TKT

Knowing my learning style and my intelligences allow me to take advantage of them when I desing a class, because I can create a very dinamic lesson that attract mi students attention and make them learn. Also, I can consider that in my class we make activities for the people that learn with other style, like visual or auditory, because I know, for experience, that is really difficult to stay in a class that is designed only for one type of learning style.

Is really useful that we consider our student’s learning style too, because if we create a class which consider the diversity of our learners the lesson would be successful and everybody would have fun and the most important thing, they would learn.

On the other side, I would like to comment that the poster activity of this week was really intersting. I usually feel a little resistance about the technology tools, but I start to feel really comfortable. I think that making a poster was challenging and useful, because, you need to summerize all the information in one poster while in a power point presentation you can use as much slides as you want. That make me feel a little stress at the begining but I realize that is much better to use a poster because all the information is there in a visual way, then, if you have a to present it, you can explain it and that’s a useful activity for the auditory learners and if you also related some movements with each image the kinestethic learners would be interested too and I think it wouldn’t take a long time to do it and our students would focus their attention during all the presentation.

http://www.glogster.com/malena26/wishlist-glog-by-malena26/g-6lj7s74auik16hn8476hpa0

This is the address where you can access to my poster, I hope you like it!!!!!!

How are we going to do it???!!!!! This was the main question last class, we were going to do a team work, but, we really didn’t know how to do it, I was really worried because I’m not use to work in teams using internet and everyone had plans for vacations so our time would be short!!! It was really frustrating, but I think we all were scared because trying new things generates that feeling.

I like team works but I never have made one by internet, I prefer to meet my teammates, organize the work with them, know how the task is going to develop, solve our doubts together and finish at the same time.

I’m going to talk about two magnificent online tools for listening and talking.
Audioboo is a plataform where you can record and share audio with your family, friends, classmates or anybody around the world. Also you can comment about a video or a text (providing the link) and I think the most interesting part is that you also can make discussion groups about something.

Woices is a “FREE internet service that allows people to create, share and consume echoes, audio records that are linked to a very specific geographical location or real-world object. Woices ultimate goal is to extend reality by creating a new layer of audio information, what we call the echoesphere, that will make the world a more interesting place” (www.woices.com)

Both of them are excellent tools for making students listen to other people and talk outside classroom with different activities, using the technology. When I was cheking audioboo I found a person “Russell 1955″ and he said that It was really difficult to make listenting and speaking activities after class, but when he started using this tool with his students they improve their english fluency and pronunciation.

I would use this tool to make permanent projects, for example, in teams, make a radio station where students have to desing interviews, debates, articles etc, and record them so their classmates can hear them and give their opinion also by recording it! This project would last all the english course and at the end students can check thier improvement.

Also I belive that if a student is too shy he or she can start talking better with this tool because the eyes of the class won’t be focous on what he or she is going to say. We can encourage confidence.

Reading is a complex activity; it is a cognitive ability that is related with the maturing process. For reading a person needs to understand the language and then connect the message with his or her knowledge of the world. To have a better understanding of a text, we use subskills that help us read in different ways according to our purpose for reading.
Reading is a receptive skill, which means responding to texts rather than producing them. Reading is to have a good comprehension and interpretation of writing. Knowing to read is knowing to analyze, reflect, deduce and understand an script. Learning to read has a very close relationship with the interest and effort that we have.
As teachers we need to increase the knowledge and information of our students looking for a better development of their potential so that they acquire abilities that allow them to respond to all the situations that might happen in their lives.
By reading our learners can have access to all the information they want, but sometimes they feel that reading is boring and tired, so we need to wake up their interest and a good tool for doing that are Literature Circles.
“In literature circles, small groups of students gather together to discuss a piece of literature in depth. The discussion is guided by students response to what they have to read. You might hear talk about events and characters in the book, the author’s craft, or personal experiences related to the story” (Schlik Noe, K.L. & Johnson. N.L., Getting started with Literature Circles, 1999, Christopher- Gordon Publishers, Inc. p. ix.)
I think Literature Circles is a good tool because students feel owners of their learning; they can build their knowledge in the interaction with their classmates. Vigotski used to say that people learn in a better way if they interact with the persons in their context because all of them have a different point of view, that’s why team work is extremely important.
By using Literature Circles students not only learn how to read and discuss of a book or text, they also learn to work independently but together. The role they acquire teaches them to response to their classmates because they feel part of something and the human being likes to be needed.
I would use the literature circles as reading projects, relating them to the contents of the course I teach. For example, if we are checking the family members, I would look for a text or book that can help with this topic and also allow the discussion between students.
Also, we can give the opportunity to learners to choose a book of their personal interest, because reading for pleasure is important too and if we want to motivate people that do not read, is better if we start with something easy and interesting for them.
There are a lot of advantages of Literature Circles but the most important part is that we give a chance to this tool; it takes time and work but it worth it.

