as, coherence, cohesion, tenses, the use of vocabulary, parts of a sentence, use of tenses, adjectives, etc. In my own experience, one of the most difficult topics for students to understand is the position of adjectives, for example, they say “the rabbit white” or the use of tenses in sentences like “The children didn’t went to school”. Another big difficulty in my student's writings is the difference between singulars and plurals, or the third person. In unit 4, I enjoyed so much Teresita´s Chavez Aguirre book review about The Chronicles of Narnia, because it was very well structured and she followed perfectly the model. Another work I loved the most, was Jackie´s strange incident where she describes a very scaring ghost´s story. My own experience in writing a book review, I learned to follow some steps in order to do a better text. In first place, I had to get reader´s attention and then, I wrote a general idea about the topic. I chose the book titled ‘Charlie and the chocolate factory’. After that, I was describing the characters´ thoughts and ideas. Talking about the comments some of my colleagues did, there are some of them which mention that the story I wrote was amazing and it serves at the same time for cultural awareness because students have to describe places.

Writing teaching strategies By Jacqueline Cèrdenas mendoza

I really loved this module Writing teaching strategies was a great experience in a fun way by creating, illustrating and publishing my writings to be read by authentic viewers. I improved my writing skills by practicing writing short texts. I also reviewed some grammar related topics such as the elements of a sentence, use of tenses, use of adjectives and the aspects as teachers have to carry on in mind when correcting a piece of writing. Everything was very interesting, fun and useful for my teaching practice I created my Wacky Web Tales using nouns, adjectives, verbs, etc., I wrote my funniest tale I ever written. Other exiting activity was write a book of poems, this strategy is one of my favorites because my students can do it without any problem. Creating stories was the most wonderful because I did it about my last summer vacations and this kind of creating activity was a great way to improve my imagination. Comic strip by Makebeliefs comic is an excellent strategy, students loved it because the can express any kind of needs. I couldn’t imagine that there are a lot of models to write. Write about a weird incident in my life real or fictitious and eyewitness account models were awesome experience. Finally I liked the last activity; use video clips in a foreign language are amazing because students pay attention and they have fun with these kinds of activities, and they can practice grammar and as a teacher we can evaluate them.... Wonderful!

Writing teaching strategies By Patricia cardoso Almaraz

There were beautiful and useful activities such as the book of poems, the comic strip line and the first book review. I loved those activities because i improved my writing in a motivating way. I have to say that I do not like writing very much and with these suggestions I started to take a journal with me, I write what it happen to me during the day with my students or at the university. I generally write when I get home at night and it has become a relaxing activity that I am practicing every day, and when I arrived very tired and I do not write and feel the need to do it, it would be great that I had the chance to have feedback from my writing but anyway at least I am acquiring the habit of writing a bit every day. The important fact in this way to improve my level of English in the writing ability is that you enjoy doing any piece of writing. My students have being very happy doing some writing using the strategies of the book of poems, the comic strip line, the first book review and all the writing activities suggested in this module.

Writing teaching strategies By Clara Ortencia Caro Sànchez The most useful writing strategies introduced in this module were many; among them I can mention how to focus grammar on linguistic aspects as how to write coherently, aspects to consider when correcting a piece of writing.

The project based approach for writing and illustrating. Create stories with pictures and publish them. Sharing and using pictures to write visual stories writing a caption to each picture using photo peach and add music.

Book review following a model was a very heavy strategy that helps you to analyze books´ content, descriptions of various sorts.

Using punctuation where we had to add punctuation to texts, play games to practice this grammar point. Sequence of tenses and events were activities that we can easily practice at work with our students.

The eyewitness account model for writing short stories through different types of writing genders is a hard and difficult strategy to be used with public secondary school students.

Movies and grammar where we used video clips to assess grammar goals, which shows us how to divide the group, invites students to express what they see, give opinions, identify clothes, environments and so on.

All this strategies forced us to be more creative writers, use a lot of vocabulary, to recognize, characteristics of descriptive texts, review and correct punctuation, to write coherently, to raise our language level combining 4 skills practice.

Writing teaching strategies By Teresita Chàvez Aguirre This module had the most interesting strategies for me becuse I loved them. I began working with the poems, it was a great activity but as I keep on doing the activities as I can not choose which was the best activity because all of them were fantastic! I checked my activities and read my classmates´opinion in the forums and I am very proud of myself because some of my classmates liked my poems. I found marvelous woks, for example Today’s horoscopes from Ma. Teresa Caballero that was very ingenous, “pet shop” from Carolina Perez it was nice, but the most relevant was her comment that in the site to write tall tales we should try more than one time. In Unit 2, I liked Adriana’s book, she made her first book about a hummingbird, then she did the completed exercise and included the hummingbird again, both books were excellent. In Unit 3 I loved my comic strip but I would rather drew my own drawings but it was a nice activity and the story using photographs was very creative, the autobiographical incident model was a hard experience because I shared a bad experience that is part of my life; the eyewitness account model was wonderful because I remembered a special and memorable moment in my last holidays, Finally in my last text Myth writing I had to look for information about fairies but it was a good momento to increase my culture. This module was excellent and I am going to practice the activities with my students in the class.

Analize Books

Write a comic strip Write a myth

Writing teaching strategies

Write stories from pictures

Write poems

Writing Teaching Strategies By Susana Contreras Leòn I felt so creative using this marvellous tool, everything here was new for me and I had fun inventing and creating different stories and I think this is an excellent way to check punctuation, grammar, capitalization, vocabulary and fluency while writing. My first book of poems was a very nice activity because I have never written a poem in my life so I was so proud of myself. I am sure my students will also be very proud of their poems. Creating a story using comics is another different activity that students have never done before so I will take advantage of this activity in my classes. My first book review made me remember those beautiful books I have already read. I know I will make my students think using this activity. A weird incident in my life made me remember an incident that happened to me many years ago when I was very young, my students must have lots of weird incidents to talk about. Eyewitness model was something that happened to me during my childhood so I had to think and remember that old event in my life. Using movies in class to teach writing is also an excellent tool. Teenagers will love the movie activities.

Writing teaching strategies By benilde Lysenka Cosìo salazar On the writing module, we learnt several techniques to help our students to write, and I concluded that the only strategy for learning to write or improve our writing style is to write, we have to try many times to identify which errors are our weaknesses; there can’t be writing without reading, when we read we hear what we wrote or what others wrote and thus we have the opportunity to re-write. There are different techniques that this module gave us, my students are very enthusiastic with interactive activities and everything that is offered through the computer, the sites are very interesting and now I think some of them are at their level, as I mentioned in one of the forums, the last goal of the secondary reform 2006, is to understand and produce quotidian, academic and literary texts, the techniques that I prefer to use are dictation, reading comprehension questions, journal, vocabulary, small trials, projects and so on. I check myself and the students themselves, can make self-or co-evaluation, review grammar and punctuation so that the processes are complete, I plan collegial work with the subjects of Literature, Civics and Ethics, History, Science, Geography and Informatics Workshop. One activity that I used with my students in this module of writing was the last unit, I mean pieces of films, they liked and enjoyed a lot and they saved me a long time.

Writing teaching strategies. By lucia De Labastida Espinosa

The forgotten writing strategies, I call them like this because we teachers assume that writing is only the assessment of the notebooks, small compositions, dialogues etc. that we include in the students portfolio. For us is the most important activity in the student’s evaluation because it can really be seen by the students, parents and authorities. With this we support our grade. Within this we paid a lot of attention to spelling, word order and structure but Are these really writing strategies? No, they are not.

Writing strategies are those strategies we apply with the students to achieve the writing of text, freely or controlled.

For me some of those strategies are:       

Register personal information. Relate signs with short texts. Ordered a sequence of activities. Identify use of tenses, words, expressions, idioms within a context. Exchange relevant information. Research information and classifies it. Compares opinions and facts.

Writing teaching strategies By Josè Javier Guzmàn espinosa

My main teaching strategies used in order to develop my writing ability had been reading a lot (remember I studied Letras Modernas Inglesas at the UNAM), but I also have practiced a lot. Having a diary helps, even if you don’t write on it daily. You need to express the events that affect you. You make a quotidian use of words, descriptions, memory, and more than one good dictionary! (EnglishEnglish) A thesaurus is needed to enrich your vocabulary. And grammar exercises. Visuals dictionaries help to check the meaning of difficult words. Roots of words help. Internet helps a lot with so many places where you can get access to periodicals that use the English of actuality. But it is helpful to connect with ancient English. Observation is important. I had had lot of courses to keep me up to date. Travels. Laredo, El Paso and San Antonio when I was a kid. Later I won a scholarship to study English for a month in Columbia University at the capital of South Carolina. Dvds help you to express yourself in English. I collect old subtitled films in English. Books. I collect old books in English. Classes. To prepare the classes, programs and material for classes in English helps a lot. There are many more useful ways to write good English, but the most important is to practice it as often as possible, daily, in as many contexts as possible. You’ve got to think in English.

Writing Strategies By Nahum lòpez Gòmez For most second language learners, speaking is the most important ability to develop, because of its importance on the building of relationships. However, the appropriate and effective usage of language principles can be better evidenced through what’s considered the most difficult skill to acquire: Writing. Learning how to write, in other words, how to record ideas and arguments isn’t just developing another skill; it also means getting involved in an activity in which the proper use of language is required. Then writing, the symbolical representation of language, isn’t a dimension that could readily be learnt by exposure, as speaking is; on the contrary, its mastering demands instruction since it’s only through writing that we can come fully precise and effective in the usage of language. Although writing is a one-way communication process, it’s capable to set the conditions in order to carry out a meaningful interaction between writer and reader, then writing works as a type of discourse which intends to inform, describe, instruct, and/or persuade. The strategies presented along module six were suitable for the achievement of writing purposes, but more important quite instructive. Book Review: A report of the most significant characteristics (author, settings, ideas, and characters) in a plot or work. Explaining a Process. It’s focused on describing the working of the process itself, by following the model guidelines, without addressing the reader directly. Autobiographical Incident model and Eyewitness model: Focused on storytelling; consist on a series of chronological actions, which come from author’s experiences or imagination.

WRITING STRATEGIES By Leydi Diana Lòpez hernàndez One of the most wonderful ways to express ourselves, may be the most difficult because you have to choose the exactly words so that the reader could understand what you want say, it is important to remember the writer won’t be there to clarify something, however it is one of the activities I enjoy doing so much. And in one way I used with my friends who are not here. I enjoy a lot the activity about the poems, to write a letter from a literature, in this case poems but I think the tools you gave us were properly to guide us to write poems, I consider my poems were not professional but I deem with the practice I could improve them, the good of this is that I know now how to do them. There were some other interesting activities I consider me and my students could take pleasure in doing them for example the comic stories, more if you have imagination to built it a funny one from a real situation, so it is a great way to describe your experiences, and to see them with another point of view. The last activity I want to mention is the one is which we use photopeach, this is a really nice tool we have to explore and use and I consider an excellent tool to

express your thoughts and feelings too.

Writing teaching strategies By Ana Rosa Mancilla Cruz Writing a book of poems was one of the most useful teaching strategies to improve my writing skills as I could not only practice the parts of the speech but also generate and find the right words to express some feelings. It was also a motivating activity in that I developed my creativity to illustrate and publish my own online book. As well as that, it was poignant in so far as I could capture all my emotions that I had about my life and achievements, and turn them into poetry. Other meaningful teaching strategy for my learning was to create a comic strip. It helped me to boost my imagination in order to create short dialogues and choose the suitable characters for the story. In addition to that, it was an entertaining exercise because I was able to express my ideas in a funny way. Apart from that, writing a book review was a good experience as I used appropriate vocabulary to catch the readers’ attention, followed a pattern to create the text and thought about in an extraordinary book to share with the members of the forum. In this case, I did my book review about the play "Othello" because most of us have experienced the jealousy in different degrees. So I thought it would be a good idea to write about it. I reviewed my colleagues’ opinions and we agreed that the most important thing of these strategies is that we could review and correct punctuation, grammar and sequence of sentences. We also identified the characteristics and structures of descriptive texts, poems, book reviews, autobiographical models, etc, and by means of these, we could create extraordinary writings.

Writing teaching strategies By Miguel de Jesùs Martìnez medina

I might say that this is what we do the most, talking about one of our daily activities in the classroom. But sometimes we do not have the opportunity to have feedbacks about our own writings, as it happened in this chapter. So every time I had to write about something, later on I had many opinions about the way I had written, some were from my colleagues and I appreciate the way they did, because you can see that others have some thoughts just like you, but the most I really liked came out from my tutor who was always pointing out what was right and what was wrong. And also telling you sometimes

that you have to add something else or change

letters if they were written incorrectly. Or maybe to check grammar points in some writings. After that you can reorganize your activities, see the problems you have and check your needs in order to work again. 1

That is practically what a good teacher do with students, and how we as teachers must do it in our classrooms, we can take that as example if we want to improve our students’ writing skill and start working with it.

Writing teaching strategies By Josè Luis mendiola Noguez All the activities from writing module were important to develop my writing ability. The activities were from a controlled practice to a freer one. Each activity had a purpose. Instant poetry is a funny site to write poetry in an easy way. Bookr, photo peach and movie segments were my favorite sites. I was impressed with the movie segment site; a creative way to study and review grammar. The movie segments were for all English levels. Grammar classes were boring in the past. Nowadays I consider movies segment site an innovative tool for grammar practice. Book review is a freer writing activity. I like it because it made me think and organize my thoughts to express them in writing. 1

I enjoyed the writing module

Writing Teaching Strategies By Benito Navarro Robles

The main teaching strategies used for writing In this module there were activities for enjoyment like the book of poems, the comic strip, the Tell tale, the photoshow and the one on the use of movies in English learning classes; which required just brief writing pieces or choosing options from a predetermined set of expressions; but, notwithstanding such features, they revealed to be helpful in making the participants learn the use of some resources for teaching writing and provide some reading practice. I liked those activities a lot, but also the module included activities intended to foster formal writing, having among these ones a book review, an autobiographical incident and an eyewitness’s account. For fulfilling the first task, I hesitated a while which book I would write about and it was Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World; for the second activity, a personal incident, I evocated a hard time I had when I was assaulted about twenty years ago, in unexplainable circumstances, in a very strange setting. The third sort of task could have been accomplished describing a 1

directly observed traffic accident, an airplane’s forced landing, a street fight or any other quotidian event which might have happened along the years, but I focused my attention on academic matters and tried to figure out what it meant school financial crisis in York’s Schools District, Maine, USA; which I personally experienced as an exchange teacher during the term 2002-2003.

WRITING TEACHING STRATEGIES By Xòchitl Guadalupe Palacios Michel

This module was full of many interesting and useful strategies. Almost all of them were new for me and I really enjoyed doing them.

Although all activities were interesting and helped to improve my writing, I’m just going to mention the activities that I consider the most important for me.

To write a book of poems in special for me; it made me creativity and sensibility… were the teaching strategies

Unit 2, was very hard and very active my imagination, vocabulary, rhythm and rhymes that I learnt and practice here.

Activity 4.2 “Writing a book review” was very interesting for me ‘cause it is a little difficult to summarize all a book and then to give an opinion; here I had to talk just about the most important and specific information without lose the sense of the main meaning of the story. I summarized the “Azteca” book of Gary Jennings and I practice the strategies of coherence, new vocabulary and sense.

“A weird accident in my life” and “Eyewitness” made me remember two real things that happened to me a time ago… I had to order my ideas and be very coherent and clear in my writing to be able of transmitting by my words all that I wanted to tell in both cases. I had to research and use the right vocabulary and write it in the same sense that I felt. It was hard too but very interesting.

Writing teaching strategies By Carolina Pèrez Màrquez

There are so many topics to write about that it is necessary to be prepared for it. It won´t be easy because, to improve any of the skills we worked with, further practices are required. Writing, as a mean of expression, demands certain abilities related to other skills (listening, speaking and reading). By reading we can know new vocabulary, learn structures and follow instructions to apply in our own text productions. Listening and speaking show to us that there are different ways of expressing ideas, opinions and even feelings. There are some ways we need to consider to organize the information we want to share and in order to get a better comprehension about it is said. Sometimes, there are so many things I want to say that I mix the ideas up so I get a mess, that’s why I need to write them down, in order not to forget them. In other occasions is happens exactly the opposite, I got stock and ideas just don’t come to me, in

such cases, I try another activity to clear my mind up and start over. For any of these situations following models were very helpful to succeed on any kind of writing activities. So, to develop my writing ability I need, first, to identify most common mistakes I make and try to correct them; and then, more practice, not only for written skills, but every language learning skills.

WRITING TEACHING STRATEGIES By lilia adriana Sobrado Campos

Module number six was full of surprises! I had never experienced such happiness and emotion while writing. Activities here are amazing and very creative, although it is important to say some of them were not easy (technologically speaking).

The best written activities for me were: A book of poems (1.1) Students can learn and use a variety of vocabulary in order to be more descriptive and fluent. - Creating stories (MAKEBELIEFSCOMIX) (3.1) Students can use their imagination to create a funny and amazing story, practicing grammar and vocabulary. - A visual story (Photopeach) (3.2) Students can create wonderful pieces of art because most of them are very creative. They can practice grammar and vocabulary. - Movie clips comments (8.1) Teacher can work with movies according to students’ interests, this is a good way of identify grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, intonation and cultural aspects of English communities. According to my colleagues’ comments they enjoyed this module too. We think this way of teaching-learning is useful and funny for students but even for teachers. We agree writing is associated with grammar and as teachers we must correct pieces of writing or students’ written productions checking tenses, punctuation, role of the words in sentences, spelling, etc. (it depends on the aspects we want to check). We consider students face some difficulties while writing such as capital letters, verb tenses, punctuation, etc. And finally, we are positive that with these activities students learn more vocabulary and grammar, and improve their writing skill. -

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart. ~William Wordsworth

WRITING TEACHING STRATEGIES By Hèctor Fernando Suàrez Camacho

The strategies I used and or discovered on the writing module were and have been really useful. As an English teacher you are supposed to know some of them. So, if you are asked about a piece of writing you are not asked about you are able to do it. You are asked about how you will do it. I mean if you have enough skills to follow the proposed theme, characters, tenses, extension, etc. The strategies used on the mentioned module are: a) Have a clear and well defined objective or topic. b) Correct use of tenses. c) Avoid punctuation mistakes. d) Pay attention to coherence. e) Do not repeat the same idea in two or three consecutive paragraphs.

f) Reserve the best part for the ending. g) Use the following steps: introduce the threads; make a knot; finally do an unexpected, romantic or tragic denouement.

I think if you follow these strategies you could have a good piece of writing.

8Writing teaching strategies By Cynthia Judyth venegas Cabuto Students feel much more secure when they have written new language down, me too. The act of writing is slower and to some extent less spontaneous than speech, so by putting new grammar and sentences onto paper give you a chance to think about what we have been learning. In my personal opinion we as Teachers must be very careful with the activities we are going to use, during this module I have learned that students can be creative by writing tales, poems, a book, a photo albums, etc. Our job as teachers are feedback the activities, motivate to use this incredible tool. My classmates agree with these web sites and most of them were pleased with this module. It may be difficult for them some grammar or tenses or vocabulary depends of the level you have been teaching; anyway the activities will improve reading skills, writing skills, meaning and lexis.

Students do not like writing because it is difficult to organize their (and also for me) ideas, time consuming and you might get confused using grammar. I tell them that I am going to correct one particular aspect of writing (paragraph construction, contractions, long words, simple sentences, structure, spelling, etc). I am going to plan a class by using these web sites, I also told other Teachers about it. It is so funny, creative and we as teachers can innovate lessons in the computer lab. These web sites were the best www.makebeliefscomix.com/comix_id=20519787C140241 http://photopeach.com/album/s4yeo5?invitecode=598c3222ed

Writing teaching strategies By Luis Javier Villegas Castro I liked the wacky tales and correcting writings too, I consider they are interesting and encourage people to write about something. The book of poems was incredible too. It had inspiring things to start writing. Creating stories are funny activities for those whose imagination is in another level because it lets you fly and invent. The comic strip was awesome, I never thought that something like this could exist and with easy instructions it will give us the chance to produce and create new segments of a story. You can perform your writing but besides that you can perform something else different that is not easy to find somewhere else. 1

I went back to the writing module and I could find neither my productions nor replies to those productions, I don´t exactly know what happened to them. I remember something I didn´t like was those long writing structures or models where we had to write following certain aspects. The good part was when you can write about anything in your mind but to follow a formal model I didn´t like it. Another part that I didn ´t enjoy was the starting stories or something like that, where you find titles to your story. I remember I was searching for something good and I found nothing. These were some strategies that will help improve writing not only for teachers although for students.

