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Communicative Skills for Secondary Teachers

http://ced.cele.unam.mx/englishforteachers

Program developers

Escuela Nacional Preparatoria No. 1 “Gabino Barreda. UNAM

Ma. Elena Delgado

Centro de Enseñanza de Lenguas Extranjeras. UNAM

Leticia Martineck

Karen Lusnia

Eréndira Camarena

Dulce Ma. Gilbón

Online tutor

Adriana Aceves Martineck

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Introduction

A 120 hour online teacher development program was prepared for English language secondary school Mexican teachers. Free access sites were carefully chosen in order to facilitate their improvement of language skills and grammatical competence as well. Seven modules were designed to reach this objective.

Would that program be an appropriate response to that population’s needs?

At the end of each module, teachers were asked to reflect on their own learning process in the different contents: learning to learn, the four linguistic skills, teaching strategies and the use of ICT.

As a final project of the above mentioned diploma, the participants are required to write a report. This volume includes the reflections of the first group participants who share their enthusiasm, surprise, stress and even frustration struggling with new technologies during their learning process, but their willingness to face the challenge as well.

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Hi colleagues,

It has been a really exciting and different experience, to be your

tutor in a course where we used only online tools. If you had any

technical problems, you always found the way to solve them. I will

miss your enthusiasm and professionalism in your work. You are the

best class ever.

I hope all you learnt will help you to be a better teacher.

Best Regards Adriana

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Contents

Contributors_______________________________________________________________3

Tutor’s presentation________________________________________________________5

Contents__________________________________________________________________6

Amalia Alvarez____________________________________________________________6

Rony Alvarez Gonzalez_____________________________________________________19

Martha Arredondo Burquez_________________________________________________24

Enrique Caparros Cadena__________________________________________________37

Irene Cardenas León_______________________________________________________46

José Antonio Carrillo Tejeda________________________________________________51

Gloria Chavarrin Millan____________________________________________________63

Tomás Cordova Lara_______________________________________________________70

Carlos Cornejo Carbajal____________________________________________________80

Diana Eréndira Fernández Jaime____________________________________________92

Jannet Flores de la Cruz.__________________________________________________102

Karla García Ruiz________________________________________________________108

Juan Antonio Lonngi Vélez________________________________________________116

Omar Lucio Bustos_______________________________________________________128

Maria Elena Macfarland__________________________________________________134

Araceli Manriquez Peña___________________________________________________137

A. Isabel Moreno de la Rosa________________________________________________144

Rosa Moreno Ascencio____________________________________________________153

Belem Pedrin Goméz______________________________________________________163

Xóchitl Pérez Pérez_______________________________________________________170

Leonardo Ruiz Uriostegui__________________________________________________178

Alejandro Vazquez Morales_________________________________________________189

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Amalia Alvarez

My Learning Experience

LEARNING TO LEARN ENGLISH THROUGH INTERNET TOOLS AND RESOURCES

MODULE 2

As this module refers, here we had to familiarize with some resources and tools for learning to learn English through Internet, it requires different abilities such as: typing, using the mouse, searching etc. I liked Mouse Master where I had to use the mouse for ex: pointing, clicking with a single click, double click, drag and drop, scrolling, checking boxes and radio buttons, selecting menus, listing and typing in text fields and it was very easy and

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fun! (of course, it was the beginning) However it was not the only exercise to do, there were several like the icon for Canadian Master which is to read Canadian stories and to practice with exercises dealing with Canadian citizenship, there is also the Grammar central which is good for my students, because there are several exercise where he/she is able to select answers according to the topic. It has a very basic vocabulary, as well as the Crazy teacher and the Terrible Teacher which are for more advanced students. Flashed ESL which has exercises for students to learn grammar and a last one which is to read American stories with radio button exercises. The site is the following: http://www.tcet.com/eaonline/index.html

I also enjoyed answering the Birmingham Grid for Learning MI because I found out the kind of learner I am. I realized that some people are better at understanding some things than others. And that we have all 8 intelligences, but we don´t have them all developed but just some of them and that we can develop the others by doing different things or exercises.

CULTURAL LEARNING AWARENESS

This internet Diploma opened new doors for me as an EFL Teacher. After several weeks of study and practice I am able to use internet sites without fear or without doubt because it´s fun for them and exciting, since here they´re going to find information from other people around the world, they´ll also experience different ways of speaking, which is good for them to discriminate and sharpen their ears and even more to make them feel confident when they speak, tell them that they don´t have to sound perfectly American when they speak. Internet is the immersion to different cultures and different people (traditions) different ways of thinking, different ways of living, eating and communicating, but similar in flesh.

MY TEACHING READING STRATEGIES EXPERIENCE

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I learnt that Reading is an interactive process between reader and text . The reader interacts with the text to recreate a meaningful discourse. In order to extract the required information from the text in L2 we apply certain skills and strategies. We have different purposes when reading which draw on a variety of strategies. For example, skimming the text if we just want to know what the text is about, scanning to locate specific information.

A strategy I found really useful when applying this skill is to use the 8 questions Who? When? What? Where? How many? Why? How? How often? And this really good because they won´t read every word, they´re going to understand the text more precisely and also we can use a Semantic map to process information, which is better to ask them to write a composition of the text or reading.

I loved the read along exercise, because here I could improve my pronunciation and context grammar too. I liked this site http://www.manythings.org/ I can work with my students in reading shopping, travel, driving and everyday signs so later they can make their own for school.

Reading most of the times is the most difficult skill to develop (but not impossible) with students since it´s the most boring for them. Readings must be motivating, interesting, unknown (sometimes) to raise students interest. I liked the 100 short stories site. However there are tons of stories in the internet, we have to look for a good strategy to apply with students.

One interesting exercise is “Adult learning activities”, which is good to learn about daily foreign people activities . One of the readings is “Cell phone safety”. I think that before putting sts. In the computer to read these kind of exercises is necessary to consider first if they are ready to understand such vocabulary, so I think is great to start with prediction and brainstorming the topic and try to write words that are in the reading they will work. So they don´t feel dumb.

I learnt 2 strategies: Identify Facts and Opinions

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A fact is something that can be verified and backed up with evidence.An opinion is based on a belief or view. It is not based on evidence that can be verified. And to evaluate or note the difference between both we had to answer some exercises in the following site: http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/words/reading/fact_and_opinion/index.shtmlThis module also remind me the different types of texts.

1. Non chronological report2. Instructions

3. Explanations

4. Persuasive

5. Discursive arguments

6. Biography

7. Descriptive

8. Informative

It´s a must that students know that here are different types of texts so when they´re reading they notice it. For this Teacher can explain the different types of reading by presenting different colorful text to call sts. Attention and then ask them to identify the different types of texts teacher presents.

http://www.learner.org/jnorth/tm/ReadStrat3.html I consider this site truly important since we have to take into consideration what strategies students need to use before, during, and after reading to improve their reading comprehension.

Because I found this 6 statements interesting and useful I pasted them

A good strategy is to active Prior knowledge before reading because it helps them decide if they need additional information about the topic, format, or language of the text they will be reading.

A good strategy is to ask questions before, during and after reading because it activates prior knowledge,it will help them understand the text or to have an idea about the text or to get familiarized with the text.

