READING LOG

REACTION 1 (CHAPTERS 3 AND 4)

After reading chapters 3 and 4 it is obvious to me that having clear objectives when

teaching English is just as important as (or maybe more than) having a content to teach. I

especially liked the quote If you dont know where youre going, you will probably end up

somewhere else. by Lawrence J. Peter because it presents a very clear metaphor of how a

class without clear goals is just like a lost person (or group of people) without a clear

destination. Clear, well-stated objectives will help us aid our students in the task they have

set their minds on: learning English. Every teacher should go back and reflect on his/her

objectives for every class and then think about ways in which he/she can help students

improve their English through the use of activities that foster communication which is the

ultimate goal when learning a language.

REACTION 2 (CHAPTER 5)

Dear Patri:

I hope you are well! I wish you were here to enjoy this course. I am learning and re-learning

a lot. For example, I just read a chapter about some aspects that we take into account when

setting up our classes. Have you noticed how you sometimes plan an activity very carefully

and it doesnt work the way you planned it? Frustrating, isnt it? Well, according to the

material I just read it might be because I did not take some important aspects into account.

All these aspects as important for the activities to be successful. It is as if you spent a lot of

time planning the menu for a dinner party and then forgot the silverware or the dishes to

serve the food. These are some of those important aspects:

Classroom environment: what do I want the room to look like?

St arrangement: where will the sts be during the activity?

Teachers role: where will I be? What will I be doing?

Materials: What do we need for the activity?

Time and stages: How long will the activity take?

As you see, there are more things to take into account besides having clear objectives. We

know how hard it is to teach effective classes and we dont want our plans to go to waste

because we didnt foresee how things could go in a different direction.

Well, I have to go now. I will write again as soon as I can.

Bear hugs,

So

REACTION 3: THE GROUP

Human beings have the need to belong to a group and to be accepted and appreciated.

That is why, regardless of the duration of the activity which brought a group together, it is

important to have a place according to your characteristics and your needs. As I read the

article about group formation, development and death I started wondering if I really needed

to be reminded of the fact that our days as a community are counted. I have always thought

that people come into your life for a reason and that we learn from everybody we encounter

on our way. It is easy to get along well when people compliment you or agree with you but

it is a different story when you find other peoples attitudes incompatible with yours. Then

I realized that it was better for me as a learner and as a person to be aware of what is

happening in this moment in order to savor and enjoy it. So only for this day, instead of

complaining about the heat or the long hours, I will try to look around and find purpose in

everything I do. Thank you Lord.

REACTION 4: SEEING STUDENTS LEARNING

The readings we had to do for our session today present concepts that make sense

according to where we are in our learning process this week. I know now that it is not a

coincidence but the result of careful planning. How can I determine that my students are

learning and that it is not just my perception of their behavior? According to the article, we

have to find evidence that shows that learning is really going on in our classes. We should

try to find that evidence in our sts behavior. Are they accomplishing our goals? Another thing

we have to pay attention to is developing the ability to be present in our classes. Being

present does not necessarily mean being physically there but it means being emotionally

there. If we want our teaching to be effective and meaningful, we have make sure to be

available and not judgmental of our sts learning process. We have to be open-minded enough

as to accept that what we planned may have not been exactly what our learners needed and

then when I have that information then I can act accordingly in a mature, proactive way.

Keeping the correct atmosphere where sts ideas and perceptions are accepted and respected

will enhance the possibility of learning happening in our class.

The article on giving feedback is very useful not only for my classes but for life in general.

The idea that stroke me the most was that feedback has to be solicited or desired. It makes

sense to me because if you do not want feedback then you are probably not going to receive

it with an open mind-let along an open heart. So it turns out that giving and receiving

feedback s yet another skill we need to learn in life.

REACTION 5: TELL ME MORE

This article is about the art of listening. Listening is not the same as hearing. Listening is

paying close attention to a persons words, message and heart. Listening is not rebuttal.

When we listen creatively, we quietly engage in conversation and try to connect to the person

and then communication starts, ideas flow and connections are established. When a person

feels listened to, he/she opens up and starts sharing not only his /her ideas but also feelings,

emotions and thoughts. Wouldnt the world be a better place if only we would stop and

listen to what others have to say.

