new techniques are here

Before talking about our oral presentations, I want to say that my favorite evaluated activity within a subject is making a presentation since it gives me not only the chance to exploit the topic as much as I desire but also allows me to improve my speaking skill.
Now, regarding the topics we presented, I must say that all of them were very interesting, full of useful advices to take into account when teaching, and very practical in terms of time and pedagogical aims, as in the case of “Grouping People”. However, the one I felt more identified with, was the “Use of the voice” which I found more than useful, essential; since most of the time we need to teach in large classrooms with more than 35 students and we pay little o no attention to our throat. So, I must say that Patricia did an excellent job developing this topic in a way that I become aware of my performance in class and the damage I make to my articulators when yelling my students just to try to keep them under control.

A summary of my presentation

The central issue of my presentation was to give some advices to teachers about approaching their learners so as make them feeling enough confident to participate actively in classes; (proximity). Besides, I talked about how close we need to be from students depending on their own personality, and how confident the teacher feels about his/her class (appropiacy). Another important aspect I mentioned was the way the teacher should move across the classroom so everybody can see him/her and listen to his/her explanations. Finally, I focused on a very significant aspect: the performance of the teacher inside a classroom. Encourage our students is a task that we can never forget, specially because we are dealing with young people most of the time and they need to feel involved in the activities we prepare for them and finally achieve a meaningful learning of the language we are teaching them. So, it is very important to be enthusiastic educators and make Motivation the most crucial element when teaching our dear students.

OUR CLASSES DEMONSTRATIONS!

In this course I was asked to make two different demonstrations, the first one was related to presentation, process, and production stages within a single class (PPP), in which I learnt a lot about controlled/less controlled activities, and I had also the chance to create innovative strategies to put students` minds to work freely as in the startegie I used (picture dictation). Well, in my opinion it was just great and my partners also enjoyed the activity a lot. Then, I work in a reading demonstration, which my group and I chose horoscope as a topic that engages all people.
In that demostartion I was the one who has to start (pre-reading stage) and I decided to ask students about their birthday date and continue by making as brainstorm inorden to get the class` main predictions. In here, it is important to remark that even though we had some discrepancies between the predictions and the actual piece of reading we chose, I felt satisfied with our job and the most important thing: I realized about the mistakes I usually commit when make my students dealing with a reading activity.
Finally, I want to say that these demonstrations really gave me a new conception about teaching. I mean, I knew teaching was not an easy task to do with, but by preparing demostrations I have realized that we need more than simple vocation to prepare and develop good English classes. Consequently, we -as teachers- need to search, create, prepare in advance and discuss whatever we want to teach our unique groups of students, especially teenagers.

Impression on ELT before taking this course.

Regarding the way I perceived ELT before studying methodology, I must say that I didn’t change my mind so much, because through my entire career, I have been taught how to make presentations, and I also have had the opportunity to see our teachers’ performance who though their mistakes have been the best models I could have. In addition, I had the opportunity to work on with web sides when attended reading and writing II, and of course, I have been asked to use my emails to communicate with teachers and deal with homeworks, self assessment, co-evaluation and peer-correction too. However, it is important to remark that this course has showed me innovative ways to get our students involved in English classes and to help them how to learn more. For instance, the different demonstrations I have prepared in this course have been very useful to work with the four skills (listening, writing, speaking and reading) efficiently. Besides, it was a great idea to teach us how to deal with a web blog, which in my personal opinion is ONE of the most interesting issues in this subject because by using the network and designing different strategies to teach English (ELT) educators not only manage to approach their students and achieve great participation during classes but also evaluate students by using realistic activities as the one they like very much such as chatting, watching cartoon, listening to music etc.

ICT Use!

If it is true that teachers must be educated on the use of new technologic devices (main purpose of ICT), what is the practical advantage professors can take of this training?

We can find some educators arguing that being prepared to use technology in classes is just needless, since as far as they are concerned, the only requisite to teach is a huge desire to educate people. However, all this educational program (ICT), which is constantly increasing, gives teachers a wider perspective on science advances, specially the www sides whose main objective is to make students and teachers exploit the variety of strategies on the net and make English learning/teaching (in our case) an easier and a more successful process.

For instance, by including internet practices in our classes, we can surely expect from our students great blogs creations, in which learners not only play and exchange their hobbies with people from different places but also force them to learn English even though they are not aware of that. Besides, ICT helps teachers to increase the students` interest in classes, making them more participative and meaningful (focus on real-life activities).