Is important for us as teachers to know the meaning of CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference) and ALTE (Association of Language Testers in Europe) because they are associations that have a parameter for mesuring the level of English that our students might have in order to know the necesities we should satisfy with them.

Both of them have similar levels, so it help us for planning lessons, because we know what our students need to learn depending on the level they are in. We can use it to choose the book we are going to work with and to stablish goals for a course thinking always in improving our learners knowledge.

Also, if they want to move or travel to another place and they decide to study or work in the same, they can have a document that is useful in a lot of parts of the world because it validate their English level.

In this reflection I’m going to talk about language function. Function is a reason why we communicate and how we use the language to do it, because every time we interact with people in our context we have a purpose and depending on the situation the exponents can express one or more functions.

The students prefer to learn functions than grammar rules, because, they give meaning to what they say and it´s more interesting for them to use the knowledge they have to express and communicate ideas, is more memorable and they would learn in a better way (with this I do not want to say that grammar is not important).

Also, I think that functions are useful to all the people that is learning English, It doesn’t matter the level they are in, because all of them want to communicate thoughts by talking or writing so is necessary to introduce the learners since the beginning, teaching them the different levels of formality too.

“I don´t think we need to teach “correct pronunciation” these days because people all over the world speak English with different accents”.

It’s true that there are a lot of different accents all over the world and students have to develop the ability to understand most of them, but first they have to learn a standard pronunciation and then, teachers can help with recordings, asking the learners to watch movies or T.V. shows in English, etc, so they can hear, identify and understand little by little the variety of accents.

“You can’t improve the pronunciation of adults – there is no point in trying”.

Is easier for kids to improve their pronunciation because their minds are open to the stimulus of their context and every new thing that they hear, see or read, if they consider it important, will build new structures in their brains and they would acquire knowledge.

With adults is different, because they have fear of being wrong and that´s why they don’t even want to talk in class, so we need to motivate and making them feel confidence. One thing that can help might be pasting the phonemic chart in the classroom, so every time we teach new vocabulary, introduce them step by step to the vowel, diphthongs and consonant sounds making the difference between voiced and unvoiced, that’s how adults will be more comfortable, because they can check the chart every time they need it.

“Knowing about phonology can help teachers when they plan and give their lessons”

Yes, I think knowing phonology is really useful, because you can understand all the symbols and know the correct pronunciation of the words. Also you can introduce the phonemic chart to your adult learners and teach them how to interprate these symbols making life easier for them.

Across
4. / A word with the same spealling and pronunciation as another word, but which has a different meaning
6. / Words which are regulary used together
Down
1. / the opposite of another word
2. / Nouns, verbs, adjectives or prepositions that are made up of two or more words and have one unit of meaning
3. /a word which sounds the same as another word, but has different meaning or spelling
5. / Describes or gives more information about a noun or pronoun

Looking in the web I’ve found these page which has a lot of links to other pages where you can choose and desing a lot of material and activities that help the students learn vocabulary.

In these case I choose to make a crossword puzzle with some of the words that are in the TKT glossary. It was different to make these puzzle than just learn the words by memorizing them, in fact these was relaxing for me.

I think that we can make these activities with our students, because they would find them more interesting and fun, letting them work in teams and share their experiences.

I’ve never thought of using these tools from the internet to work with because I founded really difficult, but it isn’t that bad, using technology gives the opportuniny to learn from others and share with them.

There are some advantages in using translation to teach meaning, but some disadvantages, too.

I think that are much more disadvantages than advantages in using translation to teach meaning,  because students would only know one use of the word, the one that they translate and in some cases they would only keep that meaning, being really difficult to open their minds to other meanings of the word. The words have to be repeated again and again, so they can little by little learn their different uses and meanings depending on the context.

There are lots of activities that can give the students the opportunity to meet a word or groups of words using their relationships in meanings and the ways in which they can be built. Also, making the students have a vocabulary record, where they write the new words they are learning so they can recall them every time they need them.

I think it’s really important for my learners to keep a vocabulary notebook in which they write the word, its meaning (s), its pronunciation, its collocations, etc.

I totally agree with this teacher because the students will learn more words and how to use them at the same time they feel comfortable when they start a conversation. A vocabulary record gives the students the opportunity to make a research when they have a doubt and increases their knowledge.

Getting to know words is like getting to know a friend – you learn more about them, bit by bit.

This is true, the students would learn the complete meaning of words with time, teachers can’t expect them to know what part of speech are the words, how to pronounce and spell them, all the meanings that they have etc;  at the first contact with them.

Is better if teachers help the students by giving them key words, activities to increase their knowledge, search for false friends, homophones or homonyms of the words, have vocabulary records and other kinds of exercises that let them practice these words in real context and eventually they would really learn them.