It is possible to infer the meaning of unfamiliar words if they connect unknown ideas with known concepts.

To visualize when reading to create a picture in our mind is helpful because it helps them support their comprehension of the text.

I have taught the following reading comprehension strategies in my classes: Prediction, making inferences,visualize images from text,classify or categorize information, making comparisons, sequence events,

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I am aware that I use some of the reading comprehension strategies as a reader in my own language when I find a difficult reading with a heavy vocabulary or with political ideas.

MY TEACHING LISTENING STRATEGIES EXPERIENCE

I enjoyed a lot these strategies that have to do with listening• Top down listening: I loved these 2 because I had to pay much attention to get the answers right.• Bottom up listening• Minimal pairs: Minimal pairs are words which have exactly the same pronunciation except for one sound. Do the exercises found at these sites, and check your ear. For ex: safe – save . This is a great exercise for my students and myself, it helps me sharpen my ears and differentiate between two different words that sound the same.

• Word stress, intonation, pause, rhythm:• Tag questions

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This is a top down listening strategy where I had different options to work with

a. See the video with Streaming video: Real Player or Windows Mediab. The transcript

c. A multiple choice quiz

d. Story spotlight

e. Story Notes (vocabulary)

f. Downloading or subscribing to the vodcast.

This module also remind me the importance of Word stress and I want to write 3 reasons:

*To identify the many levels of meaning based on the word you stress.*To see the different ways a sentence can be understood*To remember that the true meaning of a sentence is also expressed through the stressed word or words.

I also remembered intonation and rhythm but I hadn´t put the same attention as today with this diploma and I conclude saying that Intonation is the melody of speech! Something I knew and know now, but maybe I didn´t realize it until I heard it!And what I see is that depending the way you say things it´s the way people will get them (meaning of words or sentences) or get the message, so I could teach English or anything else by singing or with a different intonation (and my students can understan better)as if you do it seriuosly or in a rigid manner.

MY TEACHING SPEAKING STRATEGIES EXPERIENCE

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It is a common problem for every student of English. You know lot of words but you are unable to speak. Isn't it strange?

The reasons are many. English is not your mother tongue or you are hesitant because of your nature (and personality), as you may not be too confident and think a lot before you speak. This makes it doubly difficult.

So the key is to start speaking is to initiate and condition your mind to speak English. For that, you need to begin with words, small phrases and sentences. You may have noticed how people try to intersperse their speech with English words. It may not sound too good but it's definitely a good way to build a rhythm.

*Taken from: http://engspeak.blogspot.com/2008/08/lesson-91-how-to-deal-with-hesitation.html

I completely agree with this, when we prepare our students to condition their mind to speak at least short words or sentences or sing songs, they will not fear to speak in English.

As for this module I enjoyed recording myself!! In the audacity program. Let me tell you that it helped a lot to improve my speaking. Its great advantage, is that I could delete it as many times as I wanted to, so it was finally ready. However, I sometimes got desperate because I had so many interruptions.

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I also enjoyed the voicethread which is fun and cultural, I get to know important people and some others I didn´t know. It´s fun and exciting to have your voice on the internet. Besides everything, this is the first time I´ve heard of it.

Practice speaking with other partner was a great experience because we could express our own opinion coherently and understand each other perfectly. I also like the idea of reading our course mates works and make comments on them.

Voicethread a new and excellent tool to talk about and share images, documents, and videos with other people.

MY TEACHING WRITING STRATEGIES EXPERIENCE

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Many of us are not used to write and less to be the example of our kids at home. Writing can start with a diary or simply with words that you like and make sentences. Writing in English can be very difficult for students since they get confused with the order of some words, but it´s not impossible as I´ve said before in other modules. A start with words it´s an end of paragraphs and long sentences.

Publishing my own book! I made about 10! Imagine my students! This is a great start in writing in English since it´s motivating.

http://www.pimpampum.net/bookr/index.php?id=9695

Creating your book with internet images!

I also learned much about photopeach site. Where I could tell stories over pictures.

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ICT TOOLS

We must take advantage of the ICT to become better teachers and to be a 21st century teachers, and to offer our students a greater life so they are great citizens and can immerse and compete in this globalized world not just to be great students but to face real life. So let´s use them because our students are reaching us quickly! Module 5 is the one that uses most of the times the internet tools, than the others, which I think is great and fun for students.

ABOUT PLANNING

Bloom's Taxonomy and Critical Thinking

Knowledge - recall ------- Concrete experience Comprehension - understand ------- Observation and reflection

Application - use, practice ----------- Testing in new situations

Analysis - dissect, generalize -------- Forming abstract concepts

Synthesis - create, combine --------- Testing in new situations

Evaluation - appraise, value --------- Apply what he has learnt and

I chose this one because it has the elements that are needed for a good lesson planning, having and considering all these elements, we can have an effective learning and we can a achieve our goal which is to accomplish the graduation profile of Secondary level.

David A. Kolb (with Roger Fry) created his famous model out of four elements: concrete experience, observation and reflection, the formation of abstract concepts and testing in new situations. He represented these in the famous experiential learning circle (after Kurt Lewin):

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In other words this means that Experiential learning is based on the assumption that knowledge is created through the transformation brought by the experience. Specific experience is transferred to an abstract conceptualization which is actively tested through new experiences. It is constructed by the individual.The main objective in this scheme is the construction of meaning by the student through two types of experience: the discovery, understanding and application of knowledge to situations or problems and interaction with other members of the process, where through spoken and written language, students share the acquired knowledge and through this process, all this it deepens, perfects and dominates the knowledge.

MY LEARNING EXPERIENCE

The 6-week Communicative skills for Secondary Teachers Diploma online from the Autonoma de Mexico University by the Foreign Language Teaching Centre, was a a truly remarkable experience of upgrading knowledge, and sharpening professional, cultural and social edges for me. The active teaching techniques offered by many sites in the internet came as cool drops on my thirsty lips. Great explosions of thoughts and reflections have been triggered inside me.

I powered the idea that we as Teachers must seek ways to make the classroom learning interactive and entertaining; doing it this way, the students would be engaged unconsciously into the learning process. Then learning happens. There´s a Teachers belief that skills learned hands-on, or in other words, in a kinesthetic way, can achieve better retention in the learners’ mind. Creativity is a door to a fun learning and this reminds me of a famous line ----

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“Tell me and I will forget; teach me and I will remember; involve me and I will learn.” Words of wisdom, indeed. But in my EFL classrooms, with limited teaching resources, and super-large class, interactive activities can be a very luxurious investment of time and money.

As my 4 skills are concerned, I´ve improved a lot, as well as in my English Language Teaching.

My writing skill is better since I found several interesting and useful sites like this one, that helps me look for answers I don´t know. Also is a good site for my students since they have many questions and it´s good for them because they´ll learn new vocabulary.

I also liked this site, because it helps me to have more ideas on what to add to my lesson plans and to make it fun!

I conclude saying that I enjoyed this diplomado online because it taught me to look for more, to go beyond, if we do more than we do, we´ll find things we never thought.