ABOUT ICT TOOLS By Marìa Aglahe Arreola martìnez

I consider that speaking is one of the most difficult skills to developed for this reason I believe that is appropriate to look for the ways to do this. Many students feel very stressful and shy when they try to speak in English face to face with the teacher or with another classmate.

Some of the activities presented in the module fifth are useful to help our students to develop speaking skill. Some of the tools I found more useful were: Audacity: this tool is an excellent opportunity to let our students being listening by themselves and by other classmates, however they can express as they wanted and they feel confident because nobody is watching them. Another important point is that they can realize which are their mistakes and how to improve it. Voicethread: with this tool students could speak with a purpose and it is very motivating because they could hear their speaking within a web page. Videoconference: although could be similar to a face to face conversation it is very engaging for our students to listen and watching through a computer to another person speaking.

ABOUT ICT TOOLS By Maria Teresa Caballero Martìnez Writing, generally results a boring activity for our students, but with the use of ITC tools, we have a powerful tool in our hands in order to get a better learning. Definitely, the most useful tools I found were in module 6. The topics proposed have been interesting, fun, enjoyable, cultural and helpful for my English classes. 1

In unit 2, I was able to create my own book of poems using technologies in internet through the site ETTC’s.

Another useful technological tool I used is the link Boorkr where it was possible to illustrate my poems. It has been one of the best experiences I have ever had because it was an enjoyable, fun and productive activity. These poems help students to develop their creativity and encourage them to write easily in a fun way. The third useful technological tool I found in module 6 was unit 5 about “model for different types of writings”. This kind of activities helps learners to follow specific steps in order to write a whole text correctly.

Models for Writing provide a wealth of motivating materials to help teach writing to give opportunities to our students to gain better and more valuable learning experiences. Using WebCT’s tools we can create Web environments to assist in communication, collaboration, and the work by projects according to the new plans and programs in secondary school. These three tools mentioned are an awesome way to encourage the individual creativity of our students. DESCRIBE THE TOOLS AND EXPLAIN WHY YOU SELECTED THEM The first tool I chose was in unit 2, module 6 because it is in my opinion one of the most interesting, fun and useful activity for my students who use to be very creative. This ITC´ tool will help us to develop our creativity and ate the same time we can practice the use of words such as nouns, adjectives, verbs, etc. Another function we have to keep in mind is the use of rhymes in the creation of our poems. 1

I found this activity thinking in my students’ preferences and I am sure this will be a fun activity. The second tool I selected was the illustration and publication of my first poem book where students have the opportunity to use their creativity in a fun way and with the help of images they will create excellent works which can see for many people. The third tool I preferred was in unit 5 and it is about the creation of texts following models. I enjoyed writing a description and the main point here is that with the help of specific steps we will be able to create well done texts. These tools are really useful because as we know, with the globalization, our students live in an integrated network of communications and exchange of information and they are very able in the use of technologies and we as teachers have to be competent in the use of these tools and give modernity to our teaching.

About ICT tools By Jacqueline Càrdenas Mendoza

Using ICT tools is challenged to improve skills. Presenting to students is something teachers do on a day to day basis, yet many are still nervous about incorporating ICT into their presentations and students have learned into action. I really loved more than three activities during the Diploma, speaking and writing modules were great.. The first ICT tool I experimented and I liked very much was Voice Thread from 5th module speaking; Group conversation around images; describe a person or people of influence, this could help students to improve fluently. The second ICT tool from 6th module writing, one of the most difficult skills but fun and the example is creating stories (makebeliefs commix). In this creative activity students have lots of fun because they create building weird, funny, crazy stories and they can practice vocabulary and language. Finally the third ICT tool was Tell a story, Photo peach from 6th module writing too. I loved this site; because using only 6 or 8 pictures with a topic as "My favorite vacation", "My favorite pastime", "My favorite place” etc. students can create from their personal experiences making a wonderful video mixing real photos, music, and stories. Students develop their expressions, use of language and they will love this kind of awesome sites. About ICT tools By patricia Cardoso Almaraz The module that I enjoyed the most was module 6. I think this module was helpful because you can take to your classroom activities that can catch students’ attention, interest and motivation immediately. Although students are constantly in touch with the internet it is a challenge for kids that you force them to use the

language and they can see their progress right away. It is fun, rewarding and challenging for any foreign English language learner. The three tools I chose were: BOOK OF POEMS (2.2) It is an activity where students force their imagination, express their feelings, use different and new vocabulary and write in English without even noticing it. They can make a collection of poems and the great thing is that they can add photos and share with their friends and family. MAKE BELIEFS COMICS (3.1) Here students are invited to build their own stories in a fun, exciting and original way, and this could become a dream come true because young students always love comics and being the author of one of them is simply awesome.

PHOTOPEACH (3.2) This ICT tool was really memorable for me and so it was for my students because here you are really involved in your learning just because your feelings are touched by your memories. Matching English learning with your personal experience by means of the use of your photos and music makes the activity simply wonderful.

ABOUT ICT TOOLS By Clara Ortencia Caro Sànchez

I choose Module 6 about speaking. The activities I would consider for working with students of secondary school are: 1. How to describe a situation or place where using a music clip you can describe a situation or place it evoqued you to generate oral production. A fantastic activity to motivate students to learn language in a very creative way and encourage them to express themselves. 2. How to present a short talk. Someone important in my life. I would modify the activity. I’d ask students to talk about themselves, including name, last name, place of origin, age, nationality, likes and dislikes according to the secondary school program and according to the students language level. After that, I would ask them to talk about someone important in their lives and say why. 2. Voice thread. How to describe people. It is a fantastic activity for students to work using recording tools, pay attention to coherence, vocabulary awareness, stress, rhythm and intonation when talking. I’d use this activity especially for first and second grade students according to the English language program for public secondary schools where students have to describe people’s appearance and personality. In all this activities students use technological tools as a computer, internet, microphone, headphones, MSN account and a recording software like audacity

ICT tools By Teresita Chàvez Aguirre This module was very hard, but I strongly believe that in this module are the most useful ICT tools to my students. I chose : 1

Voicethreat

Using Audacity videoconference ICT tools

ICT TOOLS By susana Contreras Leòn Information and Communicative Technologies on English language has had a huge effect on Teaching English, those who have been teaching for a long time have had to face a 1

different reality, some of them refuse to change but some others have decided to run the risk. Here we can find a great variety of activities and apply them in our classes. The most difficult module for me was SPEAKING. I found that my fluency is not good enough I realized that I have a lot of work to do and I was aware of my weaknesses. The section called “How to tell a story” was an excellent tool, It gives me every single step to tell a story so It was easy to create a short one. When I used the Audacity program in the section called “ How to describe a situation or place” I was surprised of my works, I could describe different situations with different audios, I could record my voice and use the music at the same time, that activity made me feel happy, I used all my imagination my students will love to do that. I loved the section “How to give instructions” I applied it with my students, when they finished the activity they recorded their voices. They had fun. ICT tools are great, fantastic, marvelous.

About ITC tools 1

By Benilde Lysenka Cosio Salazar I think that it would not be appropriate to choose only one of the modules because all were important, each was carefully selected and had the necessary activities according to the ability we had to develop, however if I choose just one it would be the last, the speaking module, which I consider the most challenging because the last goal of the target language is not only to read, write, listen but also to speak, to understand what a person is saying and respond, here we evaluate the comprehension and the level you have on the much famous phrase "think in English" which is a complex process to acquire, but not impossible to obtain. Among the activities that I consider more comprehensive, more attractive and commensurate with the age and the interests or needs of my students according to the context we live were the use of the free software audacity where we recorded our voice, listen and allow others to hear us, detect the fluidity of speech, the other one was the group Voicethread site which allowed us to hear the voice of a group of people and identify accents, emotional states, language proficiency, and finally the activity of videoconferencing to express agreement and disagreement, where in addition of listening we could meet the people and how do they react in real time

ICT TOOLS By Lucia De La bastida Espinoza

I think that one of the purposes of this Diploma course was: that we learned how to use new tools to improve our lessons. For me all the modules presented new ICT tools, all of them very useful in our teaching, but Module 6 was 1

something relevant, something I had not used or seeing in an English classroom.

I think Photo peach was an easy activity with lots of potential inside the classroom easy to use, all the students can work with it and it fulfills the competence of registering the personal ideas, describing feelings and emotions, etc. using the language functions given by the curricula.

Another ICT tool that can be used in my classroom in an easy way is the makebelifscomics.com.This is very creative, simple and funny and the students will be able to apply the social functions given by the curricula as well, but in a funny way without knowing that they are learning.

The Bookr was also one of my favorites easy to deal with and very useful to create performance evidence, I think these 3 ICT tools, were the very best and could be useful, meaningful and easy to work within my groups of 35 or 40 students.

About ICT tools By Josè Javier Guzmàn espinosa

American English Pronunciation Practice helped me a lot on minimal pairs because there I got objective assurance of the pronunciation and identification of words with similar

sounds difficult to distinguish. The number of exercises is great and the practice is engaging. YOU TUBE is a multi-purpose tool that serves many listening practices of English. It’s a platform that serves to put tutorials for the installation of devices. (Audacity, the cherished free audio recorder device was installed with a tutorial from YOU TUBE). Some very useful lessons on thought groups, intonation and similar topics were practiced through this tool. The popular videos of Bon Jovi and U2 used in this course were accessible through YOU TUBE. Students like this kind of videos and it’s only natural to select this site because of its popularity and the easiness to get for them. BBC is a whole institution in the learning of English. I have used it many times with purposes such as the reading of the news or their comment with listening of the text plus subtitles and an array of exercises fitted to the initial news. The exercises on ESL/EFL and on Grammar, Practice tasks, etc. are varied and one can rely on the expertise of the site to deal with problematic questions of the English language. I selected these three tools especially but not only for module 4. Other modules use Skillswise of the BBC or YOU TUBE. They have proved their value.

About ICT Tools By Nahum Lòpez Gòmez ICT’s (Information and Communication Technologies) is a term that involves all technological resources designed to process and transmit information. However, its usefulness has spread to other disciplines such as education, for which purposes they hadn’t been initially created.

The inclusion of ICT’s on educational methodologies and strategies has resulted in a new conception of learning. This conception, which regards learning as an active, authentic, and collaborative process, focuses to provide language learners the opportunity to use language in meaningful ways within real contexts, through the use of resources and platforms based on the ITC's. Internet, the most outstanding ITC nowadays, lies in the exchange of information through resources such as e-mail, videoconference, forums, and chats, to allow new forms of communication for long-distance interactions, which consider the exchange of ideas, values and feelings. On the educational level, it appears as an ICT that offers the possibility to, analyze, use, and distribute information to facilitate interactions among the learning agents in the construction of knowledge. Many are the benefits that emerge after incorporating the ITC's to teaching, especially for long-distance education: • • • • •

Availability 24 hours a day Free online activities Practice with technology based-material Easy and fast access to current and authentic material Opportunities for collaborative work

I found the most interesting tools in module 6 • • •

Book of poems: to encourage writing using the project based approach. Make beliefs: to create small statements in brief stories with pictures. Photopeach: to describe the most significant characteristics in a situation.

About ICT tools By Leydi Diana Lòpez Hernàndez

I have found that ICT tools are really a magic for everybody, and if we refer to teenagers, this tool is not just a tool for learning, but an interesting, 1

fashion, easy way to be entertained studying a new language, if we as teachers discover many things using them, now that they love the computer, I am sure they will use these ones and will find them more useful for them, they will be part of their lives. Honestly the selection of one of the modules was not easy, every one of them was very useful for me and I enjoyed doing them so much, however I had to choose one according to my needs, so the one I selected was the listening Module, I think in this one were provided excellent tools for now and for the future for example the BBC Learning in the section 6 min English, here you can practice your listening, the comprehension and get new vocabulary, if you any doubt you can after a great effort to check your mistakes in the scrip, also there are different topics you can choose to study as in the dictation, I consider this one is an excellent way to practice listening, and for those ones who have problems to learn idioms and phrasal verbs there are different web pages to work in a funny way, those have different exercises and you check your answers from yourself, and the other activities were so useful too.

About ICT tolos By Ana Rosa Mancilla Cruz I chose module 6 because I found some ICT tools very useful for my learning as well as appropriate to work with the students. One of them was to publish poems with pictures using Bookr. This is a fascinating and enjoyable tool that can help us not only to create, illustrate and publish any kind of short texts such as tales, poems and anecdotes, but also to attract our students’ attention. It is suitable since the students can use it to improve their

writing skills and at the same time to know and enjoy all the resources that this program offers. Other one that helped me to produce and publish a story was PhotoPeach. This tool may be very practical for my students as they can write something interesting about their life. With this program, they can use both pictures and music to make it more attractive, read others stories and make commentaries about them. This can become in a meaningful activity in that the students can share their anecdotes and feel proud of themselves because of their works. The last resource that I found helpful was: makebeliefscomix.com. Most of my students lack of vocabulary, so this would be a useful tool to start writing short ideas about a specific situation and express by means of the characters different moods. I strongly believe that the students will spend such great time in that they can use their imagination, creativity and knowledge about the target language. Finally, all these tools can allow the students to improve their spelling, increase their vocabulary, develop their reading skills at the moment of reading their classmates’ writings and enjoy learning English using ICT resources.

ICT TOOLS By Miguel de Jesùs Martìnez Medina

About ICT Tools By Josè Luis Mendiola Noguez

It was difficult to select a module because all the tools of the Diploma course were useful to develop my abilities. However, I selected module 6 about writing. The tools are: 1. Bookr 2. PhotoPeach 3. Make beliefs comix I selected the three previous tools because they are according to my secondary school students. Nowadays most adolescents in official secondary schools use internet. Most schools in Mexico city have computers to be used with the students. I will describe each tools in short. 1.- Bookr is a site where students use their creativity. They write and use flickr images. 2.- PhotoPeach may be used to describe any experience, create stories using real pictures. 3.- Make beliefs comix has students create their own dialogues and stories.

ABOUT ICT TOOLS By A. Marìa Guadalupe Monroy gutièrrez 1

All tools I worked with along six modules are very useful for improving my learning of English, but I am going to describe three related with ways to enhance writing skills. The first one is named tall tales; its web site has a great variety of popular short funny tales with different topics like animals, traditional celebrations, weather, etc. After choosing one, students fill out some blanks with verbs, nouns, adjectives, comparatives; it depends on what aspect is asked. At the end, the whole writing is displayed and students can read their productions, some of them are funny and they laugh. Slideshows is one of my favorite. This easy, funny, creative tool is used to tell stories or describe places and events with images, sound and text. It is a resource to make more personal productions because students can use their own photos, select a song they prefer and express feelings through short sentences or phrases. Besides everybody can write opinions about others´ work or receive comments. The third tool is movie segments. I have not thought before how I can take movies into my classroom to support grammar. The majorities of students enjoy watching TV or attend to cinema, so the web site has many movie segments with several tasks to get student´s prior knowledge, questions to look for specific information, write short productions with certain grammar aspects, etc. I chose the previous three devices because my students can use them easily and have fun while learning English grammar.

ABOUT ICT TOOLS By Benito Navarro Robles 1

Description of three tools

Thinking in the Information and Communication Technologies on English language learning, the most useful tools I found for my own learning were those of module 5, speaking, because this has always been my weakest language skill and I am aware I need to continue steadily practicing oral expression. The audacity program revealed to be especially useful for designing descriptions of people of influence, in the so called “voicethread” activity as well as in communicating through a videoconference about a predetermined issue; additionally, we can use audacity in other creative activities, such as listening to a music clip and then giving a description in writing and orally of the place and situation it evoked in our mind. But, thinking in terms of teaching, on my students’ sake, I rather need to select reading and listening comprehension activities from modules 3 and 4, because those two skills are closely related to the syllabus of the subject Adolescents and the Learning of English, which I am currently teaching in the “Normal Superior” school, and they also might relate a great deal with the kind of tools I am going to need in December this year to June 2010, for teaching a basic and an academic English reading comprehension courses, as part of a Diploma I am coordinating in the Tlaquepaque campus of the National Pedagogical University. The most supportive

reading comprehension strategies, were those referred as “reading while listening”; “reading for pleasure” and “Reading, listening and watching a video”.

ABOUT ICT TOOLS By Xòchitl guadalupe Palacios Michel Module 6 was full of creative activities that improved my English writing using the technology. There were many useful tools in this module but I selected the three most important for me that I’ll use with my students…

The first one is funny to create my enjoy it too at the vocabulary and help of the internet and this special software. 3.2. “Sharing or using my pictures: My favorite Vacation” is the second activity that I choose because it’s very useful… here, my students will have to do a presentation of something special that happened to them adding pictures, music and a brief description in English about

activity 3.1. “Creating stories…” It was own comic and I guess my students will same time they could learn new learn how to make their own comic with

it.

In unit 8, activity 1 “Movies and Grammar” I practiced my grammar (tenses, tag questions, etc) at the same time that I got fun watching a movie… and I think my students could learn so much English with this activity.

About ICT tools By Carolina Pèrez Màrquez Writing is not an easy task, it doesn’t matter the topic we want to write about, so, as much resources as possible, we can use to make written productions easier, funnier and meaningful, will be better. First, I will mention movies as an attractive tool to capture and keep students attention; we know they can get bored very quickly, but most of them enjoy movies. They love watching and listening to all sorts of effects from them, so we can work with the entire film or select the scenes we want to focus on, depending if we want to talk about the whole play or if we are going to refer just about some particular features, for example: vocabulary, characters, grammar structures, etc., which, in my opinion, is an interesting way to learn. I think writing poems is a challenging task because literature has very especial structures, verses length, rhymes and so on. I could have been hours waiting for the inspiration muse with no results. In this activity, I found models to write poems in an easy, interesting and funny way, besides; I could complement them by adding great attractive images to match the texts. For me, it was wonderful when we could see, almost immediately, the publication of the results of this activity. Creating stories was an unexpected way of expressing interest, likes or feelings. To create a visual story proved me, once more, that images and music are useful, meaningful and a better way of saying something when words aren’t enough. Students are very creative, and they still prefer reading comic strips rather than plain written texts. This is an excellent opportunity to involve them on being part of the creative team instead of just a reader. I think this activity is a very funny way of practicing writing.

ICT TOOLS By Bertha Senciòn Hernàndez

Audacity: it’s tool that help me to tape my voice practicing speaking at the same time other people can listen my conversation and give me suggestions how to improve it or which aspects I have to reinforce. At the same time is a good opportunity to acquire knowledge to manage some tutorials.

Voicethread: is very useful to describe people. In this site I could find some pictures and next to them the tapes recorded for people who have done the corresponding description for one of the pictures. Voicethread is easier to use than audacity, because I don’t need to discharge the program by internet, I can work directly in the site and I neither need a file mp3.

Videoconference: using this tool is a good opportunity to meet my collegues through a camera and discuss face to face a topic. I think is an excellent time to interact and to know the ideas and point of view of partner and why not to learn from them too.

The sites suggested in the module to be familiar with the activity were very interesting because I learnt how to create a story, how to describe situations and how to present a short talk and much more. These ones helped me in my writing skills too.

ABOUT ICT TOOLS By Lilia adriana Sobrado Campos

As I told you Writing Module was my best. The kind of activities I found there were funny, interesting, cultural and productive. The tools I found more useful for me and my students’ learning are: - (2.2) A book of poems. This site is an extraordinary tool to develop students’ imagination and increase their vocabulary and grammar. Students can create their own poem and select photos to illustrate it.

