Tuesday, 30 August 2011

Teaching listening

How students learn to listen
Bottom-up vs. top-down processing
Warming up
Types of listening: literal comprehension, making inferences
How to listen: strategies and tasks


http://www.slideshare.net/samuraitheologian/hd-browns-principles-for-teaching-listening-skills
http://www.slideshare.net/samuraitheologian/brown-8-factors-in-listening-comprehension
http://www.slideshare.net/samuraitheologian/brown-8-processes-involved-in-listening-comprehension

Working with listening skills:
Instructions
1. Work with your partner
PART A
2. Study the unit you have selected from the textbooks available.
3. Propose one brand new original activity in each item. You need to have a "new version of the unit" based on each activity.
PART B
4. After you have your "duplicated unit" choose an authentic material: movie segment, song or video to design a complete unit following the type of activities presented in the chosen textbook for part A.

Next Monday (September 5th) part A has to be finished.
On Thursday (Septeber 8th) A and B must be ready to present in front of the class.

Monday, 22 August 2011

Methodology II, Night Class

Dear Students,
Miss Karen Olave has informed that your course will have class only on Tuesdays due to the number of students. See you tomorrow.

Thursday, 18 August 2011

Teaching reading: How the youth Kilhuch came to king Arthur's court

Follow these steps
1. Work with your partner
2. Set a purpose for reading
3. Prepare a reading lesson based on pre-while-post
4. Your activities must be TEXT HANDLING
5. Determine your objectives
6. Pre and post activities support your WHILE READING TASK
7. Include activities to work on the literal and inferential level.
8. This time you CAN'T base you work on activities found online, but you can support pre and post with audiovisual material.
9. The objective of this practice activity is to develop the skills of questionning (from the teacher's perspective).
10. All your activities and questions must have a key (desired answer)
DEADLINE: First draft AUGUST 21ST, Final version August 25th

Your lesson plan needs to include the following:
Objectives
Activity (brief description)
Strategies
Materials
Timing
Problems/solutions
Evaluation

Is this the tale http://www.authorama.com/celtic-fairy-tales-15.html?
Please let me know! comment

Monday, 15 August 2011

Teaching Reading

Before we plan a  reading comprehension lesson, it is very important to ask yourself the following questions:
1. What is the purpose for reading? To entertain, to study, to be informed, to follow instructions, to support a point of view, among others
2. What is the type of text?
3. What is the topic?
4. How will the students activate prior knowledge? questionning, brainstorming, picture exploration, case study, example form real life, etc.
5. What cognitive strategies will be highlighted? grouping, elaboration, etc.
6. How will metacognition be encouraged? checklist, modeling, peer correction
7. Will I have inferential questions? What do my students know about inferences?

Reading strategies:resourcebook

We know that the most popular techniques to work with reading comprehension are Skimming and Scanning.
To Skim means to find general information. Samples of these questions are:
a. What is the main idea of the text?
b. What is the main idea of paragraph X?
c. Paraphrase the title
d. Write a subheading for each paragraph.

To scan a text means to find specific information. Samples of these questions are:
a. What is the name of.....?
b. When did X event take place?
c. Where did X go?
d. How many X were sold?

A second level of comprehension should be the inferential level.
Check this presentation
Inferences 1
How to read

Sometimes, learners have negative reactions towards inferential questions. They may feel that the text does not provide the necessary inforamtion to answer a specific question...

Thursday, 11 August 2011

Methodology II: Pair Work

These are the pairs working together in August:
Susana-Patricio
Francisco-Alejandro
Cristopher-Axel
Angelo-Nicolás
Danny-Katherine
Nataly-Yasna
María-Denisse
Francisca-Judith
Marco-Marcelo
Neptalí-Oscar

Monday, 8 August 2011

Teaching grammar


Check the following presentations:
http://www.slideshare.net/Ottamay/teaching-grammar-1279836
http://www.slideshare.net/Annie05/teaching-grammar-presentation
http://www.slideshare.net/RELOFay/a-fressh-approach-to-teaching-grammar

Choose one of the activities in Grammar for Everyone.http://comunidad.udla.cl/udla/ArgStorViewer.aspx?84503ç
Plan one activity including the suggestions in the presentations above and the techniques and principles presented by Larsen Freeman.






















Techniques and principles: what you should never forget


These are some principles to be considered in your lesson plan, classroom interaction and assessment:
(Taken from Larsen-Freeman 2004)
Community Language Teaching: 
-Teachers must consider students as "whole persons".
-Groups help to feel a sense of community.
-Teachers and students should have a relationship of trust, support and cooperation.
Communicative Language Teaching:
-Use "authentic language"
-Consider the communicative intention.
-Foster classroom interaction.
-Une language function can have different linguistic forms.
-Work above the sentence level.
-Games are important because thy have certain features in common with real communicative events.
-Students should express their ideas and opinions.
-Errors are tolerated
-Social context is essential.
Content-based, task-based and participatory approaches:
-A subject matter is used for language teaching processes.
-The teacher scaffolds the linguistic content.
-Authentic materials, tasks and cognitively challenging language.
-The tasks are divided into smaller steps.
-Teachers make adjustments if necessary.
-Education is most effective when it is experience-centered, when it relates to student's real needs.
-Students learn to see themselves as social and political beings.
-Language skills are taught in service of action.
Learning Strategy Training and Multiple Intelligences
-Prior knowledge is valued.
-The teacher's job is to teach learning.
-"Hands on" experience.
-Learning a strategy means to be able to transfer it.
-Students have different strengths:
1. Logical/mathematical
2. Visual/spatial
3. Body/kinesthetic
4. Musical/rhythmic
5. Interpersonal
6. Intrapersonal
7. Verbal/linguistic
-Being aware of which type of intelligence is being tapped by a particular activity, teachers can keep track of which type they are emphasizing or neglecting in the classroom and aim for a different representation.
What do you think about these principles? Think for some minutes... How do you relate them to your experience as student? Did you observe then in your practicum? Did you include them in your lesson plans? If not, How can you integrate them? What advantages and disadvantages do you foresee?
POST A COMMENT  :)

















Thursday, 4 August 2011

Techniques and principles in language teaching

Revision of the different methods
Work in pairs or groups of three. Choose one of the methods presented in the book by Larsen Freeman.
Read the chapter carefully. Prepare an oral report including the following:
1. Introduction or contextualization.
2. Explanation of 4 principles supported by examples taken from the corresponding chapter.
3. List and description of the techniques.
4. Two questions for your classmates (to check if they are paying attention ;)
5. After class, prepare a concept map. I suggest to download this software:http://cmap.ihmc.us/
6. Upload the concept map in your blog. Try to organize Methodology II in a different page.