This world is changing greatly! And continuing education stresses the need to improve learning efficiency, flexibility and personal responsibility for one’s own learning. So we don´t need to spend money for improving our language proficiency or to improve as teachers, we just need and must navigate or search for things we can use in the classroom with our students or things for us as teachers!! If you don´t have the tools for this kind of activities, use your imagination!! And do it!

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Good luck to all of you! I don´t think computers can substitute men mind, but is a helpful tool so we can work together!

"This course, without a doubt is far superior to any other courses I have experienced. It was positive and very encouraging".

It was fun and motivating! As for the Tutor Adriana is highly schooled in Language Arts (I believe)in general which aids in helping us understand any doubts we had during this course. It was a very colorful and enjoyable learning.

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Rony Alvarez Gonzalez My Learning Experience

Unit 10. Reviewing the report of my learning experience.

Cultural learning awareness.

It was really interesting the way we could reach other situations, other realities, other cultures by listening stories, news, etc., through ICT tools.

For instance, we watched movies and short videos from other places and countries, listening different accents like the Australians and British ones, and we used lot of others resources, particularly I tried out with those little comics in classroom, the students liked because it was fun, they did the same by using the school’s computers, since we don’t have connectivity they did it on Paint making draws and balloon talks, etc.

Writing and speaking for my students was fun too, I started the activities using real photographs of another students, boys, and teachers meeting, that was a start point of the learning activities where they had to write or say something about the picture through they know by their own experience, It was funny and motivating, and also they could correct each other’s writing specifically grammar and spelling, however they were afraid to correct themselves about the speaking, they said they don´t know, so that make them feel unsure.

I did some exercises using Audacity too, It really help me a lot because they listened to the themselves how they pronounce the words, I use a little software that says a word you type on it, you can find it for free at http://talk-it.softonic.com/ they often goes to the computer in order to know how a word they found should be pronounced. I have tried little videos and part of movies to show them how native people from other countries sound when they speak English, I download short videos from some of the next links www.vimoeo.com, www.youtube.com, http://www.real-english.com/ to see and watch as many times you need over a subject, for instance the verb do in past tense in this video http://www.real-english.com/reo/46/unit46.html gives a lot of examples and lot of answers to the same question, then I did the same with the students.

I would like to use voiced thread with my students but we don´t have internet at school, that would be so interesting and motivating.

New teaching strategies discovered

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The strategies that we used to learn in this Diploma have been really attached to those habits mentioned for effective teachers of the 21st Century, by the way, the reasons they gave in the text are so strong, and it’s true the world is changing all the time, it doesn’t stop, the kids and teenagers are called the Net Generation because they use and incorporate technology to their lives so naturally, in this context the teacher’s roll have to change, in order to teach better we have to use current and different techniques and strategies that uses new resources, ICT resources. The school cannot be out the world changes.

Since this Diploma is online, the resources were most ICT tools for learning, that make sense but, in our schools we don’t have internet for example, but we do have computers, so I download some videos, pictures, text, exercises and they have to work on the computer, they really like having the class using these tools, for instance, we use audacity and we play what we recorded and everybody listen and have the opportunity to fix it and say it correctly.

Reading teaching strategies

If I had to choose two good activities I would select two kinds of activities that I liked most, those are contained in the follow links http://www.awesomestories.com/, and http://www.rong-chang.com I think they are complete as a didactical resource, I mean, they are not only for a simple reading, and that’s what I liked, they also have exercises and activities around the information on the text you read, they make you think about what you read, there is not the usual resource for reading, they work on the reading skill; if we practice enough we can read a text and by using some of this advices we can have more information than just by simply reading.

Skimming and scanning in www.skillsworkshop.org is important to keep them as an everyday resource for permanent learning. The next links http://www.bbc.co.uk/, http://www.cdlponline.org/, are very interesting tools for reading too.

Talking about reading strategies the next link http://www.learner.org/jnorth/tm/ReadStrats_20Best.html was so interesting to me because that gives you useful reading strategies, which can be used as a resource for learning in any other language.

I would say that the teaching strategies used were so important, because some of them used the exercises on the web and some of them the tutor asked a specific reflective question that made you think about the text we read. The effect they had on me was good because by reading I knew about other cultures, facts, thoughts, etc, and they came up as a knew reading strategies for me. You can go over them as many times you want or you need, you can download them print them and take them to your students.

Listening teaching strategies.

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In my opinion this learning experience didn’t has a difficult activity, the activities weren’t so easy either, but I think they were just normal, new surely but not difficult.

If I must choose a difficult one, it would be the dictation, why, because the others you can learn them, and the dictation is kind of evaluation of what you know, It’s a little test of your listening skill at any moment you take the dictation.

The others activities if you don’t know them you can learn and practice them permanently, for instance: word stress, the eight common word stress patterns in English, ESL Intonation Guide: tonic stress, emphatic stress, contrastive stress, new information stress, and of course phrasal verbs.

However I would like to say something that could make the module of listening better (but no easier), is by giving more time to these module, I mean, more practical activities, I know that there is one of the modules that has more activities but I think still needs more.

We know that the people who took this Diploma have certain knowledge about English, but if you don’t know phrasal verbs for example, you are not going to learn them by one or two exercises, even when we know that everybody has to practice more. However in the other hand, we also know that the intention of the course is got the awareness of the needs to learn by our own decision, and that’s the goal of these exercises and the ones and the end of each of the modules.

Speaking teaching strategies

Definitely was the voice thread and the recording voice activity, the voice thread was nice and funny but challenging too, you notice how you really sound when you speak, and realize that you don’t speak as you always believed, so that motivate you really to have more practice.

Voice thread was interesting because the first exercise was like easy because we had to spoke freely, but the second one had more specific instructions for the speaking task, so we had to do our best.

The recording voice activity was a very shocking activity, when you heard yourself, you evaluate how you pronounce the words, how you stress the words, you notice that you don’t apply the intonation according to what are you saying, that you sometimes don’t have a rhythm, a natural rhythm.

The advices for writing a story by Aaron Shep were very useful too.

Speaking teaching strategies

I will take the same idea that the course at the very beginning, I mean, I will use the audacity to record their own voice, to get rid of their fears, probably by using a writing

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product made before, or by telling what they do after school, that everybody knows it and can say it without bigger problem, after that, give them back their recording to correct it and record it again until they are satisfied with their recording.

Then I will make couples to do a new voice record, but this time, they would have been written a little conversation, check it and correct it, and they would have to recorded, and everybody at the end would say what recording exercise would be the best.

Also I would do what I said at the beginning of this text, motivate the speaking using real photographs to talk about them, what they evokes to the students, what they can imaging, or what they think.

Writing teaching strategies

Writing with sense. Making a poem was so funny, but it was kind of serious writing because what we wrote had to make sense, had to have a message even in a few words, the templates helped like in the funniest tale, also I learnt that make a poem is not so difficult with the help of the web.

Having an intention when we write. Making the comic was funny I really liked, and I liked because you had to say a story by using the comics, but tell something with sense, that make me write, fix and correct because you couldn’t write that much, so you choose the right words that could say, what you wanted it to tell in the story.

Word as a tool. Photopeach, I really liked, and I really enjoy it, because it was so meaningful for me, because I talked about my state. That was an interesting activity for me because I had to write something that had relation between the picture and what it represent to my state and what it represented to me, all at the same time. That’s what I wrote Word as a tool because that is another level of writing, by using the word, the language; words define the world.

