It is a way to have interaction on a classroom. Working in groups or pair group can help the students to have better communication between each other and to get to know one another a little bit better. It can break the barrier that some students have specially to people that come from different backgrounds talking about social and cultural differences.
In a class we can have students whose families live in a car and others who live on a three story house with four cars and more, and we can also have people from Asia, South America or Canada, so introducing this kind of activity can be a way to break the walls students have. Remember the movie that we saw last week "Freedom Writers" and the techniques the teacher used to get the group closer and closer.
On the other hand I think that some people work better by themselves and working in groups can be a bad experience for them. It also depends of the approach that the teacher use and the activities that the teacher creates for the students keeping in mind the students themselves.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Teaching through content
I really liked the activity that you created for us. Teaching grammar and language through a song, by listening and/or watching a video it is much more interesting for the students, specially if it is a popular song which I think most of the students would know.
It motivated me and I think it motivated the rest of my classmates to work in groups, to know the types of ironies that existed and also to find out the types of ironies that were writing on the lyric.
Instead of the typical boring lecture type of class which we are just to, interaction and motivation through Internet, CDs, radio, DVDs and TV are much better.
It motivated me and I think it motivated the rest of my classmates to work in groups, to know the types of ironies that existed and also to find out the types of ironies that were writing on the lyric.
Instead of the typical boring lecture type of class which we are just to, interaction and motivation through Internet, CDs, radio, DVDs and TV are much better.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
MILK
MILK English
http://milkenglish.net/
Explore everyday life; expose to nature; experience and learn.
While having fun, being natural, creative, and imaginative, children can learn through their own experience – not by being imposed upon. For young children, school is a fun place, where they can meet peers that have the similar interests, where they can fulfill their wonder and curiosity about the world, and where they can be allowed to be themselves.
MILK English program provides the opportunity for children to experience the world while being exposed to an English speaking environment. They will Move, Imagine, and Laugh with other Kids while developing their creativity, building the confidence, and growing through communication with others.
http://milkenglish.net/
Explore everyday life; expose to nature; experience and learn.
While having fun, being natural, creative, and imaginative, children can learn through their own experience – not by being imposed upon. For young children, school is a fun place, where they can meet peers that have the similar interests, where they can fulfill their wonder and curiosity about the world, and where they can be allowed to be themselves.
MILK English program provides the opportunity for children to experience the world while being exposed to an English speaking environment. They will Move, Imagine, and Laugh with other Kids while developing their creativity, building the confidence, and growing through communication with others.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Gina´s social and psychological distance to Spanish language, culture and speakers
Social Distance:
1) Social dominance: Whose social group is more dominant?
As a native-English speaker in the US is a little bit hard to learn Spanish especially if you live in the Spokane area. Although Spanish is US second language you would have to became friends with native-Spanish speakers like Mexicans. One thing that you have in favor are 15 Chilean students that will be here until December. Good practice.
2)Integration pattern. How much do learners integrate, or do they do most things apart from the mainstream?
You are integrated when you have classes with us. You have received a great deal of culture from us and have heard us talk. A positive thing here in EWU, there are many Mexican workers that you could talk to, and maybe visit some towns where most of the people talks Spanish, like Bridgeport. Maybe you are a little bit away but you can try to reach for someone from a Spanish speaking country.
3) Enclosure. To what extent does learner's group have their own resources for interaction, such as church, publications, clubs?
We have seen many places where Mexican people work. We know that there are radio stations where the main language is Spanish, the Mexican group in EWU is a good group where you could practice your English so you have a lot of possibilities to interact.
4) Size. How large is the group?
It is a huge group of native-English speakers in the US considering that English is the main language. Although there are many native-Spanish speakers living here too. In Spokane especially Cheney we do not see a huge variety of Latin cultures, the main one being Mexico.
5) Cohesiveness. How much does the group stick together?
I think that you stick with your group all day long, here in the US there isn't enough choice, but you can reach Latin American people if you have the time. Remember us.
6) Cultural congruence. How are the cultural patterns and customs of the home culture and the target culture alike or different?
They are very different, even though you have to consider that Spanish speaking countries are very different between each other also. But speaking from experience and being a Chilean myself there are a lot of differences: food, music, dance, greetings, attitudes, and more.
7) Attitude. what attitudes do the home and target cultural groups have toward one another?
In my personal experience in the US and for what I heard Spanish speaking people do not have a very good attitude towards Americans and vice versa.
8) Intended length of residence. How long does the learner intend to stay in the new country?
Well you are living in the US, you work here and your family is here, your whole live is here so I would say you will stay here forever. Maybe a trip to Chile would be good for you, you should try.
Psychological Distance
1) Motivation. Does the learner want to learn the new language?
