COMMUNICATIVE SKILLS VOLUME 4A by Sandra Hinojosa

4A 2

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. 2

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

1. English language learning awareness………….9 2. Cultural learning awareness……………………….32 3. New teaching strategies discovered……………56 4. Reading teaching strategies…….………………….81 5. Listening teaching strategies……………….……105 6. Speaking teaching strategies……….……………129

ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING AWARENESS By Maria Aglahe arreola Martinez During the course I learned many things for example; I got more strategies for Reading as skimming and scanning; I learned that word stress and intonation are important parts of listening in order to understand what other people is saying; I learned different phrases to enrich my vocabulary as linking words and I reinforced some tenses such as present perfect and simple past also they let me interact with some of my 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. This must be often practiced so as I can get a better English level, some of the ways are by reading some books, newspaper articles, magazines even in 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). I`m aware of having many weaknesses in my English because I continued making some mistakes some of them are in my speaking, I found difficult to communicate my ideas, my vocabulary is poor yet, and I have some mistakes in the connection of the words and phrases, but I think it could be eliminated if I follow some of the advices given in the course.

English language learning awareness By Maria Teresa Caballero Martinez This Diploma course has represented a unique opportunity in order to get a better knowledge of English language and, with the use of virtual lessons, my learning became more interesting. In my opinion, the language acquisition and performance I got during this course has been transcendental to me because of the development in my competences and language skills, for example, now I can distinguish between a fact and an opinion, I notice the stress in words (that can change the sense in expressions). A very interesting strategy I have learned is about though groups and I am able to notice them into songs. My speaking skill has improved and now I am more confident to speak with other people; I also can express opinions, agreements, disagreements, comments, etc. In short, I´m aware that I need to learn more in order to improve my English language skills and to search my student´s benefit.

English Language Learning Awareness By JACQUELINE CÁRDENAS MENDOZA UNIVERSIDAD AUTÓNOMA DE MÉXICO CENTRO DE ENSEÑANZAS DE LENGUAS EXTRANJERAS

I am very pleased to have studied Diploma Communicative Skills for secondary Teachers because I have learnt a lot of kind of strategies with some resources and tools for learning to learn English through Internet. Reading was first where I developed fluent and I was independent reader I used some skills and strategies to facilitate comprehension. Like: skimming, scanning, vocabulary, deducing and inferring I improved my listening skills and strategies by means of top-down and bottom-up listening as well as listening for stress and intonation, minimal pairs, reading along, word stress, intonation, pause, rhythm, and Tag questions I developed my oral production skills through monologues and dialogues going through the stages of planning, practice and publishing. I could described experiences and events, dreams, hopes and ambitions and briefly give reasons and explanations for opinions and plans’. Finally writing skill by practicing writing, short texts by creating, illustrating and publishing .I also reviewed some grammar related topics such as the elements of a sentence, use of tenses, and use of adjectives. As a language learner and teacher, I discovered many sites to practice and improve four skills. It was exiting to answer many different exercises and the web offers a wide range of interesting sites.

English language learning awareness By Patricia Cardoso Almaraz During this course I have had the chance to learn about have to improve my level of English using technology and doing this in a fun and motivating way. The abilities I found most problematic were listening and speaking and with the activities I could work in those areas facing the main problems I had. At the same time I had the chance to find activities to work with my students. It is very important for teachers to find opportunities like this course to be in touch with new material, technology, internet sites and lots of new things you can do with your students. They find it very interesting and little by little they start loving the subject. In my personal case, some of my weaknesses were detected and I believe that if I keep on practicing I will see better results day by day. I also learnt new vocabulary and now I use on line dictionaries and I recommended the use of them to my students, and they really love them. I am trying to recommend the internet sites little by little so they can have the chance to check every site thoroughly and then they wait for the next site with emotion because they feel interested, I suggest a new site every week. In conclusion, having the chance to be part of this course has been a rewarding experience for me and for my students. Of course, there is still a lot to learn but I will keep on working.

English language learning awareness. By Clara Ortencia Caro Sanchez Through out modules 2 to 6 I have learnt some differences about the structure of the English and the Spanish languages. In the reading comprehension lessons I learnt how to exploit the content of a text. I met three steps to follow: Read as the first contact with the text. Revisit or the process of rereading. Finally identify and analyze types of texts. In the Listening module I improved my listening ability because I learnt a lot about listening strategies as: 1. Top down listening. 2. Bottom up listening 3. Minimal pairs 4. Reading along 5. Word stress, intonation, pause and rhythm. 6. Tag questions. In the module of production skills through dialogues, monologues using strategies as planning, practice and publishing. I learned how to record my voice and check pronunciation, stress, and rhythm and evaluate myself. In Module 6 about writing, I produced short texts using templates. I learnt how to exploit grammar using movies. I can say that I am able to give instructions, follow them, use chunk words as part of a quotidian communication and of course I feel more confident when expressing my ideas orally. I still have a lack of vocabulary and listening problems but I consider that through practice I could improve this skill.

English language learning awarness By Teresita Chavez Aguirre The aim of this report is to assess my language learning along five modules in this program, I began this course with an English language level B1 and after it 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. Other advantage to increase my speaking ability was the fact I learned different aspects that are involved at the moment to speak, the accuracy allows me to focus on the elements of phonology, meaning and gramar. To raise my language level I am going to use internet sites and practice recording my voice in order to increase my fluency and reduce my stress. To sum up I am going to improve my English language using the tools of this program in order to reduce my weaknesses and increase my strengths.

Excellent teacher

Reading & Writing

Listening & Speaking B1

English learning awareness 2

By Susana Contreras Leon

After reading all my summaries I realized that times have changed and now we can learn and teach English in a very nice, different and funny way. During this Diploma course I have learnt lots of new strategies in each one of the teaching abilities (LISTENING, SPEAKING, READING, AND WRITING ) while I was in the listening section I realized of the importance of listening carefully and in the speaking section, I learnt how to use a web cam and I had the chance to interact and use it with my peers, in the Reading section I learnt that my student can develop this activity by reading and creating funny tales, the best part for me was definitely the Writing section where I had the chance to create comics to elaborate visual stories and poems. I am sure I will be a different teacher from now on. These wonderful resources will help me to teach English in a very different way I have decided to apply all this new technology in my classes with my students and I will have fun using all these activities. Internet always surprises me and gives me the opportunity to get lots of information. Those Web sites gave me new ideas and this Diploma course made me feel happy , I was aware of my weaknesses and my strengths so I have been thinking through this course that there is a lot of work to do in order to be a real good teacher. Most of our students know how to use technology but I think they do not use it properly because they do not know how to. Even teachers are not well prepare to guide them, If we as teachers learn how take advantage of these tools ,our students will be lead to a very good, nice and well organized work .

English Language Learning Awareness 2

By Benilde Lysenka Cosio Salazar When I began this course my language level was an independent user, throughout this course I decided to study very hard in order to get more proficiency and continue learning, when I was in module 2 I detected that I couldn’t understand specialized reading so I had to study specific vocabulary , another strategy that I found was to explore some sites to develop my reading strategies, with my students we read an audio book and we practiced some reading strategies at the beginning, at the middle and the final as scanning, infering, pre-reading. According to the module about listening, something important that I learnt and then I taught to my students was thought groups and I took into consideration not only to read academic texts but also literary and quotidian, my students love listening to songs. At module 4 about communication, I noticed that most of the times is difficult to establish a conversation with native speakers but I tried to practice with my students and partners and I organized groups in class to have the social practices. Nowadays I feel that my English is better than two months ago in my fluency at writing and speaking and I can see it on my conversations, my essays.

English Language Learning Awareness. 2

By Lucia de la Bastida Espinoza At this point, I can say that I improved in different aspects, my listening, speaking, reading, and writing abilities during this course. I am very pleased with the achievements I have accomplished. On my listening ability I was able:  To improve my sound discrimination.  To listen and understand small conversations.  To listen and apply vocabulary and infer the meaning of words from speech.  To understand some pronunciation rules.  To apply known structures. On my reading skill I was able:  To identify the different types of texts.  To improve my spelling.  To learn the use of the dictionary on the net.  To increase my vocabulary.  To learn new reading techniques.  To find interesting and useful stories.  To improve my reading comprehension. On my speaking skills I was able:  To improve my word stress.  To practice thought groups.  To be aware of my fluency and intonation as well as the pause of speaking.  To learn to communicate orally with the use of colloquial expressions to be more accurate on my speech. On my writing skill I was able:  To realize my mistakes on punctuation, word order, length sentences, structure and vocabulary.  To be more concrete on my writing and express my relevant ideas.  To express feelings, thoughts and emotions through a writing.

Language Content By Jose Javier Guzman Espinosa Reading and writing: I began wIth sImple grammar exercIses 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. Listening and speaking: englIsh pronouncIng dIctIonarIes wIth Instant sound free on lIne seem to me very useful. for lIstenIng I had useful exercIses on mInImal paIrs, content words, IntonatIon and stress. the audacIty and the voIcethread and splendId speakIng programs changed my way of learnIng and practIcIng speakIng. a constant practIce In Internet and In other medIa Is requIred to overcome my IdentIfIed weaknesses on lIstenIng and pronuncIatIon. the messenger program helps to gaIn confIdence

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English Language Learning Awareness By Nahum Lopez Gomez 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

“English language learning awareness” By Ana Rosa Mancilla Cruz Along this program, my vocabulary has increased and I have learnt new synonyms as well as phrasal verbs. I got this by means of reading which is an important way to gain new words and use them in appropriate contexts.

In addition to that, I learnt a series of strategies not only for reading but also for listening comprehension. Actually, they allowed me to get general or specific information about a text or recording. Listening also helped me to improve my pronunciation because I heard a lot of intonation patterns to express clear and concise ideas.

The exercises were useful in that I was able to explain in detail a piece of writing such as a book review. Most of the activities I did were based on real contexts, so they were helpful for my learning. However, I need to continue working on writing models and learning sophisticated vocabulary to express my written ideas coherently.

English Language Learning awareness By Miguel de Jesus Martinez Medina I have learned, I will truly say it. Not only as a teacher, I did as a student, too. Here, in the Diploma course, I saw different English speaking countries which had some web pages with a lot of exercises to use them in class. I used to think that USA and England were the only ones to have those kind of exercises. I practiced in web pages where all the activities where amazing, I am talking about all the skills. On listening I had some readings with the sound involved. That is a good option to apply among our students, we can have them reading and practicing with listening at the same time. And what about the videos, aren’t they good for practicing? Of course they are! So it depends on what we want to have our students practicing. I am not used to read, I confess my self as one person who has not the ability to do it, as soon as I start I fall asleep, but, probably the texts I do are not the right to read, because I read some interesting stories here in this course and they never were boring to me. So I must be more selective on the books or articles I read.

On writing I did wonderful exercises, the poems and some short story were excellent. So I might spend a whole page telling you and letting know you that, this course it really helpfully. Now it is time to ask our students to work with activities we saw or did here.

Language Learning Awareness. By Jose Luis Mendiola Noguez Through the Diploma course, I learned the past tense of different verbs for example: sin, awake, creep, sake, quit, swell, wed, weep, wet etcetera. I used in real situations to learn them. I learned several phrasal verbs doing some exercises of the English Phrasal Verb web site. The episodes are an excellent tool to learn and practice phrasal verbs. About.com: Grammar and composition web site helped me to learn and checked some of my doubts with my vocabulary. I used to confuse advice and advise, etcetera. My vocabulary was improved though idiomatic expressions and slangs are my weaknesses. The Brainyflix is an excellent site to learn and review vocabulary In this site, I learned and review some vocabulary like it is raining cats and dogs, I did not know this expressions. I used the dictionaries suggested in the Diploma course to checked some vocabulary problems like spelling and meaning. I followed some tips of the Zozanga web site. Some of the tips are speak without fear, surround myself with English, listen to native speakers as much as possible, listen to English music, study as often as possible, do exercises and take tests, record my self and listen to English. I have to continue working in idiomatic expressions, slangs, relative clauses, phrasal verbs, preposition and time expressions.

ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING AWARENESS. By A. Maria Gpe Monroy Gutierrez Communicative skills for secondary teachers is a remarkable course in my training as an English teacher. I found an extensive guide to convert my teaching in a funny communicative experience based in the usage of English. It included a review of nouns, noun clauses; verbs and verb phrases; passive and active voice; modal verbs; prepositions; conditionals; simple and complex sentences; punctuation; tag questions; linking words; tenses of the verbs; adjectives; etc. This program also emphasizes the purpose for learning the formal aspect of English language. For instance people need to express their ideas, they also describe people or places, say instructions, make agreements and disagreements, give opinions, evaluate actions or assignments, tell and listen stories, organize short talks, etc. So I used English for doing something with it. I also knew and practiced many strategies and techniques for self evaluating my way of learning and teaching English. This reflection has changed my mind about the goals with my students and how I could get them in my classrooms. I decided ways to manage my time in a better way, and then I compared my skills and my students´ with the eight competences for lifelong learners. They identify the purposes of the texts; apply reading strategies like skimming and scanning and they will be able to write according with models 2

like autobiographical, weird incidents, eyewitnesses, etc. Finally I will use the technology because I want my students learn and have fun at the same time.