About ICT tools

I choose the listening module and I choose the tools that talk about the intonation patterns, the stress word and the rhythm.

For listening I think the next link http://www.esl-lab.com/ is a web page that have exercises for three levels, easy, medium and difficult, all of them together are more than 170 subjects that have an audio story, information or fact and it has what is called Answering Machine that have four types of exercises that helps to understand what it has been read, they are: I. Pre-Listening Exercises, II. Listening Exercises, III. Vocabulary, IV. Post-Listening Exercises, it also have a Key vocabulary.

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The videos that talk about the sound of English: Word stress, the one that shows the eight common word stress patterns in English:

http://esl.about.com/od/speakingenglish/a/8wspatterns.htmhttp://esl.about.com/od/speakingenglish/a/8wspatterns.htm

ESL Intonation: stress types

Teaching Intonation. Ted Power: English Language Learning and Teaching: Teaching English intonation and stress patterns

The videos on You TubeLearn English RhythmLesson 10a, 10b, 10c,10d Intonation: English PronunciationAlso the two videos about thought groupsLesson 7a: Thought groups: English PronunciationLesson 7b: Thought groups: English Pronunciation Why I selected these instruments? I selected them because they are a real help, I mean, if we don’t have the others resources the ones for writing, I think we can handle it, as well as the ones for reading, but the listening/speaking most of the teachers are lack of that skill, and these videos or links not only shows you how the English sounds, they teach you the very beginning and the basic and main ideas to be able to learn properly, what I would like to call the “sound of English” in other words, Intonation, stress words, thought group, rhythm, etc.

Lesson planning.

The Critical Thinking could be the one I consider is appropriate for my context; I would complement that with the roles that the teacher plays, something that was mentioned in the text about lesson planning.

In fact there is not a unique plan lesson or methodology for teaching; there are several methodologies which coexist at the same time, what does it change? It changes the understanding of what I’m doing, and the why I’m doing that, and of course the how I’m doing it, because sometimes is the same purpose, the same intention. Another very important matter is the role that teacher plays, the teacher’s attitude is so important, that build most of the time the learning environment in the classroom, and for example the learning strategy could be good, the didactic moments or stages could be right, the resources can be according to, etc. but if the teacher’s attitude is not good, that can obstruct the process of learning or the sense of the activity, it make another context for learning.

In telesecondary schools this aspect is very important since is the same teacher who teach all the subjects, like in elementary schools, so the teacher spent all day in the same classroom, and know all the students, the way they learn, where or how they have

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difficulties to learn, how some of students can learn easier than others by doing something specific, in this context different intelligences can work also.

Martha Arredondo Burquez My Learning Experience

Unit 3. Key competences for Lifelong learning

First of all, sections from 1 to 8 are strongly related, but talking about 2, 5 and 8 we can say that they are the essence of a good teacher/learner; those skills let us be able to understand and communicate in other languages solving our special needs, as the way  learn to learn autonomously and a cultural background are needed in this profession and life-long learning itself.

I think I have to improve my skills in cooperative learning and evaluate my own work, and learn to develop creative skills and dedicate long periods of time in learning.

Unit 4. Advantages of learning English using Internet sites

Internet offers a wide variety of programs and information that can improve our knowledge and skills while learning other languages, where we can "sail freely" according to our needs and expectations, as well as we have fun and enjoy studying at our own rhythm.

After sailing through the sites suggested here, I can say that learning by using the Internet provides a variety of choices to improve our knowledge, gives us the opportunity to compare different ideas, concepts and point of view and provides fun to our study.

Unit 3. Text Types and Vocabulary Learning

the names of the different text types are:

INSTRUCTIVE (giving instructions step by step to gain the goal)

DESCRIPTIVE (giving details of an event or anything)

PERSUASIVE  (leads you to do, buy, go, etc. something or anywhere)

INFORMATIVE (provides you the main information you must be interested in)

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Read Health and safety in construction identifying information.:

well, first I read the questions to know what the exercise wanted me to do... so because it

requested specific information, I used scanning  to look for it, but I think that at the same

time we are scanning we take a general overview on the text to locate the subtitles and then

find the topic and the information we are needing to give an appropriate answer.

Unit 4. Intensive Reading

Read and follow the instructions:

http://www.skillsworkshop.org/l2lit/l2bbcnewsadultsfearyoung.pdf

Read again to find the words in their context, try to infer the meaning of them.After doing

the exercises find the answers and correct your mistakes:

If I have to grade myself, I think 9 will be ok! because in some questions I had to reread

the text... but in general, I´ve always tried to "guess" (infere) the meaning of the words I

don´t understand if they help me to understand the message,  the purpose of

communication, but I know I have to improve my vocabulary by trying to find and learn

new words, and infering is a good way to get this goal..

Unit 5. Reading for pleasure

Produce a 5 line written opinion about the article:

first of all, I really enjoyed reading "The Amistad Incident" because I haven´t seen that

movie -even I wanted to- and now, I have a very good "picture" in my mind to understand

of what happened in this interesting movie... the text is easy to understand, and even more

because it gives the reader the chance to find some pictures that illustrate the narration, so

we can have a better Idea about the original documents and people that make it more

believable!!

100 SHORT ENGLISH STORIES:

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Mention at least one cultural element that you found in the story you read:

60. WOMAN LIES ABOUT WINNING LOTTERY

one very known cultural element in US is lottery... many stories are told about poor

people that become rich just with one single lottery ticket... even they have almost

everything, they don´t own almost nothing, so they won’t to win the lottery to pay all their

bills -house, car, education, etc- to make the American dream come true...

by the way, I knew a couple from Cuba.. she and her family won the "Lottery" that is

played every year to go freely to live in the US... she was studying medicine and her father

was a doctor, and that day every single family was paying attention to the radio when they

heard their names!!! They left Cuba and started a new life in Florida. She met a young

Cuban man that was illegal in US, fell in love and got married. They were in their honey

moon when I met them in a cruise to Yucatán.. nice, isn´t it?

100 SHORT ENGLISH STORIES:

Mention at least one cultural element that you found in the story you read:

Unit 6. Thinking about strategies

Take your time to read and reflect on them and then complete the following statements:

1.- A good strategy is to active prior knowledge before reading because readers connect new information to their existing knowledge base. This helps them understand the text.

2.- A good strategy is to ask questions before, during and after reading because questions pertain to the text´s content, structure and language. They ask questions for different purposes including those that clarify their own developing understanding. Readers wonder about the choices the author made when writing.

3.- It is possible to infer the meaning of unfamiliar words if they try to figure out something by using clues from the text and what they know from previous experiences. The conclusion is reached after thinking  about details and facts from the selection.

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4.- To visualize when reading to create a picture in our mind is helpful because they use developing images to support their comprehension of the text. Readers create images from text during and after reading.

5.- I have taught the following reading comprehension strategies in my classes: identify main ideas and supporting details; make generalizations; sequence events; ask questions before, during and after reading; activate prior knowledge, among others.