Yes she does, you have asked us many times to help you with your Spanish, so there is a positive motivation to do so.
2) Attitude. How does the learner feel toward the target-culture group?
I think you have a very positive attitude towards our culture and other Spanish speaking countries, you are very excited to learn our language and also very interested in our traditions.
3) Culture shock. Is the learner suffering culture shock?
No because you are still living in your country, you use English to communicate every day, you are living your daily life routine.
1) Social dominance: Whose social group is more dominant?
As a native-English speaker in the US is a little bit hard to learn Spanish especially if you live in the Spokane area. Although Spanish is US second language you would have to became friends with native-Spanish speakers like Mexicans. One thing that you have in favor are 15 Chilean students that will be here until December. Good practice.
2)Integration pattern. How much do learners integrate, or do they do most things apart from the mainstream?
You are integrated when you have classes with us. You have received a great deal of culture from us and have heard us talk. A positive thing here in EWU, there are many Mexican workers that you could talk to, and maybe visit some towns where most of the people talks Spanish, like Bridgeport. Maybe you are a little bit away but you can try to reach for someone from a Spanish speaking country.
3) Enclosure. To what extent does learner's group have their own resources for interaction, such as church, publications, clubs?
We have seen many places where Mexican people work. We know that there are radio stations where the main language is Spanish, the Mexican group in EWU is a good group where you could practice your English so you have a lot of possibilities to interact.
4) Size. How large is the group?
It is a huge group of native-English speakers in the US considering that English is the main language. Although there are many native-Spanish speakers living here too. In Spokane especially Cheney we do not see a huge variety of Latin cultures, the main one being Mexico.
5) Cohesiveness. How much does the group stick together?
I think that you stick with your group all day long, here in the US there isn't enough choice, but you can reach Latin American people if you have the time. Remember us.
6) Cultural congruence. How are the cultural patterns and customs of the home culture and the target culture alike or different?
They are very different, even though you have to consider that Spanish speaking countries are very different between each other also. But speaking from experience and being a Chilean myself there are a lot of differences: food, music, dance, greetings, attitudes, and more.
7) Attitude. what attitudes do the home and target cultural groups have toward one another?
In my personal experience in the US and for what I heard Spanish speaking people do not have a very good attitude towards Americans and vice versa.
8) Intended length of residence. How long does the learner intend to stay in the new country?
Well you are living in the US, you work here and your family is here, your whole live is here so I would say you will stay here forever. Maybe a trip to Chile would be good for you, you should try.
Psychological Distance
1) Motivation. Does the learner want to learn the new language?
Yes she does, you have asked us many times to help you with your Spanish, so there is a positive motivation to do so.
2) Attitude. How does the learner feel toward the target-culture group?
I think you have a very positive attitude towards our culture and other Spanish speaking countries, you are very excited to learn our language and also very interested in our traditions.
3) Culture shock. Is the learner suffering culture shock?
No because you are still living in your country, you use English to communicate every day, you are living your daily life routine.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
School visit: Bridgeport and Brewster
We visited two schools that have an 81% of Spanish speakers students. Most of the students were from Mexico or were born in USA but their parents are from Mexico. Most of the students spoke English very well, even better than us. My impression of the schools was very positive, there is a huge difference with the schools of Chile. For example the classes that we saw were very small only 5 or 10 students versus the classes of Chile were we can have up to 44 students.
One of the things that I really liked was that the teacher has his or her own classroom that he or she can adapt according to their students and the class given. We can see a very positive support from the principal in both schools and a real concern for the students' needs and one wonderful thing that I liked was the parents work, how can they also learn English and keep up with their sons and daughters.
There was a lot of discipline and respect. The schools were very clean and welcoming, there were positive signs, the classes were very quite and the students worked on their assignments, something surprising to us, just because of the same issue: class size.
The school at Bridgeport had better academic results that the one in Brewster and I think that it has to do with a more personalized class, a closer teacher-student relationship, the classes at this school were a little bit smaller so that is a big help.
One thing that I found strange was that in the schools especially in Brewster there weren't any Spanish speaker teachers or a native speaker teacher from a Latin country. I found it strange because when you have a school with 81% students from Mexico it is a necessity to have at least one teacher that speaks the language for multiple reasons that are very obvious.
In my opinion the trip was very helpful for us, we now can see the difference from schools in USA and in Chile and what it is being done here in terms of second language learning.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Trip to Seattle
Our trip to Seattle was great but too short.
What I loved most about the city were the similarities with Valparaiso and Vina. Living on a big city all of my life I was very happy and excited of just walking through the city and finding out what it had to offer.
We found a lot of interesting shops and places to go especially during the night. We went to the aquarium, to the market and to Chinatown a very interesting place.