English language learning awareness By Benito Navarro Robles

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, minimal pairs, voice pitching and word and syllable stress; now, I take a little bit more care of my pronunciation 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 course, I have gained confidence in speaking in English with my students. I can also use now 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 a brother of mine and from a neighbor. This is the reason why instead of having a videoconference with my conversation partner we chatted through the messenger. This was just the beginning! 2

Language learning connection: Teacher Benito at York High School, Maine, 2003

ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING AWARENESS By Xochitl Guadalupe Palacios Michel

In this program I learnt many useful tools to improve my English as a learner and as a teacher... I learnt how to use the internet tools to learn and teach English doing exercises with this purpose. I learnt the "skimming" and "scanning" strategies, identifying different types of texts and learning the 20 different strategies for reading comprehension to improve my reading. I learnt very interesting skills to improve my listening like: top down listening, bottom up, minimal pairs, reading along, word stress, intonation, pause and reading (they were the most interesting for me) and tag questions. Speaking was a little difficult for me but I learnt many skills to: how to give opinions, how to describe places and people, how to tell a short story, etc. And in this module I practice my rhythm and intonation that I learnt in module 4. And finally, my writing was improved in module 6 that was the most interesting for me 'cause I learnt grammar and how to express myself by different types of texts: poems, comics, book reviews; and practicing the rules of punctuation and tenses that they are very important t

English language learning awareness By Carolina Perez Marquez Language is important for information and communication. Reading information from different sources has been useful to me to identify expressions, review grammar structures and learn new vocabulary. At the same time, I knew some reading comprehension strategies and aspects, I haven’t considered before; for example, different styles of writing for different purposes and steps to develop a detailed text comprehension, considering activities before, during and after the reading. Listening and speaking skills are necessary to achieve communication, otherwise it would be incomplete. Now, I pay more attention to intonation, pause and rhythm, word stress and thought groups, when having conversations, especially with other teachers, and, as much as possible, with students. After writing module, I realize that writing structure is important to make clear the ideas I want to express. At the beginning, it was difficult to me, but following models, step by step, helped me to organize the information I wanted to share.

At this moment, although I have made progress on my language level, I consider, I need to improve my speaking and writing skills.

English language learning awareness

By Bertha Sencion Hernandez

I wonder if have you ever been in a great adventure as a “diplomado”. For me is the first time that I take part in one and it has been an amazing experience. At the beginning was so hard and for a moment I had decided don’t participate because of the lot of job that I have but when I started to read the texts about internet and the uses of it and the terminology used in the cyber world I realized that everything was new for me and at the same time was very interesting and I decided to take the challenge. In the module one I learnt everything about the internet and cites besides Google or Yahoo, magazines, the main uses of chat and its advantages, discussion forum, videoconference, digital and virtual library and electronic bulletin and magazines. Most of them new for me. Through the readings I knew the main uses and their advantages and the most important is that now I can use them and work with my students with these tools. It’s an innovation in an English class.

Module two was about grammar where I experienced with some internet cites and games to reinforce it and some texts with cultural information of many countries. The activities helped me to improve in this section of English but I need to practice more and more to increase my score in this skill and I learnt a lot of cultural facts in the readings presented in the web cite at the same time I practice listening with different accent of English. Everything I have learnt I have applied in my classroom even though I haven’t had the expected results about it. The modules three, four, five and six were designed to practice the four skills of English: reading, listening, speaking and writing. The knowledge acquired in these sections was enormous and new specially in the tools used to practice speaking, the requirements to write different types of texts, the strategies used in reading comprehension made me to improve in this and was more clearly for me to understand the texts. This skill is very hard for me. In listening I had the opportunity to hear different accents of native speakers, I loved Australian conversation because it was the first time that I had the experience to listen people of this country and was a little difficult for me to understand. Despite the difficulties during the journey of this course I am in the ending and I would like to say that it answered my expectations. I am very happy to meet my assessor and colleges of different states in my country that are interested in improve their level of English like me. Thank your for the opportunity that our authorities gave us to participate in this great and amazing course.

ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING AWARENESS

By Lilia Adriana Sobrado Campos

In this course I could learn that I need to learn more in order to be updated and to be a better teacher. I discovered many tools in Internet to give my students funnier and more interesting classes. Talking about READING I can recognize different ways of checking a text such as SCANNING, SKIMMING, FACTS, OPINIONS, etc. Combining reading and listening is a good idea. LISTENING activities were very useful in my progress because I could remember or learn new things such as MINIMAL PAIRS, WORD STRESS, INTONATION, RHYTHM, PRONUNCIATION and THOUGHT GROUPS. English Bites and BBC Learning English are important sites not only to practice listening but to learn about culture.

SPEAKING was a great experience because I learned FLUENCY, PHONICS, CEHERENCE, etc are important to speak in an accurate way. It is a good tool to check different aspects on language. Voice thread is an excellent site to practice speaking. WRITING activities (Bookr, Comix, Photopeach, Movie segments) were my best because they are funny, creative and different. More reading and listening are needed in my practice to improve my English skills. *To improve my reading I must read a lot because it is an excellent way of learning more vocabulary, language and cultural aspects. To improve my listening skill I have been listening music and TV programs in English without subtitles in order to identify different kinds of intonation, pronunciation and real situations of native speakers’ language. To improve my speaking I will continue practicing.

Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards. - Vernon Saunders Law

ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING AWARENESS By Hector Fernando Suarez Camacho During the development of the modules I got very surprised about the richness and variety of English language. When I was practicing the four skills I could know how English actually works. Now I am able to understand a read or a spoken text. At the same time I am able to produce an oral or a written text.

I realize English language is involved with a lot of things I didn’t notice in a complete sense as now I do. I mean the rhythm of speaking, the stress, the pauses, and all of these small parts that finally make the puzzle in the correct way.

Nowadays when I am teaching I can practice all the tips I have learned on this course. I elicit my students for practicing more conversations with a more confident feeling because they are doing them in a rhythmic sense.

ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING AWARENESS By Cynthia Judyth Venegas Cabuto In order to prepare this report, I explored and practiced the language acquisitions and linguistic performance along modules 2 to 6. As a language learner and Teacher I realized and reinforcement the main aspects of my language learning along this program. I got familiarized with some resources and tools for learning to learn English through Internet. I have learnt about how can I organize my time better by using web sites as time management, learning tips in www.zozanga.com .To raise my language level, I worked a lot by doing exercises in these incredible web sites as www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learnenglish/language/wordsinnews/ .

I my personal opinion I think, that one technologically advanced method that has improved the learn English is the Internet. This modern form of communication has opened the world to a whole new way of learning the English language. The vast resources on the web makes learning English a less intimidating undertaking. Also learning English require a number of learning materials such as text books, videos, and audio (cd´s, tapes). It took a lot of time an effort to find the most appropriate learning tools. Now, with a simple click of the mouse, one has a world full of materials that they can access. For instance, sites such as you tube contain many videos, Lessons about learning and a best way to encourage speaking English. These sites provides learning material in such areas as pronunciation and vocabulary, fun learning games, quizzes, English books, articles, magazines to read online, English chat forums that provide a place where one can meet other learners and practice conversational English, lessons for beginners, as well as a place to share English stories and poetry. Instead of buying piles of newspaper, books, and magazines and then sifting through information that does not interest you, you can find anything that interests you. The sites you are providing us are incredible, awesome and funny. In fact I have worked with some web sites with my students as www.bgfl.org/multipleintelligences/ and they loved them.

English Language learning awareness By Luis Javier Villegas Castro Vocabulary has increased more and usage of those words is the most important. Now days separated words are meaningless because students don´t learn how to use them. We all need to continue increasing our vocabulary so we can develop our skills with the time. Working more and more with readings will help us to become better. Skimming and scanning are without hesitating perfect strategies for reading. I have learnt how to improve my reading comprehension by using different strategies that this module has presented and in order to improve my reading comprehension skills I need to continue exercising with those great activities and share them with other teachers. About my listening ability we know that using those exercises, we will have the chance to improve because we had learned different ways to practice it. I can continue improving my listening by working very hard. I will continue visiting these web sites to continue developing my listening skill. My 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 I will apply that knowledge with my students. The comic strip was wonderful where you add images and write dialogs down and you invent your own story.

A book of poems where you add pictures and start narrating is excellent besides you share electronically with friends. Now I can share and use a lot of writing activities to increase my writing level, I need to practice more using these activities to become a better writer. Speaking is probably the hardest to develop because you can have programs like audacity, record your voice and listen to it but who is going evaluate pronunciation, intonation, etc. I consider that the best way to improve this is having another person to interact with otherwise is hard.

CULTURAL LEARNING AWARENESS By Marìa Aglahe Arreola Martìnez I have learnt that cultures are influenced by other cultures, but each culture has its own traditions, the only way we can understand them is by interacting with each other. Most teenagers are curious and very interested about what surrounds them specially at their personal interest such as music, clothes, technology, etc. I think 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 2

the New York Times and BBC: Learning English where it is posible to read and listen to the news. I think ,we have to give the students the puropose of what they are going to do, also select the activities as I said, according to their interests.

How to teach a Language and Culture

C CULTURAL LEARNING AWARENESS By Marìa Teresa Caballero Martìnez The way I could focus my students´ attention to English language and culture will be through different topics I found in this Diploma course. Some activities include songs, fashion, articles and cultural 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´. I also learnt about the origin of some English words.

With all this kind of activities, students will be able to reflect about the richness our culture has and in this way, they will value and respect many other life styles, habits, opinions, cultures, etc. Another important aspect I noticed was different speech registers and linguistic variations in some English speaking countries. ThIs will help students to contextualize communication.

Cultural learning awareness By Jacqueline Cardenas mendoza In all kind of sites I noticed that competence exists in foreign languages, the skills for communication in foreign languages, the ability to understand spoken messages, the ability to read, understand and produce texts appropriate to the individual’s needings of listening and watching some videos. I learnt that these kinds of sites have many interesting cultures to learn about, quizzes articles, books, newspapers, etc. In writing skill, I learnt many structures and how to use the sites; I really loved to write poems, about the English speaking community. 2

I have learnt in the web sites the course presented and in different speaking activities, that we can share any discussion and practice with someone about the English speaking community. I have practiced with my students speaking intonation, stress, etc. and it is very exciting to share experiences like these. I taught Countries and Nationalities, and this is a sample; my students got dressed as a native person and they introduced themselves and they talked about where they come from.

They represented Greek people.

I am Brazilian

They were Egyptian

They are German

“Hello my name is Carol I am from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, so I am Brazilian and I speak Portuguese.” 2

We walked around the world.

It was a great experience. My students and I loved it.

CULTURAL LEARNING AWARENESS By Patricia Cardoso Almaraz IT IS A CHALLENGE TO TEACH CULTURAL ASPECTS IN THE CLASSROOM. SO HOW SHOULD WE TEACH CULTURE? THAT WAS ONE OF THE BIGGEST PROBLEMS I WAS FACING BEFORE THIS COURSE. NOW I HAVE DISCOVERED DIFFERENT TECHNIQUES THAT HELP ME AND MY STUDENTS WILL BE MORE FAMILIAR WITH CULTURE RELATED TO ENGLISH NATIVE SPEAKERS. FIRST OF ALL I KNOW THAT THE MATERIAL SHOULD BE SIGNIFICANT AND RELEVANT. THERE IS PLENTY TO TALK ABOUT WHEN YOU ARE DEALING WITH CULTURAL ASPECTS IN THE CLASSROOM, YOU COULD FEEL ATTRACTED BY CULTURE AS A STUDENT AND TEACHER AS WELL IF YOU FIND THE RIGHT CULTURAL MATERIAL. THERE ARE MANY INTERNET SITES WHERE YOU CAN FIND MATERIAL FOR THIS ISSUE. THE IMPORTANT THING IS THAT YOU CONSIDER YOUR STUDENTS NEEDS AND INTERESTS AS WELL AS THEIR AGE. YOU CAN TALK ABOUT SOCIAL PROBLEMS, FAMILY ISSUES, MUSIC, SCHOOL, ETC. YOU WILL FIND LOTS OF TOPICS THAT WILL MAKE YOUR STUDENTS AND EVEN YOURSELF FEEL INTERESTED. YOU CAN EVEN COMPARE ALLL THESE TOPICS WITH YOUR OWN CULTURE AND SEE

HOW AND WHY THEY ARE DIFFERENT. IN THIS COURSE, I FOUND MANY ARTICLES THAT WERE REALLY INTERESTING AND CHALLENGING FOR ME.

Cultural learning awareness. By Clara Ortencia Caro Sànchez One of the most important things I have learnt is that the English speaking community is different in the way they use the language, the expressions they use to refer to a certain action or even the way they behave. As you know teaching a language is the same as teaching culture because you show students a complete landscape of the country, their customs, buildings, food and so on. You explain them that there are specific expressions to refer to a certain action, the use of different accents according to the region about the English speaking country you are referring to. Of course, in the different speaking activities there are a lot of expressions used in the English quotidian communication, like phrasal verbs, chunk words, linking words to give sequence, coherence and fluency when expressing ideas. 2

About writing it is crucial students know the use of adjectives, verbs, adverbs and in some way how the English speaking community express their thoughts and feelings. To conclude, reading, listening, speaking and writing strategies are useful for students to get in touch with cultural aspects of the English speaking countries. I’m sure I can apply these strategies to start with my students but, according to their level of language.

Cultural learning awareness By Teresita Chàvez Aguirre 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 image 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. 2

Cultural learning awareness By Susana Contreras Leòn There are many ways in which I can focus my students´attention during my classes I can show them that teenagers are very independent, they do not depend too much on their parents, they are planning to live in their own apartment since they are very young and their parents are absolutly agree with that fact, they even help their sons to look for the right place to live, parents know this will help their sons to grow up and they will be responsible of everything in their own new houses. In Mexico most teenagers depend on their families in every single aspect of their lives and in most of the cases they stay with their parents until they get married but if they decide not to 2

get married they can live with their parents all life long. This is a relevant cultural aspect in our society. Another relevant aspect is the fact that most American people are not very affective people, they do not kiss and hugh each other very often they love their sons but they almost never kiss or hugh them in order to show their affection . On the other side we, as Mexicans show our affection to friends and family hughing and kissing each other very often, most of Mexican people do this. Another cultural aspect could be the fact that Mexican people almost always eat fresh fruit and well prepared food at home, the fact in America is that almost everybody eat frozen food and they have big freezers in their refrigerators to keep their food so they do not spend too much time preparing food as we do, they are practical people.