- (3.1) Creating stories (makebeliefscomix). This activity allows students to have lots of fun while they are building strange, serious, funny, crazy stories. Here they can practice some vocabulary and language. - (3.2) A visual story (Photopeach). It is an attractive site where students can use their personal experiences to share with their classmates by means of a video where music, images and stories are mixed. Students can improve their vocabulary and use of language.

Seals basking in the “sun” A pleasant piece of art

Seals, sand and sea are

on a gray day below the

mixed to show the

bluffs, at Half Moon Bay.

where men don’t exist.

majesty of nature.

In these activities you can find many options to work in a creative, funny and inspiring way. Students can enjoy them because they are free to write their own productions. Moreover, teacher enjoys watching students’ evidences and progress.

ABOUT ICT TOOLS By hèctor Fernando Suàrez Camacho

Module four: listening The most useful tools from the web I could find in Module four listening were: a) Unit one activity 1.2 “Ship or sheep”. This activity provides you a sort of words that are easily mispronounced in English. In addition, it gives you some tongue twisters; they are very useful in class. I have tried them with my students and they are funny and challenging of course.

b) Unit three activity 3.1 “Intonation and rhythm with teacher Joe”. Teacher Joe is a practical man. He does easy those things that look difficult. With his fingers clapping he taught me the English language’s real rhythm. I admired and liked teacher Joe.

c) Unit four activity 4.2 “Words on the news” from BBC learning English. This web site provides you a lot of tools in order to understand a text. They are: a vocabulary with expressions and words; the audio scripts, and some other activities.

In my opinion, these tools are useful because we have the web support and different teachers who give you clear instructions. So, I recommend them to my students. I suppose the activities could be done in the school, but my school’s computer classroom is always closed, the computers are damaged and they are not connected to the web. So, what can I do? This is my reality. However, most of my students have a computer and internet in their houses. My solution is: provide the students with the web addresses and ask them do the homework about these activities. After that, I could check if they did it with a written resume or another type of task.

ABOUT ICT TOOLS By Cynthia Judyth Venegas Cabuto The use of ICT tools in my experience has been great, my students and I are used these tools for many collaborative activities such as discussions, the multiple intelligence test, some readings from www.bbc.co.uk and we are going to plan more lessons by using ITC tools. We also know that technology changes rapidly and newer but I am sure we will continue to emerge of potential use in education. I think that ICT tools provides an opportunity to think and share ideas with hundreds of people all over the world as the activity 2.2 in module 6 how to create a book, it is awesome and students can publish it, everyone can watch it, feedback on your work and interchange points of view. In other activities students and teachers can develop strategies better; a good example of this is the activity 1.1 Wacky web tales in module 6 because students learn in a funny, creative and different way how to write.

ABOUT ICT TOOLS By Luis Javier Villegas Castro

I will start with my favorite one; writing. The activities presented were incredible and I will choose some of those strategies to encourage students to write because they will feel it like I did. MOVIE SEGMENTS was excellent. It gives you the opportunity to choose from different great movies depending on what you want to teach and even print a handout. Those students who like movies will have the chance to write more and more about anything they want. Another one that I enjoyed a lot was WACKY WEB TALES you choose a title and it asks you fill out some words and after that you get a funny tale. I discovered many funny ones that I will never forget and I am going to share them with my students for them to check what I got when I used for the very first time BOOKR was another amazing experience with pictures and narrations sending it to friends and having an electronic album. I liked it so much. Working with real exercises is much better that imagining unreal situations, people we don´t know or places. I know there are many strategies we have learned the challenge now is to use them and take them into the classrooms.

LESSON PLANNING By Marìa Aglahe Arreola Martìnez The anatomy plans were basically the same but I think the difference is in the application or the use we gave them. I liked more the multiple intelligences because it could be adapted to our students and help them to learn in a better way. This plan take into account the different ways of learning of the students also are related to the English skills as reading, writing, listening and speaking. According to Gardner's view, learning is both a social and psychological process. When students understand the balance of their own multiple intelligences they begin to deal with their own learning and to value their individual strengths, from this point of view I consider that this plan could help to deal with different situations presented in my classes such as discipline, attitudes, but the most important; It could help

students to

discover their own knowledge because they may gain some confidence and intrinsic motivation.

LESSON PLANNING By Marìa Teresa Caballero Martìnez

I consider that in the context of the Educative Reform, now it is necessary to plan by competences and one of the most appropriate and suitable model in my classrooms would be Madeline Hunter´s (seven steps) proposal. This model contains almost the same steps than the one I use in my classes.

Anticipatory Set (setting the stage)--attention-getter and focuser. In every class it is important to get student´s attention because motivation serves to activate or energize behavior and give it direction, thus it is essential for learning.

Statement of Objectives--tell students what they'll be able to do as a result of the lesson. In my case, I always write what the students will be able to do by the end of instruction. 1

Instructional Input--lecture, but not necessarily lecture: demo, explanation, instructions. It involves the determination about what information is needed by the students to accomplish the objective and the means for getting the information.

Modeling--demonstrate, show what you tell: According with this lesson plan this is the step where the teacher shows the students examples of a final product; it could be through a picture, a text, etc.

Check for Understanding--watch faces, ask questions: In this part of the lesson plan, we will prove our student´s understanding using questionnaires, quizzes, exams, oral questions, exercises, etc.

Lesson planning By Jacqueline Càrdenas mendoza

The success of a good class for a teacher is planning the same; we have diversity of students in groups and it is an important point in order to plan. Students have difficulties and special-needs in foreign language learning and planning class allows us to develop optimally teachers need to find assignments that are open-ended enough for each student. With this assignment, all students can find success "where they are" as we address culture, vocabulary, voice, and characterization in specific contexts.

Previously, I have reviewed Common Lesson Plan provided on the activity 9.1, I think all of them have the same characteristics and I consider that Madeline Hunter's (Seven Steps) model from the Huntington College Education Department is appropriate for my context because it has seven steps:

Anticipatory set, statement of objectives,instructional input, modeling, check for understanding, guided prectice and finally, we reach the independent practice. This model contains nearly the similar steps than the one I follow in my lessons. In conclusion every step is well considered for a good lesson plan and the most important thing is that it must help to organize the knowledge and it helps us to guide the awareness for the students and as a result the success of a class.

Lesson planning By patricia Cardoso Almaraz Multiple Intelligences: "Seven Ways of Knowing" (Gardner)

This is the lesson plan model I consider the best for my context because with this model you can have a wide variety of possibilities to teach or learn and decide which one fits better according to the type of students you have. You don’t have to teach or learn something in all seven ways, just see what the possibilities are, and then decide which particular ways to teach interest you the most, or seem to be the most effective teaching or learning tools. Multiple intelligences are so useful because it expands our horizon in the teaching/learning issue. One strategy I use is to put the topic of whatever I am interested in teaching or learning about in the center of a blank sheet of paper, and draw seven straight lines radiating out from this topic. I write a label on each line with a different intelligence. Then I start brainstorming ideas for teaching or learning that topic and write down ideas next to each intelligence. Any student can have access to this way of processing information and become aware of their learning process and that is why I consider this model the best for my students. They love it and they can also work with this model in any other subject.

Lesson Planning By Clara Ortencia Caro Sànchez

GROUP WORK

I consider that before choosing a lesson plan model, we should take into consideration the characteristics of our groups, their English language level and the objectives of the class. After considering the above observations, I think that through GROUP WORK lesson plan model, I could get students to develop a cooperative learning where they could share their knowledge, rehearse oral and written language and of course to correct themselves. This kind of work helps students to develop also values and social interaction. The steps of this model guide us as teachers to select appropriate activities and structure clear instructions and check students understanding of what they are asked to do, in order to students develop their activities correctly. It is also important to start with a guided practice where step by step students will manipulate situations a, vocabulary and appropriate language for discussing.

Regroup for establishing a general summary and assessment of activities and products is great to close the session.

Lesson planning By teresita Chàvez Aguirre The lesson plan models that are in the website www.huntington.edu have the same elements: Title, time, objectives, setting the stage, discuss, construct, groups, show and journal but they vary according to the author’s focus. I chose the Critical Thinking (Bloom’s Taxonomy) because this lesson plan allows students to develope the competences that they need to manage themselves in a changing world. They need to strengthen the competences for living, so we are talking about knowledge, emotions, social behaivor , nature and democracy. This lesson plan includes the cognitive levels that students need to get their goal in the Secondary School. Knowledge is the students’ ability to recall the appropriate material which may include terminology, classifications, trends, criteria, methodology, generalizations and structures. The second level , Comprehension is the ability to know what is being communicated and to be able to make some use of the materials or ideas contained in it. Then, Application is when students use ideas, principles and generalizations in new situations. Next, In the analysis level students identify the components parts of an idea and to establish the logical relationship of the parts of the whole. After that, the Synthesis level has the ability to draw on elements from many sources and put these together into a structure or unified organization or whole not clearly there before. In the finally level, Evaluation students have the ability to make judgement about value, for some purpose of ideas or procedures, solutions, methods, 1 Evaluation

materials. Uses criteria for appraising the extent to which particulars are accurate, effective, economical or satisfying.

Synthesis Application Analysis Knowledge

Recall

Understand Requiers: Knowledge

Use Requieres: Knowledge and Comprehension

Generalize Requieres: Knowledge, Comprehension Application

Value and

Requieres: Knowledge, Comprehension, Application

LESSON PLANNING By Susana Contreras Leòn Mexican public schools have plenty of students. I work in a big school with 750 students. I am in charge of eight groups that means 320 students. Lesson Planning is very important specialy when you have a busy morning. Every group has special characteristics so my planning has to be adapted to every group. Because of the Reforma we have a special format in which we can write our lesson plans every day, which are generally based in all kind of texts. However the format I chose in this site is The Bloom´s Taxonomy and Critical Thinking because this format is the most similar to the one I use at school. It contains: Title Time Materials Objectives: What to do, what I want and what do I expect from my students Setting the stage : Stablish the situation Discuss : knowledge of the topic Construct: Application, use, practice of what they are learning 1

Groups: Team work Show : Doing synthesis and checking comprehension Journal : Appraise, value, analysis, evaluation Lesson Planning is very important in our daily work, if we plan our activities we will feel too much more confident, everything will be under control, we will love our job but the most important thing to consider is that our students will have a variety of activities and they will feel happy with us, they will respect us because of our work and they will love our classes.

LESSON PLANNING By Benilde Lysenka Cosio salazar I believe that based on the context in which my students develop themselves, I can’t choose just one example of planning, but the combination of two, these are based on the collaborative and multiple intelligences, the main reason is that we have to remember that my classmates are concentrated in a center of high performance for athletes and this center is their house, here they go to school, eat, sleep and train together, collaborative work is always present in their activities and even more if their sport disciplines are in teams, but this wouldn’t be implemented if before we don’t identify and analyze the types of intelligence of each of the students because we all have different ways to learn skills. In other times teachers discriminated other types of knowledge but today we have more chance to develop them according to our preferences and interest, all intelligence are important and our strategies as teachers should stimulate the interest in learning. Most of the times planning takes too long and a plan with multiple intelligences more, but once you have practiced with it you can add more experience, sometimes is difficult because we need to have a lot of imagination to create different activities or to explode one of them with different exercises and using it for different purposes anyway we can get a positive response from classmates because they enjoy work, it is no more the boring activity that the teacher give us, it is something that I like and I will do very well because of my own abilities.

Lesson Plan By Lucia De Labastida Espinosa

Planning is a tool for teachers but sometimes it is very difficult and complicated. We can do excellent lesson plans but in the class we can’t do all we planned.

I believe that the Instructional Scaffolding lesson plan could be the right model to use in my context, because it includes all what I need. It is short and can be adapted to large classrooms we set objectives, materials, times, etc. We could easily adapt the strategies, dynamics and performance evidence as it is required in a competence assessment.

Lesson planning By Josè Javier Guzman Espinosa Explain why you consider the lesson plan model appropriate for your context. I consider the lesson plan model appropriate for my context because it is the most flexible of the plans presented. In night “secondary schools for Workers” there is not the same kind of students than at regular morning secondary schools of the D.F.. If there are not enough students per group the groups and maybe the school would be at the risk of disappearing, so we need to accept troublesome students that have been expelled from regular secondary schools or students who are too old to study in regular secondary schools. Consequences: We provide courses in 18 months for students who failed in other schools and who are not motivated enough to learn intensive courses (there are good exceptions). 1

The MiniCycles seem flexible for our students yet I cannot guarantee this kind of plan without knowing more about it. I cannot see the good points of any plan yet this plan seems to adapt to small groups of 6 students or less in a school with most of their students having socioeconomic problems (police patrols give custody to school). Cycles of three steps provide instruction::instruction-check for understanding -- Guided practice.

Lesson Planing By Nahum lòpez Gòmez

Planning the teaching practice recording it schematically on a piece of paper, is a desirable activity when teachers want to get the maximal profit from their own resources, from the means at their reach, and of course, from their students. This practice demands an analysis of the contents in order to determine, depending on the circumstances, time, level of lesson, contents, methodological strategies to apply, and materials to use. The teacher has to conceive the class lesson as a whole, foreseeing the different steps along the same, and the difficulties that may emerge, including verification procedures of learning; looking for that as a result of that planning, the students significantly acquire and incorporate, along the course, their previous knowledge with the knowledge they have been exposed to, but above all, that they be aware of this. After analyzing the elements of each of the models of planning, I have concluded that the Madeline Hunter's includes the most significant aspects to be considered for the development of a successful teaching practice, according to the context where I work, and the audience I interact with. This model is shown as a progressive procedure that goes from general to specific, going along the steps in order the ss’: •

Feel confident.

•

Be aware of their expected results

•

Be exposed to language samples

•

Be modelled with examples of the use of language

•

Demonstrate understanding of tasks

•

Produce language and be corrected

•

Construct their own knowledge

Lesson Planning By Leydi Diana Lòpez Hernàndez About the different Lesson Plans shown I am sure in one or in another way we put in practice the different models given, although to organize our activities it is necessary to select one and we prefer to focus on those things we can forget, and the order we have to follow to present it, just we adjust the characteristics we need according to the kind of group we have. In my case I use a lesson plan similar to the Seven Elements of a Lesson Plan • •

Anticipatory Set (setting the stage)--attention-getter and focuser

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 1

•

Check for Understanding--watch faces, ask questions

•

Guided Practice--help students start practicing new skills, applying new knowledge

•

Independent Practice--turn them loose to work on their own, homework assignment, etc.

Because in one or another way I have to guide them, I give 3 rd grade in a Tv secondary school and in spite that we hope they have a basic level of language, the real life it is that they do not have it I consider it is because the teachers who gave them before do not worry so much in the subject of English and be, so I have to start with them since the beginning, and also because in one way it is useful for the other subjects too.

Lesson planning By Ana Rosa Mancilla Cruz The lesson plan I selected was “critical thinking”. I consider that this plan could be suitable for my context as it has all the necessary elements to organize the classes and get learning outcomes in the students. On the one hand, it establishes the theme and objectives that are really essential to set up what I want my students to learn. It also takes into account the prior knowledge of the students so they can be able to facilitate their learning. This aspect is very important to recall all those experiences that the students have about something so that they can make connections between the known and new information, and finally to comprehend and acquire a meaningful learning.

The next step is the application where the students will be able to practice all those knowledge by means of different activities not only in the school but also in their daily life. I also chose this lesson plan because it includes a useful aspect called analysis. This part of the plan tries to establish some activities that lead the students to apply their knowledge to be more thoughtful and critical in different contexts and situations. The synthesis and evaluation are important aspects to identify all those characteristics that can be significant for the students’ learning. Lastly, the time and material are vital to know the duration of the tasks and the items that will be needed to get the aims.

Lesson Planning By Miguel de Jesùs Martínez Medina

The true is that there is not a clear format to write a lesson plan, everybody do it and uses those which feel free and have confidence on them and think will work the best. But if we have the opportunity just to take a look on all the formats we can find, we will find that almost all of them have something in common, it means 85% of them ask for the same. But you can also find some differences among all the formats, that is why you must have a clear idea about what you want in class and based on that reflect your steps on a piece of paper. I had the opportunity in a previous time to check this website and see all the formats, and there is one in particular I really liked. And it is Seven Elements of a Lesson Plan (Hunter) which I consider myself includes all the process to get an effective class, but I will add timing for each activity and I will do it in a different format. Teacher’s name: ___________________________

School: ____________________ Date:

__/__/__

And that way I will continue explaining each activity.

Lesson planning ing By Josè Luis mendiola Noguez

I chose the Instructional scaffolding lesson plan model. I share with you some information about instructional scaffolding I find out. Scaffolding is a temporary structure which provides help at specific points in the learning process. It also describes specialized teaching strategies geared to support learning who students are first introduced to a new subject. Moreover, I found out 8 components of a scaffolding lesson. These are: 1. Objectives and goals. 2. Anticipatory set. 3. Direct instruction 4. Guided practice 5. Closure 6. Independent practice 7. Required materials and equipment 8. Assement and follow up Therefore, I chose the Instructional Scaffolding model because the model is according to the methodology of English programs in secondary schools. Instructional Scaffolding (Jerome Bruner; Langer & Applebee) • •

Ownership--wish to learn Appropriateness--right level

•

Support--structured guidance

•

Collaboration--coaching

•

Internalization--independent practice

LESSON PLANNING By A. Marìa guadalupe Monroy Martìnez I have chosen instructional scaffolding lesson plan model because it has the following five important elements to keep in mind when teaching and learning English in large teenagers classes. 1

Ownership. Even though I work with fifty or more teenagers each class, it is very important to keep their attention, interest and wish to learn along a time period; that´s why the planned activities must include attractive tasks that involve students into learning experience. Appropriateness. A teenagers group demand adequate assignments according with their age, interests and needs; scaffolding plan incorporates such attributes from the objectives until students´ production. Support. My students need lots of support because many of them studied in public school where there was not an English teacher, besides they perform in a poor way even in Spanish. It has been hard for me to provide an individual help because the large number, instead of that, more skillful students are monitors, but in both cases, it is a guided assistant and planned in advance. Anyway, the idea is the same: provide an external support during learning process; specially when they discuss, elaborate works and make presentations. Collaboration. As the example refers, scaffolding model promotes group work between students. They feel more comfortable in this situation and learn from each other´s experience and knowledge. Finally, Internalization stage let know, through any production, if teacher and students got the objectives or not. This moment could be used as an evaluation with my students because any creation is an evidence of learning experience.

Lesson planning By benito navarro Robles

From the lesson plans reviewed, I selected Madeline Hunter’s seven steps and the one for Group Work in a cooperative learning setting. Both models focus on educational outcomes, in

product evidences, rather than just fostering the learning of concepts and factual information without a through application in the student’s context. Both lesson plans relate each other, in some respects, they demand the teacher to grab the students’ attention creating an anticipatory setting; the lesson’s core, namely the objectives, state what the students “will be able to do…”; the third step is giving instructions about the group’s organization, the characteristics of the activities and assessment criteria; then, the teacher models what he expects from the students’ performance; while, at the same time, he / she checks their understanding of the whole procedure. This is a controlled stage and it is followed, either in Madeline’s plan or in the Cooperative Learning’s, by two final stages, a Guided Practice (semi-controlled) and an independent or free practice; respectively intended for the students to apply new knowledge and develop new skills and abilities as well as for letting them work by themselves, elaborating creative works. Both models are according to the competences based curriculum approach and, obviously; they’re suitable for almost any school setting. I have organized my classes for cooperative learning, in secondary school, and it has been a useful strategy for project work and keeping self-discipline in the classroom.

LESSON PLANNING By Xòchitl Guadalupe Palacios Michel

I think every lesson planning has almost the same structure and purpose but I chose the following:

Multiple Intelligences (Howard Gardner's 7 Ways of Knowing) • Verbal • Mathematical •

Spatial

•

Musical

•

Kinesthetic

•

Interpersonal

•

Intrapersonal

•

Example

This one is the lesson plan that I consider appropriate for my context because with the new changes in basic education, particularly in secondary level, now we teachers have to develop competences or intelligences (as this lesson planning says) in students and they are the same that we have to evaluate at the end of every lesson, unit or bloque of the study program. This lesson plan only mentioned 7 intelligences but we have to evaluate 8. So I would have to add one more… there are 2 classes of competence: general competences, they are always the same and make that subjects have relationship between themselves; and specific competences or intelligences, that change with the purpose of the unit or the lesson of the day, they are not always the same.

