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Friday, October 22, 2010
Thursday, October 21, 2010
MATERIALS TO DEVELOP THE SPEAKING SKILL
Prof. Licda. Cindy Gutiérrez Navarro
According to author Rebecca Hughes, it is necessary to make students understand that speaking is the basis of all human relationships and the first means to form their own identity which differentiate it from written communication in the sense that it has to be spontaneous and not edited and reread. Moreover, the understanding of cultural and pragmatic use of the language requires special attention to avoid misuses of expressions as well as misunderstandings of them. Finally, to carry out real-time conversations it is a must to possess a rich competence about the language in order to produce a rich performance when speaking. That is why some recommendable activities to develop such skill are affecting students’ interests and emotions, providing informal day to day encounters, putting into practice public formal uses of the language like interviews and speeches, and expose them to local and international varieties of English.
In addition, the previously stated differences between spoken and written discourse, collaboration among learners and cultural differences in the use of the language are also of prior importance when teaching and learning English.
Theory states that the most important aspects to focus on when preparing material to develop the speaking skill take root on the study of spoken corpora, insights from conversation analysis, work on affect and creativity, interactional linguistics and speech processing and psycholinguistics.
Considering the information above, there is a big controversy about the aims of our development of the speaking skill in the classroom: do our materials elicit only chunks of speaking or they make our students produce accurately, fluently and in context? It is something which needs to be clear and of course; if the second option is chosen, the process will be widely successful.
An example of materials and information to encourage the use of speaking skills in context can be accessed to the following link...
http://www.englishclub.com/english-for-work/hotel-reservation.htm
An example of materials and information to encourage the use of speaking skills in context can be accessed to the following link...
http://www.englishclub.com/english-for-work/hotel-reservation.htm
EVOLUTION OF INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALS DESIGN
USES OF TEXTBOOKS IN THE ENGLISH CLASS
Prof. Licda. Cindy Gutiérrez Navarro
cgutierrez_m@costarricense.cr
According to the Florida Department of Education (2008), effective materials must include features like instructional goals with adaptability to course requirements; accurate, relevant and relatively up-to-date information; appropriate reading level vocabulary and real-world applications or informational skills among others.
In regards to these materials, textbooks are known to be the most dominant tools when teaching English. Most of the time, such textbooks include teacher’s manuals to complement and enrich their use. Such manuals need to be practical, complete, content aligned, readable as well as possess accurate methods to apply, assessments and outlines to organize and manage lessons and classes
Sometimes, textbooks and other material to teach English could face problems related to controversies about how best to approach the specific subject areas, inaccurate contents which do not treat the subject matters the way they deserve or even contain factual errors which mislead content analysis in the sense that contents are not either complete or mistakenly treated.
Moreover, the presentation of the materials is an issue here. It is a must to take into account teachers’ and students’ resources, alignment of instructional component, organization, pacing and easy of use in order to apply them in class. Students’ resources have to be attractive but not too much to be misleading and reference aids such as index, glossaries and maps. On the other hand, teachers’ resources need to have materials easy to use and to support lesson planning, teaching and learning, suggestions for adaptation to special needs and guidelines to evaluate instruction. The alignment of instructional components of students and teachers’ materials plus their organization, content, format, objectives, unity, consistency, readability, language styles and typographical presentations are also of a prior importance when working with them.
Prof. Licda. Cindy Gutiérrez Navarro
cgutierrez_m@costarricense.cr
According to the Florida Department of Education (2008), effective materials must include features like instructional goals with adaptability to course requirements; accurate, relevant and relatively up-to-date information; appropriate reading level vocabulary and real-world applications or informational skills among others.
In regards to these materials, textbooks are known to be the most dominant tools when teaching English. Most of the time, such textbooks include teacher’s manuals to complement and enrich their use. Such manuals need to be practical, complete, content aligned, readable as well as possess accurate methods to apply, assessments and outlines to organize and manage lessons and classes
Sometimes, textbooks and other material to teach English could face problems related to controversies about how best to approach the specific subject areas, inaccurate contents which do not treat the subject matters the way they deserve or even contain factual errors which mislead content analysis in the sense that contents are not either complete or mistakenly treated.
Moreover, the presentation of the materials is an issue here. It is a must to take into account teachers’ and students’ resources, alignment of instructional component, organization, pacing and easy of use in order to apply them in class. Students’ resources have to be attractive but not too much to be misleading and reference aids such as index, glossaries and maps. On the other hand, teachers’ resources need to have materials easy to use and to support lesson planning, teaching and learning, suggestions for adaptation to special needs and guidelines to evaluate instruction. The alignment of instructional components of students and teachers’ materials plus their organization, content, format, objectives, unity, consistency, readability, language styles and typographical presentations are also of a prior importance when working with them.
PRIORITIES FOR EVALUATING INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALS
As stated by the Florida Department of Education (2008),in order to teach English, it is necessary to consider the learning conditions each student in the classroom possesses. The determination whether the type of learning we want to accomplish is developing critical thinking and analysis in our students, or forming strategic learners of contents needs to be carried out. Moreover, we must pay attention to students’ expertise levels about the language. That is, high expertise level students do not require the same strategies that low expertise ones do. High ones need direct information and low ones intense constructivism.
To focus our students’ learning, we have to provide students with high motivational and relevant activities plus appealing challenges to arouse their interest and make them establish personal connections with the information studied to improve their learning. There are even students who require practical applications to learn. Furthermore, the feedback given during and after the treatment of subject matters and about how they are learning help them reflect about this own important process.
In addition, the teaching of major ideas taking into account students’ major work to develop core thinking skills about setting goals, making comparisons, inferring, evaluating and others besides considering correctness, explicit and clear directions and explanations, excluding ambiguous terms or aspects, an alignment of strategies with outcome and a useful guidance and support by facilitators contribute to enhance, encourage and enrich the students’ learning process. If fulfilling, the previous aspects successfully, students’ responses are going to be more effective since they would be able to make identifications, discussions, summaries, relations, explanations and others as a result of their application.
Friday, October 8, 2010
PRINCIPLES OF EFFECTIVE MATERIALS DEVELOPMENT
By Prof. Licda.Cindy Gutiérrez Navarro
According to author Brian Tomlinson (1998), in his article "Principles of Effective Materials Development", teachers must take into account certain principles for material creation to guide themselves in their goal of teaching English to their students in their everyday labor. Such principles have to do especially with the role students have in the classroom. Namely, teachers must consider their pupils´cultural background, needs and interests because depending on their identification with the material used in class, their learning, development and application of the language will become more spontaneous, authentic and of course more accurate and fluent.As a conclusion, it is a fact that the materials we, as teachers create every day for giving our English classes to our students, play such an important role in their learning and use of the language that sometimes we cannot even measure the positive effects they have on them.
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