6.- I am aware that I use some of the reading comprehension strategies as a reader in my own language when I compare and contrast ideas, identify

Unit 7. Sample Reading Comprehension Lessons

1. Express briefly your opinion about the use of these three steps for the suggested text.

2. Would these steps be appropriate for your students?

1.-my opinion about the use of these three steps:

READ.- this first step activates prior knowledge and motivation by using questions before their first contact with the text. Then, they're ready to read it.

REVISIT.- is a reflection about the answers they gave in the first step, and it generates new questions while they reread the text and make some connections with other subjects. This allows them to produce from reading.

REFLECT.- this is the time to arrive to some conclusions, give their opinions and connect what they've learned to common life; this also leads students to research and look for related information, increasing of course, reading skills as they are able to identify and analyze the text structure.

2.- would these steps be appropriate for your students?

Unfortunately, their reading skills' level in Spanish is poor... they don´t question what they read and sometimes they don't even understand it, but in English we have to encourage them to think, analyze and create from reading... I know they can, my work is to make them like it. Isn’t it?

Page | 28Unit 2. Top-down listening and word stress

Think the minimal pairs are useful because they bring us the opportunity to improve our listening skills by making differences in pronunciation between words that are very similar -though we make it according to the context-, and the actions I will take is to find chances to listen more English at real speed, learn new words and try to use different and wider vocabulary.

Choose TWO videos or VODCASTS (video podcasts) to view from this site by selecting the link to English Bites, select and complete the multiple choice quiz, the story notes, etc. so that you can better understand the listening:

EPISODE 29: THE GRAMPIANS

the grammar point is to make the difference in spelling and pronunciation, and of course the meaning and use of TO (INDICATING DIRECTION), TO (AS INDICATING ACTION), TOO (INDICATING MORE THAN IS LIKED, OR AS WELL), AND TWO (AS A NUMBER).. AND THE MEANING OF RANGER, SOMETIME giving some examples as the narrator goes through, stoping and retelling that part of the text; he says that TO sometimes is hard to hear.. This national park is also known as Gariwerd that is an indigenous term used by the original local people. the closest town is Halls Gap. It finishes with a marvelous view of the place.

EPISODE 27: SEA LIONS:

This story is obut swimming with sealions and is used to show the meaning of expressions like ALL WALKS OF LIFE  (PEOPLE THAT COME FROM ALL OCCUPATIONS OR BACKGROUNDS), GET A BUZZ (ENJOY),SOMETHING ELSE (SPECIAL AND DIFFERENT), TURN UN (ARRIVE), FIRST HAND (WHEN YOU EXPERIENCE BY YOURSELF), AND  GET ON (LIKE EACH OTHER/BE SUCCESFUL/CONTINUE)... sea lions are very friendly animals, so people enjoy diving in the water and play with them.. the man says that he's got the best job in the world! .. I agree, 'cause I love the sea...

Activity 2.2. Word stress

WORD STRESS IS IMPORTANT BECAUSE:

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1.- It is important at the time we acquire new vocabulary, so we can avoid confusion and

misunderstanding.

2.- in real life, English words are stressed in one syllable and the others sometimes are not

clearly said (as muted).

3.- Improving sentence intonation is one of the key elements in your English pronunciation.

Unit 3. Intonation and rhythm

from these exercises I learned the importance of intonation and in social language and how crucial it is in communication, and also the four basic types of word stress for a proper intonation as well as English speaking rhythm, intonation patterns (what they communicate) and I liked the term "music of language"... when it´s your mother tongue it comes naturally but as learners we have to pay attention on that to be more assertive. good exercises! 

Six minute interview: "clouds"

Intonation helped me to understand the text because it stresses the main information and took me through the listening in a fluent way... they talked mainly about the types of clouds (that come from Latin names: cumulus, cirrus, stratus..) and the way people make a relation between clouds and daily life, as a paraphrases, for example, when some one "has a cloud hanging over him" could mean that someone is depressed or unhappy.

Unit 4. Reading along

Three tips that have to do with thought groups:

1.- When we read aloud, the writer´s punctuation tell us where to pause.

2.- Sentences are made of grammatical units. identify them and you will know where to pause. that creates natural rhythm and more fluid speech.

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3.- If you need to speak slower for your listeners, break sentences into shorter thought groups.

I listened "welcome to wherever your are" from Bon Jovi.. it´s curious, but now I pay attention on this, a noticed the thought groups in songs that make language as music, with rhythm and natural meaning...

I chose two news to make a comparison:

The "summer fires in Europe" has many commas and full stops. the reader makes short pauses in the commmas, and a little longer ones in the full stops. it is easier to know when the pauses have to be, but in the other one, "Jackson's birthday burial" there are very few punctuation signs, so the reader has to break the text in thoughts groups while reading to breath and let listeners understand the ideas, as you can see:

Summer fires in Europe.-

Many parts of Europe remain on a fire alert. //In Aragon, /the worst affected Spanish region,/ the authorities say 500 personnel,/ supported by water planes and helicopters,/ are still battling blazes.//

Jackson´s birthday burial.-

Meanwhile police are still investigating his death /and have focussed on doctors who treated him /to find out what drugs were in his system.//

Unit 5. Word stress, intonation, pause, rhythm

paste your TWO dictation texts::

POOH:

Pooh always liked a little something at eleven o’clock in the morning, and he was very glad to see rabbits getting out the plates and mugs; and when rabbit said, “honey your condensed milk with your bread?” he was so excited that he said, “both” and then, noticing him greedy, he added, “but don’t bother about the bread, please.”

NUMBERS:

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Think of any number betwwen two and ten. Double it, then add six. Now add the number you first thought of. Divide this number by three and take away two. The result is the number you first thought of. How did I do that?

Unit 7. Top down listening

Write in the text box how this listening is different from the others and what strategies you used to understand the speaker:

I chose three different listening at intermediate level... the first one was  "the crown parliament in Britain during the 17th"... the narrator used a paused English -he has a phD in linguistics - so it was very understandable... on the second one I listened to an English accent woman easy to understand, talking about "a House in the mountain"... the third one was not so clear: "Differences between US and UK schools", but I had to use strategies such as prediction and inference of vocabulary, and intonation, rhythm and word stress where important to a better listening understanding.

Authentic listening:

this kind of listening is faster than the ones that are prepared for teaching using some expressions that we only learn by the use of the language...

The New York Times conversations are some  interviews with interesting people about what they do in their daily life, and their passions... I chose the one with John Cameron Mitchel, an Actor and director. He talks bout hiss experience in learning golf; he hadn't do it before, but he thought he would like it and he would do it... at the beginning he was a disaster, but he became a better player... but at the end he doesn´t seem very excited as he said "I love football".

Unit 1. Grammar and writing

Meet the Animals

Martha: Today, we are interviewing a couple of animals at the zoo. I am Martha and I will be your host. Our first stop is the primate area, and our first guest is Godzilla cow. Mr. cow, please tell us about a day at the zoo.

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cow: Well, Martha, I have many lazy days here at the zoo. The most lazy days are the ones when I get to buy with my friend Babs Boone. We fly all day, and this is a lot of fun. We also like to make small faces at the people and watch their reactions.

Martha: Thank you, Mr. cow. That was very interesting. Next, we head to the pachyderm area, where we meet Elle E. Phant, a famous elephant who has been seen on the covers of national geographic and vogue. Hello, Ms. Phant.