Lesson planning By Carolina Pèrez Màrquez

Planning is one of the starting steps to achieve any activity we want. However, it isn’t the first one to be done. I think a diagnosis is needed to preview situations and work conditions before planning. After reviewing the models provided, it is difficult to select a specific lesson plan because each one contains particular and important characteristics I need to give attention to. It was very interesting to compare each author’s focus to find out there is more than one way to achieve objectives through combined suitable activities to the different learning styles and contents. Madeline Hunter Seven Elements of a Lesson Plan offers, in my opinion, a very complete activity sequence to work with secondary students because every step contributes with essential and important elements to the entire lesson: to set the stage and objectives, initial and advanced instructions and guided exercises looking forward further independent practices, without omitting checking for understanding during the class. In my teaching experience, I have noticed secondary students are very used to follow and repeat instructions, for any activity, without reflecting on what or why they are doing it, that’s the way they have been taught; so, it is a challenge to make them realize that learning is more than repeating instructions. Considering the environment conditions from the place I work, this lesson model provides the opportunity to learn by watching, talking, listening to, discussing in small and bigger groups, creating, writing, etc., so learning should be useful and meaningful instead of boring or complicated. It will all depend on the time and activities organization, in order to motivate students, and keep them interested on working and learning.

Lesson planning By Bertha Senciòn Hernàndez Lesson Planning Bloom’s Taxonomy THe lesson planning I chose was Critical Thinking Bloom's Taxonomy for me is the most appropriate because in this scholar year I'm planning by competences and this format give

me all the aspects to consider in my lesson plan and in my class too. Knowledge: consider the material, the topic (function) experiential learning and the first moment to present the information Comprehension: Understand the grammatical function and how to use it and how to construct them. Application: in which statituation and stages I can use the functions learnt and practice with their classmates. Analysis: compare their new knowledge with the previos one and reflect what they have learnt. Synthesis:Create their own concept how the language works and compare with their mother tongue and comprehend differences and similituds.

Evaluation: appraise value how much the student has learnt putting in practice the language in different situations of speaking, writing, reading, listening and grammar and why not my own practice teaching.

In addition the lesson plans models permormed all of them are useful to organize my class work and know the elements that each one of them bear in mind. Finally the examples that I found in the sites gave me a clear idea how the elements are arranged in each step of my class.

LESSON PLANNING By Lilia Addriana Sobrado Campos All of the lesson plans presented are similar. I selected the one called Mini Cycles.

Mini Cycles

(e.g., vocabulary lesson)

• •

Equipment Set the stage

•

State objective

•

Cycles: o

Instruction

Check for understanding

Guided practice

Instruction

Check for understanding

Guided practice

etc.

•

Independent practice

•

Assessment

I consider it is more appropriate for my large groups (45 students in each classroom). I have seen lesson plans which are more dynamic or with more interesting activities where students interact, such as Role Plays, Games, debates, etc. but these ones are more likely for smaller groups where is easier to control discipline and monitor all of them. It would be great present those kinds of activities because most of students are not interested in school or in learning English and it is necessary to give them different and dynamic activities where they feel more comfortable and less bored. But the truth is that I have many large groups at last hours and it is hard to control discipline so, it is easier to implement strategies where students produce but in a controlled way. In this lesson plan activities are more controlled, give instructions and check understanding which is very important in large groups because students get distracted so easily and teacher must check everybody is getting what to do. Besides, it is important to permit students to try with independent practice to check their achievement. Assessment is necessary to evaluate students in order to give a grade each two months. I consider, as much assessment as easily students pass.

Equipment, set the stage and state objective are important steps to introduce students into the topic such as a warm-up and lead-in.

LESSON PLANNING By Hèctor Fernando Suàrez camacho Once I have reviewed all lesson plans provided on this activity, I think all of them are good lesson plans. I say this because the main skeleton or basis is the same for all the lesson plans: a) Title b) Time c) Materials d) Objectives e) Setting the stage f) Discuss g) Construct h) Groups work i) Show j) Journal

I could modify the h) for a new one named “Class work modality”. Those modalities could be:

a) Personal b) Pairs c) Small groups d) Whole class

I think the evaluation or assessment is applied to the Show or Journal steps. However as assessment is about a process, it could involve all the steps from e) to j). As I am asked for taking a decision about a lesson plan I would say the first one is my selection. The seven steps lesson plan adjusts to my teaching style. In this way I have the class control in my hands. Even if the students are doing a task by themselves. So, this series of steps fits to the SEP lesson plan required for English teachers on secondary schools.

LESSON PLANNING By Cynthia Judyth Venegas cabuto I have been working at EST 99 for 10 years, I have 50 students per group, the average age is about 12-15, there are 7 groups in 1st grade, 7 in 2nd grade and 7 in 3er grade in both schedules, the school is not so big, we do not have English lab but we have a computer lab that we can share with others subjects so this is the best method for me besides I sometimes change the techniques. It was difficult to choose one but I think the most suitable can be the seven elements of a Lesson plan by Hunter. • •

Anticipatory Set (setting the stage)--attention-getter and focuser 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

•

Check for Understanding--watch faces, ask questions

•

Guided Practice--help students start practicing new skills, applying new knowledge 1

•

Independent Practice--turn them loose to work on their own, homework assignment, etc.

MY LEARNING EXPERIENCE By Marìa Aglahe Arreola Martìnez

ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING AWARENESS During the course was possible to learn many things such as strategies for reading as skimming and scanning; word stress and intonation are important parts of listening in order to understand what other people is saying; phrases to enrich my vocabulary as linking words and to reinforce some tenses such as present perfect and simple past also they let interact with other classmates; it is important to take into account that a sentence has to make sense and the order of the words is necessary to make this possible. These must be practiced often to get a better English level, some of the ways are by reading some books, newspaper articles, magazines even in 1

the written form or by internet. Equal important watching movies and listening to music will help to enrich my listening. As well the internet resources and the web pages brought in the course are an exceptional way of being in touch with English in all forms (listening, speaking, writing and reading).

CULTURE AWARENES Cultures are influenced by other cultures, but each culture has its own traditions and costumes but the only way we can understand them is by interacting with them. Most of the teenagers are curious and very interested about what surround them specially at their personal interest such as music, clothes, technology, etc. These could be used to introduce some aspects of other cultures. In most of the WebPages as Australia Network: English Bites where it could be introduced some aspects of the Australian culture through the videos and the images that these site offered, also there are other web pages as the New York Times and BBC: Learning English where is possible to read and listen the news. I think we have to give the students the propose of what they are going to do, also select the activities as I said, according to their interests.

NEW TEACHING STRATEGIES DISCOVERED It is clearly to see the relation between the strategies and the habits mentioned in the text “Eight habits of highly effective 21st century teachers”, as well as we have been working with technology and most of the skills and strategies that this course has tried to develop are focused on this habits. It is necessary that we as teachers be in contact with technology, it has been increasing and improving constantly. We are in charge of many students whose possible have had a little or none contact with technology, but we should look for the necessary spaces and tools for bringing our students a better and modern education. One important aspect on the text is that we must adapt our teaching to our students’ needs but we must add our creativity to make a dynamic class because many times our students could have negative reactions or they couldn´t understand what we are teaching, for this reason is important to take risks, if we do not prove different activities or ways of teaching we couldn’t realize if we are teaching in a right or a wrong way. READING TEACHING STRATEGIES Reading is actually a very complex process that requires a great deal from the rider for the reason that is very different from the Spanish language, as we know it includes grammar structures, tenses, vocabulary, etc. These elements helps to understand better the text and to reinforce what we have learned in classes. There are so many strategies to teach reading that could help to maintain the attention and engage the students into the text, some of them are: Before Reading Strategies consist of those strategies that a student learns to use to get ready to read a text selection. These strategies help the student get an idea of what the author might be trying to say, how the information might be useful, and to create a mental set that might be useful for taking in and storing information. These strategies could include previewing headings, surveying pictures, reading introductions and summaries, creating 1

a pre-reading outline, creating questions that might need to be answered, making predictions that need to be confirmed, etc. During Reading Strategies consist of some strategies that students learn to use while they are reading a text selection. These strategies help the student focus on how to determine what the author is actually trying to say and to match the information with what the student already knows. When a teacher develops reading guides and outlines that need to be completed during reading, requires students to ask and answer questions, creates summaries as they read, etc. After-Reading Strategies consist of those strategies that students learn to use when they have completed reading a text selection. These strategies are used to help the student look back and think about the message of the text and determine the intended or possible meanings that might be important. These strategies are used to follow up and confirm what was learned. Skimming and scanning are other helpful strategies to help to comprehend the whole text or specific part of it. Skimming refers to the process of reading only main ideas within a passage to get an overall impression of the content of a reading selection and scanning is a technique often used when looking up a word in the telephone book or dictionary. It is for searching for key words or ideas. Scanning involves moving the eyes quickly down the page seeking specific words and phrases. LISTENING TEACHING STRATEGIES One of the most difficult activities I found was the dictation. It was very interesting because it could get my attention and I made more effort than in the other activities. One of the reasons was that some vocabulary was so difficult to understand that’s why I have to listen many times so I could get the whole text. The other activity I really find difficult was the news where I watched and heard a video clip in order to answer a quiz. This kind of videos were very difficult for me to understand, one of the reason was the length because I had to stop to listen many times , the other one the vocabulary that I didn’t know also I forgot some aspects of the listening when I had to answer the questions. 1

I believe it could be easier if I were accustomed to listening English. As we know there are many accents and the interference of the Spanish language sometimes makes more difficult to listen other language because I want to translate everything I hear , besides I didn’t work harder, I must admit that sometimes I had not time to do properly the activities.

SPEAKING TEACHING STRATEGIES From my point of view Module fifth was one of the best ones because it included all the skills (listening, writing, speaking and listening), moreover it was clearly to distinguish how each microskill (pronunciation, intonation, fluency, etc) from speaking was being developed. In each unit of the module the rubric let us to know which was the point of speaking we must take into account in order to develop and focus on it at the moment of doing the activities. Another important aspect was the participation in the videoconference that let me to lose some shyness at the moment of speaking for the reason that I feel confident because I had recorded my self so at the moment of speaking was easier. Voicethread was another significant part of the module for the reason that it brings something new because as well you can record your voice, you listen to other people talking about the same topic but with a different point of view. The web pages saw in the module were very useful as giving opinions and instructions were I could acquired some expressions that were helpful to fulfill the activities moreover to improve my speaking. 1

WRITING TEACHING STRATEGIES This module was very helpful because it gave many ways of writing where was possible to follow a model such as the book review, autobiographical incident, eyewitness account, etc. In these models where possible to see some examples to get an idea of how to write. There were other main activities as the comic strip. This activity was very funny because of the use of the imagination and creativity to make the comic, but one of the most complex activities was to create a book of poems, although there were some poetry forms it was necessary to rhyme the words or look for the most suitable words or even phrases. The blog named "Movie segments to assess grammar goals" could be very interesting for students for the reason that they are more interested in this kind of activities also videos could provide them opportunities to see where different grammatical structures and types of discourse are used. The students can see, as well as hear.

ABOUT ICT TOOLS Speaking is one of the most difficult skills to develop. Many students feel very stressful and shy when they try to speak in English face to face with the teacher or with another classmate. Some of the activities presented in module fifth are useful to help students to develop speaking skill. Some of the tools I found more useful were: Audacity: this tool is an excellent opportunity to let our students being listened by themselves and by other classmates, however they can express as they wanted and they feel confident because nobody is watching them. Another important point is that they can realize which are their mistakes and how to correct them. Voicethread: with this tool students could speak with a purpose and it is very motivating because they could hear their speaking within a web page. Videoconference: although could be similar to a face to face conversation it is very engaging for our students to listen and watching through a computer to another person speaking.

LESSON PLANNING The anatomy plans analyzed in Common Lesson Plan Models were basically the same but I think the difference is in the application or the use we gave them. The multiple intelligences was better for me because it could be adapted to students and help them to learn in a better way. This plan take into account the different ways of learning of the students also are related to the English skills as reading, writing, listening and speaking. According to Gardner's view, learning is both a social and psychological process. When students understand the balance of their own multiple intelligences they begin to deal with their own learning and to value their individual strengths, from this point of view I consider that this plan could help to deal with different situation presented in my classes such as discipline, attitudes, but the most important could help to students to 1

discover their own knowledge because they may gain some confidence and intrinsic motivation.

MY LEARNING EXPERIENCE By Marìa Teresa Caballero martìnez ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING AWARENESS

This Diploma course has represented a unique opportunity in order to get a better knowledge of English language and teaching strategies, through the use of virtual lessons, learning became more interesting. The language acquisition and performance gotten during this course, has been transcendental because of the development

several 1

competences and language skills, for example, now

it is possible to

distinguish between a fact and an opinion, the stress in words can be find (that can change the sense in expressions if it is not well done). A very interesting strategy learned was about though groups and now they can be identified easily in songs. Also the speaking skill has improved and this can give more confidence in speaking with other people; with this skill it is possible to express opinions, agreements, disagreements, comments, etc. In short, with the skills acquired, it grows the necessity for learning even more, improve English language and above all to look for students´ profit.

UNIT 2. CULTURAL LEARNING AWARENESS ACTIVITY 2.1 Cultural awareness is an important part of English language because of its influence in people´s behavior and culture. Some activities can be included in songs, fashion, articles and

readings from different English

speaking countries, like the “history of holidays in England”, the problems that The USA face

with cell phones while driving (like everywhere); the

importance of a health reform also in the USA; the abuses provoked because of slavery; British adults `fear youngsters´. It has also been learned the origin of some English words. All these topics take part of a cultural 1

background which at the same time, can influence one´s own culture and that of others. This also will help to explain the own cultural behaviors. On the other hand, in today´s global environment, it is important to have general knowledge about a cultural diversity because every day the borders among countries are disappearing with the use of the means of communication and, teaching is a good mean to transmit culture. Also, cultural awareness has a wide influence in different aspects such as the development of values (tolerance, respect, etc.) and sensivity to social events and the stimulation of curiosity to other cultures. Another interesting element of cultural awareness noticed in this unit, were different speech registers and linguistic variations in some English speaking countries which will help students to contextualize communication.

NEW TEACHING STRATEGIES DISCOVERED Certainly, as the eight habits of highly effective 21 first century mention, teacher´s work must be focused on students and do it in an imaginative way, using as many resources as possible. This Diploma course has been very helpful in order to teach more dynamically, and with the use of technologies. It is known that a change in the teaching style, will involve the awareness of taking huge risks but it will be reflected in the students learning. New activities have to be improved in the classrooms, taking in consideration quizzes, questionnaires, descriptions or situations using music, commix, poems, tall tales, writing through models, tales with images, photo albums, etc. 1

With all these innovative strategies, students will be captivated and, learning will be improved. Finally, with a leadership attitude from teachers, students will feel more confident with the class work and it will be found pleasure in all what students do. In addition, with the use of better teaching strategies, the English teaching will respond to students' needs and the interest about how well students are prepared to assume future.

Advantages of teaching strategies

READING TEACHING STRATEGIES Activity 4.1 One of the best strategies found in this module was reading practice in activity 4.1: Reading, listening, watching a video and vocabulary. The link is Adult Learning Activities, (Science and technology) and the text is called Cell Phone Safety. The topic is interesting because everywhere the same problem exists, people using their cell phones or mobiles while driving without thinking that they may cause an accident. In the basic story, a general idea of the text has been gotten from an image. Here, it was found the first strategy. Then, reading the full story, the 1

second strategy took place when it was used information from text to decipher unfamiliar words. After that, a video and more images were helpful in order to support the reading comprehension. Other useful reading strategies were applied to this text such as taking notes while reading; distinguishing facts from opinions when a report was presented (facts), and also a policeman talked about the topic. For learning more vocabulary there were spelled some words, a crossword about the text was answered. A skimming helped to have a general idea of the reading and the specific information was found with scanning. A basic strategy used for reading comprehension was to establish the type of text among instructive, persuasive or informative.

LISTENING TEACHING STRATEGIES

The most difficult activity in module fourth was 2.1: top-down listening, where an Australian text and video were presented. It was possible to identify a linguistic variation which differs from American and British English. With this example, it can be showed how the same language has different spellings and even words. The instructions given in this activity were: a. To see the video with Streaming video: Real Player or Windows Media b. The transcript c. A multiple choice quiz d. Story spotlight 1

e. Story Notes (vocabulary) f. Downloading or subscribing to the vodcast. After all these activities, a short summary about the text called ´swimming with sea lions´ was written. The text was not understandable and it was supposed to be long. This activity could have been taken from a different link or site to do easier the work to do. The final comment about this unit is that this kind of listenings are authentic and different from the ones prepared for English language learners because they are obtained from real context and that’s why it was found faster and more difficult than others. Some listening strategies were used, such as avoiding distractions while listening; it was not paid attention to those not understood parts. Some notes were taken during the listening and they were inferred the meanings of some complicated words from the text.

SPEAKING TEACHING STRATEGIES All the activities have their own importance and consequently, they all result useful, however, one of the best and most meaningful was in unit 2, where through the use of music, it was possible to generate an oral production of a descriptive story. It has been the best way for learning different aspects of the language, for example, when it was necessary to prepare a report this kind of texts, the speaking, reading and writing skills were practiced. It was also useful to develop some aspects of cultural awareness, when listening new age music, it grew up the curiosity about this 1

instrumental genre and it was searched its origin and expansion in the world. Finally it was necessary to look for more vocabulary for the activity. Creativity arrives while listening to the music and it is possible to describe places, landscapes or even situations. On the other hand, this activity helps to reflect about the practice in the classroom and can influence to an innovative way to teach and not just to be oriented to the text book. Definitely, with the use of creative tools, English teaching will become more interesting and fun for students. When music is used in class, it is supposed students learn or practice songs for cultural goals, for practicing, or just for having fun, but the best characteristic of this activity is that music can be a powerful learning tool.

WRITING TEACHING STRATEGIES

The majority of comments made by the classmates about the writing activities in module 6 were focused to the main areas of the language that teachers usually correct to students´ such as, coherence, cohesion, tenses, the use of vocabulary, parts of a sentence, use of tenses, adjectives, etc. One of the most difficult topics for students to understand is the position of adjectives, for example, it is so common to say “the rabbit white” or the use of tenses in sentences like “The children didn’t went to school”. Another big difficulty in students´ writings is the difference between singulars and plurals, or the third person.

In unit 4, the most enjoyable work was the one of Teresita Chavez Aguirre book review about The Chronicles of Narnia, because it was very well structured and they were followed perfectly the model steps. Another excellent was Jackie’s strange incident where it was described a very scaring ghost’s story. Writing a book review has been an excellent opportunity to learn how to follow steps in order to do a better text. In first place, it is necessary to get reader’s attention and then, it is important to write a general idea about the topic. ‘Charlie and the chocolate factory’ was the book chosen where the characters´ thoughts and ideas were described. Some positive comments about the book described were written by some colleagues who said that the story was amazing.

With the use of comics, our students will be able to write texts in a fun way.

UNIT 8 ABOUT ICT TOOLS ACTIVITY 8.1 Writing, generally results a boring activity for students, but with the use of ITC tools, an important and powerful tool will be in teachers ´hands with the main purpose of improve students´ learning Definitely, the most useful tools found were in module 6. The topics proposed have been interesting, fun, enjoyable, cultural and helpful in English classes. In unit 2, ICT tools were helpful in the creation of students´ own book of poems using technologies in internet through the site ETTC’s.

Another useful technological tool

used was the link Boorkr where it

was possible to illustrate the poems created. It has been one of the best experiences ever had because it was an enjoyable, fun and productive activity. These poems help students to develop their creativity and encourage them to write easily in a fun way. The third useful technological tool found in module 6 was unit 5 about “model for different types of writings”. This kind of activities helps learners to follow specific steps in order to write a whole text correctly. Models for Writing provides a wealth of motivating materials to help teaching writing to give opportunities to students for gaining better and more valuable learning experiences. Using Web CT’s tools it is possible to create Web environments to assist in communication, collaboration, and the work by projects according to the new plans and programs in secondary school. These three tools mentioned are an awesome way to encourage the individual the students´ creativity.