CULTURAL LAERNING AWARENESS By Benilde Lysenka Cosìo Salazar This course was a good opportunity to get in touch with the culture of other countries who speak English, in my case I could see some behaviors, beliefs and traditions checking some sites and doing different activities, I think it is a good way to identify customs and to know how people is in other countries in aspects like practices, laws. This module was too rich for me and for my students because we analyzed aspects that would help us to improve our country; the most important and interesting activities here were to listen to accents of people of different countries so 2

they took into consideration that although all of them speak English, they have different ways to pronounce words, they have sometimes different spelling or they give 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). Also we can see how people express feelings and emotions and the different attitudes they take in some situations.

Cultural Learning Awareness By Lucia De Labastida Espinoza “A fish only discovers its need for water when it is no longer in it. Our own culture is like water for the fish. It sustains us. We live and breathe through it.”

The websites introduced in this Diploma course, are amazing. The information that you find in these places is excellent. You can see the magic of new places, its history as well as culture of the English speaking countries. You can get popular and cultural events, and everyday information, such as news, recipes, jokes, games just with a click you are there! Interacting and learning about the way of life in these countries. My listening and reading improved a lot and make me aware of the differences of use of language as a mean of communication in the English speaking countries only by getting in touch with the images and materials presented in these sites. These sites facilitate the use of idioms, colloquial expressions, slangs and literature and help me improve and understand the use of my speaking and writing skills, by applying them in the correct form. Also in the websites I used. I read about historical events, popular and cultural events, important dates and celebrations from different English speaking countries that could help me to make my classroom become a learning community. I also learnt that the internet is an excellent tool. Just with a click on the correct link and you can visit many different places and learn about them. For me it was a challenge to become an internet user and to understand that it could be a teaching tool. But it is not as difficult as I thought with a little practice and you master it.

Cultural learning awareness By Josè Javier Guzmàn Espinoza

I could focus my students’ attentIon to englIsh language and culture by puttIng them to watch In the pc about newspapers of such faraway 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 on the changes that dIgItal cInema brIngs to old projectIonIsts or the Queen of england’s celebratIons, etc. (they would need a translator tool because they are 1st grade secondary students who cannot read In englIsh)

Cultural Learning Awareness By Nahum Lòpez Hernàndez

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.

CULTURAL LEARNING AWARENESS By Leydi Diana Lòpez Hernàndez About the cultural awareness I would like to share with my students there are many things I would like to and that I will do, to start I could begin with this diagram I think it is important they most know

Besides this to explain them the multiple intelligences, so that they know everyone learn in a different way, and there are some abilities we develop more than others . For example we can share with them how the English Language change through the years, how it was developed in the USA, to talk them about the how are sea lions, for example, what about the fitness , if they enjoy the science or any specific profession to lend them know they can have access to all kind of information but through English Language which will be a nice form to learn a new language and at the same to do what they enjoy to do, without pressure, and so more, but the main purpose of this it is that they need to understand the importance of studying English in all the areas. And as consequence to invite them to evaluate by themselves so that they become autonomous learners and with the complete skills that a competent person.

Cultural learning awareness By Ana Rosa Mancilla Cruz

It was through the websites I used that I learnt history, idioms, expressions, lifestyles, regulations and traditions about the English speaking community. All these activities helped me to increase my knowledge about different cultures and be more open-minded as everything was linked to real life.

Therefore, I would focus my students’ attention to English language and culture taking advantage of authentic materials such as texts, videos and recordings. The students could both develop their skills and learn more about the cultural aspects of a country. For instance, they could read an article, use some reading strategies to answer some questions and find out about what is happening in a specific region.

Cultural Learning Awareness By Miguel de Jesùs Martìnez Medina Going to the past, it will help us to work in the present.

I really saw many aspects about other culture, for example I read about how people in California are trying to preserve some lakes away from a fish that is killing all species. About a prison system where a food fight occurs when it is cut by half. About a School system and how students decide about what to study in a University. About animal life in Australia and about an old knitting competition they had there. About the American civil war through stories and that way you can notice and realize about differences in American and British English. So as you can see we learn a lot from other countries.

Something I might use and I think it can work among our students and we can go through English history at the same time, is by reading about slavery. How? Well, there is a nice reading. I read it while I was working on the reading module. And it is called:

When I read it, I would say that it took me back to those days. I was really living the novel. It is not boring, easy to read; grammar is not so hard to understand, short and it was a fact. Something which it really has strong feelings, such emotions, because it is a little bit sad at the end. And that way we can catch our student’s attention, by this reading. Mostly because they are willing to learn about American Culture, of course you might find some who do not really like culture, and all the words coming from USA, but some do.

Cultural learning awareness By Josè Luis mendiola Noguez

My students must know if they type an email in capital letters is a mistake because people who receive it will think my students are not educated. I have to make my students aware of this point. If my students plan their time, they will achieve better results. They must know that a positive attitude is necessary to achieve good results in different kinds of learning situations. They must respect each other. We as English teachers must respect our students’ learning styles. Some of our students are better in a skill others in a different one. Differences in pronunciation, grammar and spelling between American and British English, celebrations, proxemics, how to write a letter, etcetera are elements that our students must be aware of.

CULTURAL LEARNING AWARENESS By Agapita Marìa Guadalupe Monroy Gutièrrez Through this program I understand the important role of the tics in modern societies, so an updated teacher has to take technology into his classroom because it is an intrinsic part of our current and future culture. Nowadays people need to get in touch each other in short time and they need to get information from many sources; e-mails, forums, video conferences, chat, you tube, messenger and courses on line are some of the main communication resources around the world. Along the course I read interesting articles like golden Gate Bridge, American and English story, cell phone safety, British adults ´fear youngsters´, freedom, Michael Jackson´s doctor, Sydney Festival, Maha suckkar, etc. All of them and some songs, videos and audios were valuable resources to understand English speaking societies, their customs and traditions. Now I can encourage my students to interact more effectively because I have understood cultural meanings like the importance of rhythm, intonation patterns, word stress, idioms, pronunciation, punctuation, etc. They won´t be boring anymore because I use minimal pairs, thought groups, funny tales, songs, tag questions, voice threat, tales, bookrs and comic strips. In addition, I read stories about famous and historical people, I “traveled” in a few minutes to some English speaking countries for instance United States of America, Sydney, Australia and England. I listened and read news from authentic sources like New York times. Everything helped me to change my concept of student and teacher I had; nowadays our culture requires creators that interact in a communicative environment Just differences

In the In the same same world world

Cultural learning awareness By Benito Navarro Robles

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 not 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 punish such behavior; 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 (see “A school girl sues her school”). I have taught some cultural aspects, 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.

Varieties of cultural traits and English language as compared among regions and countries.

CULTURAL LEARNING AWARENESS 2

By Xòchitl Guadalupe Palacios Michel

I could interest my students to study English making them reflect about the importance of learning foreign languages ‘cause speaking more than one language not only means communicating in that language, but we also have a different vision of world, new ways of thinking, history, geography… it also help us to understand different collective characters and it makes us people with an open mind… and that’s what I learnt about American people… In Module 3, Unit 2. activity 2.2., an interesting data that I read and learnt about the English community is that the differences between British and American English are because American people wanted to be independent of England in all aspects of life (including language). As families, they’re more independent than us… children leave the parents’ house very young and live with more freedom… American families also are formed in many cases by people of different nationalities… I realize this when I listen about the family in Activity 7.1.

And although they speak have different intonation, different pronunciation.

the same different

Cultural learning awareness

language, rhythm

they and

By Carolina Pèrez Màrquez

Learning a foreign language is a valuable tool to know feelings, habits and opinions from people with different culture to mine. This information allows me to enrich and wide my knowledge about other cultures and my own, by comparing them, in order not to decide if one of these is better than the other one, but to get a better understanding of them. Mexico is surrounded by English language and culture so it is common to students to find any kind of messages and expressions of English culture. The aim will be to keep their interest on foreign language learning, to guide them to make a proper use of it and to take the most advantage they can of their knowledge.

obtained from ORAL, VISUAL AND WRITTEN EXPRESSIONS Books, newspaper and magazines articles, poems, songs and music, videos, movies

TOPICS General and particular information about international and national social events, people, sports, music, daily life, etc.

expressing to get and share Concepts, thoughts, feelings, experiences, opinions

to keep

Interest, motivation , inspiration , pleasure

responding to Individual and social environment, necessities, culture, professional improvement

CULTURAL KNOWLEDGE

By Bertha Senciòn hernàndez

The opportunity that you gave to participate in this “diplomado “ helped me to know more about English speaking countries; is amazing the quantity of knowledge that I could learn by internet. I never imagined that I could travel around the world and know may places and experiences given in the audios, videos and readings.

The videos performed the life style of English spoken people, their clothes, their hobbies, the society in where they live, social troubles and in some cases the war between human beings.

In the T.V. programs I heard about local and international facts between them economic, political, environmental and social news where English spoken countries took part.

I had the experience to read some poems, essays, reports and readings, I mean literature. I knew some writers as Frank R. Stockton, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Ambrose Bierce, etc. All of them with their own writing style. I loved this part because I enjoyed reading and acquiring knowledge from English language in a different way.

This part of the course is enjoyable although is nothing compared with the enormous quantity of information that I can find in internet about it. I would like to work more modules that refer to cultural awareness.

Cultural knowledge from other countries is a good option to learn English and improve my skills and at the same time the acquisition on general knowledge.

CULTURAL LEARNING AWARENESS

By Lilia Adriana Sobrado Campos

English Speaking Community is interested in developing their skills and competences to be successful in a changing world. As English is the business universal language, it is implicit in our lives because we find it everywhere.

Through the different sites I noticed real day-to-day situations about English speaking community where I could learn different strategies they use to teach, some information about their history, important and interesting places, how native speakers teach English to foreign students, etc.

In every reading and listening activity I could identify not only cultural information but some expressions used by native speakers. Therefore, these kinds of activities are useful to teach my students not only cultural aspects but grammar, vocabulary, etc. at the same time.

“As the soil, however rich it may be, cannot be productive without cultivation, so The mind without culture can never produce good fruit.” (Seneca)

CULTURAL LEARNING AWARENESS 2

By Hèctor Fernando suàrez Camacho

About the learning of some culture from English language as a result of this course, I could say it has been possible step by step. I mean English culture is a foreign culture for me and for my students. So, I am trying to teach them English culture and English language together.

How can I do the teaching of a culture? I can do it through songs, authentic materials, use of internet, etc. For me English culture is an ocean apart, but we can dive in it if we have the correct equipment. This equipment is the use of the four language skills. Speaking and writing are skills named “productive skills” then I encourage my students in the use of colloquial expressions learned on this course.

The use of these colloquial expressions is easy if you write one of the on the board day after day. At the beginning my students were surprised but now they are on the way of it, so this practice is a part of the class.

Cultural Awareness By Luis Javier Villegas Castro

I learnt that North American people are cold they do not express their feelings like we do it in our country, maybe they don´t care about other people or I don´t really understand 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. When we speak about listening I think is hard to compare because color people speak very fast and the accent or pronunciation many times is hard to catch, so I had experienced that situation in real life and it is hard to do something about that. We learn the regular language so we need to work with those ones too. Speed is another aspect we confront some people speak very fast and it is hard to understand so practicing the listening skill will help. I learnt habits and ways people from other countries have about the Language and writing is not an exception British vs American have many differences speaking about writing.. During my speaking activities, I found out about different pronunciations between American and British English. I learnt about different intonation aspects like those we have in our country. British pronunciation is harder to understand when you are not use to it. 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.

HAPPY THANKSGIVIG EVERYBODY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

NEW TEACHING STRATEGIES DISCOVERED 2

By Marìa Aglahe Arreola Martìnez It is clearly to see the relation between the strategies and the habits mentioned in the text, 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 necesary that we as teachers be in contact with thechnology, it has been increasing and inproving constantly. We are in charge of many students whose possible have had a little or none contact with thechnology, but I think we should look for the necesary spaces and tools for bringing our students a better and modern education. One important aspect I read on the text is that we must adapt our teaching to our students needs but we must add our creativity to make a dimanic class because many times we think that 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 realise if we are teaching in a right or a wrong way.

NEW TEACHING STRATEGIES DISCOVERED By Marìa Teresa Caballero Martìnez

Certainly, as the eight habits of highly effective 21 first century mention, we must focus our work in the students and to teach in an imaginative way, using as many resources as possible. This Diploma course has helped me to teach more dynamically, and with the use of technologies, I am aware that I will take a huge risk, but it will facilitate and improve my teaching strategies. As a teacher, I will adapt new activities in my dairy work such as quizzes, questionnaires, descriptions or situations using music, commix, poems, tall tales, writing through models, tales with images, photo albums, etc.

This is an example of a funny teaching strategy.

With all these innovative strategies, I will be able to captivate my students and contribute to improve their learning. Finally, with a leadership attitude from me, students will feel more confident with my work and they will find a pleasure in all what they do.

Advantages of teaching strategies

New teaching strategies discovered 2

By Jacqueline Càrdenas Mendoza

We live in a competitive education in our days, and the teacher of the 21st century should not be left behind, is compelled to live always at the forefront of the update. These 8 points I think are very important and interesting to adapt our educational practice. 1. Adapting, 2. Being visionary, 3. Collaborating, 4. Taking risks, 5. Learning, 6. Communicating, 7. Modeling behavior, 8. Leading

Technology plays an important role in education in recent times, Blogger, Wikispaces, Bebo, MSN, MySpace, Second Life, Twitter, RSS, etc. are tools that can help us in the classroom, students of the 21st century are familiar with these tools and sites, The text says that students should be lifelong learners, emphasis should be integrated ICTs to achieve success in any project and avoid failure. Today it is very important that our students understand that there is a huge world of information in the network along with technology and teachers .of 21st century have to innovate. I want to quote a great author; Peter Druker says; “Don’t try to innovate for the future. Innovate for the present”. Not leaving behind that one looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teacher, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings.