REACTION 6: THE THREE DIMENSIONS

One of the greatest challenges for teaching English is that we work with living, changing

organisms. I am not only talking about our learners, it goes beyond that. The subject matter

we teach changes constantly. Language is alive and it evolves constantly which makes us

teachers run around our subject matter in order to decode form, meaning and use to our

learners. We may be very good at explaining the meaning of a word or the grammar of a

sentence or when to use it but even when I can provide my students with rules for using

language there is always room for confusion or misinterpretation unless I think about all the

layers language has at the same time. Meaning, form and use should all be considered when

teaching a language because if you are not able to interpret one of them correctly, you may

find yourself in a difficult or uncomfortable situation. Can we, as teachers, master all the

layers of language? I doubt it. But what we can and should do is keep on studying, learning

about, using and being in contact with language so that we can provide our students with

interpretations that are as close to reality as possible and that would help our students

achieve their goal: communicating with others efficiently.

REACTION 7: IMPLICATIONS FOR LEARNING

I find this chapter to be especially meaningful. I like how the author refers to long-hold

beliefs about SLA in order to make us reflect about them. Does all input lead to

communication? Does all interaction promote communication? Is repetition the kind of

production we want in class? Can pure grammar instruction promote communication? Are our

expectations hindering the achievement of our objectives?

Experts have done a lot of research in order to come up with approaches, methods and

frameworks to teach English but it is our job as teachers to try to find the class activities and

routines that work better for our learners. Keeping in mind our students needs and interests

is, in my opinion, an essential part in the puzzle of teaching English.

REACTION 8: THE CHANGING FACE OF LISTENING

Developing good listening skills is a very important part of becoming a proficient language

learner. In this article, the author analyzes how important it is to work in designing

meaningful pre, during and post listening tasks. The main objectives for pre-listening

activities should be to provide context about where the situation occurs and to motivate the

learners to listen. The activities that we plan to be carried out in the during stage should

basically be tasks that will allow teachers check comprehension. Such tasks let learners to

do something with the information they get from the audio. The advantages of using specific

tasks is that they are more realistic, they reduce reading and writing and they provide

evidence of individual comprehension. Some examples of comprehension tasks are: labelling,

selecting, form-filling, and completing. The use of authentic materials is highly recommended

since scripted audios sometimes do not present natural speech. The author also recommends

using audios that are a little bit higher than the learners level but designing tasks that can

be successfully accomplished by them. By using authentic material, teachers expose learners

to features such as hesitation, false starts, and unstructured sentences. The author also

states that we should not only test listening but teach it, which would prepare our students

to become effective listeners in the real world.

REACTION 9: TEACHING READING IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

The author of the article states that reading is interactive. The reader of the text interacts

with the text to create new meaning. For a reader to understand a reading two very important

variables have to be taken into account: readers variables (interest, purpose, knowledge,

willingness to take risks) and text variables (structure, syntax, vocabulary). It is also

important to take into account schemata or background knowledge that the reader brings to

the interaction either on the content or the structure found in the text. Some important

reader strategies that the readers need to develop are: using illustrations to understand a

passage, skimming, scanning, summarizing, guessing meaning of words, taking risks. The

three stages a teacher needs to be aware of are: pre, while and post- reading. During the

pre-reading stage, readers activate prior knowledge and become interested in the topic of

the reading. Activities for this stage include: brainstorming and reviewing familiar stories.

While reading activities help sts develop strategies, gain understanding and improve the

control of the target language. Post reading exercises check understanding and lead to

deeper analysis. Ideally, the reader will acquire strategies that he will then use with other

texts.

REACTION 10: THE CULTURAL EXPERIENCE

The author begins by defining culture as multifaceted and complex. She then goes on to

mention all the experiences teachers tend to include in their classes as part of the cultural

topics they want to deal with. Later, she explains how we, as language teachers, become

also culture teachers. How can we teach culture? Culture is a personal experience.

Therefore, what we can attempt to teach is the cultural experience which the author defines

as contents, activities and outcomes that the learners achieves in or about a given context.

The content is what the learners need to learn, the activities are ways in which they might

be able to learn those contents and outcomes are the specific behaviors they need to achieve.

She then presents two different frameworks that might help us as teachers to aid our

sts learning of culture. The first is the knowings framework. It presents four different layers

of knowledgewe need to help our sts to develop:

Knowing about (cultural information)

Knowing how (cultural practices)

Knowing why (cultural perspectives)

Knowing oneself (self-awareness)

The more aware a learner is about the culture he is learning, the more interested he will

be in learning about concepts, practices and perspectives.

The second framework presented in the article is the experiential learning cycle. It

presents learning about culture as a concrete experience (participation) on which the learner

reflects (description), creates meaning (interprets), and then gets to conclusions (responds).

According to this framework, learners are constantly engaged in a cycle of gathering cultural

information, developing cultural behaviors, discovering cultural explanations and developing

self-awareness.