LESSON PLANNI

Considering that in the context of the Educative Reform, now it is necessary to plan by competences and one of the most appropriate and suitable model for being used in class, would be the Madeline Hunter´s (seven steps) proposal. This model contains almost all the steps required in an English class. Anticipatory Set (setting the stage)--attention-getter and focuser. In every class it is important to get student´s attention because motivation serves to activate or energize behavior and give it direction, thus it is essential for learning.

Statement of Objectives--tell students what they'll be able to do as a result of the lesson. It is useful for teachers to write what the students will be able to do by the end of instruction. Instructional Input--lecture, but not necessarily lecture: demo, explanation, instructions. It involves the determination about what information is needed by the students to accomplish the objective and the means for getting the information. Modeling--demonstrate, show what you tell: According with this lesson plan this is the step where the teacher shows to the students, examples of a final product; it could be through a picture, a text, etc. Check for Understanding--watch faces, ask questions: In this part of the lesson plan, teachers will prove the student´s understanding using questionnaires, quizzes, exams, oral questions, exercises, etc. Guided Practice— Is the step which helps students start practicing new skills, applying new knowledge: Here students will begin to apply new knowledge with different examples. Independent Practice--turn them loose to work on their own, homework assignment, etc. This is the step where students will perform their skills indifferent contexts, such as, teaching to someone else, correcting their own works or others.

My learning experience. By Teresita Chávez Aguirre The aim of this report is to assess the Communicative Skills that I learned in the present course. In order to prepare this report I wrote nine small reports, discribing my English language learning awareness, cultural learning awarenesses, New teaching strategies discovered, Reading teaching strategies, Listening teaching strategies, Speaking teaching strategies, ICT tools and Lesson planning. English language learning awareness 1

At the beginning of the course I had an English language level B1 and after I did the diagnostic exams, I knew exactly my strengths: Reading and Writing and my weaknesses: Listening and Speaking. My listening ability was improved because I learned about minimal pairs, word stress, thought groups and listening skills, different aspects that are involved at the moment to speak and the accuracy allows me to focus on the elements of phonology, meaning and grammar in order to increase my speaking ability . To improve my language level by using websites and recording my voice in order get fluency and reduce my stress, because I was very nervous at the moment of recording my voice. To sum up my English language is improved by using the tools of this course, so my weaknesses will be reduced and my strengths will be increased to be a better teacher. Cultural learning awarenesses For a long time the object of study in English courses for secondary schools has been the language system itself, English teachers sometimes focus only on descriptions of language that come from linguistics but now, English is not the gist, English is the way to learn about the world. English and websites are the key to know, try and live experiences and teachers should take an advantage because our students are part of the kowledge society and they are interested on tools like videos, interactive website, programs to record voice and imagen and other modern options that internet offers. A fundamental premise is that English serves not only communicative, it is the way an individual comprehends the world and integrates himself into society.

New teaching strategies. Nowadays, teachers must have the right competences to be highly effective, web technologies offer threats and opportunities and teachers must change threats into opportunities to increase their strengths and reduce weaknesses. I learned teachers must consider all the learning styles showing adapting, we must be visionary using the wide variety of websites, for example I had a good experience: I checked the Australia Network with a group and they were encourage to attend the English class; about collaborating, internet allows to share information: using and solve doubts with other teachers in different places using the videoconference, I discovered speaking, listening, reading and writing can be practiced in a natural context using web technologies and teachers must include them in their planning, to work in projects: In my classes I work with comic strips and my students have problems with drawings, so the site www.makebeliefscomix.com is a very helpful tool. Finally, teachers are leaders, we are the guide to our students to succeed in their projects. Reading teaching strategies. In module three about Reading, the most interesting activity was 6.1 because the strategies are adequate to secondary students. In this activity first, I checked 20 strategies for reading comprehension on the web site Journey North Reading Strategies. I reviewed and printed them. Then, I reflected on the strategies and completed some statements: Good strategies are Active Prior knowledge before reading because readers use their knowledge as a framework for learning new information and ask questions before, during and after reading .It is possible to infer the meaning of unfamiliar words. To visualize when reading to create a picture in our mind is helpful because we can use descriptive details and I have taught the following reading comprehension strategies in my classes: Active Prior Knowledge, Skimming and Scanning. Finally, I am aware that I use some of the reading comprehension strategies as a reader in my own language. Listening teaching strategies. 1

In this listening module, the most difficult activity was 7.2 authentic listenings. First, in the web site New York Times video I chose a video, I watched it and finally, I reflected about the difference between it and the previous listenings, it was an authentic material, that was not created to give an English class, it is a good opportunity to use English in quotidian communication means. In the video, the narrator was giving a new item about something that happened suddenly one day in summer: In New York some women were wearing evening dresses during the day. People looked really enjoyable and the dresses were plain, colorful, black, etc. during this description the voice of the man was skeptical (he was using a special entonation), then he lowed his voice to give some details about the weather finally he gave his opinion about a dress, that was amusing him (he moduled his voice) -it was a short black dress that had a trasparent cage. This video highlights the importance of entonation and stress and we can confirm that English is a stress-timed language. Speaking teaching strategies. The Speaking module was very hard, I spent the double of the time in all the activities, and activity 2.1 “How to describe a situation or place” was the most useful, I was very creative. In this activity I listened to a music clip, “The magical flute”, then I prepared a one minute talk about a palace where Mozart worked. After that, I described a place that it evoked. I used Audacity to record my comment and uploaded it at the forum “How to describe a situation or place”. This activity is very creative because you listen to music and you imagine the situation, write a brief draft and finally you record your description using a computer programme. I think this activity is the most useful because I need to improve my clases using musical smart, because it is one of my weakness, I am not so good at music and I know it, I must improve and include it in my classes. This activity can be used with my first grade students. After listened some songs, I chose the song “Ana”, singers: The Beatles, then the procedure is students will listen to “Ana”, then I will ask students to imagine Ana, write some characteristics about her and record a short description about this girl using Audacity. ICT tools. The Speaking module was very hard, although I strongly believe that in this module there are the most useful ICT tools to my students, I chose :

2.1 “How to describe a situation or a place”. From a music clip, “The magical flute”, I prepared a 1 minute talk about a palace where Mozart lived. After that, I described a place that it evoked. I used Audacity to record my comment and uploaded it at the forum “How to describe a situation or place”. This program is excellent to encourage students to improve their speaking skills. 5.2”Discuss with your partner during a video conference”. I think it was the most difficult activity to do because adults are not familiar with the technology. It was very hard, but finally I talked to Miguel de Jesús Martínez and José Javier Guzmán about “Should taxes be raised?” and I think this is the most powerful ICT tool because our students are part of the videocoferences, and they can communicate by this way easily. 7.2 “Giving opinions” Using the website “Voicethreat” I recorded my opinion about Rigoberta Menchú, who is one person of influence in our times. This website is an excellent option because students have the opportunity to record their opinion with a microphone or with a web camera and they can listen to other people’s opinions. Lesson planning. The lesson plan models that are in the website www.huntington.edu have the same elements: Title, time, objectives, setting the stage, discuss, construct, groups, show and journal but they vary according to the author’s focus. I chose the Critical Thinking (Bloom’s Taxonomy) because this lesson plan allows students to develop the competences that they need to manage themselves in a changing world. They need to strengthen the competences for living, so we are talking about knowledge, emotions, social behavior, nature and democracy. This lesson plan includes the cognitive levels that students need to get their goal in the Secondary School. Knowledge is the students’ ability to recall the appropriate material which may include terminology, classifications, trends, criteria, methodology, generalizations and structures. The second level , Comprehension is the ability to know what is being communicated and to be able to make some use of the materials or ideas contained in it. Then, Application is when students use ideas, principles and generalizations in new situations. Next, In the analysis level students identify the components parts of an idea and to establish the logical relationship of the parts of the whole. After that, the Synthesis level has the ability to draw on elements from many sources and put these together into a structure or unified organization or whole not clearly there before. In the finally level, Evaluation students have the ability to make judgement about value, for some purpose of

ideas or procedures, solutions, methods, materials. Uses criteria for appraising the extent to which particulars are accurate, effective, economical or satisfying. Conclusion. To sum up, the Communicative Strategies I learnt in this course are excellent, on the whole. It is therefore the most suitable choice to improve Secondary School teachers’ skills. I had the opportunity to measure my skills and from that point I recognized my weaknesses to changed them into strengths, some activities were difficult but they were excellent challenges, I lost fear to use music in my classes and I felt as my students when I had to do my activities in the module 5 Speaking, many times I was impatient at the moment my students were trying to speak but all the strategies I got from this course will change this situation. On the other hand, I strengthened my reading and writing skills, I loved the module 6 Writing, the first activity was innovator, then I did a comic strip and I knew it was the best module. Finally, The ICT tools are very important nowdays in the classes and teachers must be considerated them in the teacher’s planning.

My learning experience By Benilde Lysenka Cosio Salazar 1.1 English language learning awareness We want to share with you our learning experience as a learner and as a teacher through this book, it is a good way to communicate with other people and to leave an evidence about the work developed during all modules.

First of all, let us tell you that when we began the course we were level B1, but all this time we were working on the main aspects of the language to improve ourselves with very interesting activities, we have studied very hard to reach the next level and we have developed many useful strategies not only to learn but also to teach students, so we are going to tell you our point of view about this wonderful work experience. 2.1 Cultural learning awareness During this course we had a good opportunity to got in touch with the culture of other countries who spoke English, we could appreciate some behaviors, beliefs and traditions because some sites were checked by us and we did different activities, in this manner we thought it was a good way to identify customs and to know how people is in other countries in aspects like practices, laws, expressions, clothing, we have understood that spirit of abundance about cultural features that can be found around the world. This module was too rich for us and for our students because a variety of aspects were analyzed by us and those aims have helped us to improve our country (we wished we had countries like those); the most important and interesting activities here were to listen to accents of people of different countries, alumni have already taken into consideration that although in all of the examples people spoke English, they had different ways to pronounce words (they could establish and recognize some differences between American and British English) also that they had sometimes different spelling or they gave another meaning (the plans and programs emphasize the American English because it is the most commercial and in this way we can’t appreciate different styles, it is such as different, anything we had done in the past). Also we can see how feelings and emotions were expressed by people including attitudes they took in some situations. This pleasant module lasted some days but it therefore benefited considerably ourselves because it placed us in another level of thinking and counsciousness.

3.1 English language learning and teaching As a language learner and teachers, we discovered that if we want to increase our learning or teaching we should investigate more in libraries, web sites or with people we know, in those places we can find many useful strategies and then we can share them, we concluded that communication is a vital part because in this manner everything will be easier and also to follow a collaborative process. Another thing noted by us was that nowadays there are many sites where we can save time because they are writing generators, and they are very interactive and attractive for our students due to they are colorful, complete, creative, etc. it is generally believed that anything can’t be new in education but it is a common mistake, with this courses it is possible to have more opportunities to success but it is also important to gain the cooperation of the workshop participants and the interest showed by authorities (it does the job and it’s not a little thing) little by little technology is taking part in our whole life, we don’t have to learn or teach English in an antique form as in previous times by repeating words orally and using only the board, technology has opened and woken up our imagination to create because sometimes it takes a long time to come out, then we should move any obstacles. Everything will be much better if we continue practicing, if we keep in touch with the foreign language but also it has been necessary to adapt ourselves to the world because English is very important around the world and for common users it seems natural, all new knowledge and investigations are in this language, nations of economic power speak English and we can say more reasons, but well we might as well to

avoid false beliefs and take the challenge I mean as in the examples given we saw how people behaved in their countries, we would be a better city if we copied those models. Frequently we hesitated and then we said Why not?, this is our role in society, to teach for the future; we know what have happened with us, now we are more enthusiastic than some months ago.

4.1 Reading teaching strategies Although it wasn’t an easy thing this module, there were many interesting activities to use, it is said that students suffer from panic while reading aloud because of the jokes of the auditorium but if we taught better they would have more strategies and techniques to do it better. Some of the activities that were applied in our schools were “read while listening” because we considered that this activity combines perfectly sounds with reading, and it was to useful to appreciate pronunciation and we can do it wherever we want, principally one of the sites offers the possibility to do it in different forms: we stood in front of the computer and we could asses themselves, another option was to download the reading and to copy the text, one of the days computers were busy so we prepared the classroom for the class and there we used tools of our own students (IPODS, laptops), they love that, and they are understanding that reading is not awful because it isn’t only for academic purposes but also for pleasure, in addition we can listen to in your IPOD while you use the public transportation for example. We determined that images are also important, they gave us an idea of the 1

reading and we could use many teaching strategies for reading, we mean activating prior language to see what they know, drawing conclusions to evaluate comprehension and so on. We don’t have to sit down behind desks, we must participate with them and students will handle more vocabulary, grammatical rules, young child can pay attention to any one activity only for a short time particularly if it is challenging, so we have tried to attract their attention in such a great time reading and discussing interesting topics. Our idea is to be joined to a reading club.

5.1 Listening teaching strategies We thought it was going to be a hard module, everybody rejects this ability but now we have more tools that we find convenient to share, activities of this module impressed us, they weren’t difficult neither they lasted a lot , nor that the instructions were not very well explained but they imposed a challenge, we have already learnt new tricks to learn, things that were there but we never took into consideration as “sentence patterns”, have you ever know about this technique to identify feelings and emotions in people? This topic helped us to improve our writing style, we believe that for students would be advisable that the software include definitions and more examples also that the exercises provide answers to check progress. In contrast another activity that we can mention as relatively different was: “listening strategies”, wasn’t it? Although it was the last, 1

we chose and practiced with this because here we had to apply everything we learned through the module, the challenge here was to listen to people of different nationalities, for students would be more attractive and easier if people were more like their age and if they talked about interesting topics, but one of this activities should be prepared for us according to our schools contexts; besides, listening is the ability that they find more difficult to develop, however we have acquired knowledge and everybody has formed a style of interpretation. A new era begins now, we will be better teachers and we will develop this ability as much as the other ones, they will listen to all the songs they want, news, cartoons and so on. 6.1 Speaking teaching strategies Speaking, the essence of a tongue! The main difficulty of people who is learning English, they say “ I understood everything, but I can’t speak! I can’t express myself! as learners we can have mistakes but almost never as teacher, we are the model of our students; one more time, practice with joyful activities as videoconferences, express your opinion, speak about any topic you like, record your voice, we know he must monitor our students, but let’s invite them to dare, venture to speak! There’s no another way to be fluent: speak! Through this module we have learnt that we will never part with computers, they are our resource, if we discover their functions it is easy to use it. More than disadvantages, this way of learning has a lot of benefits for students and classmates because it’s easy to access, you can be evaluated, your students will enjoy it a lot. 7.1 Writing teaching strategies In the module of writing we learnt several techniques to help our students to write, we decided that the only strategy for learning to write or improve our writing style is to write, many pieces of paper will be used before a perfect piece of writing, read it, your errors and weaknesses will be identified and self-corrected; there can’t be writing without reading, when we read we hear what we wrote or what others wrote and thus we have the opportunity to re-write. 1

There are different techniques that this module gave us, our have practiced some of them, in this way we can have success covering the purposes of the secondary reform 2006: to understand and produce quotidian, academic and literary texts, writing won’t be boring anymore after the techniques we have discovered in this module. 8.1 About ITC tools All of the activities were important, each was carefully selected and had the necessary topics according to the ability we had to develop, the process to acquire the abilities of the language is not impossible to obtain, our experience through this module was very rewarding. Technology helps us a lot in this career to teach along life in addition with our own creativity and innovation. 9.1 Lesson planning Based on this course we know that some classmates are similar but each one has special characteristics, some plans share elements, the main aim is first of all to diagnose our context as a particular part of the world, a place where students develop themselves, it is considered that you have to follow a strict lesson plan and maybe it is true but with our experience through this course we understood that there are an enormous quantity of things to do, so follow the curriculum, plan you class but always add what you need, what you feel.

MY LEARNING EXPERIENCE By Josè Javier Guzmàn Espinosa

This report is divided in the nine units that covered my experience and practice in this course.

Unit 1. English language learning awareness Reading and writing: I began with simple grammar exercises in sites such as ABOUT.com to gain confidence and find my level before dealing with the most complex and difficult ones. I have learned a lot about such subjects as sequences of tenses and adding prepositional phrases and coherence in an exercise on a story of John Steinbeck. On vocabulary matters I have found great insights in the Merriam Webster Dictionary, The Heritage Dictionary, the Visual Dictionary and the Oxford Dictionaries.

Unit 2. Cultural learning awareness I could focus my students’ attention to English language and culture by putting them to watch in the PC about newspapers of such far-away countries as The United States, Canada and India besides England. I would recommend sites such as iTunes and You Tube. (and to the BBC through them) and invite them to use a lot of sources of materials about the English speaking community that can be very motivating for future use, such as the Splendid Speaking (a place to practice listening of foreign podcasts). In other sites as English Bites they could find interesting articles about Australia for example, on the changes that digital cinema brings to old projectionists or the Queen of England’s celebrations, etc.

Unit 3. New teaching strategies discovered

I find my self-evaluations were directed at signaling aspects of learning and of grasping the exercises and possibilities of the interesting sites, instead of elaborating teaching strategies, habits or plans. From my point of view I find that, for example, suggesting sites where the student can investigate, learn or practice whatever he/she is needing to do is broadly related to Adapting, Being visionary, Collaborating and Learning, if not the whole Eight habits of highly 21st century teachers (which are excellent). Other findings: audiovisual practice and actuality (BBC), Multiple intelligence tests (for taking responsibility of one’s own learning), important sources of information and practice of aural and/or visual activities in Splendidly Speaking, iTunes and You Tube and the BBC. Audacity and voicethread.com need to be mentioned for the practice of speaking, and an organized list of internet sites is needed.

Unit 4. Reading teaching strategies The most interesting activity for my reading practice was Activity 7.2. Reading and understanding an article from a newspaper. The teaching strategies used were related to Unit 7. “Sample Reading Comprehension Lessons”. There were four questions and the directions to get to the selection of a newspaper. The task was attracting. The text found in the newspaper was interesting: The Telegraph, Calcutta, India, Section Entertainment, Tuesday , August 18 , 2009 Bollywood- ‘Success just happens’ The support provided was great: Englishpage.com > English Reading Room , a site where to read newspapers in English from India and other countries. A photo from the Indian actor in the newspaper article complements the visual presentation. The task was organized with four initial questions about: 1. Help offered for the students understand the article. 2. Tasks for the students. 3. Questions to ask to the students. 4. Specific skills for them to practice. The activity called for strategies to use by the students: four reading strategies learned by the students during Module 3. It asked why the students use them (It’s important they know what they are doing) and the name of the strategies. They must explain the purpose of each strategy and when to apply them (before, during or after the reading). They must give the name of the newspaper and the date the article and the name of the strategies. The teacher has to know these data in order to check and qualify the activity. I liked the scope of the task. 1

Unit 5. Listening teaching strategies Listening teaching strategies. The activity of reading along using thought groups could have been easier in several ways, according to the objectives, the students, the teacher or the support (karaoke, choice of songs and printed lyrics accompanying the activity, organization of the activity, etc.). Thought groups are at the core of the activity and they could be taught graphically, too. Repetition of lyrics, guided practice, students’ choice of the song and getting the students’ lyrics and song ready for immediate use help the activity. If the activity becomes too long then it lacks fulfillment, which is a component of the activity. The most important result of the activity must be to convince the student of the usefulness of the activity for reading along using thought groups in order that they practice this activity in the future.