New teaching strategies discovered By Patricia Cardoso Almaraz 2

It is a huge challenge to teach at the present time and the main issue is to consider that we should be ready to learn new things day by day and also be prepared to innovate, adapt and have the vision to try to understand the world our students are facing in a difficult society like the one we are living in the 21 st century. We should take the risk to take this challenge in our hands, there are teachers that think they have a kind of magic recipe and they do not want to innovate or learn new things. In my personal experience, I believe that it is very important the use of the new technology and the internet in the classroom it is the teaching tool of this century and it is one of new things I have learnt in this course. How to deal with the reading ability finding a nice text with perfect activities in a teaching site with specific educative purposes, and the same happened with the other three abilities. It has being very useful for me to find a wide range of opportunities for my teaching strategies and in fact for my personal growth.

New teaching strategies discovered By Clara ortencia Caro Sànchez

Definitely all these habits to become effective teachers are closely related to the strategies about teaching English communicative skills I have learnt in this diploma course. We must adapt the curriculum and the requirements to teach, to know and manipulate a lot of technological tools to be used in our classes. For instance, the great variety of activities we have practiced for being visionary teachers to enhance and motivate our students to develop a collaborative work and learn through practice to improve the different communicative skills.

All internet pages and links, electronic libraries, the bloggers, wiki spaces are of great value and help for us to understand and facilitate learning and teaching process to our students become life-long learners. We must keep in mind that we are models to our students; we are leaders who have clear goals and objectives to guide them to be successful learners. We teach them not only formal instruction but values, to be tolerant, to have a global awareness.

New teaching strategies By teresita Chàvez Aguirre

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. Finally, teachers are leaders, we are the guide to your students to success in their projects.

Interpersonal learners

Intrapersonal learners

Leading Kinaesthetic learner

New teaching strategies discovered By susana Contreras Leòn

The strategies I observed in this article are related to the habits we must have as 21st Century teachers, as a new teacher I must be able to adapt the curriculum and the requirements to teach in an imaginative way. I also must be able to adapt software and hardware into tools to be used by a variety of age groups and abilities. I need to adapt my dynamic teaching experience. Imagination is a crucial component for an English teacher. Team work is very important, sharing, contributing, adapting and inventing will make us feel as a real good teacher academy. I must have a vision of what I am I have and what I want so I can take advantage of this marvellous technology. I must take the risk even though my students know a lot about technology. Nowadays they are very good using it. I actually know I must continue learning and absorbing new experiences and adapt myself to the changes. I know I have to be fluent in tools and technology to enable communication and collaboration. There is something very important that we as teachers must never forget, we are leaders and we also teach values so we must watch our behaviors. As a new teacher I have to improve my English, I have to learn lots of things about teaching strategies. I know technology is very important and I have to be a good model and be responsible but for me the most important thing is to love my students and respect them.

NEW TEACHING STRATEGIES DISCOVERED By benilde Lysenka Cosio salazar 2

As a language learner and teacher, I discovered that if we want to increase our learning or teaching we can 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 it, communication is a vital part because in this manner everything is easy and also collaborate in our processes. Another thing that I noted 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 me and my students due to they are colorful, complete, creative, etc. and in this way we are adapting ourselves to technology, we don’t learn or teach English in an antique form repeating words orally and using only the board, it wakes up our imagination to create. Everything will be much better if we continue practicing, if we be I touch with the foreign language also it is necessary to adapt ourselves to the world because English is very important around the world, all new knowledge and investigations are in this language, we can see how people behave in another countries, we can copy those models to be a better city.

NEW TEACHING STRATEGIES DISCOVERED By Lucia De Labastida Espinosa “You can’t get anywhere unless you start.” This is how I feel. I think that with this Diploma course I have just gained the abilities to become a 21st century teacher. I have started to adapt my teaching strategies to the requirements of the 21 st century students. With this I mean I have realized that a change in my teaching strategies must be done. Now I know that I will be able to become visionary if I start using the new technologies I have learned in here. The English classroom shouldn’t be only a language classroom. It should be a place where everybody must collaborate, share, contribute, adapt and invent to get a better performance on the language learning process and really become a learning community. I will try to become and expertise in the use of the ICT to be a role model and strength my teaching competences and do a real learning place. I have also realized that being a non native speaker, does not make me less. On the other hand It makes me stronger because I know my weakness and I am able to look for the necessary tools to become a better teacher through updating and using all the resources available, to facilitate my student’s learning. I must set goals to achieve. And with a renew attitude approach them. I have to cultivate the willingness to improve myself everyday through participating in the world learning communities to enhance my teaching competences everyday. I will incorporate to my teaching the reading strategies learned in this course, I will make emphasis in the pronunciation, intonation, word stress and fluency of oral production, I will be aware of grammar, punctuation, coherence, and spelling in the written production of my students as well. An of course I will keep on updating.

New Teaching Strategies Discovered By Josè Javier Guzmàn Espinosa

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 (which are excellent). Explaining my point would take more than 150 words. To mention my other findings I add 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.

New Teaching Strategies Discovered: Strategies vs. Habits By Nahum Lòpez Gòmez

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.

NEW TEACHING STRATEGIES DISCOVERED STRATEGIES AND HABITS By leydi Diana lòpez Hernàndez As a language learner and teacher, I can say that the habits and the strategies are really closed and they depend from each other just because in any activity we realize they are present in our life. In the case of the first habit which I consider one of the most important is the fact of Adapting, as students, we adapt our resources to carry out our homework or tasks, and as teachers we manipulate them according to the skills our students need taking in consideration their multiple intelligences, in order to help students to acquire the learning in a faster and better way, making the knowledge significant to them creating competent people for the life. For example in this link http://www.rongchang.com/qa2/stories/story064.htm, we can see they have the opportunity to develop their skills practicing the language, working with almost everyone of the skills. Although if the learner is a visual person He will forget soon what he did and practice. To solve this problem we can use http://www.cdlponline.org/index.cfm? fuseaction=activity1&topicID=3&storyID=145 ADULT LEARNING, where they can even find the language funny and interesting to learn it. However we have to consider if our students does not have all the tools required so that they modify the activity or give them the option to use other resources making them conscious from the work in team and the importance of the communication and values, sharing and helping each other.

New teaching strategies discovered

By Ana Rosa mancilla Cruz

There were several teaching strategies discovered to motivate the learning and improve the skills. The most useful strategies for reading are skimming to get general information about a text, scanning to locate specific information and making inferences and deductions from unknown words. By means of these ones, the reader can become more critical, improve his written skills and increase vocabulary.

It is also important bottom up and down, intonation, stress and minimal pairs so as to improve not only listening but also speaking skills. These ones can help to perfect pronunciation, phonologic knowledge, pragmatic awareness, coherence and flexibility in order to support and make sense to a conversation.

All of these strategies are suitable to work with teenagers and are related to the habits mentioned in the text because, as teachers, we can adapt them according to the kind of activity that it is going to be worked. We can also be visionaries as we can design tasks for our students making use of the internet and strategies. The important thing is to clarify the aims and objectives to promote a significant learning.

New teaching strategies discovered 2

By Miguel de Jesùs Martìnez Medina Working in a different way! Working with videos is an excellent way to catch attention, but firstly you need to select them, it means you will adapt the video according to what you are planning to see in class, it doesn’t matter if it is a grammar point or just to have practice in other skills. So, some of the videos we saw in order to have more practice on listening, were an excellent opportunity to see how words are pronounced by others. Which could be another way to use videos? See; 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.

New teaching strategies discovered By Josè Luis Mendiola Noguez The habits of highly effective 21st century teachers are: a). Adapting b). Being visionary c). Collaborating d). Taking risks e). Learning f). Communicating g). Modeling behavior h). Leading

I will mention some activities and how they are related to some habits mentioned previously. The Golden Gate Bridge site is related to the adapting habit because some activities are for different English levels. As an English teacher I can adapt those activities to my students´ English level. In my opinion, all the activities are related to the being visionary habit because web technologies are being used to teach English. Nowadays we must use new tools to teach English like the web sites of the Diplomado course , so they related to the learning

NEW TEACHING STRATEGIES DISCOVERED By Agapita Marìa Guadalupe Monroy Gutierrez

I write about several strategies I liked more because they led me to develop at least one of the eight habits of highly 21st century teachers. When I read about the advantages of Communication and Information Technologies I figured out many imaginative activities for teaching to my students. Especially the forum and videoconferences are linked with the habits of taking risks and being visionary. Related to oral production strategies, I love voice thread because everybody learns from everybody. It is a good chance to share individual´s productions with a community of speakers, so everything is designed to raise attitudes of collaboration. I also enjoyed telling stories or personal episodes, it is a way to emphasize, for instance, values or enhance modeling behavior. Even though listening skills were hard for me, when I heard authentic material like some news, I had to develop different ways to evaluate, control and stimulate a better comprehension in order to understand what the speaker said. It helped to interact with the oral text, the speaker and the listener. Bottom up and top down strategies also contributed to enhance an effective communication. Finally I want to take the risk of teaching grammar in a funny way through web sites. I am sure my students will enjoy creating books of poems, tall tales and slideshows. They can learn and have fun as I did it, because these activities switch boring grammar into an entertaining experience.

New teaching strategies discovered By Benito Navarro Robles

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 audio, 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. Having them as a flexible model, he /she can create his/her own 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 his or her own sake.

NEW TEACHING STRATEGIES DISCOVERED By Xòchitl Guadalupe Palacios Michel I learnt how to use internet as a English and the 8 abilities of the lifelong learning; which are highly effective 21st. century learning, taking risks, etc.

useful tool for teaching key competences for related to the 8 habits of teacher: communicating, (Module 2)

The reading strategies of module 3 that I’ll use are: skimming and scanning, read while listening and prior knowledge. These are related with the habits of learning and adapting.

In module 4, I liked the most the listening strategy of identifying “thought groups” and it is related with the habits of learning and communicating.

I’ll apply the tips and resources of module 5 to improve about speaking like: how to tell a story (say the story with a mirror, gestures, etc), using “chunks”, expressions to give instructions, opinions, agreements or disagreements… which are related with the habits of learning, communicating and leading.

I’ll do my students practice a variety module 6: poems, tall tales, myths, with the habits of adapting, being learning and communicating.

of writings, like in etc.; relating them visionary, taking risks,

New teaching strategies discovered By Carolina Pèrez Màrquez

Actual learning doesn´t mean anymore to take a book and stay passive, waiting for someone else to say what to do, neither as a learner nor as a teacher. There’s no doubt about the importance of being a permanent learner to become an effective teacher. New technologies provide a wide range of meaningful activities to share learning experiences from different English speaking and non speaking countries around the world, so, we must dare to navigate through the sites and identify the ones we consider fit the best to our community necessities. These e-tools help to maintain people interested on learning; at the same time, this kind of activities can motivate their participation in them. Nevertheless, school real conditions are far from ideal, so teachers have to be creative to achieve objectives, with or without new technologies help. Through reading, listening, speaking and writing strategies we can establish proper ways of communication with people close and far from us, enriching our knowledge and vision about the world we live in. Young people learn by following models, so we must pay attention to the perception they have from us, in order to become a good model to them.

NEW TEACHING STRATEGIES DISCOVERED

By Bertha Senciòn Hernàndez

I have observed through this “diplomado” that it is well organized especially in the strategies used to provoke the learning in each one of us as students. Analyzing the reading “Eight habits of highly effective 21 st century teachers “ I could discover how this course was organized taking into account these steps . But what is the relation between the strategies learnt in each module and the other ones mentioned in the reading?

As you can see, this course contains all the situations that I must consider to teach in a classroom I will mention some of them: learning styles, diagnostic exam, personal information, reading, writing, listening, speaking, grammar activities and internet cites to reinforce each one of the skills with a variety of activities according to the perception channel of each person. All of them took part of the strategies used to work on line with excellent results.

The way of teaching this course was adapting to the curriculum and our requirements, there was a lot of imagination because I used some tools and web technology to manipulate information according my needs, my tutor was collaborative, you took risk let me to work the activities according my opinion and in this way I learnt a lot. There was communication and collaboration. Modelling behaviour: it was present when I reflected my practice and it’s a leader with clear goals and objectives because I have improved my skills and I will finish this “diplomado” that is the goal and the objective.

NEW TEACHING STRATEGIES DISCOVERED

By Lilia adriana Sobrado Campos

In this course I discovered a different world of teaching and learning based on Internet tools. I have never imagined the amount of information that Internet provides in order to give my students a diversity of materials to improve and enjoy their knowledge. Every module I could find interesting strategies to introduce my students in the skill and topic I want to work out. I am sure those activities are going to be attractive to my students and they will be more interested in their learning process because they are going to get fun and create their own knowledge while learning. For instance: -Readings combined with listening where students can check vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, etc. -About.com, BBC, dictationsonline.com and You Tube sites have many ways of practicing listening. -Voicethread and Splendid-speaking are places where students can practice speaking skill. -In writing module we were exposed to excellent sites such as Eduplace.com, Bookr, Comix.com, Photopeach, Model Bank, Writing with Writers, Movie segments to assess Grammar Goals. To be a 21st century educator is a fantastic idea and I am so happy of having this opportunity in order to be an updated and better teacher according to the current educational needs.

A teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering on cold iron. ~Horace Mann

NEW TEACHING STRATEGIES DISCOVERED 2

By Hèctor Fernando Suàrez Camacho On my final reflection for module two I wrote about an English teacher should be a little crazy in order to do things other teachers don’t do. But now I realize that madness must be changed for a wide vision of the world and its possibilities. I mean if a teacher would like being successful, this teacher would be able to use all kind of resources are offered nowadays. Especially the resources offered on the internet. Then that teacher is not crazy but is someone using some flexibility on his plans and curriculums. I add this because Mr. Churches says “when the technologies fail, the show must go on”. It means we must be prepared for all sort of sudden difficulties during the class. I definitively agree with Mr. Churches when he says teachers must model student’s behavior. And so when he says we must go a step forward from our students in the use of ICT’s. Talking about the new teaching strategies I have caught during this diploma course, I could name them as follows: Being visionary: I couldn’t imagine a teacher that sits peacefully and waits his class would develop agree with his plan. I have learnt I should have one or two extra activities in case my students would run out all the ones I had provided for that class. Taking risks: I have learnt taking risks is an important part of English teaching, especially if these risks are about technology in the classroom. I have told technology is one of the most powerful tools in the 21st century classroom. But if it fails the class must go on. Learning: As Mr. Churches says in his essay, I have learnt my lesson plan from five years ago are not useful nowadays because I don’t have the same students, situations, textbooks, etc.