Elle: how do you do?. How do I look today? Come, share some beans with me. Do I look long to you?

Martha: Why, no, Ms. Phant, you look expensive.

Elle: Thank you. I have to swim now. I must pack my trunk for a long trip to Japan.

CREATING A PIECE OF WRITING:

What are some of the aspects teachers have in mind when correcting a written

composition?

well, it depends on the activity... I mean, the purpose... if the main point is grammar, a focus on it; if it´s communication or fluency, or spelling, etc. it doesn´t mean I don´t pay attention on that, but my goal is to assess them in what the activity is focused on. in secondary school time is a fact that unfortunately doesn´t let us pay an individual

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL INCIDENT:

This is a truly awful incident in my life! and I want to share it with you... remember, sea is

beautiful but unexpected things can happen...

THE UNEXPECTED SHARK

 

Have you ever been near a crazy shark that comes to you?

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My family and some friends were having a barbecue in a beach here in La Paz, it was a

sunny hot day and we were having fun playing ball in the sea, about forty meters from the

seashore… children were trying to take out some clams, and adults were talking and having

some ´cold drinks’.

But suddenly people began to go out from the sea, while a man was running and shouting

“there´s a shark over there, get out right now” but we said: “what does that chilango

mean? There are no sharks in this place! they swim in the channel about three hundred

meters from here!” and we laughed, at the time we slowly began to walk to the seashore…

 

I was trying to hold my granddaughter and take her to the sand, when I saw a big dark fin

coming directly to us! It was the endless worst moment in my whole life! Feet were like

iron, the sea seemed to be very heavy and the seashore too far… I shouted “it´s true! There

´s a shark over there!” and everyone tried to get out as quick as they could.

 

Finally, when we all were out of the sea, the big shark passed near the seashore and we all

saw him so near, but safe on the sand…next day, the TV. news announced that a shark had

been seen in another beach, in front of the island, and it seemed sick, and that makes them

crazy because they attack everything that moves in the water.

 

That day we all knew that nobody knows everything about the sea, even though we have spent our whole life in the sea…

THE EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT:

This is my HURRICANE LISA´S  story... thanks for helping me to put some order in my mind!

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Pineda 520

La Paz, B.C.S. 23000

October 13th 2010

 Dear Adriana,

Have you ever been in a Category 4 Hurricane? Which is the highest wind you´ve felt on

your face? I think this is the most horrible and unforgettable days of my childhood. On

September 30th 1976, an up to 280 kph wind speed, bringing big amounts of uncontrollable

water arrived to my city.

 One midday, when I was in my 3rd grade on Primary School, it started raining and we all

were very happy, because it´s a rare event here in my state; on the malecon back to school

waves were too high that they almost crashed into our car… my father looked a little

worried, and told me there was going to come a strong hurricane, that´s why the tide was

different than always it is.

 When we got home, wind was so strong that trees bended to the ground, and clouds passed

very fast because of that wind; rain was running over the street and I even couldn´t see

almost nothing through the window! What I specially remember is that sound as the wind

blew, like a plane turbine... I was very scared, so my mother invited me to cook something I

had for homework, and that distracted me for some time.

When the night came, everything got worse! Everything was quiet and noisy at the same

time, lights went out and I saw falling trees through the window, things flying outside,

ambulance sirens, so I couldn´t sleep well... I just wanted to see the sun again!

 In the morning, when everything was calm, every family got outside to see what happened

and listen to the radio... a disaster had occurred... a lot of people died trying so save their

belongs and family, they even didn´t know how many deaths and damages were going to

result... the wind still blew but softer, things in the patio where everywhere, birds started to

come out and neighbors came to see us and talk about the news and help if necessary.

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 That was Hurricane Lisa... we had never seen something like that, so when the hurricane

season comes every year we pray the Lord and we got prepared to be safe; my students get

very excited when a tropical store comes to us, because they won´t have classes, but they

don´t already know what a real disaster is, so we have to talk to them to create a “Hurricane

Culture” to be prepared and safe.

Education can be the key for a new generation; new citizens able to live and share, create

and feel proud of their country. New schools that belong to our families; teachers that want

to be teachers, students that want to study, a community interested in schools, and schools

interested in the community they are inserted in.

Educational quality first means that we can recognize that things can get better, not settle

for what has been achieved in the center and seek to improve the service provided, in every

sense. Individual school must then develop its own indicators of quality that is reflected in

the satisfaction of the expectations of both users such as the teachers themselves pointing to

a higher academic achievement, that is, in reaching better learning.

 This process involves radical and progressive actions:

 First of all, a change of attitude: this starts with a serious reflection on to see problems that

don´t allow us to advance as collective, and the recognition of any individual has much to

contribute for our schools progress towards greater quality indicators.

 Then, we have to promote innovative practices: a good sign that we are progressing, is the

emergence of new teaching practices that can be shared with the rest of teachers as means

to makes reach their goals more easily, and let it be permanent and significant for the rest

of their lives.

Last but not least, we need a greater participation of parents and school context: a clear

sign that the school is designed to improve is when an enthusiastic participation of parents

is increased to feel part of the school community, a place where responsibilities are shared

toward a process of improvement; in the moment that these changes begin to be produced ,

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the projection of the school to the context in which it is located can make external actors be

motivated and willing to be part of the same.

 Finally, if we have been able to put our eyes on the development of student skills by a new

knowledge assessment in our classrooms, and promoting values as the time we live them in

our collective, we can be sure we are on the way to have better schools and better human

beings that can make our wish of a better country come true. We are the key of the change.

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Enrique Caparros Cadena My Learning experience

English Language learning awareness

As a language learner and teacher, I discovered that I have the ability to write, speak and

listen in English better than I thought. But I need to practice every day, with this curse I

discovered some internet pages that can be used to improve my English communicative

skills, such as: bbc.co.uk, learning English or 100 free short English stories.

Next there are three brief examples about the grammatical aspects that I have improved in

this course.

1.-Adverbial clauses are phrases that function as an adverb in a sentence.

They can use to show time example:

While I was fishing last year, I caught a fish.

They can also show a cause example:

Because my sister knew how I felt, she took me to the mall.

2.-Using on correctly

Exclamations: right on, go on.

Prepositional phrases: on the desk, on the bed, on the chair.

Noun phrases: come on, a price on my head.

Two part verb: act on, hold on, take on or rock on.

Verb phrases: call on the carpet, land on your feet.

Time frame: on Sunday, on your break.

3.-Tag questions are more common in colloquial spoken usage than in formal written

usage, they can indicate politeness, emphasis or irony. Some examples are:

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Open the window, will you?

You’d better stop now, hadn’t you?

You´ve been there, right?

Cultural learning awareness

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We teachers can use American TV programs or movies to teach many aspects about the

American culture.

We can learn American moral values from soap operas and cultural values from comedies.

Every one knows that America has an important progress in all the fields specially in

technology, the new cities around the world are very similar to New York or Houston, they

have tall buildings and big malls to buy all kind of items. We eat hamburgers, and drink

sodas as americans do. Latin America, Asia and Africa want to live the American life, in

fact we learn English to have a better comunication and trades with them.