Unit 6. Speaking teaching strategies Speaking teaching strategies. Activity 6.1 The Activity 1.1 from Module 5 turned out to be the most useful for me. How to tell a story implied more than 10 steps before recording and saving it. First you had to analyze the traits of your speech according to a Self assessment rubric. Then you had to pay attention to levels of accuracy. Once done that you had to choose a remembered period of your life and prepare a story talk. You had to connect a series of events for it and make an outline with the help of two internet sites: Telling a story (http://www.english-athome.com/speaking/telling-a-story/) and Tell a story. A guide for storytelling by Aaron Shepard.(http://www.aaronshep.com/storytelling/Tips.html).

Speaking Teaching Strategies. Activity 6.2 I could use Activity 1.1 from Module 5 with my secondary students of first grade focusing the activity on their listening to their own pronunciation rather than in some difficult task that would spoil the fun of the activity. Step 1. The students choose a tall tale or a funny story or a joke in three acts. They make use of a dictionary- that can be on-line, or ask the teacher how to say something. The idea is to surprise and amuse the classroom (smutty jokes forbidden). Examples: “An American, a Japanese and a Mexican inside a plane before the crash”, “In the first act there is/are a/an/some …In the second act there is/are …(conclusion/guess in the third act)”. Minimal presentation-development-final result is the purpose.

Step 2. The students in pairs present their funny or surprising story to the classroom. Step 3. The students join all the stories and apply some sequence to them. They edit the material where needed. They can add special effects to the resulting story. (An alternate activity is to make the students invent each one a follow-up to the preview story that would be set as Step 1) Step 4. The teacher reviews the script. Step 5. The students record the story with their voices in the PC Room. Step 6. The students comment the result. Order in the class, clear instructions and motivated students would be necessary for the good results of the activity

Unit 7. Writing teaching strategies Activity 7.1: Unit 7. This module (Writing) was highly rewarding. Creative technology allied with good ideas got this result. I liked Photopeach because it gave magic to photos and text. MY FIRST POEMS opened a kind of sensibility to poetic forms. To make a poem is a door to sounds, meanings and rhymes. I enjoyed writing the book review for The Autobiography Of Bertrand Russell. I had read the book recently and to review it made me to appreciate it better on second readings. A weird incident in my life made me remember old, forgotten times of childhood and reconsider hidden experiences in a new light. EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT MODEL reminded me of a magic experience: flying without a plane. my funniest tale-Up close and personal, was surprising, fresh and amusing. FILE FORUM MOVIES AND GRAMMAR is useful and very interesting-but it can take a lot of time on occasions. Writing enriched my life because it made me to become creative and reflective. Delightful feelings found a way. CORRECTING WRITING ASSIGNMENTS is useful and a good practice.

Writing teaching strategies. Activity 7.2 There are just too many: My main teaching strategies used in order to develop my writing ability had been reading a lot, but I also have practiced a lot. Having a diary helps, even if you don’t write on it daily. You need to express the events that affect you. You make a quotidian use of words, descriptions, memory, and more than one good dictionary! (English-English) A thesaurus is needed to enrich your vocabulary. And grammar 1

exercises. Visual dictionaries help to check the meaning of difficult words. Roots of words help. Internet helps a lot with so many places where you can get access to periodicals that use the English of actuality. But it is helpful to connect with ancient English. Observation is important. Lots of courses to keep up to date. Travels. Scholarships to study English. DVDs help you to express yourself in English. Books help. To prepare the classes, programs and material for classes in English helps a lot, but the most important way to write good English is to practice it as often as possible, daily, in as many contexts as possible. You’ve got to think in English.

Unit 8. About ICT tools. Module 7. I selected Module 4: Listening as an example for explaining where the ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) tools rendered best results. The three most remarkable sites for this practice were: American English Pronunciation Practice is a very good tool to introduce the students of English to the listening practice (such as minimal pairs exercises is). This practice is objective, quick, easy to repeat until getting a grade of command on the difficulties found. There I got an objective assurance of the pronunciation and identification of words with similar sounds that otherwise is difficult to distinguish. YOU TUBE served to put videos with classes or exercises necessary to the practice of English (lessons on thought groups, intonation and similar topics). It’s a platform that serves to put tutorials for the installation of devices such as audio recorders (Audacity); it can admit subtitles in English in English speaking videos. Its specialty is videos (songs) (Bon Jovi and U2 songs were downloaded from this site). It is very easy to get and use and very popular among young people. Students love this kind of videos. BBC is a whole institution in the learning of English. It offers an array of exercises fitted to the news and their comment, with listening of the text plus subtitles. It is the best tool targeted to the learning of English. Its presence is felt not only in the media (TV, radio, book editions, the news, etc.) but also in ESL/EFL and in a variety of exercises: Grammar, Practice tasks, etc., so it is a logical place to go for the practice of all kind of exercises. I find it a most useful tool for my learning and it is also appropriate for my students.

Unit 9. Lesson planning I chose the The MiniCycles as writing lesson plan for being the most adequate of the seven plans presented. I consider this lesson plan model appropriate for my context because it is the most flexible of the plans presented. We need to accept troublesome students that have been expelled 1

from regular secondary schools or who are too old to study in regular secondary schools. We provide the three grades of secondary school courses in 18 months for students who are not motivated enough to learn intensive courses (there are good exceptions). Possible implementation of this plan: Cycles of three steps provide instruction: instruction-check for understanding –Guided practice. I replace Equipment for a PC, Set the stage for the class, State objective for the official program and Cycles for Units of the official program or maybe for individual classes. Independent practice seems a kind of complement, and Assessment would be for saying if this plan is feasible for my school. The MiniCycles seem flexible for our students. This plan seems to adapt to small groups of 6 students or less in a school with most of their students having socioeconomic problems.

English Language Learning Awareness By Nahum Lòpez Gòmez

Learning English through virtual courses and the wide range of activities available on Internet has allowed me to practice, assess and improve my command of language, as well as develop autonomously abilities to succeed in communicating by performing the dimensions of language.

I’ve learnt to... •

Analyze, evaluate and organize information from texts by reading, revisiting, and reflecting, in order to progressively enhance my reading comprehension.

•

Discriminate phonemes by minimal pairs, identify word and sentence stress, perceive thought groups, and recognize raising-falling intonation patterns, in order to develop a fluent pronunciation, and convey accurate meanings in implicit and explicit communication.

•

Produce clear, concise, and proper speeches, performing appropriate tone and style; show satisfactory understanding during oral interactions, and be able to contribute with new ideas by performing the conventions of language.

•

Create informative, descriptive, and persuasive writings, being aware of punctuation rules, to evidence and widen my level of vocabulary and structures.

Although, I consider my language proficiency level has improved substantially, I still find great difficulties in handling phrasal verbs. That's why after six modules, I’ve realized that mastering the language is a long-life process, and in spite this Diploma has taken me back on the road, there's still much to do.

MODULE 7: TECHING STRATEGIES

UNIT 2

CULTURAL LEARNING AWARENESS

Cultural Learning Awareness

Learning a language doesn’t only imply the knowledge of its principles and rules, and the proper performance of its four skills. Effective use of language also requires the understanding of the contexts and conditions that surround the environment in which language naturally evolves.

Culture, the elusive construct of human knowledge, belief, practices, and behavior, which shifts constantly over time, provides an extensive basis to explain why interactions in English speaking societies behave in the way they do, to ease language learners the understanding of the authentic use of language and its meaning, in order to enable them to communicate effectively. Language is inextricably bound to culture, thus, culture must be part of language instruction, since it provides the conventions for individuals’ appropriate language and social behavior. Most of activities along the Diploma were vast in cultural content. Awareness of cultural conditions in English speaking societies, and practice with the functional instead of the literal meaning of language, were the most significant contributions to my learning. I’ve considered few examples to draw my students’ attention to culture aspects: •

Address to people by their first names.

•

Shake hands when greeting each other.

•

Look in the eyes when speaking.

•

Hugs and kisses are only for close relationships.

•

Say thanks whenever you receive a favor.

•

Be aware of the volume of your voice to appear confident.

•

Women are considered equal, so don’t be condescending towards them.

Avoid the use of words as black or nigger that may suggest a racist pose.

NAHUM LOPEZ GOMEZ

MODULE 7: TECHING STRATEGIES

UNIT 3

NEW TEACHING STRATEGIES

New Teaching Strategies Discovered: Strategies vs. Habits

Along learning, students develop recurrent and often unconscious patterns of behaviour towards the learning process called habits, which are gradually adjusted to their practice, in order to make learning more efficient. To do so, and usually tied to the needs, knowledge and interests of students, learning strategies are problem-solving mechanisms used by the learners to cope with the complex process of learning, in which such mechanisms play an important role as promoters and facilitators. But, is there any relationship between strategies and habits within the learning process? In my opinion, the implementation of advanced learning strategies, and their subsequent and successful praxis, promotes the gradual acquisition of efficient habits, in guided or autonomous processes, to the eventual achievement of the desired results. I consider that the innovative strategies presented along the Diploma, as well as all the technological platforms over which they were designed, are vanguard tools that allow the potential acquisition of highly effective habits for 21st century learning agents. I’ve considered the following strategies as the most significant along this instruction: • • • • • • • •

Reading and writing: to asses reading comprehension through a written task. Dictation: for practicing word stress, intonation, pause, and rhythm. Reading along: for thought groups’ discrimination. Using music to generate language production: to describe situations and/or places. Voicethreath: to describe people. Book of poems: to practice writing using the project based approach. Make beliefs: to create stories with pictures. Book Review: to report of the most significant characteristics in a work.

MODULE 7: TECHING STRATEGIES

UNIT 4

READING TEACHING STRATEGIES

Reading Teaching Strategies

Most learners think that reading, the cognitive decoding of written symbols, is a simple and passive process that enables the reader internalizing the meaning of words. However, reading is indeed a complex process between reader and text that doesn’t only demands knowledge of strategies, as ways to extract the required information; it calls to reader's awareness to know when, how, and why to use them, his prior knowledge, and active participation in order to enhance understanding and learning in terms of a meaningful discourse.

During module 3, I was asked to produce an opinion about: “Amistad Incident”. My analysis about the activity is described as follows:

Amistad Incident An historical chronicle that reveals the most significant case among multiple outrageous acts of bondage, particularly remarkable for the importance it had in America’s history as the spark that ignited the civil war. This amazing piece of reality heightens the superb defense of human rights along the way to the abolition of slavery. It’s an extraordinary precedent of everyone’s duty to struggle against any threat to the natural law of man: freedom.

Activity: Length limited activity to assess reading comprehension through a written task, which includes a brief selection description and reader’s opinion. Strategies:

“Skimming”, technique used to obtain the gist of a text, which helps to quickly identify the main ideas. “Summarizing” captures the main ideas and keeps the original meaning of a selection through a brief and concise statement, in order to reveal reader’s level of comprehension. “Giving Opinion”, information that establishes the reader's point of view about

the reading.

NAHUM LOPEZ GOMEZ

MODULE 7: TECHING STRATEGIES

UNIT 5

LISTENING TEACHING STRATEGIES

Listening Teaching Strategies

Phrasal Verbs Large part of English vocabulary is made up of phrasal verbs, idiomatic expressions composed of a verb and one or more prepositions. According to research, phrasal verbs are the most common verb form in spoken English, therefore their learning substantially determines learners' vocabulary, and thus, part of their language proficiency. However, their idiomatic nature makes their learning extremely difficult, and unfortunately, there aren’t shortcuts to learn them. Trying to learn them isolated is quite difficult and insignificant because they’re not contextualized. It’s better to learn them from different situations in order to have more opportunity to get used and apply them correctly. I’d consider the following conditions to ease learning and practicing phrasal verbs: · Frequent exposure to realia, real language contexts, through reading and listening activities. · Writing sentences using phrasal verbs within a context. · Learning phrasal verbs used for particular contexts. · Learn different meanings of one particular phrasal verb. · Learn different meanings according to the main verb. · Learn different meanings according to the particle.

NAHUM LOPEZ GOMEZ

MODULE 7: TECHING STRATEGIES

UNIT 6

SPEAKING TEACHING STRATEGIES

Using Music to Generate Oral Production

Music is an extension of human expression, is the language of senses which can be decoded by everyone around the world no matter what language they speak. Music is also, a bunch of aural stimuli that elicits sensorial responses, useful to induce memories, thoughts, and ideas. It’s an excellent resource not only to stimulate, but to involve the aural sense in the language learning process, and a helpful tool to ease the achievement of language learning aims. The first activity in the second unit of the fifth module is based on the induction of memories through the exposure to different genres of music clips, which intends to encourage learners to generate detailed descriptions of places or situations in order to promote their oral production. Although I’ve never supported my teaching practice with music, I find it helpful, because I do believe that using music as strategy in language acquisition processes represents substantial and significant advantages in generating students’ oral production. I consider that in basic stages, as those in which we are involved, it could be used gradually, as background to set classroom mood, to ignite students' creativity, and to encourage students to overcome the psychological barriers that oral production represents, to eventually promote students’ language skills to produce own stories.

NAHUM LOPEZ GOMEZ

MODULE 7: TECHING STRATEGIES

UNIT 7

WRITING TEACHING STRATEGIES

Writing Strategies For most second language learners, speaking is the most important ability to develop, because of its importance on the building of relationships. However, the appropriate and effective usage of language principles can be better evidenced through what’s considered the most difficult skill to acquire: Writing. Learning how to write, in other words, how to record ideas and arguments isn’t just developing another skill; it also means getting involved in an activity in which the proper use of language is required. Then writing, the symbolical representation of language, isn’t a dimension that could readily be learnt by exposure, as speaking is; on the contrary, its mastering demands instruction since it’s only through writing that we can come fully precise and effective in the usage of language. Although writing is a one-way communication process, it’s capable to set the conditions in order to carry out a meaningful interaction between writer and reader, then writing works as a type of discourse which intends to inform, describe, instruct, and/or persuade. The strategies presented along module six were suitable for the achievement of writing purposes, but more important quite instructive. Book Review: A report of the most significant characteristics (author, settings, ideas, and characters) in a plot or work. Explaining a Process. It’s focused on describing the working of the process itself, by following the model guidelines, without addressing the reader directly. Autobiographical Incident model and Eyewitness model: Focused on storytelling; consist on a series of chronological actions, which come from author’s experiences or imagination.

NAHUM LOPEZ GOMEZ

MODULE 7: TECHING STRATEGIES

UNIT 8

ABOUT ICT’s TOOLS

About ICT Tools ICT’s (Information and Communication Technologies) is a term that involves all technological resources designed to process and transmit information. However, its usefulness has spread to other disciplines such as education, for which purposes they hadn’t been initially created. The inclusion of ICT’s on educational methodologies and strategies has resulted in a new conception of learning. This conception, which regards learning as an active, authentic, and collaborative process, focuses to provide language learners the opportunity to use language in meaningful ways within real contexts, through the use of resources and platforms based on the ITC's. Internet, the most outstanding ITC nowadays, lies in the exchange of information through resources such as e-mail, videoconference, forums, and chats, to allow new forms of communication for longdistance interactions, which consider the exchange of ideas, values and feelings. On the educational level, it appears as an ICT that offers the possibility to, analyze, use, and distribute information to facilitate interactions among the learning agents in the construction of knowledge. Many are the benefits that emerge after incorporating the ITC's to teaching, especially for long-distance education: • • • • •

Availability 24 hours a day Free online activities Practice with technology based-material Easy and fast access to current and authentic material Opportunities for collaborative work

I found the most interesting tools in module 6 • • •

AHUM LOPEZ GOMEZ

MODULE 7: TECHING STRATEGIES

UNIT 9

LESSON PLANNING

Lesson Planning

Feel confident.

•

Be aware of their expected results

•

Be exposed to language samples

•

Be modelled with examples of the use of language

•

Demonstrate understanding of tasks

•

Produce language and be corrected

•

Construct their own knowledge

FINAL PROJECT

Reviewing the report of my learning experience

CULTURAL AWARENESS

By Miguel de Jesùs Martìnez Medina When you have the opportunity to study another language, you will find some interesting facts about culture. They might appear in some way estrange or similar to you, buy they are part of people’s values. And as English teachers we must have a kind of obligation to give our students a window to other places where culture is taken. It means that we have to teach English, but culture as well. And in this course I had a chance to read some articles which were really interesting, some could show you a little bit about how people lived in slavery and the way they were threaded in the “Amistad Incident”, or you can take a look and realized why American and British English is different in sounds. I also saw that many countries besides The USA and England intent to create educational WebPages to help students to have practice in English as a second language. So there are many ways where we can ask our students to practice, do a research, or just to have fun and learn at the same time, the way they do it is on our hands, now we got more information and more resources to share among our students. I will end up with a definition of culture and it says that it is “the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization or group”. See the importance of telling our students about culture is that they must know that there are many people doing different activities which might sound inappropriate for some, but they are right for others, and we must respect them as they do with our culture, and also because it identifies you as Mexican wherever you go. People around the world learn about cultures.

NEW TEACHING STRATEGIES DISCOVERED

There are many ways of teaching, but sometimes we do not realize that we have had fallen in a lack of variety, called routine, which affects our lives and our jobs. We can find a lot of students saying that they do not like to study English, they see it too difficult to learn, but sometimes we contribute as teachers to make boring classes, so students have the right to hate this language. If we want to change here we can find as many activities as we want, for example. The one where

READING TEACHING STRATEGIES

uses videos to practice reading was an excellent activity, because you can use it to practice vocabulary, grammar points, pronunciation, cultural aspects, students can check English in videos, and have people from different countries, speaking in English in our classroom, they do not have to go abroad to learn about how people pronounce words. And to learn that there is a wide variety of English speakers, so, different accents - same language. So it depends on what you want in your classes. It is true that are many books or WebPages where you can get a lot of information to use in class, but there is something that you can use without help of a book, and that is imagination. As the videos all the exercises we did here had something good to use with our students, the only thing is that we must be able to apply them.

Reading is something important to do among our students, we must teach them, what to read and how to read. Unfortunately we as part of our culture, in some places and some people, do not like to read, so when they have a necessity to do it, they feel desperate. It might be because people do not have learned to read, they just go through the text and suddenly they feel lost. That is why some techniques or strategies are very helpful to help people enjoy texts, like skimming or scamming which take you exactly where you want to be, I mean you can have a general idea about a book and then continue reading or just leave it, by skimming. And sometimes use scamming to look for specific information. So we can have our students practicing these strategies in order to make them more enjoyable the reading, therefore they will learn to read and the will see less difficult the time we ask to read, and sometimes it depends on the readings we use with our students, probably it is too high for them, or the topics are not interesting for them, that is why we need to be more selective with our readings and always we aware of student’s needs.

Listening teaching strategies Sometimes we as teachers do not have time enough for practicing some skills and mostly those where we have troubles like listening and speaking. We spent more time on reading and writing. So when we face kinds of situations where we have to use them, for example an oral exam or an interview, we find troubles. That is for sure, so I found many activities which were a little bit difficult but not too much, like the ones where you practice the minimal pairs, but they were very interesting and kind of easy at the end. It is true that there are many accents and you as learner must be able to learn all the possible ones, but it is also true that ones are easier to catch than

SPEAKING TEACHING STRATEGIES

other ones. I am say that I am not really used to work with British accent, I work more with American English and now that I found activities where I had to listen to them, my gosh! So, if we try to spend time just in one accent, we will find as many difficulties as we can imagine. As an advice, now I will work with both. That way, students are going to be able to understand both accents.

Probably this skill turns out to be one of the most difficult to improve, because it requires improvisation at the time of doing it. And takes a lot of time to master it, here you do not use grammar in a proper way, but you must be clear at the moment you speak. Therefore when you encourage your students to do it, you must be prepared to give them a lot of confidence. That is way when I saw an activity in chapter two where you have to describe someone in a web page and also it could be seen by others, it looked magnificent, to us as teachers and also to be applied among our students. It is on http://voicethread.com. I think it will work in a better way for our students to do it outside the classroom because students feel less pressure by the teacher’s presence. They can have it as a final project or as a speaking exam, or it can be done in pairs, or teams. It depends on the activity we chose, and what we ask from our students to do. But if we have the opportunity to do it in the classroom and show our students how to use this program, it will work even better.