New teaching strategies discovered By Cynthia Judyth Venegas Cabuto In order to write this report I did a reflexion about my experience by using the different strategies I have learnt during the course. I have learnt strategies about how can I and my students can improve grammar through web sites, a good example of it can be www.free-english-study.com , in order to know my students better and help me to plan attractive classes and material I did a quiz in the lab about multiple intelligences www.bgfl.org . I also learned about text types and the strategies you can use with them. I also reviewed some strategies about reading such as skimming and scanning. I learnt about the twenty strategies for reading comprehension I practice a active prior knowledge, activate prior knowledge, ask questions before, during and after reading, distinguish facts from opinions, make inferences and draw conclusions, sequence events, visualize images from texts. Others important strategies learned were how can we use dictations in internet, practice and learn phonetics, how can we record our voice, download a program and share with people all over the world, strategies about how can we work with music , watch videos from news, how can you work by mail with your students, how can integrate writing with fun, how to create stories, how can we write books, use punctuation, about writing models how can we start a story, how can we work with movies. Nowadays Teachers must be visionary, collaborative, risky, communicative, leader, adaptable, terrific learner and a model for the students we need to our future. Technology is a powerful tool to get it.

New Teaching strategies discovered

By Luis Javier Villegas Castro 1. Adapting We need to have the ability to adapt book exercises for example: we can use them according to our context so they are real and students can imagine something that is around them and that they also can experience otherwise will be meaningful. Book of poems is a good strategy where students can adapt any picture to the topics we are studying. 2. Being visionary When we hear or read some ideas we must have the ability to convert them into activities we can use in our classroom with those exercises we are going to work with. Audacity is an application where students besides recording voices they can start and story and have a partner to continue it or finished that will be great. 3. Collaborating It is important to share material and ideas with our colleagues so we can increase the amount of activities we have and take them to the classrooms. I will share many of the strategies but I will mention one: 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 ourselves and students capacity facilitating language instead of stopping students´ growing. Photopeach is a web site where you create a photo story, taking risks over the internet for new experiences.

5. Learning Even though we have a professional career, language teachers must continue learning new strategies, methods and ways of facilitating language learning. During this course I have learnt great things trough the net: Skimming and scanning for reading Comic strip for writing Audacity for speaking 2

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 We as teachers must be a model for students to follow. We must act as we ask students to perform otherwise we´ll be incongruous. Students do it if they see how we do it and not only inside the classroom or school also outside. Foster children is an example where we can speak about values and take them into the daily practice, students learn by imitating too. 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. Lesson planning guides us to consider those important aspects we cannot put aside when giving classes.

READING TEACHING STRATEGIES By marìa Aglahe Arreola Martìnez The text is about a fire house, the police didn’t hnow how the fire could started, in the house there were a father with his three childreen but they culdn’t be found. The activity for this reading was firstable to read the story then listen and watch a viceoclip from the text. To evaluate the reading comprehension there were different activities the first one was to listen to some vocavulary, then you have to listen to the word and spell it in a box to check it. The sedond activity was to match a word with their meaning . The third activity was related with the text to verify the comprehension of some specific points of the text, there were ten sentences which needed to be completed with some words. The next activity was about some questions to review the general comprehension of the text, there were ten questions and you had to choose the best answer. Finally there was a box where you must add your comment or what you understand about the text. I think the strategies are implicit in the text and in the activities because each one has a purpose, but I used other as skimming and scanning that help me to understand the text better.

READING TEACHING STRATEGIES By Marìa Teresa caballero martìnez In my opinion, the best activity for my reading practice was 4.1: Reading, listening, watching a video and vocabulary. I found in the site Adult Learning Activities, (Science and technology) the text 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, I got a general idea of the text from an image. Here, I found the first strategy. Then, I read the full story and I used information from text to decipher unfamiliar words. After that, I watched the video and more images, helped me to support my text comprehension. I also distinguished between facts from opinions, when a report was presented (facts), and also a policeman talked about the topic. For learning more vocabulary there were spelling words, a matching game with words from the text, to pick and write answers.

Reading teaching strategies By Jacqueline Càrdenas Mendoza

In this part of the course we learnt that Reading is an interactive process between reader and text. The reader interacts with the text to restructure a significant communication. In order to take out the necessary information from the text I share certain skills and strategies. Reading has different purposes a diversity of strategies. For example, skimming the text if we just want to know what the text is about, scanning to locate specific information, understanding relations between parts of text through lexical cohesive devices and identifying the main point in the piece of discourse.

Vocabulary is important, some lexical knowledge, strategies like deducing and inferring meaning from unknown words are necessary to understand the text. In this module I improved my reading skills and strategies by reading and listening to a variety of different texts. I also developed fluent by using many skills and strategies to facilitate comprehension. I read interesting texts, listened and read along, filled in exercises and work with reading strategies. Finally as an independent reader it is a very interesting opportunity to develop skills. I read the summary and report of Civilians escape fighting in Sri Lanka and Mark's Email Mistake: Big Mistake? And I heard both vocabularies. I think these exercises would be very interesting for my students, nowadays they are very interested in studying on line, and these kinds of sites are very useful to learn English and they can help my students to learn new words. These exercises build their reading and life skills. READING TEACHING STRATEGIES

By Patricia Cardoso Almaraz I have not realized that there are different types of texts for me all texts were only texts, now I know that there are four types of texts: 1. Instructive 2. Descriptive 3. Persuasive 4. Informative All of them should be taught considering their characteristics and when you read you should also be aware of the type of text you are dealing with. So learning these new aspects of the reading ability was very important for me. The activity I liked the most was “adult learning activities: cell phone safety” because it was very complete and the well balanced activities were amazing. The material in this module was very interesting and useful. Sometimes the problem with material is that it is specially prepared for teaching purposes, and it could be not useful because is not realia but the material presented in this module was great. Now it is clear for me the different types of texts, the characteristics and how I can teach them in my classes with my own students. Now I believe that reading can be fun and motivating for teenagers using some of the internet sites you suggested in this module.

Reading teaching Strategies

By Clara ortencia Caro Sànchez

Interact with texts through Reading strategies according to the purpose when reading has been an unforgettable experience since I have practiced with a wide variety of activities.

The use of skimming to know what the text is about or scanning to locate specific information as well as the use of deducing and inferring meaning of unknown words.

Identify facts and opinion of writers, to be in touch with different types of texts like: instructive, persuasive, informative and descriptive texts was very helpful to identify the purpose of communication, the sort of language used structural and presentation devices writers use in order to work easier with my students.

I love all reading strategies especially intensive reading where I used listening, reading and watching. These strategies taught me how to visualize when reading to create a picture in our minds. Read, revisit and reflect about processes of reading and the use of authentic materials.

Reading teaching strategies. 2

By Teresita Chàvez Aguirre In module three 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 complete 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. Text Select a suitable text to your students

Pre-reading stage: Active prior Knowledge

Reading stage: Scanning & Skimming Ask some questions during the reading

Post-reading stage: Use pictures to describe the Reading.

Reading teaching strategies 2

By Susana Leòn Contreras

The most interesting activity for me was the section called 100 stories to read where I could listen and read the stories at the same time. All of them are nice and useful materials for me and my kids. For example the story called “Female seeks mature male” This is the story of two teen agers 12 and 13 years old and one them has decided that her friend needs a boyfriend and she is trying to convince her to have one, but her friend refuses the idea because she thinks she does not need a boyfriend, she feels comfortable and she says that she has a lovely father who gives her comfort, protection and he always remembers her birthday, so she feels she really does not need a boyfriend now. This kind of reading is easy to understand for my teen agers besides the reading aspect we can talk in class about their feeling of having a boyfriend at this age. First of all our first activity is Skimming where they have a general look of the reading then we use Scanning where they look for specific information. We have to activate the prior knowledge, personal experiences on the topic, questions before, during and after the reading, visualize ideas, identify main ideas, identify cognates and make conclusions of what they have already read.

Reading teaching strategies 2

By Benilde Lysenka Cosìo salazar

Although there were many interesting activities, for me the most was the activity 1.1 “Read while listening” because it is a good way to appreciate pronunciation and we can do it wherever you want, this site offers the possibility to do it in different ways because you can stay in front of the computer and then you can asses yourself or you can download the reading and copy the text for example if I need it for my students and the computers are busy maybe if we want to practice it in the classroom but not only we can use it as an academic homework but also for pleasure, in addition you can listen to in your IPOD while you use the public transportation for example. Images are also important because they give you an idea of the reading and you can use many teaching strategies for reading, I mean activating prior language to see what they know, drawing conclusion to evaluate comprehension and so on.

Reading teaching strategies 2

By Lucia De Labastida Espinosa The text which call my attention was: The Amistad incident, long time ago I read this story and it left print in me. Then not long ago I saw the film. But to read it in this way was very different. The strategies that I applied in this activity were: To activate my prior knowledge, I remember that I read this story as a tale not as an historical event, and I even remember the illustrations from the book. This helped me: to visualize while reading and recreating the story in my mind. I built up an interest to know more about it. I started to get my conclusions, but at the same time, the need to know more. So I used the links to find out more information in this case, historical and interesting events. I was able to distinguish facts from opinions, I also applied scanning and skimming and in some cases infer the meaning of some words. I followed the sequence of events, cause and effect and finally I was able to analyze and synthesis the information.

Reading teaching strategies 2

By Josè Javier Guzmàn Espinosa

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.

Reading Teaching Strategies By Nahum lòpez gonzàlez

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.

READING TEACHING STRATEGIES THE MOST INTERESTING ACTIVITY By Leydi DIANA Lòpez Hernàndez I think all the activities we realized were interesting, with a grade of difficulty, however I have to choose one, in my own opinion I consider the activity we did in Adult Learning is one of the most completed and that helps me a lot and enjoy was this one. First because it contains different topics to choose according to your likes and in the level you prefer to practice, as for example the one called: “cell phone safety” or the other one “Foster”. You can start with the reading, the scanning and skimming strategies, both are used, besides this it helps you to get more vocabulary, learning the meaning, practicing the pronunciation, but if you prefer watching the images as a video there are some ones who has video, so that you see it, and at the same time to enjoy your learning. I think this one also could be focused on listening, which is one of the most difficult skills to develop for the students, first listening the reading or watching the video without seeing the reading, later repeat it the times they consider, until they have understood it, then they can continue with the rest activities; to finish also they have questions for specific information to check the comprehension, and there is a last part in which you can write your own point of view to practice writing in conclusion an interesting and complete way to study English using Technology.

Reading teaching strategies Ana Rosa Mancilla Cruz

One of the most interesting texts I selected was “British adults fear youngsters”. First of all, I used the reading strategy called skimming to get a general idea about the text. By means of this, I knew that it was an article and it said that British adults were less likely to intervene when teenagers committed anti-social behavior according to statistics. It also said that Britons complained and wanted to move away from their local area because of the little louts. However, they did not do anything to solve the problem and just tried to avoid it. After that, I had two solve two tasks with this article. The first one was to decide if some statements were true or false. Thus, I use scanning so as to locate specific information. Then, I had to write a definition or a synonym for each one of the words that was in bold in the text, so I used the strategy called inference. Finally, I realized that these strategies had a positive effect on my learning as they help to understand more easily any text.

Reading teaching strategies 2

By Miguel de jesùs Martìnez Medina

All the readings on that module were excellent; some were based on comprehension questions and some on techniques and other just to make emphasis on the importance of reading, and all of them had something good to use among our students or we as teachers, but to me the reading I like the most was on chapter six. Why? I might say, because it was on a well known city to me. I spent a time in California, and I had the opportunity to meet that place. But I did not about this problem in fact. So when I read it I felt completely interested on that issue that I made some research about it. And also because the story had a video included, so the importance of reading and listening at the same time has always had a huge impact on me. I have already worked with comprehension questions in class and I have had nice experiences, but I recently started doing similar activities as the ones you selected here, those where text and sounds are implicit. And students seem to be more interested, that is way when I got into this reading, I remember my students, when I see that they work with something they like, they work in a better way.

Reading teaching strategies

By Josè Luis Mendiola Noguez

The activity I liked it a lot was: Reading, listening, watching a video and vocabulary. It is in unit four; named “Intensive Reading”. Activity 4.1. The site is Adult learning Activities. I liked the activity because it integrates skills like: reading, listening, and writing. Playing is also part of the activity. The text is about “Cell phones”. The risk of talking on the phone while driving. There have been a quite a few accidents because of talking on the phone while driving. The activities were: a). First, read the full story. b). Then, play the video. c). Finally, do the activities like: learn new words, spell a word, pick an answer and write an answer. Skimming and scanning were the techniques used in the activity. Listening and playing were used too.

READING TEACHING STRATEGIES By agapita Marìa Guadalupe Monroy Gutièrrez

The most interesting activities in reading practice were the ones in “foster children” reading. The topic is related to a social and touching situation that unfortunately is increasing around the world. The first reading is easy because it is short with common vocabulary, the second was written in a more complicated way, it is longer but it has details that support a better understanding. One useful teaching strategy is the title. When I read it, it engaged me even though I did not understand the word foster. After watching the image I made some hypothesis about meaning and content which were proved with the full story because it is like an easy summary to read. Another helpful reading resource is the audio because I listened and read at the same time. It was a support for the following activities: I got more information about the topic after a second chance to get in touch with the content; I also obtained new vocabulary and its pronunciation and; I could hear and practice intonation and stress while reading. Both, the basic story and the video are excellent ways to raise feelings of pity, sadness, sympathy, etc. It is a manner to establish a close relationship between text, reader and writer. They create an environment for a living reading. Finally skills like inferring, taking risks and reflecting were supported with exercises like learn new words, spell a word, matching game, pick an answer and write it. mm I really liked activities for “foster children” reading.