But the truth is that we are so different, they enjoy american football and we get crazy with

soccer, they have a tranquil and quiet life and our is very noisy, they respect the

handicapped and we don’t have adapted schools to that kind of people.

So to teach american cultural aspects I like to translate biographies of movie stars, sing

songs in English and read poetry and magazines that reflect the the American life.

After translate, sing songs and read we analize the cultural aspects we find.

New teaching strategies

1. Adapting

Teachers must also be able to adapt the new technology as a tool to be used by students in

order to improve the communicative skills. Today the use of the internet is the most actual

and complete source of information.

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2. Being visionary

Teacher must learn and use computers and Web technologies to select and manipulate

information. The traditional school texts are not enough.

3. Collaborating

Teachers can use Web tools such as Wikispaces, MSN, or Twitter, to enhance and motivate

students. A good example of this point is “Audacity.

Audacity is a very nice way to improve speaking due to students can hear their own voice

and make a reflection of their level and progress, they also can listen others classmates.

4. Taking risks

Teachers must take risks due to technology facilitate the learning. The new risk for teachers

is to trust what the students do on the Web.

5. Learning

Teachers must learn and adapt as the horizons and landscapes change. For instance Watch

news (in English) everyday is an excellent strategy to improve listening.

6. Communicating

Teachers must know how to facilitate, stimulate, control and manage the knowledge. One

strategy that can improve the communicative skills is taking everyday notes in English.

7. Modeling behavior

Teachers must teach values, so we must model the behaviors that we expect from our

students. Read newspaper, magazines or books in English help to be in touch with the

world and the American culture and at the same time they learn cultural values.

8. Leading

New teachers must be leaders with clear goals and objectives.

Reading teaching strategies

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The most interesting activity for reading practice is to visit the following sites:

bbc.co.uk/reading/techniques and adult learning activities. The advantage is that we can do

the activities as many times as we need, besides we have the results immediately.

Here there is a list of the reading teaching strategies that I learnt on module 3 and that I am

going to use with my students.

Skimming, we use this when we want to know what the text is about.

Scanning, it is used to locate specific information, to understand relations between parts of

a text and to identify the main idea of the text.

Learn vocabulary, it is necessary to understand the text

Use Active Prior knowledge before reading because this helps readers to connect new

information to their existing knowledge base. 

Ask questions before, during and after reading because it helps to clarify their own

developing understanding

It is possible to infer the meaning of unfamiliar words if readers form an opinion based on

information they have read.

It is important to visualize when reading to create a picture in their minds because the use

of pictures in the main supports the comprehension of the text.

Listening teaching strategies

The most difficult activity from module 4 was unit 3 activity 3.2. Listening for intonation

and word stress

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What was the problem? Well I had to hear the interview more than three o four times to get

specific information. The title of the six minutes interview was “Beekeeping”, the

conversation was about bees. They said that the number of species has decline. they

mention that there were 250 species in the past but they have gone down from 10 to 15 %

in the last two years, the cause of this situation is the lack of habitat and some pest that

share the same area.

How the activity could have been easier? To be honest the activity is great, I mean the task,

selection, instructions and audio-text length are appropriate; the problem was my poor

listening skill.

So to improve this ability I have been watching news on TV, I have been listening music in

English and I have been visiting mouseovermusic.com

I think that listening is the most difficult skill. But I promise that next year I am going to be

better, I am going to work hard this year to improve a lot.

Speaking teaching activities

Well in my opinion the most useful activities were 3.1 “How to describe people” and 7.1

“How to present a short talk”, in fact they are the same due to we use the same site –

voicethread.com-.

I liked this activity because I had the opportunity to prepare the speech before recording;

besides the pictures from activity 3.1 had many specific details to be described, we could

use colors, shapes and of course use our imagination.

Another point was the high motivation to record our voice and hear the voice of our

classmates.

About activity 7.1 I spent a short time reading about The Pope to be able to talk about him.

In conclusion with this activity we moved all the communicative skills, we listened the

tutorial to be able to use the site, we read information to talk about the pictures, we wrote a

speech to be sure what we were talking about and we record a comment about the picture

from activity 3.1 and a speech about The Pope on activity 7.1.

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It was one of the most interesting activities on Module 5, I liked very much, and of course I

am going to try this with my students.

Writing teaching strategies

On module 6 we had some interesting writing activities. Those were create tales and write

poetry.

At the beginning I was worried for the task, but then it was easy because I used the tutorials

and templates to create some nice writing products.

In my opinion the main teaching strategies were “Create tales and the Book of poems”, for

both the templates were useful and the result was very nice. For instance I read the poems

of Jose Antonio Carrillo and He read my poems, we exchange opinions that made us felt

satisfied with the task.

We teachers can use these small and easy projects to encourage our students to write tales

and poems, thus students can use language creatively and appropriately selecting phrases

from the templates and of course using their imagination and feelings to complete the

writing product.

To enrich the activity students can add pictures or music to create different environments or

feelings such as: a romantic poem or a sad tale.

Finally writing is the most difficult skill to develop. I mean when writing we teachers and

students must be careful with the grammar, the verb, spelling and punctuation in order to

create a text with the minimum of mistakes.

About ICT tools

The effect of Information and Communication Technologies.

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Several years ago I never thought that the computer could help me in my job as a teacher,

in my school we only had boards and chalks, but today every teacher has his own laptop. At

the beginning it was for the individual use and now we exchange all kind of information,

besides the computer we have electronic boards and mini laptops for our students.

Today the risk is to use the computer appropriately.

In this course I found a very useful and modern tool that could help me in my classes. It is

the Internet and all its advantages.

With the internet we knew some other tools such as: Audacity, The book of poems, mouse

over music and voicethread

Audacity is a very nice way to improve speaking due to students can hear their own voice

and make a reflection of their level and progress.

The book of poems was very interesting because we were encouraged to write some poems

and we had the opportunity to read the creations of our classmates.

With the site voicethread.com I had the opportunity to prepare a speech and describe people

from a picture.

In conclusion now I have more strategies and tools to use with my students, they are going

to be included on my next lesson plan, I am sure my students are going to enjoy all of them.

Lesson planning

I read the lesson plans and my choice was “Instructional scaffolding” (Bruner- Vygotsky), I

also like multiple intelligences (Gardner’s), in fact they both are very useful and accepted

by many teachers.

Scaffolding instruction as a teaching strategy has its origin with Lev Vygotsky and his

concept of the zone of proximal development (ZPD). “The zone of proximal development

is the distance between what children can do by themselves and the next learning that they

can be helped to achieve with competent assistance." This teaching strategy provides

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individualized support based on the learner’s ZPD. I like this because students improve the

ability to build the prior knowledge and internalize new information. The learners can

accomplish (with assistance) the tasks that students could otherwise not complete.

In my opinion the plans are very similar, the difference is the interpretation, for instance

show pictures and watch videos are visual activities according to multiple intelligences, and

for instructional scaffolding it is ownership and modeling.

For my students and their context the appropriate lesson plan will be the Brunner and

Vygotsky approach due to the teacher must propose a situation that encourages students to

discover the solution by themselves. It means that students have a very active participation

because they are trying to discover something interesting for them and their community.