Writing teaching strategies I might say that this is what we do the most, talking about one of our daily activities in the classroom. But sometimes we do not have the opportunity to have feedbacks about our own writings, as it happened in this chapter. So every time I had to write about something, later on I had many opinions about the way I had written, some were from my colleagues and I appreciate the way they did, because you can see that others have some thoughts just like you, but the most I really liked came out from my tutor who was always pointing out what was right and what was wrong. And also telling you sometimes that you have to add something else or change letters if they were written incorrectly. Or maybe to check grammar points in some writings. After that you can reorganize your activities, see the problems you have and check your needs in order to work again.

ICT tools

Technology has become to be a useful tool in a world that is changing very rapidly. Education has taken advantage of it because the modern society has required. And teachers and students are the ones who really get the benefits. As I had the opportunity to see it in this course I took here. I might say that all the modules had something good and something in particular, but I will work again if I had a chance on speaking. It was the module I like the most because the challenges it represents. So I decided to choose in a first place the story telling, if you use it with your students it will work great, because students love stories and I know that they hate to speak in class, but what if we let students to invent their own story and tell it in class. Then in second place I liked where describing an event, and you have specified instructions in order to have a better result, it can also work with our students if we give clear steps to be followed, and I will leave to the end the Voicethread site which it was one of the activities where I really enjoyed myself, so I think students will love it, too. They will feel realized and free to give opinions about the pictures, so it can be checked later and give a feed back. I students are afraid of do something in class is to And that so way I willwe continue explaining eachasactivity until I got everything I wanted to have in my class. The speak, maybe can have this website another tool. observations space is provided to take notes, during or after the class, the ones will help to avoid some possible mistakes which occurred in class, it can be about the same format, timing, vocabulary, activities, and Lesson Planning material. Or just write about something in particular about the topic, if the students liked or not, or an idea to improve theis class, or, maybe incident couldabe avoided you were prepared it. those As we can see, The true that there is notsome a clear formatthat to write lesson plan,if everybody do it andfor uses imagination is a key to have a nice format. which feel free and have confidence on them and think will work the best. But if we have the opportunity just to take a look on all the formats we can find, we will find that almost all of them have something in common, it means 85% of them ask for the same. But you can also find some differences among all the formats, that is why you must have a clear idea about what you want in class and based on that reflect your steps on a piece of paper. I had the opportunity in a previous time to check this website and see all the formats, and there is one in particular I really liked. And it is Seven Elements of a Lesson Plan (Hunter) which I consider

myself includes all the process to get an effective class, but I will add timing for each activity and I will do it in a different format.

MY LEARNING EXPERIENCE

MY LEARNING EXPERIENCE 1

BY A. MARIA GUADALUPE MONROY GUTIÈRREZ UNIT 1 ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING AWARNESS. Communicative skills for secondary teachers course provides outstanding resources to keep a permanent training as an English teacher. It is an extensive guide to convert teaching into a funny experience based in the usage of English. Grammar aspects like nouns, verbs, punctuation, adjectives, etc. are presented in an easy and entertaining way that engages students´ attention and interest. Each module provides learners with a wide range of activities for using English in communicative contexts. Grammar rules are not the most important aspect to teach in a classroom because students need to interact in real situations. Indeed, communication occurs when people express ideas and feelings with specific purposes like describing a person or places, saying instructions, giving opinions, evaluating actions or assignments, telling stories, etc. Usage and use of English have to be acquired along efficient users of language training. Such goal requires four main abilities: Listening: learners need to understand rhythm and stress function, differentiate sounds, interact in dialogues; figure out contents according with models like, news, conversations, videos, speeches, etc. and interact efficiently in, at least, quotidian situations. Writing: English learners have to use grammar rules to communicate, discriminate facts from opinions in order to support their counterpart understanding, express main ideas, manipulate tools like dictionaries, etc. Reading: efficient readers infer words meaning, apply reading comprehension strategies and improve them, look for ways to boost spelling and know new vocabulary. Speaking: oral expression demands practice, relevant and involving situations, strategies like thought groups, intonation and stress awareness, fluency, etc.

UNIT 2 CULTURAL LEARNING AWARENESS. Learning of culture through ICT´s is the most fascinating experience. They provide effective learning opportunities for students to value diversity and challenge racism. They focus on helping students to understand and appreciate aspects of cultural difference and extend their perceptions of themselves and other people. Some decades ago books, radio and TV were the only means of information; nowadays digital technologies and the Internet are opening the door to new forms of expression, changing the roles played by cultural institutions. Whether people want or not, digitalization is both a technological and a social development that alters not only the content but also the form of cultural expression. Wherever ICT´s are, there are not boundaries between human being´s behaviors, beliefs, values and symbols. XXI century teachers, users of ICT, are needed in classrooms. Students want digital models that enjoy being in the Golden Gate Bridge or in Sydney festival; brave leaders who participate in forums, video conferences, chat sessions and messenger conversations; creators that can teach with tools like you tube, pimpampum, photo peach, movie segments, tall tales, poems, songs, etc. That is to say, teachers who share students´ versatile epoch.

UNIT 3 1

NEW TEACHING STRATEGIES DISCOVERED. “What children learn depends not only on what they are taught but also how they are taught” Saskatchewan Teaching strategies determine the approach a teacher may take to achieve learning objectives. Experienced and motivating teachers develop an ability to look for new teaching strategies and adapt them to different learning teaching experiences. Their goal is to engage students by observing, speaking, writing, listening, thinking, reflecting, doing, etc. Communicative skills for secondary teachers course includes strategies like… TEACHING STRATEGIES A) Independent study promotes individual initiative, self-reliance and self-improvement.

METHODS Computer instruction.

B) Interactive instruction develops skills and abilities through interaction.

Peer partner learning.

C) Active Learning set environments to allow learning.

Reading for meaning. Story telling. Narratives Descriptions

D) Differentiated instruction take into consideration the different ways of learning.

Inferences. Reflection.

E) Graphic tools on computer.

Visual. Sound.

HOW PARTICIPANTS GOT IT Immediate feedback: tutor and peers´ recommendations. Different types of exercises: yes/no and Wh questions, asking questions. Assessing capabilities and progress with pre- test and post- tests. Co evaluation in forums. Assess writings. Give opinions in “poem book”. Models: eyewitness, autobiographical incident, myths, American robin. Identifying facts and opinions. Texts types: instructive, descriptive, persuasive e informative. Newspapers articles. Short talks. Tall tales. Games. Quizzes. People descriptions. Short talks. Movie segments. Voicethread. News. Showslides. Tutorials like audacity software and voicethread.

UNIT 4 1

READING TEACHING STRATEGIES Comprehension is the essence of reading. That is why one goal of secondary schools curriculum is to develop fluent and proficient readers with ability to silently or orally read texts with appropriate speed, accurate, expression and use them according to personal purposes. ICT facilitates this purpose because websites provide support about: a) Linguistic competence: identify writing systems and their elements like vocabulary, how words are ordered in sentences, functions of words (noun, verb, adjective, adverb, etc.) Some useful readings are Civilian escape report, adult learning activities and foster children. b) Sociolinguistic competence: knowledge about different types of texts, their usual structure, content and different purposes. Reports, news, articles, magazines and everyday material are useful to get this competence. Some examples of readings are “a horse in the sky”, “American and British English. These websites are helpful too http://www.englishpage.com/readingroom/readingroomintro.html http://www.nytimesconversations.com/ c) Strategic competence: ability to use top-down and bottom-up strategies; skimming; scanning; reading, listening and watching video, sample readings, distinguish facts from opinions. All of these reading strategies develop a life-long interest and enjoyment in reading a variety of material for different purposes which determine the appropriate approach to reading comprehension.

UNIT 5 LISTENING TEACHING STRATEGIES. Oral texts are the hardest to understand for non-native speakers. Some of the reasons are the reduced opportunities to practice in quotidian situations, priority in grammar when teaching and teachers do not use many authentic materials. This complex ability requires intentional listening that employs strategies for identifying sounds and making meaning from them. Teachers´ tasks consists in helping their students become effective listeners, it means choosing and practicing listening strategies like top-down where understanding is based on the listener background and knowledge of the topic. It includes identifying main idea, predicting, drawing inferences, summarizing. Sidney festival and dioramas are useful movies to practice this strategy. Bottom-up strategy uses the combination of sounds, words and grammar that creates meaning. Word stress pattern encourages students to know words function, improve good pronunciation, getting underlying meaning of a sentence. Phonetic links like http://www.shiporsheep.com/, tag questions, idioms, minimal pairs, can be used. An inadequate rhythm and Intonation -falling and raising- can result in misunderstandings or losing interest in conversation. Helpful pages are http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLOBq2WcINY&NR=1, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2bHdXcszJ4 http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=Qh6kUsJcu3k Thought groups and punctuation strategies are explained in these links. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHZIA0G1sc&feature=related , http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=nM5AS4XIPSM&NR=1 Authentic texts like video or news are helpful ways to teach culture and develop listening.

UNIT 6 SPEAKING TEACHING STRATEGIES Being able to speak English fluently is critical for English language learners. There are a number of students, from different cultural background, who are too shy to speak up in the classroom or to answer a question, even when they have the answer. That is why the goal of teaching speaking skills is communicative efficiency. Learners should be able to make themselves understood, by trying to avoid confusion in the message due to faulty pronunciation, grammar, or vocabulary, and to observe the social and cultural rules that apply in each communication situation. Communicative skills for secondary teachers course provided a wide range of speaking teaching strategies in order to get such purpose. They could be classified into two groups: Voicethread tool

Music clips

Describing places or situations

Describing people Free strategies

Giving and asking instructions by phrases and expressions.

Making agreements and disagreements through videoconferences

Short talks: someone important in my life

Telling a story based on Aaron Shepard´s guide. More structured strategies.

Giving opinions about people of influence

UNIT 7 WRITING TEACHING STRATEGIES Amazing activities can be done with ICT in order to develop writing skills in any level of performance, the only boundary is students´ and teachers´ imagination. From the most essential need, vocabulary and grammar, until scholastic creations like reports or essays are facilitated with technology use. ICT´s are worthy tools to learn the formal aspect of English, for instance verbs, nouns, etc -concepts- how to use them in a sentence – procedure- and use them with responsibility –attitudeCommunicative emphasizes:

skills

for

secondary

teachers

course

a) Reviewing Grammar through “a book of poems” and the funniest tall tales like modern Cinderella, foolish invitations, etc. b) Correcting compositions by analyzing and reflecting on language. c) Creating short stories like comic strips by using makebeliefs software. d) Producing visual stories with photopeach software. e) Models like book review in order to write summaries, autobiographical incidents, eyewitness account, myths , etc. f) Entertaining games. g) Movie segments to assess grammar goals. These strategies contribute to… - know new vocabulary, use functional grammar, understand written texts, value the cultural diversity and arise the interest and curiosity in language. -Be aware of the wide range of applications of internet in order to work, share information and make collaborative activities. - Encourage students to get, understand, process and present information. 1

-Support the creativity and innovation. -Through co evaluation and self evaluation, students develop skills to control their own learning process and know new ways to learn. -Bear the group work to socialize knowledge and promote collaboration. -Turn the grammar into funny products.

UNIT 8 ABOUT ICT TOOLS ICT are some of the most updated and useful resources for teaching English in any level. There are educational investigators whose recent findings are displayed on web sites and teachers have first hand information about changes in curriculum and new ways to teach according to them, so teachers and students can save money and time in order to practice a permanent training and they can do it at any time in his or her home. ICT are useful means for teaching because students can find many exercises for supporting any special topic. It enables skills related with finding specific information, establishing standards for selecting pages, control students´ learning process, self evaluate tasks in order to improve them and share productions. Some advantages of using technology are: it combines image, sound and movement to display colorful and attractive pages where students learn by playing because they can interact with knowledge and elaborate new productions. There are exercises for all ages and levels, so ICT contribute to create independent learners. Trough technology students socialize knowledge. A feeling of utility is raised when students see their work or when they talk with some peers in order to get opinions or make agreements or disagreements. A collaborative work is promoted and students learn many things like how to interact with others, encourage respect for diversity, be tolerant, and develop attitudes of responsibility about his or her productions and opinions. 1

Finally, ICT help students to test strengths and feel more confident to interact in English

UNIT 9 LESSON PLANNING Lesson planning is the art of combining a number of different elements into a coherent whole so that a lesson has an identity which students can recognize, work within and react to. (see Jeremy Harmer, 2001) Based in this definition, instructional scaffolding lesson plan model has five important elements to keep in mind. Ownership. It is very important to keep students´ attention, interest and wish to learn along a period of time; that is why the planned activities must include attractive tasks that involve students into learning experience. Appropriateness. Classes demand adequate assignments according with their age, interests and needs; scaffolding plan incorporates such attributes. Support. Students need an external support during learning process, especially when they discuss, elaborate works and make presentations; that is to say, a guided assistance must be planned in advance when leading a class. Collaboration. Scaffolding model promotes group work between students. They feel more comfortable in this situation and learn from each other´s experience and knowledge. Finally, Internalization stage let know if teacher and students got the objectives or not. This moment could be used as an evaluation with students because any creation is an evidence for assessing a learning experience. 1

REVIEWING MY LEARNING EXPERIENCE FINAL REPORT Benito Navarro Robles

English language learning awareness In general, I think I have improved in the four language skills. I can read a variety of texts and write using some complex grammar structures; my vocabulary has increased while, at the same time, I’ve corrected my pronunciation. In the speaking and listening skills, I can focus now on specific sound features, like thought groups, intonation chunks, voice pitching and word and syllable stress; now I can understand longer listening material. A crucial error I used to make when I talked was that I got nervous and spoke rather slow. But, with this Diploma, I have gained confidence in speaking in English with my students. I can also use some technological resources for learning and teaching English. However, one of my major weaknesses is still my low ability in accessing and using technological resources; this particularly happened, for example, when I was instructed, through a tutorial, how to record a story as well as to create a mp3 file using the Audacity program; I really had a hard time trying to understand each part of the process and the correct use of the webcam; there were moments I couldn’t even activate the microphone and had to ask for help from someone else. This is the reason why instead of having a videoconference with my conversation partner we chatted through the messenger

Cultural learning awareness

In this course, I could distinguish some great differences in pronunciation and idioms, from one culture to another; such expressions have to do with the way people see the world. It is weird how Australians pronounce “day” as it is written in, for example, the idiom “day-to-day” which refers to “things done on any ordinary day” or the word bus pronounced so by British people, differing from the American English pronunciation. In the social relations field, one cultural aspect is how It is increasingly becoming a problem in Great Britain for adults to intervene when youngsters commit anti-social behavior as compared to the 65% of Germans, 52% of Spanish and 50% of Italians who would be willing to intervene; but in The United States things are not so different, people live in permanent fear of being sued, due to any meaningless incident like, for example, getting a low grade in a subject thinking the student she / he had deserved a higher one. I have taught some cultural features, especially in a subject named Adolescents and the Learning of English. I organized my students in pairs and had them work on the topic “varieties of English”, comparing each team the English spoken in two different cultures. They compared, for example, New York’s vs. Texan’s English; Australia’s vs. Irish English; British vs. American English, Arabic vs. Indian English and so on. My students enjoyed a lot this activity.

New teaching strategies discovered All the teaching strategies were interesting; I can mention first the one based on the three audio recordings with sounds effects, whose activity was to choose one, listen attentively to it and write about what it evocated; I had my college students do this activity and they liked it a lot. Other activities I am considering to apply are those of creating comic strips, “photoshows” and Tell Tales or “Wacky web Tales” from www.eduplace.com/tales, which let the students practice grammar items in writing, having as a result very funny personalized versions. It’s worthy to watch over and over again the series of videos and check activities from each unit in order to determine their usefulness in relation to specific teaching situations. This Diploma has also given to me the opportunity to select a variety of reading comprehension strategies and texts, suitable for a course

I teach at the university; among those strategies are: Activating prior Knowledge; Ask questions: before, during and after reading; as well as Make and refine predictions. Regarding the article “Eight habits of highly effective 21 st century teachers”; a reflective and efficient teacher can adapt almost all strategies reviewed through the Diploma. They are flexible models to create teaching material as well as organize the class in a collaborative environment in forum discussions and, obviously, prepare the class for taking risks using technology to improve their learning and for the teachers’ sake.

Reading teaching strategies

From all the activities in module 3, the ones I found most useful were in the website named Adult Learning Activities. It allows practicing not only reading comprehension but also listening comprehension and speaking; each reading is illustrated, it appears in basic and full format, one can read a story on screen while, at the same time, listen to it from an audio recording and, as an additional practice, a video is displayed where news reporters talk about the scenes, adding details about the story. The other practice sections in the webpage are: “Learn new words”, “Spell a word”; “”Matching game”, “Pick an Answer”, “Write an Answer” and “Learn More at other websites”. In the same webpage, it is available a wide menu of stories, classified into different categories; so we can go from one to another. A similar website is www.Many Things. Org; where we can listen to stories, displayed on a screen, and do activities classified in eight different sections. The general term for this strategy is “reading along” and if we read the text before we listen to the story we can practice some conventional reading comprehension strategies, like the following ones: Activating prior knowledge, skimming, identifying text structure, identifying the author’s purpose and making predictions..

Listening teaching strategies Whenever I’ve taken English language exams, I’ve always found listening comprehension to be the most difficult section and, obviously, when having direct conversations it has become an interfering factor, which I’ve tried to surpass asking for clarification. I hadn’t been aware that I needed to steadily practice a set of phonological rules that could help me improve my language skills; but, fortunately, I realize now, listening comprehension is closely related to reading and writing. English, as any other language, is a whole, not the sum of isolated parts. However,

reaching to such a crucial reflection was not easy, I struggled against my weaknesses along the listening comprehension module, doing activities with voiced and voiceless sounds, stress and intonation as well as chunks and thought groups; among the different practice sections, perhaps the most difficult listening activity was one in Australian English, in unit 2; but it is understandable, these dialectical differences have been beyond my experience. I know a cultural aspect of learning a language is feeling native speakers talk faster than normal, it has happened to me with Americans in direct conversations and sometimes in listening to British people, but this time I felt as if Australians, in videos, spoke even a little bit faster, due to phonological features, phrasal verbs and idioms. I’ll continue practicing; it could’ve been easier if I’d had more time to review the text vocabulary.

Speaking teaching strategies

To tell the truth, I have an ambivalent opinion about the activities I fulfilled in the speaking module; because, on one hand, in trying to learn how to use the Audacity program, the webcam and fixing some installation problems in my computer, I experienced high anguish and nervousness all the time, but, on the other hand, when I finally could upload the activity I enjoyed the moment but almost immediately I also had kind of frustration because it wasn’t with the quality I wanted. This happened, in activating the microphone, recording a description or story and correctly uploading it to the platform, based on the “Voicethread” or description of people’s video as well as in another Unit’s activity which required a videoconference, on the current issue “Should taxes be raised?”; however, for some partners’ behalf, the activity ended up in a chatting session, submitted in writing to the platform. In spite of those hindrances, I must mention, without hesitation, that the voice thread descriptions in units 3 and 5 and the videoconference in the latter, were the most useful activities, because they intended to develop our abilities in using computer programs and, at the same time,

to better our oral expression related to the other language skills. I’m prone to apply such activities with my English major class, during this academic year, learning from and with them.

Main teaching strategies used for writing.

In this module there were activities for enjoyment like the book of poems, the comic strip, the Tell tale, the photoshow and the one on the use of movies in English learning classes; which required just brief writing pieces or choosing options from predetermined utterances; but, notwithstanding such features, they revealed to be helpful in making the participants learn the use of some resources for teaching writing and provide some reading practice. I liked them a lot, but also the module included activities intended to foster formal writing, having among these ones a book review, an autobiographical incident and an eyewitness’s account. For fulfilling the first task, I hesitated a while which book I would write about and it was Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World; for the second activity, a personal incident, I evocated a hard time I had when I was assaulted about twenty years ago, in unexplainable circumstances. The third sort of task could have been accomplished describing a directly observed traffic accident, a street fight or any other quotidian event which might have happened along the years, but I focused my attention on academic matters and tried to figure out what it meant school financial crisis in York’s Schools District, Maine, USA; that I personally experienced as an exchange teacher during the term 2002-2003.