Reading teaching strategies By benito Navarro Robles

From all the activities I checked 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 enjoying learning. A similar website is www.Many Things. Org; where we can practice English listening to stories, displayed on a screen, and doing 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, looking at images and headings; checking the familiar words. -Skimming, getting a general idea of content by reading fast, “sweeping” the text. -Identifying text structure in order to find the type of text and possible information. -Identifying the author’s purpose. -Making predictions based on text verbal and visual features.

READING TEACHING STRATEGIES By Xòchitl Guadalupe palacios Michel

In the 3rd. module, unit 5 “Reading for pleasure”, the activity 5.1. “Reading and writing” was the most interesting for me because of the text “Amistad Incident”. It’s a famous trial about a real and interesting case of African slaves and all of their suffering and fight to get their freedom.

The activity was reading for pleasure and as quickly and effortlessly as possible and then to produce a 5 line written opinion about the article.

I used the “skimming” reading strategy to obtain the overall sense of the text, because it was long (it had 10 chapters). The skimming strategies that I used were: 1. Read the title, subtitles and subheading to find out what the text is about. 2. Look at the illustrations to give you further information about the topic. 3. Read the first and last sentence of each paragraph. 4. Don't read every word or every sentence. Let you eyes skim over the text, taking in key words. 5. Continue to think about the meaning of the text.

Reading teaching strategies

By Carolina Pèrez Màrquez

From all the reading strategies revised, one of the most interesting and complete, in my opinion, is Reading, listening, watching a video and vocabulary activities; because it integrates, from one text different activities, from basic to higher levels of difficulty, from vocabulary to grammar, through reading, listening, watching and writing practice. It isn’t easy to organize and integrate activities to different learning styles but in this case, many of them are included: an attractive presentation, a video provides visual and audio elements; spelling and writing exercises from and interesting topic; all this make a complete work. When we have a wide range of activities, we can decide whether to use some or all of them, depending on the purpose of the text, according to the level and interest readers have and, of course, we can’t forget that, most of the times, we need to adjust them to time and class conditions. At the same time reading offers possibilities to wide reader world through diverse types of texts and topics to get information, pleasure and fun, but also to reflect about them.

Reading teaching strategies By Bertha Senciòn Hernàndez

HOW CAN YOU HELP YOUR STUDENTS TO LEARN NEW WORDS?

This activity was one of my favorite because the text refers to a report from the BBCC news “ Civilians escape fighting in Sri Lanka”. The reading has three paragraphs with ten unfamiliar words in bold letters. The activities to work are: listen the report and at the same time I could watch the video that gave a clearest idea of the text, then I could both read and listen the reading at the same time. After that, click to hear the vocabulary. In addition, I could know the meaning of the words, it appeared in the computer with a click in each one of them.

The strategy used in this activity was the learning of vocabulary through the audio and video, identification of new words inferring their meaning and then specifically paying attention in those words and be familiar with them listening one by one and of course with reading comprehension. It’s an excellent strategy because bear in mind the learning styles with the different activities. The continiuos repetition of the same strategy helped me to improve my skills especially in reading comprehension. As I said before I love it.

READING TEACHING STRATEGIES By Lilia ariana sobrado Campos 2

In Module 3 I liked two activities: Words in the News (BBCLearningEnglish), and Adult Learning Activities (cdlponline).

Both web sites are really interesting and complete because you can create a diversity of activities using the same reading. For example, you can work with vocabulary in terms of meaning, pronunciation and spelling. Reading comprehension through the different reading strategies (skimming, scanning, prior knowledge, etc). Practice of listening while reading in order to check pronunciation and intonation. Learn more vocabulary by means of games based on the reading. And cultural aspects which are very important to know and understand more about English speaking communities.

All these aspects are considered in both web sites. So, this is an excellent idea for reading and learning English with fun.

IF YOU LOOK CAREFULLY, YOU WILL SEE MORE. IF YOU KNOW MORE, YOU WILL LOOK DIFFERENTLY. (UNKOWN)

READING TEACHING STRATEGIES By Hèctor Fernando suàrez camacho I reviewed the third module and I realized the most interesting activity I did on it was the related to the reading of the web site “100 free short English stories for ESL learners” I selected a story named “Brother, can you spare a carburetor?” It appeared on unit five. I think it was the most interesting activity because it shows a part of the American and English language culture the “do it yourself” as I wrote on my report about it. The strategies used after the reading were very useful for my teaching practice because they were focused on the reading in a holistic sense. It means they are not focused to the grammar only, but to the real comprehension of the text. I would like to say the activities were well done for the reading. The number of them (seven in total) is enough for an ESL learner. And they have a very good design, so they are easy to follow. On the activities and on the text there were not images that could be helpful for the reading comprehension. But this is not a difficulty; it is another reason to say they have an excellent design because they do not need any picture or drawing. The strategies used in this text and I could use with my students are: Skimming: Give a fast view of all the text. Look for key words. Read the first sentence in each paragraph. Scanning: Don’t try to read every word. Use clues on the reading such as headings and titles. Look for specific information: answer some questions given or invent your own questions. Fact or opinion? Is the text real or fiction?

Reading teaching strategies By Cynthia Judyth Venegas Cabuto 2

Learning about reading strategies through internet bring reading alive for adolescents and teachers, the technology can facility the reading experience, engage the problem solving, the information processing and collaboration, in my case as a Teacher this course help me to explore, locate, evaluate, adapt and integrate these resources. I have learnt about some web sites in which you can find different types of readings as American stories, this web site have thousand of activities you can use in your lessons. It is important to mention that the audio in the readings help you a lot because you can play it as many times as you need. One of my favorites are www.cdlonline.org in this web site you can choose different topics, listen to, read and do the exercises , in our case send to our tutor by mail, it was incredible to notice how many thing you can do to improve your learning. I also learnt about how can I and my students increase our vocabulary in www.rong-chang.com, dictation in the same web site. In www.bbc.co.uk I learned about strategies for reading comprehension as facts and opinion, the cultural differences and similarities in beliefs and attitudes in www.manythings.org , the four types of texts in www.skillsworkshop.org , I practiced skimming and scanning, some strategies as active prior knowledge, ask questions before, during and after reading, distinguish facts from opinions, make inferences and draw conclusions, sequence events in journey north strategies.

Reading teaching strategies By Luis Javier Villegas Castro

In this module, I enjoyed many activities but the one really I really liked it was FOSTER CHILDREN. 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.

The activity: There is a basic text which a consider the summary, there is also a full story with all details about the article, the video and the activities.

The strategies: Vocabulary: listening pronunciation. Spell a word: you listen and after you write. Matching game: words and a description. Pick an answer: A sentence with a blank and four possible options. Write an answer: You get an open question and you are free to answer.

This is such a great way to improve reading because having the written story while watching a video, help you reinforce vocabulary with some different activities that will ease the usage of them.

This story is very sad I cannot understand how adults can abuse if we are speaking about their own children, Unbelievable.

LISTENING TEACHING STRATEGIES By Marìa Aglahe Arreola martìnez 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 reason was that some vocabulary was so difficult to understand that’s why I have to listen many times in order I could get the whole text. The other activity I really find difficult was the news where I watched and heard a videoclip in order to answer a quizz. This kind of videos were very difficult for me to understand, one of the reason was the lenght 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. I believe it could be easier if I were acostumed to listening English. As we know there are many accents and the interference of the Spanish languaje sometimes makes more difficult to listen other languaje because I want to translate everyting I hear , besides I didn’t work harder, I must admit that sometimes I had not time to do properly the activities. 2

Listening teaching strategies By Marìa Teresa caballero Martìnez In my opinion, the most difficult activity from module fourth was 2.1: top-down listening because of the language registers used in the video, it means that the hardest part of the video was to understand Australian English because it differs from British or American English. The instructions given in this activity were: a. See the video with Streaming video: Real Player or Windows Media b. The transcript c. A multiple choice quiz d. Story spotlight e. Story Notes (vocabulary) f.

Downloading or subscribing to the vodcast.

After all these activities, we had to write a short summary about the text called ´swimming with sea lions´.

The text was not understandable and long to me. I think the activity could have been taken from a different link or site to do easier the work to do.

Listening teaching strategies By Jacqueline Càrdenas mendoza

Listening is a very fun skill where I improved my strategies by means of top-down and bottom-up listening as well as listening for word stress, intonation, pause, and rhythm, and also minimal pairs, reading along, and tag questions. There are different levels of authenticity in listening texts too, and they are very interesting I think the most difficult exercises were two; Minimal pairs are words which have exactly the same pronunciation except for one sound. If you only listen to you can you hear the differences? It is a very difficult question you perhaps can find difficult.

Intonation is important in the English language too. When we listen to news, an important person talking, interviews, radio, songs, or anything we can hear to get information, we use our awareness of intonation to predict important parts of the conversation, what we should principally pay attention too, if we are listening to an answer or question, or if the person will continue speaking, or if they will stop. English uses variation in tone (how something is said to indicate importance, an emotion, seriousness, irony, sarcasm, etc.), pitch (voice going up or down), word stress, and in general a sort of melodic variation or rhythm in speaking which if it were missing would make English sound very tedious. We can improve practicing and there are very interesting and fun sites on the Web to study.

LISTENING TEACHING STRATEGIES By Patricia Cardoso Almaraz The most difficult activity was intonation and rhythm. I thought intonation was a matter of a personal touch rather than a rule in English. now I know that intonation is important in the English language because when we listen to news, someone talking, interviews, songs, or anything we can hear to get information, etc., we use what we know about intonation to predict important parts of the speech we should pay attention to, if we are listening to an answer or question, or if the person will continue speaking, or if they will stop. In the past I used to pay attention only to questions to raise intonation there but now i see how important intonation is. This activity would have been easier if the listener could have the opportunity to listen to more examples stressing the different intonation and you could record your voice trying to imitate the same intonation. i think this could also be fun to listen yourself copying the correct intonation. another activity to make this exercise easier may be a kind of guessing

game by listening a recording and the listener guesses the intention or emotion of the recording material would be useful and fun too.

Listening teaching strategies. By Clara Ortencia Caro Sànchez I consider that the most complicated activity in module 4 that develops listening skill was the one about phrasal verbs, since they have a lot of meanings according to the particle they use.

As idiomatic expressions that combine verbs and a preposition or an adverb to make new verbs whose meaning is different because they create new terms, are very difficult to use, ( even in context) for those who are English language learners and don’t have enough opportunity to practice neither a wide range of vocabulary.

This activity could be easier if you had selected a specific amount of phrasal verbs and the particles they use. Perhaps a selection of transitive and intransitive verbs explaining when the verb is separable or inseparable, If they use an object or not, and so on. After that recommend the pages and activities included in this unit just for further practice. There is too much information.

Listening teaching strategies. By teresita Chàvez Aguirre In this 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 prevoius listenings, it was an authentic material, that was not created to give an English class, but 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 enjoyed and the dresses were plain, colorful, black, etc. during this description the voice of the man was skeptical (he was using a special intonation), then he lowed his voice to give some details about the weather finally he gave his opinion about a dress 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. Why must I consider authentic listening in my planning? Because… 2

Listeners are exposed to :

Speed:Native people has a normal speed

Stress: Gives entonation & thought groups

that is a good opportunity to improve students’ listening skill.

And shows emotions and principal ideas that help to understand the listening. Authetic listenings: Videos, movies, conferences,etc.

Listening teaching strategies By Contreras Leòn Susana

Listening teaching strategies could be a very useful tool while teaching listening. In fact listening to songs, poems, tongue twisters, short videos, movies or listening to native speakers are very important aspects I must consider while teaching listening. Intonation and word stress are also important. Teaching listening have to be a fun activity to carry on.. In the Graded Dictation Section I had lots of mistakes. It was the most difficult section for me during the listening activities. I was confused while listening I tried the upper intermediate and the advanced level, I listened carefully and made the dictations and then I felt so frustrated when I checked my words and punctuation of what I have already listened, the instructions 2

and the text length is good enough, the fact is that I have never tried this kind of exercises before, that is why I felt this activity difficult, I liked these activities very much and I think I can use them properly with my students in a low level because first of all I need to train my students with plenty of listening exercises. I think these activities could be easy for my kids if I train them since the beginning of the course.

Listening teaching strategies By Benilde Lysenka Cosio Salazar

I went back to module four and among all the activities I couldn’t choose just one, so I chose two because they impressed me, they weren’t difficult neither they lasted a lot , nor that the instructions were not very well explained but they imposed a challenge, in the first activity that was 3.1 (in sentence patterns) it was a bit complicated for me because I had never heard of it, however when I was solving it I saw that this topic is very useful because we can identify feelings and emotions in people and helps us to improve our writing style, I believe that for students would be advisable that the software include definitions and more examples also that the exercises provide answers to check progress. The other activity was 7.1 (listening strategies) and was the last, I chose this because here we had to apply everything we learned through the module, the challenge here was to listen to people of different nationalities, I 2

believe that for students would be more attractive and easier if people were more like their age and talk about interesting topics, besides listening is the ability that they find more difficult to develop.

Listening teaching strategies By Lucia De Labastida Espinosa

For me, most of the listenings were very good I learned a lot about them, it was an innovating material. To be able to interact with the computer was an excellent experience. In most of them the instructions were clear and precise the text length was adequate and up to a certain point the activities were easy, witty and funny.