We took a lot of pictures but I felt that the trip was to short, we walked a lot and sometimes we got lost but that is what is exciting when you are trying to know a place for the first time.
I would love to go a second time, Seattle is more exciting than Cheney for sure and I would like to know it a little bit more.
What I loved most about the city were the similarities with Valparaiso and Vina. Living on a big city all of my life I was very happy and excited of just walking through the city and finding out what it had to offer.
We found a lot of interesting shops and places to go especially during the night. We went to the aquarium, to the market and to Chinatown a very interesting place.
We took a lot of pictures but I felt that the trip was to short, we walked a lot and sometimes we got lost but that is what is exciting when you are trying to know a place for the first time.
I would love to go a second time, Seattle is more exciting than Cheney for sure and I would like to know it a little bit more.
Monday, September 8, 2008
WHAT TEACHERS BELIEVE
1. What role do you think technology does take/can take in learning?
Technology is proven to be a very effective teaching tool. The appropiate use of technology can save time, be more interesting, be entertaing, and meaningful for the students we are teaching nowadays.
2. What role should the learner take in the classroom?
In my point of view, the role of the learner depends on the learning activity and moment of the class. For example, if you are motivating the students in the introduction of the class, your students take a receptive role and in the core of the lesson, they take a more active role.
3. What role should the teacher take in the classroom?
It also depends on the learnning theory. If your classes are teacher´s centered, the role is more active, however if your classes are student´s centered, the teacher has to provide the tools to the studentes and they have to create using elementes studied and teachers monitor and assess learning.
Questions 2 and 3 depend on the approach you are using, but in Chile in some there are still teacher´s centered classrooms and few teachers know, practice and use learning theories and teaching approaches.
4. What does good teaching look like?
I think a well-documented approach, according to student´s needs and lacks. Classes very weel planned, using as many different inputs as posible.
A good teaching needs a motivated teacher in every way.
Listening comprehension activity
I created a blog for my future class. I posted a video from Nat Geo about children recollecting sneakers for recycle. This would be our class first activity.
Go to:
http://englishforeignlanguage.blogspot.com/
Go to:
http://englishforeignlanguage.blogspot.com/
Thursday, September 4, 2008
DELICIOUS
Chileteach delicious website: Social bookmarking will help us to find links about education, technology, ESL and more in one easy step. I liked it because I can add links that I find useful for the group and I can also see what the other members are adding.
http://delicious.com
http://delicious.com
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
I'M ONLY TRYING TO HELP: A ROLE FOR INTERVENTIONS IN TEACHING LISTENING
http://llt.msu.edu/vol11num1/pdf/rost.pdf
Michael Rost is a teacher trainer and a author who has traveled all over the world and has met different teachers with different resources and backgrounds. One of the refrains that he always hears is that teachers fell that they lack of technological resources to teach effectively and that students do not take advantage of the extra learning opportunities that are given to them. That is why he titled I'M ONLY TRYING TO HELP to this comment because teachers feel underappreciated for their efforts.
According to Norman (2004) technology should help us teach better than we already do. If
it doesn’t, we simply shouldn’t use it. In addition, Norman says, for any new technology to be widely adopted, it must appeal to the emotions as well as to reason. If people don’t enjoy using a particular technology, no matter how logically useful it may be, they will tend to shun it.
Rost present three articles that provide frameworks for evaluating technology in the teaching of listening:
1.- Help options and multimedia listening refers to the importance of interaction and the amount of input teachers should give their students. Interaction promotes language acquisition, that is, if interaction, specifically repair-motivated interaction, promotes comprehension, and if comprehension promotes acquisition, then interaction promotes acquisition.
2.- Are They Watching? provides a study of listener behavior in video-based test taking situations. The author talks about the importance of videos on listening comprehension and that the students focus more on images than on audio, and even if they are not watching they can still listen, but also if they are not watching they can still listen especially in monologues. It is important to give more than one choice when teaching listening that is why it is important for the author to present activities with video and audio.
3.- Using Digital Stories to Improve Listening Comprehension with Spanish Young Learners of English the article refers to a new technology online where students and teachers can be more interactive, students take an active role in the listening comprehension and require teachers to take a more active role in teaching listening.
Rost takes the most important aspects of each article and suggest types of interventions that can help learners develop listening. These tables are designed to show which listener's goals, or goal-driven processes, (in Column 1) may be focused upon through types of interventions, or instructional plans (in Column 2). Instructional design tools (in Column 3) are learning concepts that may be useful in planning interventions.