Description of three tools

Thinking in the Information and Communication Technologies on English language learning, the most useful tools for my own learning were those of module 5, speaking, because this has always been my weakest language skill and I am aware I need to continue steadily practicing oral expression. The audacity program revealed to be especially useful for describing people of influence, in the so called “voicethread” activity as well as in communicating through a videoconference about a predetermined issue; additionally, we can use audacity in other creative activities, such as listening to a music clip and then giving a description in writing and orally of the place and situation it evoked. But, thinking in terms of teaching, on my students’ sake, I rather need to select reading and listening comprehension activities from modules 3 and 4, because those two skills are closely related to the syllabus of the subject Adolescents and the Learning of English, which I am currently teaching in the “Normal Superior” school, and they also might relate a great deal with the kind of tools I am going to need in December this year to June 2010, for teaching a basic and an academic English reading comprehension courses, as part of a Diploma I am coordinating in the Tlaquepaque campus of the National Pedagogical University. The most supportive reading comprehension strategies were those referred as “reading while listening”; “reading for pleasure” and “Reading, listening and watching a video”.

Lesson planning

From the lesson plans reviewed, I selected Hunter’s seven steps and the one for Group Work in a cooperative learning setting. Both models focus on educational outcomes, in product evidences, rather than just fostering the learning of concepts and factual information without a through application in the student’s context. Those lesson plans relate each other, in some respects, they demand the teacher to grab the students’ attention creating an anticipatory setting; the lesson’s core, namely the objectives, state what the students “will be able to do…”; the third step is giving instructions for group’s work, the activities and assessment criteria; then, the teacher models what it is expected from the students’ performance; while, at the same time, he / she checks their understanding of the whole procedure. This is a controlled stage and it is followed, either in Hunter’s plan or in the Cooperative Learning’s, by two final stages, a Guided Practice

(semi-controlled) and an independent practice; respectively intended for the students to apply new knowledge in new skills and abilities as well as for letting them work by themselves, elaborating creative works. Both models are according to the competences based curriculum approach and, obviously; they’re suitable for almost any school setting. I have organized my classes for cooperative learning, in secondary school, and it has been a useful strategy for project work and keeping self-discipline in the classroom.

This entire Diploma represented an unforgettable learning experience that, for sure, will mark my life forever in behalf of my students at different schools and language levels.

My learning experience By Carolina Pèrez Màrquez

Communicative Skills for Secondary Teachers is an enriching learning experience in more than one way: as a foreign language learner, it allows participants to develop communicative skills through a variety of activities; and, as language teacher, it provides diverse tools to work with students and improve professional practice. English language learning awareness Communicative competence refers to diverse skills development, such as proper pronunciation, accurate grammar and vocabulary, to understand and produce speeches, appropriate words and ways of speaking for different purposes and situations and appropriate interaction with other people. Spoken and written language is people’s most used means of expressing everything. The best way to make progress on second language learning is by doing as much reading, listening, speaking and writing practices. In order to get a proper way to do it, vocabulary and grammar structures are needed. Cultural learning awareness An important and interesting part of the communicative competence is to understand more about people and their culture, the way they are like and the reasons of their behavior. Cultures comparison aim will be to know, to comprehend and to learn from them.

Cultures information from every country all over the world can be spread by readings, images and videos through the means of information and communication to English- speaking and non- speaking countries. Technology has been useful for people interaction beyond boundaries, cultures and even languages, enriching knowledge and vision about the world humans live in. New teaching strategies discovered Effective English teachers must be permanent learners to update their practice. Collaborative and communicative teaching activities for every level and learning styles are provided by helpful electronic tools, with experiences from other teachers to be absorbed and share ours with them. Interesting web sites involve enough exercises to keep on learning with useful information and teaching tips, so that continuous updating becomes a regular habit and a model to follow to young people. Awareness about actual and real school context and conditions will allow a better selection of activities, provided by diverse web sites and electronic resources, to motivate and keep students interest on participative learning. Leading students has never been an easy task. Nowadays it has become a full-time work in order to be prepared student’s attention demands and necessities.

Reading teaching strategies Receptive skills in written mode are developed by reading. It can be worked independently of listening and speaking skills but always linked to them. Written expression is one of the most common ways of human communication. To have a better understanding of the diversity of written texts people are interested in sharing and knowing about, reading strategies are to be used. Reading can help build useful vocabulary needed for listening comprehension at later stages. They can also help to decipher the script, recognize vocabulary, pick out key words, to figure out the meaning of them, recognize word classes, get the main point of

the reading, distinguish the main idea from supporting details, adjust strategies to different purposes, just to mention some of the possible ways to practice reading. Reading comprehension can be easier, funnier and more interesting, thanks to the wide range of electronic tools advantages. They provide opportunities to access and explore sites, for all levels, from different cultures, countries, organizations, institutions, etc. so people can get information for any reason even for pleasure and entertainment. Web sites offer a variety of learning and practice pages. Immediate results to the possible mistakes committed are shown after completing the exercises besides their correction with the correspondent explanation in order to clarify them and avoid failures in further practices.

Listening teaching strategies Listening is a receptive skill in the oral mode. There are two ways to understand what it is heard: through interactive and non-interactive practices. Listeners can have a face-to-face conversation and/or telephone calls, in both cases people are able, alternatively, to listen and speak. The opportunity of asking for clarification, repetition or slower speech can be requested by listeners during conversations and telephone calls. Recent technology helps to achieve long distance virtual conversations and video phone calls, allowing a more personal interaction among listeners. Listening to the radio, TV programs, films and lectures are examples of non-interactive listening practices; in such cases people don’t have the chance to ask for clarification or repetition of what was said. Though, this kind of resources also provides useful tools for listening understanding. To succeed on listening comprehension it is important to be aware of the learner level in order to organize activities and strategies gradually, according to student progress. Listening to activities, especially with native speakers, even in the non-interactive ones, provide an approach to real practices where people face the necessity of listening carefully to the speaker, in order to understand and not to miss what it is said. Specific characteristics for listening comprehension are to be attended. To identify or select the kind of text or conversation topic is going to take place, besides rhythm, intonation and thought groups, to mention some, provide important supporting tools for people to achieve a better listening understanding. Speaking teaching strategies

Speaking is the productive skill in the oral mode. There are three kinds of speaking situations in which people can find themselves: interactive, partially interactive and noninteractive. During the first kind, the interaction includes a face-to-face conversations and telephone calls, where speakers can, alternatively, listening and speaking; they can also ask for clarification and repetition, if necessary. A partially interactive speaking example can be when someone is giving a speech to live audience, although the audience does not interrupt the speech, the speaker can see the audience and judge, from the expressions on their faces and body language, whether or not the speaker is being understood. Recording a speech for a radio broadcast is an example of a non-interactive speaking skill development. Speaking allows free style expression about any topic people want to talk about. Speaking and listening skills development though, demands important general rubrics that must be attended: fluency, flexibility, topic development, coherence, precision, vocabulary richness, grammar correctness, phonologic knowledge, pragmatic awareness and sociolinguistic competence. During any oral practice, each one of these rubrics supports a part of a speech to make it more comprehensible for listeners and speakers alternatively. Once again, oral productions about diverse issues were encouraged by using electronic tools provided by the Diploma course: different kind of music, video conferences and images to be described or give opinions about, etc. Writing teaching strategies Writing is the productive skill in the written mode. It involves not just a graphic representation of speech, but the development and presentation of thoughts in a structured way. This ability has been considered as the toughest of all language skills and it might be right, due to the complex process it is required to develop it. To succeed on writing, people have to use vocabulary, orthography and forms of the words correctly, put words together in the correct word order, use the style appropriate to the genre and audience, make the main sentence constituents clear to the readers, make the main ideas distinct from supporting ideas or extra information and make the text coherent.

Written ways to describe people, places or situations; to express opinions, points of view, thoughts and feelings; to report facts or just to give instructions differ one from another. Specific details and characteristics are needed for each model to organize, in an attractive, coherent and meaningful text, the ideas writers want to share to others. To motivate written productions skills, interesting resources have been adapted to the necessities and interest of nowadays students, including production activities with comic strips, songs, music, movies, videos, images, books, newspapers, etc. Most of them maintain people attention and didactic usage is allowed in an attractive, funny and even relaxing way, starting by following predetermined models, in order to writing beginners confidence is gained and then increased, looking forward to further practices.

About ICT tools Technology, without doubt, has become part of daily life. Computers are useful tools to recover, evaluate, store, produce, present and interchange information to communicate and participate in collaborative works, so there is no wonder on being used for educative purposes, with a huge range of advantages for users, but disadvantages too. Long distance diverse information interchange is allowed through computers main communicative tool, the internet. Electronic mail, chat, face book are some examples of information superhighway resources, mainly used to access or share to any kind of audio, visual or written information. Attractive, interesting, helpful, funny and easy websites are found in the internet to improve our personal knowledge and professional practice. On the other hand, many people warn of the possible harmful effects of using technology in the classroom, related to losing relation ability to other human beings, or to become dependents from computers, there is also the concern about finding inappropriate materials. There’s the necessity to insist on the appropriate, interactive and guided use of new technologies in order they become tools for the development of higher order thinking skills, instead of harmful ones.

Lesson planning

Lesson planning is a detailed description of the guided instruction for a lesson. Even though author’s focuses can vary, they all consider almost the same elements in a lesson plan: goals, which determine learning purposes; objectives, which determine what further knowledge or skills students will acquire; material to determine time, resources and material needed; procedure, step by step activities, including: introductory, main and closure activities; follow up lessons or activities, to enrich knowledge or remediate mistakes; and finally, one of the most important learning stages: evaluation, to ensure students have arrived at the intended destination, in this phase evidence is needed to review and analyze the evidence and the success or not of the activities proposed and learning process, to make suitable corrections, if necessary. Key Competences for Lifelong learning, student learning styles, multiple intelligence, time management, teacher’s roles, seating arrangements, are just some of the important aspects to be considered in a lesson planning preparation. There is no perfect fit lesson plan, to all the student situations and school conditions that is the reason why permanent professional development is required to all teachers, in order to be prepared for present and future changes in education and social environment. Technology resources are, since a time ago, basic tools to be introduced in regular teaching practice and self learning, where professional advising can be provided and kept teachers updated. Possible misunderstandings and mistakes during the time class can be easier identified when someone is a learner instead a teacher, providing enough information to learn from them and look for possible solutions; they can be to adapt time, material, information or instructions, teaching strategies selected, depending of the problem origin. This Diploma course provides innumerable possibilities to improve every aspect of learning and teaching skills development, sometimes it was not easy but it all will be worth. It has been a wonderful experience.

MY LEARNING EXPERIENCE BY LUIS JAVIER VILLEGAS CASTRO

Language learning awareness Starting unit per unit, reviewing and explaining what kind of learning have been acquired and this world of knowledge that for sure is important to continue working with. Vocabulary increases more and the usage of those words is the most important. Now days separated words are meaningless because students don´t learn how to use them. Part of learning a new language is continuing increasing vocabulary in order to develop better skills with the time. Listening : Using those exercises from different units will give the chance to improve because it shows different ways to practice it. Listening can be improved by using those activities and working hard. The listening skill can be developed with the constantly visiting of those interesting web sites. Writing is going up for sure by using the activities in the module, many different samples of how to write were presented and speaking of writing will be much better now, It has been such a great writing module and applying those strategies with lead students to keep that knowledge with them. Speaking is probably the hardest to develop because programs like audacity, record your voice and listen to it can help to develop this skill but the question here is : who is going evaluate pronunciation, intonation and all those aspects that have to be considered when speaking. Reading is another skill that has been developed, those strategies presented will help for sure to go up with this skill and working hard with them will help to become better readers.

Cultural Awareness When learning a new language some cultural situations will be part of that process for example: North American people are cold they do not express their feelings like Mexican do in their country, maybe they don´t care about other people or they don´t really present what or how they feel. Few of them are Catholic. They leave their families very young and start working no matter what or they decide to live with a couple without getting married. Some parents save money during their lives for their children to go to the University, many others do not have that chance and they work in restaurants, factories, etc. During speaking activities, People can discover aspects about different pronunciations between American and British English. People learn about different intonation aspects like those that might exist in another country. British pronunciation is harder to understand when people are not use to it.

It is important to consider the countries culture when learning a language so it can be easier to understand different situation and don´t mess up with feelings and habits . People celebrate thanksgiving the last Thursday of November and after that day comes black Friday which is a sale day a lot of offers everywhere and they do not hesitate to buy Christmas gifts for everybody. Cultural aspects are part of learning a language the four skills student´s have to develop: Listening, Writing and reading.

including Speaking,

New Teaching strategies discovered. Nowadays requirements to teach must include technology according to “10 new competences to teach” by Philippe Perrenoud and during this diploma many web sites and internet activities were developed. Students have with them this facility at school and home where they can navigate on different sites. Adapting and adopting these web sites will ease student´s learning. We can contribute motivating students to enrich their language with technology. New teaching strategies will help teachers to be more effective during the teaching-learning process. All internet ,Web sites, links, exercises and many others activities will lead teachers to discover a new world where these strategies can help to encourage students to continue discovering the magic behind a language and to work home by themselves to improve day by day using the internet. 1. Adapting This is a wonderful ability teachers must have to adapt book exercises for example: Using them according to their context so they are real and students can imagine something that is around them and that they also can experience otherwise will be meaningful.

2. Being visionary When people hear or read about ideas they must have the ability to convert them into useful activities that will be taken into the classrooms for students to work with those exercises.

3. Collaborating It is important to share material and ideas among teachers so they can increase the amount of activities the own and take them to the classrooms. Teachers sharing many of the strategies like: comic strip where students can create funny and interesting stories using drawing and imagining dialogs.

4. Taking risks It is important to go further, using technology and challenging teachers and students capacity facilitating language instead of stopping students´ growing.

5. Learning Even though teachers have a professional career, language teachers must continue learning new strategies, methods and ways of facilitating language learning. During this course they have learnt great things trough the net: Skimming and scanning for reading can be a simple example of man other ones.

6. Communicating Teachers must be updated using technology and showing students how to use it in order to improve their language learning.

The internet and those websites are awesome for example movie segments for grammar where parts of a movie can help students to work on a special grammar area.

7. behavior Teachers must be a model for students to follow. They must act as they ask students to perform otherwise They´ll be incongruous. Students do it if they see how they do it and not only inside the classroom or school also outside.

8. Leading Teacher is a leader and must have their goals and objectives clear at all times in order to fail or succeed in his or her daily tasks.

These strategies have to be considered for updated teachers looking for something new to bring it to the classrooms.

MODULE 3: READING Reading is an interactive process between reader and text . The reader interacts with the text to recreate meaningful ideas. In order to extract the required information from the text in L2 they apply certain skills and strategies. Different purposes are involved when reading is part of a strategy. For example, skimming the text if students just want to know what the text is about, scanning to locate specific information.

All participants were given a great experience with different kind of texts discovering new reading strategies to improve their skill. Listening while Reading, facilitates students developing this skill choosing from a list of different kind of readings with audio included.

Facts and opinions were part of reading comprehension strategy for students to identify to kind of statements. Types of texts were part of the tasks in order to know their purposes. Intensive reading was a great activity with many exercises included, videos help learners to concentrate about the main ideas author´s want to share. FOSTER CHILDREN a sad story about children and it made students feel really bad. Foster Children

A place for children that are abused by adults and they feel safety and comfortable. The amount of kids has doubled in the areas and foster houses facilities need to increase to house a lot of kids. They appreciate that government has a place for them to live and someone to supervise them so they can grow and go to school getting something that their parents couldn´t or didn´t want to give them. Reading should be interesting, not boring. 100 short English stories helped students to find pleasant ones in order to improve reading skills. 20 strategies for reading comprehension were so helpful for students.

Activate Prior Knowledge Adjust Reading Rate/Rereading Ask Questions: Before, During, and After Reading Classify or Categorize Information Compare and Contrast Ideas

Distinguish Facts from Opinions Identify and Analyze Text Structure Identify Author’s Purpose: Why Did the Author Write the Selection? Identify Author’s Viewpoint: What Does the Author Think? Identify Main Ideas and Supporting Details Make Inferences and Draw Conclusions Make Generalizations Make and Refine Predictions Paraphrase/Retell Recognize Cause and Effect Relationships Sequence Events Summarize Information Synthesize New Information Use Context Clues to Decipher Unfamiliar Words Visualize Images From Text

Listening Strategies Word stress An activity to develop understanding so students know how it works and the different meanings sentences can have according to the stressed words.

Intonation and Rhythm When people listen to news, someone talking, interviews, radio, songs, or anything they can hear to get information, they use their knowledge of intonation to predict important parts of the discourse, what people should MAINLY pay attention to, if they are listening to an answer or question, or if the person will continue speaking, or if they will stop.

Including to this, a way to respond questions when people is angry, happy or sad.

Phrasal verbs Phrasal verbs are used very often in English. There are hundreds of them and using phrasals can be hard when students are not use to them. They are included in conversations, written texts formal and informal speaking. They are composed from prepositions and verbs. Translation is not recommended because they lose their essence when doing that. usingenglish. Com is a great site to practice them in a funny way.

Listening to songs will help to develop this skill too.

SPEAKING TEACHING STRATEGIES

Teachers are totally sure unless somebody else has another method, that speaking can be developed speaking because no matter how much you study or record your voice like in audacity, real practice with other people cannot replace it. Voicethread : was a good tool to record stories, descriptions or whatever but there´s nobody there to correct many aspects involved in speaking like intonation, stress or rhythm. Students can choose from many pictures to describe them and also listen to others pronunciation and participation to learn new things from them.

Agreement and disagreement was a fundamental part for speaking module so students could work with different statements. Giving opinions was another activity encouraging students to participate doing that about something they are interested in.

The cartoon describing about the coyote was very funny.

Writing teaching strategies One of the grammar aspects everybody keep in mind when writing is the role of the words in sentences. Do we need a noun, and adjective, a verb? And the order? WACKY WEB TALES were so funny where adding some vocabulary the site will ended up with a funny tale for students to analyze. A Book of poems: A site with fill in the blanks to create an amazing piece of poetry with spectacular writing to learn new things. The comic strip was awesome, teachers never thought that something like this could exist and with easy instructions will give them the chance to produce and create new segments of a story. They can perform their writing but besides that they can have something else different that is not easy to find somewhere else.

ABOUT ICT TOOLS A teacher´s favorite one: WRITING The activities presented were incredible and teachers will choose some of those strategies to encourage students to write because they will feel it like teachers did. MOVIE SEGMENTS was excellent. It gives the opportunity to choose from different great movies depending on what you want to teach and even print a handout. Those students who like movies will have the chance to write more and more about anything they want. Another one that was considered very enjoyable a lot was WACKY WEB TALES choosing a title and asking to fill out some words and after… pow students get a funny tale. Teachers discovered many funny ones that will never forget and they are going to share with students for them to check many results when used for the very first time BOOKR was another amazing experience with pictures and narrations sending it to friends and

having an electronic album. Everybody liked it so much. Working with real exercises is much better that imagining unreal situations, people we don´t know or places. know there are many strategies teachers have learned the challenge now is to use them and take them into the classrooms.

LESSON PLANNING

Elements to be included in a lesson plan. Title: so students know what the class is going to be about. Time: tells the teacher how many modules will have to perform that topic in the class. Materials: It helps to organize the theory in bond paper or slides to present it to students. Objectives: The most important aspect in a lesson plan because they will lead you and students to know exactly what they have to learn without going to deep or moving in another direction. Stage: Preparing the scenario and background information for students to be ready. Discuss. Very related to prior part if students have previous info or as hw they can read. Construct. In order to start organizing the information students can use it, speak about it, summarize, etc. Making their own productions. Groups: Team work is nowdays a very important aspect to consider because students can help each other and develop their tasks easily, among students can share knowledge and correct errors that will save time for teacher. Show: Students present their own productions according to specific points teacher exposed since the very beginning to avoid misunderstandings. Journal: students keep track of their own knowledge and it can be day by day, depending on the instructions given. Evaluation: must plan in order to we have to

be part of the lesson know what and when evaluate.

Lesson plan is the teachers.

most important tool for

This is Magic!!! See you soon