Only the exercise from the video was confusing, mainly because of the software I have. This activity was impossible for me to do it. When we are using this kind of software we have to pay attention and take in consideration if the user knows how to use it and the limitations he could have, because it is frustrating when you can work. Australia Network English Bites was the name of the exercise.

As I am not an expert user I don’t know what to suggest to make this exercise easier.

In my point of view most of the language strategies and activities were Excellent.

Listening

teaching

strategies By Josè Javier Guzmàn Espinosa 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.). Reading along simply would simplify problems but would not grasp the thought groups adequately. 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. Time is important for getting results. If the activity becomes too long then it lacks fulfillment, which is a component of the activity. Dividing the activity in more than one session could be advisable with lower grade students. The two lessons of YOU TUBE (7a and 7b) could prepare the student in a first session, leaving the rest for the following one(s). The most important result of the activity must be to convince the student of the usefulness of the 2

activity for reading along using thought groups in order that they practice this activity in the future. Don’t forget that translating songs by ear needs practice.

Listening Teaching Strategies By Nahum Lòpez Gòmez

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 2

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.

Listening teaching strategies. By Leidy diana Lòpez hernàndez

How to evaluate a difficult activity? There are not difficult activities, just they need practice, but according to what it is thought difficult, the most difficult one, were two in different ways, one is related to the news, the text was not exactly complex although almost always the vocabulary is not unknown for us but the tone, the rhythm, the intonation and the speed in which they say the words we do not use it, neither we practice it, our ear isn’t taught to hear the language in this way. Adding to this that for many people the news are bored for them, but we have to be honest with us that we do not know all the vocabulary in a topic is 2

mentioned, more if it is one that we do not have relation with, and neither in our own mother tongue. The second activity is related with dictation, in my case I have a problem because when somebody talks I use to see their mouth, or lips in order to see the words they are saying in case my ear doesn’t understand but when I hear the listening in a computer or a radio as I do not see the mount and movements of the person I can easily loose me.

SOLUTION • I just can find a solution to this problem practicing, with real material, is the best resource and using the resource you find interesting, funny, something. you enjoy listen to, in order to make the learning easier. Listening teaching strategies By Ana Rosa Mancilla Cruz

The most difficult activity I did was to listen to the news story called "Inside Saddam´s palace" and solve a quiz. At first, it was hard to understand the recording as the narrator spoke so fast, used a lot of idioms and phrasal verbs. I also lacked of certain vocabulary to get the idea and therefore I made some mistakes when I answered the questions about the story. I had to pay a lot of attention and heard the tape more than twice to improve my score. Lastly, the activity could have been easier and more comprehensible if it had provided key words before listening to the news story.

Listening teaching strategies By Miguel de Jesùs Martìnez Medina

If I had to explain why some activities were a little bit difficult to me, well there are some points which I like to mention in advance. 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, 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. 2

But if I have to say what activity was the most difficult and why, there were some using British accent, and I must say that had a difficult time trying to understand them, because I am not really used to work with it, 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.

Listening teaching strategies 2

By Josè Luis mendiola Noguez The most difficult activity for me was taking dictation. The activity is in unit 5; activity 5.1 named “Practicing dictation”. The activity was difficult for me because I am not accustomed to. I realized that I must improve my vocabulary and practiced it in different context like listening, reading, writing and speaking. I had to continue practicing intonation, pronunciation, phrasal verbs, etcetera. In addition I must listen to movies, songs and so forth. In my opinion, the activity could have been easier if: a). I listen to the text, dialogue or paragraph three or four times. b). As the purpose of the task is identify and write, the reading of the text, dialogue or paragraph must be slow than normal. The level of the text is important too.

LISTENING TEACHING STRATEGIES By A. Marìa Guadalupe Monroy Gutièrrez The most difficult listening teaching strategy was the section of news. Hearing shop workers ´face daily threats´ was hard for me because the speed of speaking, people spoke very fast and I caught just few sounds or words but I did not understand the general theme, neither main ideas nor details. People also used idioms and specialized vocabulary because it is used daily in native person’s life but foreigners sometimes do not know it very well. I did not see body language that help to understand, sometimes I saw the woman´s back and man´s upper part of his body, it was hard to read lips or see their movement in order to show what they mean or feel. Besides I could not identify intonation, rhythm or words stress. My suggestions to improve listening with news are: beginners should have previous exercises like games or hearing new vocabulary, tall tales could be funny to create guided news; it is useful to use students´ prior knowledge about the topic. Advanced classes should watch the video once and answer some questions in order to get general ideas; I also recommend spelling activities before watching the video; related to the quiz I would like to have the response after answering each question. In addition I suggest writing some news or just one based in a model and record an

audio or practice on a video conference. Finally in both cases, practicing with more news is the key to improve listening skills through authentic material.

My headache and…

Listening teaching strategies By Benito Navarro robles

henever 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 study and steadily practice a series of phonological rules that could help me improve my language skills; but, fortunately, I realize now, improving listening comprehension is closely related to the reading and writing processes too, 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 (top down listening and word stress); but it is understandable, these dialectical differences have been beyond my experience.

I know a cultural aspect of learning a language is feeling like 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, displayed on 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. (October 29,2009 2009) Professor Benito with his English major students at the public teachers’ training college in Guadalajara.

LISTENING TEACHING STRATEGIES By Xòchitl Guadalupe Palacios Michel

For me, the most difficult activity was Activity 4.2. “Thought groups” ecause I had to identify thought and I was a little confused so I missed some of them when I had to identify them in two dictations.

I selected the two more understanding texts for me, but, as I said, I was a little confused.

This activity could have been easier if we could practice a little more and present texts where we can identify the rhythm, intonation and pauses in order we can identify thought groups. The explanation (instruction) is OK I guess, but we have to practice more and if we have mistakes we could correct them getting an explanation not only about we are wrong but why we were wrong to understand better.

Listening teaching strategies By carolina Pèrez Màrquez

Listening activities can be difficult, even more, with native speakers and depending on the type of text we are working with. In Unit 5, in the Listening module, we worked two different activities, which, in my opinion, were particularly challenging: practicing dictation and phrasal verbs. Dictation requires both listening and writing skills at the same time, so, it is easy to misunderstand words or expressions and make spelling mistakes. These difficulties are related to text selection and its length, for the task, I chose two descriptive pieces of literature, instead of instructive, informative or persuasive texts. To know the type of text

previously dictation allows to have expectations about vocabulary or structures, formats, etc., that we could find during the exercise. Phrasal verbs demand another kind of challenges because they are used in common dialogues and speeches, besides they compile many words in one action phrase, which make them difficult to master them for English learners. In both cases, minimal pairs, word stress, thought groups, intonation and rhythm previous practices were very helpful to work with authentic listening and native speakers. I would follow the same steps given during the activity. First, I would start with easy exercises, maybe words and simple sentences to increase the level of complexity and text length, little by little, depending on the progress students show and in order to they get confidence with this kind of practices.

LISTENING STRATEGIES By Bertha Senciòn Hernàndez

The most difficult activity in this module was the unit four “ Thought groups “. It was so difficult because the lot of information given to do the activity 4.1. It suggest five cites to search for information and then it gave me instructions to select music that I would like to listen, after that it suggest two songs and finally another site for song option ( Fonetiks.org) by the way I tried this one and it didn’t work.

The activity could have been easier ( in my point of view) selecting only one web cite for theory information and not two, work with the songs suggested in the module to answer the activity and the other web cites for our own practice. Another suggestion could be that especially in this activity the videos didn’t work in the best way because sometimes

stopped and took a four or five seconds and again they stopped, I think would be a good option to change the cite or check them before videos be selected for work.

Texts lengths, tasks and text selection were excellent, some of them difficult but I love challenges and I did the best to finish the activity.

LISTENING TEACHING STRATEGIES By Lilia Adriana Sobrado Campos

I think the most difficult activity was 5.2 (BBC Skillswise), as listening is my hardest skill, It wasn’t easy not to have the transcript to check or to understand the information I didn’t get, although I know it is much better try to understand without transcript.

Besides, these kinds of activities are flat and a little bit boring because they are limited, with no funny and interesting tasks.

It is more attractive and productive to use the information given in a listening exercise if you take advantage of it trying with different tasks in order to practice more.

On the other hand, I could appreciate that each worksheet has a different activity where you can work with the information given, practice your listening skill and you can check your answers. I worked with four factsheets where I learned what is listening?, listening in different situations (face to face, non-verbal cues, etc.), listening to instructions in different situations and, listening in care situations.

Paul Tillich The first duty of love is to listen.

Listening teaching strategies By Hèctor Fernando Suàrez Camacho As I reviewed module four, I noticed the most difficult activity on it was the one related to phrasal verbs, that activity appeared on unit six. It was difficult for me because those verbs have always been my monster, my Achilles’ heel. The activities and tasks on this task are so difficult because they do not have a text as a support. They are given off from a sentence only. I think if they were put in a different context, maybe I could understand better. The instructions were clear and the objective so was. 2

Now I must search the net in order to find further exercises about phrasal verbs. I mention it because I aware they are so difficult and I need to improve my knowledge and use of them.

Listening teaching strategies By Cynthia Judyth Venegas Cabuto In order to select the most difficult activity I did a reflection about why is listening important? I think it is important because, as we listen, we will be acquiring the language we hear, the rhythms, the intonation, the word order and grammatical patterns. In my personal case the most difficult activity were the three exercises about word stress because I have not practiced word stress and intonation a lot. During this module I have learnt that improving sentence intonation is one of the key elements in English pronunciation but it is quite difficult for me. I learned the four basic types of word stress that lead to proper intonation in English, the tonic stress, the emphatic stress, contrastive stress and the new information stress. I also learned about the

eight common word stress patterns in English; One Syllable – Stressed (EAT),Two Syllable - First Syllable Stressed(GIant) Two Syllable - Second Syllable Stressed (toDAY), Three Syllable- First Syllable Stressed (ENergy), Three Syllable- Two Syllable Stressed (meMOrial), Three SyllableThree Syllable Stressed (employEE), Four Syllable- Two Syllable Stressed (cerTIficade), Four Syllable- Three Syllable Stressed (poliTIcian).Honestly I did not enjoy these exercises, the web site is boring and the audio is not clear. This web site was easier for me to understand and practice www.soundofenglish.org because it has lots of examples, audio and images; my recommendation is find out more attractive sites as this one because students and Teachers can improve more if they are interesting on the topic.

Listening Teaching Strategies By Luis Javier Villegas Castro I analyzed about this topic and I found a bunch of boring theory about intonation where the mentioned an oscilloscope that will give an oscill….what? Then about volume well that is easier to understand when it goes up or down to get the audience attention. In this article or research describes aspects about sound and strange things that are hard to comprehend after that they relate attitude and intonation listing 500 different attitudes. They mentioned during the article a lot of things that might be difficult to learn by heart. The text is seven pages long with a high language level and some other things that are hard to understand if you are not a native speaker. 2

I think that it will be easier to explain all these info with pictures or images examples like other sites have demonstrated it so we can check with detail the correct way to work with these patterns instead of giving background information about that. I have seen easy examples where they present visually aspects about stress and intonation depending on the reference you want to emphasize. • •

A question A surprise

•

An order.

So boring theory is not the best ways of presenting a practical aspect when speaking about a language.

SPEAKING TEACHING STRATEGIES By Marìa Aglahe Arreola Martìnez

From my point of view Module fifth was one of the best ones because it included all the skills (listening, writing, speaking and listening), morover 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 somenthing 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 usfeul as giving opinions and instructions were I could aqcuired some expressions that were helpful to fulfil the activites morover to improve my speaking.

SPEAKING

TEACHING STRATEGIES By Marìa Teresa Caballero Martìnez

In my opinion, all the activities were useful but one of the best and most interesting I have ever practiced was in unit 2, where through the use of music, we had to generate an oral production of a descriptive story. It has been the best way for learning different aspects of the language, for example, I had to prepare a report about a descriptive text. Then, I was able to practice my speaking skill with my classmates. I also practiced my grammar and I expanded my cultural awareness 2

because I chose a new age kind of music, and with this activity I became interested in the origin and characteristics about this musical gender. Finally, I looked for new vocabulary in order to prepare my text. The sequences of sounds were taking me to use my creativity and describe imaginary landscapes or situations. On the other hand, this activity made me reflect about my practice as an English teacher because I usually tend to be oriented to the text book, but I realized that with the use of tools like this one, we can improve our teaching in a funny way. When we think of using music in the English language classroom, we may imagine students learning songs for cultural goals, for grammar practice, or for just have fun, but the best characteristic of this activity is that we can change music into a powerful learning tool.

Speaking teaching strategies By Jacqueline Càrdenas Mendoza

Speaking skill can develop oral production through monologues and dialogues going during the stages of planning, perform and publishing. Spoken production is one of the most difficult skills to develop because the evident need of opportunities to interrelate with native speakers. I had the opportunity to access to resources and tools which let me to plan, practice, and record, publish my activities confidently. I was capable of produce simple connected text on topics which were familiar or of personal interest. I was able to describe experiences and events, hopes, dreams and ambitions and briefly give reasons and explanations for opinions and plans. I could interact with a level of fluency and naturalness that made regular contact with native speakers fairly possible without strain for either party. I could produce clear, complete text on a wide range of subjects and explain a point of view on a topical subject giving the advantages and disadvantages of a variety of options. I liked the activity of a Voice thread site because I had the opportunity to talk about a famous people as is Barack Obama the President of the United States and I admire him. It was a very interesting exercise and it is a great strategy to teach my students because it helps to reflect and express a wonderful topic.