Tables 1-3. Component Processes, Goals, and Interventions for Teaching L2 Listening
Table 1. Component Process: Decoding
Table 2. Component Process: Comprehension
Table 3. Component Process: Interpretation
We can teach listening with, video, audio, internet, we have many possibilities but what is important is to know your students and to figure out what works best for them in order to help them. With technology we can offer our students different kind of input that will suit them better depending on their intelligences and personalities.
Michael Rost is a teacher trainer and a author who has traveled all over the world and has met different teachers with different resources and backgrounds. One of the refrains that he always hears is that teachers fell that they lack of technological resources to teach effectively and that students do not take advantage of the extra learning opportunities that are given to them. That is why he titled I'M ONLY TRYING TO HELP to this comment because teachers feel underappreciated for their efforts.
According to Norman (2004) technology should help us teach better than we already do. If
it doesn’t, we simply shouldn’t use it. In addition, Norman says, for any new technology to be widely adopted, it must appeal to the emotions as well as to reason. If people don’t enjoy using a particular technology, no matter how logically useful it may be, they will tend to shun it.
Rost present three articles that provide frameworks for evaluating technology in the teaching of listening:
1.- Help options and multimedia listening refers to the importance of interaction and the amount of input teachers should give their students. Interaction promotes language acquisition, that is, if interaction, specifically repair-motivated interaction, promotes comprehension, and if comprehension promotes acquisition, then interaction promotes acquisition.
2.- Are They Watching? provides a study of listener behavior in video-based test taking situations. The author talks about the importance of videos on listening comprehension and that the students focus more on images than on audio, and even if they are not watching they can still listen, but also if they are not watching they can still listen especially in monologues. It is important to give more than one choice when teaching listening that is why it is important for the author to present activities with video and audio.
3.- Using Digital Stories to Improve Listening Comprehension with Spanish Young Learners of English the article refers to a new technology online where students and teachers can be more interactive, students take an active role in the listening comprehension and require teachers to take a more active role in teaching listening.
Rost takes the most important aspects of each article and suggest types of interventions that can help learners develop listening. These tables are designed to show which listener's goals, or goal-driven processes, (in Column 1) may be focused upon through types of interventions, or instructional plans (in Column 2). Instructional design tools (in Column 3) are learning concepts that may be useful in planning interventions.
Tables 1-3. Component Processes, Goals, and Interventions for Teaching L2 Listening
Table 1. Component Process: Decoding
| Goals | Interventions | Instructional design tools |
| • Create an adequate | • Give user control over input | • 3-D technology to view animated |
Table 2. Component Process: Comprehension
| Goals | Interventions | Instructional design tool |
| • Identify salient | • Use guided online summarizing tasks | • Pop-up explanations and cues to aid inferencing; feedback loops and "instant replays" for incorrect responses (Rost, 2003) |
Table 3. Component Process: Interpretation
| Goals | Interventions | Instructional design tools |
| • Work out relevance of | • Allow for direct or simulated | • Participation in global |
We can teach listening with, video, audio, internet, we have many possibilities but what is important is to know your students and to figure out what works best for them in order to help them. With technology we can offer our students different kind of input that will suit them better depending on their intelligences and personalities.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Podcasts
For my future students:
I found this website and called Learn a song Podcast-Audio for ESL/EFL that has songs and lyrics to listen and sing. I find it entertaining for students because it is a little more fun than just listen to the someone talking like in the news, this ones have rhythm.
http://www.manythings.org/songs/
On the same website I also found some jokes with the lyrics that are also fun, different and entertaining for the students.
http://www.manythings.org/jokes/
You can also download the mp3s that you liked on this website.
http://www.manythings.org/
And this one a little bit more clear/slower especially for ESL to improve students' listening comprehension:
http://www.eslpod.com/website/#
For myself:
I found this website with podcasts for free. You can listen and watch videos online. There are a lot of topics on the website with many different episodes. You can also become a member of Digg if you want.
http://digg.com/podcasts
Also I can go to this website and listen more advanced English from the New York Times for free.
http://www.nytimes.com/ref/multimedia/podcasts.html
I really liked these ones too. Lots of possibilities, lots to choose from.
http://iteslj.org/links/ESL/Listening/Podcasts/
http://www.commoncraft.com/podcasting
http://www.myngle.com/
For Gina:
This website has podcast for Spanish learners. The podcasts are first spoken in English and later they are spoken in Spanish. It is a bilingual podcast website.
http://www.edufone.com/podcasts.php
It is really funny because most of the podcasts that I found have music and it is really entertaining and fun.
I really liked this one too because the creator has videos of himself speaking in Spanish with subtitles below that are really helpful for beginners.
http://www.spanishnyc.com/videos.php
Hope you liked them.
Create+Ideas:
I would create podcasts for English learners with videos and listening activities with subtitles and/or scripts mostly about the target culture, music and topics that would motivate my future students.
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