SPEAKING TEACHING STRATEGIES By Patricia cardoso Almaraz 2

The activity that turned out to be more useful for me was “How to express agreement and disagreement” because I think that this is the main tool we use when we speak with other people and you could express agreement or disagreement in a formal situation or in an informal chat. When you start a topic for a conversation you start giving your opinion and of course you express your agreement or disagreement to that certain point. In this activity I practiced with certain activities that helped me to order my talking and consider all the elements to be clear and punctual, to express clearly well when I agree or not. There are specific phrases that one can use to express agreement or disagreement such as: I agree, me too, good idea, I don’t think so, etc. This activity can be very exciting for students because they love to give their opinions and discuss whenever they agree or not. The important fact is to give them a topic of interest to discus in a round table where they can have the chance to express themselves, besides this activity and once they get to their conclusion they can prepare a big poster or publish a document, a newsletter for example, with their points of view or their conclusions.

Speaking teaching strategies. By Clara Ortencia Caro sànchez

Considering that this is one of the most difficult skills to develop perhaps because of the lack of interaction with native speakers, all the activities practiced have been very helpful for me as a learner and as a teacher. They have allowed me to raise my English level and to access to technological resources and tools to produce texts of different topics. The activity that has been most helpful for me is the one that shows us how to describe a situation or place where we heard a music clip and after that we wrote a description of the situation or place it evoked us. Put in practice this activity with my students would be a great innovation in our English classes. I’m sure it would motivate them to plan, practice and record their descriptions and be more careful about coherence, choose appropriate vocabulary, rhythm and stress. Perhaps in a very elemental level but they would be aware of their vocabulary achievement and for sure they will feel more confident when speaking in the language they are learning.

Speaking teaching strategies By Teresita Chàvez Aguirre This 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 liked it very much. In this activity I listened to a music clip, “The magical flute”, then 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 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 music 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, 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.

My future classes My strengths and Weaknesses

SPEAKING TEACHING STRATEGIES By Susana Contreras Leòn

Speaking in English properly is not an easy job. You must be very careful with your rythm and word stress and pay attention to what you really want to say. It was great to work this module. It was a big challenge for me, everything here was new and excellent, and every single tool was great. I learnt how to use a web cam and I shared lots of my materials with my peers. The audacity program was a new experience for me so I had the chance to record my voice in different situations. It was fantastic to work with this programm. “How to describe a situation or a place” was a very nice activity for me because I had the chance to say what that music inspired me and then I recorded the music and my story, that was a fun activity. My students love music and this could be an excellent tool. Using music in English classes must be fun. They could listen to different melodies and say what they feel about the music, they can also record their voices and have fun listening to each other. Different speaking activities must be applied in English classes if you really want your students to learn how to express their thoughts and feelings.

Speaking teaching strategies By benilde Lysenka Cosio salazar For me the most useful activities were those that had to be done through a videoconference, this is an effective medium of communication, especially the 5.2 activity because there we could express our opinion (show agreement and disagreement) on a topical issue which was to raise taxes to avoid poverty, first I considered it useful because through two computers we have the possibility to be in touch with the person in real time (much better if the person is far from us), we see her/him through the webcam and listen to through the speakers, we can use headphones in order not disturb anyone, also is a resource that we can use a lot with students in the computer room (among them it is very popular) it is easy to use and I can monitor who are really working on what I asked for, check pronunciation or listening and I can appreciate writing if I ask for an essay about what are they discussing. More than disadvantages, this way of learning has a lot of benefits for students and classmates because it’s easy to access, you can evaluate yourself as a learner or evaluate different aspects if you are the teacher depending on the topic, most of all, your students will enjoy it a lot.

Speaking teaching strategies By Lucia De Labastida Espinosa

How would I use the voicethread ? First I would plan and record my own presentation setting the Social practices and Functions that I want to practice. I will record them so that the students get familiarized with them. Then with another voice I would start the voicethread so they can get used to the idea that we are working with. I would practice it by listening several times until they are confident that they can express themselves properly and without mistakes. I would write a draft and check the structures after that we will practice it, until they master the activity so that it could be very good and they could listen to their production with no mistakes, to avoid jokes and bad comments form their classmates. All this can be don as a project work by teams of 3 people ( the script writer, the audio assistant and the anchorman)

Speaking Teaching Strategies

By Josè Javier Guzmàn Espinosa 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. Steps 1-4 in the classroom. Order in the class, clear instructions and motivated students would be necessary for the good results of the activity.

Speaking Teaching Strategies By Nahum Lòpez Gòmez 2

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.

Speaking Teaching Strategies By Leidy Diana Lòpez Hernàndez 2

Each activity has an specific purpose, and in these ones I could discover some things in my learning for example in the first one, where we have to record our comment about the music we were hearing, I could see that I learnt better with music and I feel more confident to express myself, I feel more relax. The activity in which we had to talk about an important person in our life I could think about it, about what I had done and I have to do, it was an activity of reflection. But maybe the most useful and a little hard for me was the one in which I had to give a comment from a person of influence and record it, honestly I didn’t know it was one of my more difficult areas in my competence of communication but it is, it represented a goal I had to achieve, because I had to research more about that person, sometimes we talk without knowing in real life what is happening but to give an opinion or a comment it is really important to know what are you going to say. I had heard about that person however the information I had was not enough to say something about her and more in public, some people are afraid to talk in public and these activities are good to face this problem and to start to do it frequently, this is an excellent way to start to practice it.

Speaking teaching strategies By Ana Rosa Mancilla Ruiz All of the activities were meaningful for my learning as I could improve my pronunciation and fluency. However, one of the most useful activities to me was to give opinions and express agreement and disagreement about a topic. In this case, I had to talk to a partner by means of a videoconference session and give my opinion about tax increases. With this exercise, I learnt polite expressions to share my points of view and, at the same time, I used a range of vocabulary focused on the situation. I also chose this activity because we usually express opinions to reach an agreement not only in a job but also in any place. It was significant in that my partner and I used the technology and allowed us to communicate our ideas in real time, no matter where we were located. I would take advantage of this kind of activity to motivate my students to use a series of expressions and give their viewpoints politely about a topic. This will improve considerably their speaking skills and help them to overcome their fears to speak in public. Finally, when they feel more confident, they could use the technology such as the messenger to establish a conversation about a particular issue.

Speaking teaching strategies By Miguel de Jesùs Martìnez Medina

Probably this skill turns out to be one of the most difficult to improve, because it requires improvisation at the time of speaking. 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.

Speaking teaching strategies By Josè Luis mendiola Noguez I consider the voicethread site an excellent tool to use with adolescents in secondary school. I would use the site with third grade students because of their command of English, as follows: -

First of all, I would have my students do a parallel writing of a description in a letter size paper.

Secondly, I would pick up their descriptions to check them.

Then, I would take them to the “Aula Digital” to explain to them the voicethread site and how it works.

Later, I will would have them write a description of a person of the screen.

Finally, I would have them record their description. Hello….

SPEAKING TEACHING STRATEGIES By A. Marìa Guadalupe Monroy Gutièrrez My second grade students can use this tool because in unit one they learn how to describe persons physically and places. They can utilize voicethread in three moments: At the beginning of the unit, in order to figure out what is the theme about and pick up adjectives and ways to make descriptions. There is a wide range of options in order to listen different voices and information, so they can develop listening skills and know several ways for describing persons at the same time. When the unit is in progress is other moment to use voice thread because students could prove hypothesis and increase options to do the same task. With some classes is better to do a previous work based on text books, written and oral texts before practicing with voicethread. After that, students could listen different productions and hey will be able to improve their pronunciation and feel more comfortable to do his or her own speaking. The most important oral production could be done at the end of the unit when students show confidence to speak and share information with others. This stage is a result of a process based on a permanent review and correction activity in order to improve the final speaking. Third graders could work with people of influence activity because it requires more sophisticated strategies to select, organize and present the information. Students can refer past events of famous persons like singers, actress, historical persons, etc.

Speaking is easy with…

Speaking teaching strategies Benito Navarro Robles To tell the truth, I have an ambivalent opinion about the activities I carried out in Module 5 (Speaking); 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 certainly enjoyed the moment but almost immediately I also had kind of frustration because it wasn’t with the quality I wanted. This happened, indeed, 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 what I have said, I must mention, without hesitation, that the voice thread descriptions in units 3 and 5 and the videoconference in the latter, seemed to me the most useful activities, because they intended to develop our abilities in using computer programs and, at the same time, to better our performance integrating the four language skills, even though they focused on oral expression. I plan to take advantage of any opportunity with my English major class, during this academic year, in order to apply such activities, learning from and with them.

Tell a Story!

And have a videoconference

SPEAKING TEACHING STRATEGIES By Xòchitl Guadalupe Palacios Michel

The Activity “How to express agreement and disagreement” is very useful to improve our English Speaking level because it offers the opportunity of practicing many skills, like: vocabulary, intonation, pronunciation, etc.

So, I could use it with my students in many topics; in fact, students of 2nd. Grade: they have to make a project at the program; the project is always about a real and specific purpose); they have to expose their investigation about the a discussion with their classmates about it.

I have used it already with my end of each unit of the studies topic (it depends of the Unit topic and at the end they open

With my students of 1st. grade (I only teach in 1st. and 2nd. Grade), I don’t work making projects, so I could use it as a speaking evaluation: at the end of each unit I could give them a topic and, in teams, my students have to defend their point of view about it.

Speaking teaching strategies By Carolina Pèrez Màrquez

One of my favorite speaking activities was How to describe a situation or a place, because it offers innumerable possibilities of oral and/ or written productions, from a single piece of music. This activity also provides the chance to identify music preferences and even some students’ personality characteristic, which are important information to know them and to take in account for further activities. First, I have to select the music, depending on the activity purpose, I mean if I want to stimulate or relax them, so I can decide if I need music with quick or smooth chords. Then, at class, I’d play the music, encourage them to think and write down the ideas coming to their mind and prepare a short comment about what they imagined or felt when they were listening to music. Later on, I’d ask for volunteers to read or say aloud their comments; to the rest of students, they could record it, at home, and give them to me later, or maybe, just let it as a written work. If time is enough, we could share some opinions on the works presented. This kind of activity helps learners to express themselves in a free style, where the limits get as far as their imagination reaches.

Speaking teaching strategies By Bertha Senciòn hernàndez

The module of Speaking Strategies was very amazing for me, first of all because I didn't know the tools I used to work with speaking activities that's why I can say that all the activities were useful for me. But as I must to select one I decided Unit 2 activity 2.1 " How to describe a situtation or place " using audacity to tape my voice and especially with the information and steps about it. It was very useful because I had the opportunity to listen my speaking and I did my self evaluation taking into account the rubric to grade my vocabulary. It was so indescriptible for me. Audacity has been a tool that have helped me to motivate my students to speak and listening their own accent and intonation, at the same time the sites that you have suggested with useful information to improve our speaking I have shared with my collegues and pupils.

SPEAKING TEACHING STRATEGIES By Lilia Adriana Sobrado Campos

Fifth Module was extraordinary because I got lots of fun and it was a different experience using technology. Most of the activities are useful in my teaching practice, for example: My personal story (1.1), how to describe a situation or a place (2.1), voicethread (3.1), videoconference session (5.2) and, someone important in my life (6.2). These activities are useful with my students because they accept and enjoy them. Voicethreat is a good exercise where they can describe images with their own words according to their vocabulary level. “How to describe a situation or a place” is a nice exercise where, through the music, they can express themselves, their feelings, or only a special place. “Videoconference” is a good option that allows students to get in touch through a camera which would be funny. (unfortunately in my school there are no cameras to practice this activity). “My personal story” permits students to write about their personal experience with the idea of sharing their productions with their classmates. In my personal experience, speaking is one of the most difficult skills for students (and for teachers too), they don’t want to participate in class because they are afraid and ashamed, therefore these activities allow students to feel more confident while speaking.

To speak and to speak well are two things. A fool may talk, but a wise man speaks. ~Ben Jonson

SPEAKING TEACHING STRATEGIES By Hèctor Fernando Suàrez Camacho

On activity 6.1 I said the most useful activity on module five was about the description of a person with influence. I would recommend use this activity with the secondary school students. They would feel confident and secure with an activity like this because they wouldn’t need being in front of their classmates. The strategies or steps could be these: a) Students could select a character from a variety of them. b) Then, they would have some time for searching data related to the character. c) After that, students had more time in order to organize the data and prepare their speech. d) So, teacher could review the speech of each student in a pre reading. This part is made in order to correct the mistakes they had done during the writing phase. e) On the speaking phase students could decide if they would record their voice in a CD, upload it to internet, record it on an I-pod or wherever they want or could. I am sure students would be happy doing this activity. Listening to your own voice is an incredible experience. And if you hear the critics after that, you could improve your speaking skills.

SPEAKING TEACHING STRATEGIES By Cynthia Judyth Venegas Cabuto

Spoken English is an urgent requirement and an essential skill in our competitive global world that is why as Teachers we must be trained to learn new methods of teaching, we have to be prepared to integrate educational technology into the classroom instruction. This module was my favorite, I learned how to download a program that I really felt in love to, it is called audacity, in this program you can record your voice the times you wish and create a record of your activities then you will compare how your speaking is improving. It is very useful for my student and also for me. The web sites which turned out to be more useful for me are www.voicethread.com and www.splendid-speaking.com in these incredible sites you prepare and record a comment about the people at the following site also you can listen to others comments. It was a pleasure to have the opportunity to learn about it.

SPEAKING TEACHING STRATEGIES By Luis Javier villegas Castro It is hard to choose one from many different good ones. The describing part was great. What I think about this is that if we choose an important person that students really know and they have information about that, it will be easier for them to express orally what they know. Now, listening other descriptions encourage us to do the same; We may get new ideas and specific information from the descriptions. In my case, I didn´t know much about Rigoberta so it was hard for me to do that activity. I am totally sure unless somebody else has a 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. It is good to record stories, descriptions or whatever but there´s nobody there to correct many aspects involved in speaking like intonation, stress or rhythm. Like I said before these websites an activities might help with fluency which is an important aspect to consider too. In order to finish my participation here, I will like to say that I was very excited to start this module “ TEACHING STRATEGIES” but now that I am in the middle of it I feel disappointed because it is not what I expected.

See you in volume 4B !!! See you soon