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Irene Cardenas León My Learning Experience

Cultural learning awareness

It is always difficult to anybody to express confidently by writing, about any topic; unquestionably it is a weaknesses that needs to be improved. To speak a foreign language is not easy, without have vocabulary enough to do it efficiently however, this writing shows the acquainted learning through the diploma.

The analysis of videos, readings and movies, reflects how the Mexicans life style is quite different compared to people from other more developed countries, mainly to the American people. Mexican culture is still far underdeveloped, in the economical, political, and educational aspects. There are another aspects like: the familiar relationship, and the social behavior, that are better in Mexican people culture.

It was interesting to know how American people could grew up and became in the most important country even when they had to confront a lot of problems like Slavism, now days U.S.A. is a Country with a great variety of people from all over the world, so that, there are many cultures there, that think and feel different, however, they are living together and making the country become the authority in the world. There were some things not so good; for example, to know how they waste money in unnecessary things they throw out later without use them, also they waste a lot of energy, and besides of that, It seems that they are who more contribute to the planet destruction because of the tons of garbage they daily throw out.

It is important to reflect about what important the cultural aspects are to the secondary students to know. If they have the opportunity to learn about another culture and to compare themselves with people from other countries life style, ideology, social status, etc., that way; they will take the best things they consider will help them to make their country better. And in addition to that, they will appreciate their own values.

The world is changing teachers have to change and spend more time in activities to show and compare cultures they can talk about sports, houses, schools, and whatever thing they can reflect on, according to the topic they are teaching.

New teaching strategies discovered

Most of the teaching strategies cover the eight habits the article mentions; this diploma gave teachers the opportunity to read authentic materials like newspapers, It is a way to adapt teaching to quotidian situations, there were some chances to evaluate comprehension

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reading by doing some exercises and quizzes from the BBC site, almost in the all modules, that strategies are according to the visionary, collaborating and taking risks habits.

Telling a story is one of the most fascinating activities, it is an excellent way to students to record them. That activity and some others like; making video clips, publishing a story, the commix story, the interactive games, and many more, are good examples to adapt the curriculum and to teach in imaginative ways.

According to the reading the 21st century, “Teacher is fluent in tools and technologies that enable communication and collaboration.” Perhaps, would be better to say “has to be fluent” instead of “is fluent”, since there are many of them, that are experimenting for the first time the use of the internet to study, that is why it is necessary an intense training on technologies for them.

It is very known that most of the public schools don´t have an adequate infrastructure, there have not even computers and the internet rarely works, so that, teachers have to adapt teaching and be careful at plan the classes in order to avoid failures on objectives or projects.

Reading teaching strategies

The Foster Children’s article, Is one of the most interesting activities it is very complete. It is recommended to use this kind of activities, on them, students will practice almost all the language skills: to read, to listen, and to write; besides of that, they could enjoy playing a memory game to reinforce learning, before evaluation.

Here is the activity sequence:

Read the basic story. It is a previous summary.

Listen to the story. It will help to pay attention to the rhythm and intonation.

Read the full story. It is an investigation about a children’s home, which shows information about how a foundation is trying to keep children away from the adult’s abuse.

Watch the video. In which they interviewed a child in a children’s home in Sacramento, Ca. there, they give a number for donations and foster parents’ information.

Do listening and spelling new words exercises. To know new vocabulary will be very useful.

Play memory a game. It contents some of the sentences definition.

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Evaluate learning. Answer a quiz and wrote a comment about the article.

To read previously the summary helps to understand better the full investigation, and the video supports understanding.

Listening teaching strategies

There is a very difficult activity in the fourth module that is practicing dictation; in fact listening seems to be the most difficult skill in English.

The instructions for the practice are easy to follow, but the voices aren’t clear enough to hear them, perhaps by doing many exercises of the elementary level, it is recommended to students do as much dictation as they need to their listening could be improved, then they have to go to the next level and so on.

It has to take into count that the speaker is clear about punctuation, but He has not a good intonation, in addition to that the texts topics are not very interesting, it could be a good idea to choose more quotidian situations and a variety of speakers to make the activity easier. Another thing could work is to make the pauses a little longer since students are not able to write as fast as they dictate.

Speaking Teaching Strategies.

It is needed to know deeply how to use the voice thread site. Then it is possible to add pictures according to the functions and purposes to the students’ lesson. As an example; it could be added a pictured menu to students to practice how to ask for food in a restaurant, that contents some dishes, beverages, desserts, etc. for the first time students will do that activity, it could be a good idea to ask to students for a work bank with the vocabulary and expressions they will need, before they start practicing, in order to they can speak confidently.

Using this excellent tool will increase students knowledge, they would be happy experimenting recording and listening themselves, and their learning would be better.

Another good activity is describing a situation or place using music; It is a good option to teacher who have not internet in their schools. They can use a tape recorder. It will be also an enjoyable activity, but teachers have to plan carefully, because the secondary school classes are for only 50 minutes, perhaps they can divide the class into small groups and do that activity ones a week.

Writing teaching strategies

To develop writing the best strategies founded were:

The book review.

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A weird incident in my life.

The eye witness account model.

A descriptive story.

They are not very easy activities, however in them; it can be practiced grammar, punctuation, and capitalization.

In the book review for instance, It is necessary to reread a known story and later make the review, so students can learn some more vocabulary. In the other three ones, students have to look for vocabulary in the dictionary, which is another way to increase it. Otherwise the fact of to write and to rewrite in order to avoid and correct mistakes makes students a little faster and they little by little they will make fewer mistakes.

The recommended sites to choose a type of writing are very good and complete, they will helped very much because it is always better to find the best expressions by following a model.

All the activities are very interesting and useful, starting with the tall tales. It is a funny and very easy one, in the same way should be taken into count, writing poems, to create commixes make a video clip, all of them are excellent. Teachers, who have internet in their schools, must take advantage of it to improve their practice.

About ICT tools

Students live in a world where technology is present everywhere, it is almost in everything they do. However, when they enter a classroom, technology is absent.

Students in most of the public schools (it could be some exceptions) don’t relate classes to the real life, that’s why usually, they are not interested in class. So teachers must to promote their use, they need to take the ICT challenges and promote their use not only in the English classes, but in all subjects. They need to start by demanding to the authorities the needed equipment to make students’ learning more competitive.

The selected activities were:

Tall tales: this activity is a simple way to encourage our students, to write while having fun, besides of that, there are several models to follow so, it is easy, and teachers can focus their attention in the use of nouns and adjectives.

Comic strip file: there are many students and teachers, that can´t draw very well. With this activity they have the opportunity to use technology to create a pictured story and practice their writing. In addition to that, students can later act the story and practice speaking.

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A visual story: it is a fact; students will enjoy using their own pictures or looking in the internet, for the ones they would like to create or invent their own story.

Lesson planning

All the lessons plans the article shows are good, although they were planned for 90 minutes. However, with little practice teachers can adapt them to 50 minutes. According to most of the known teachers the nearest to the common practice is: 

Seven Steps; by Madeline Hunter: This plan model doesn’t seem to be the best; It is mostly an instructional one, perhaps, it doesn't make very independent students, because the teacher is who instructs, models, and guides the practice.

The Critical Thinking; by The Bloom's Taxonomy: seems like students have to work more by themselves; they analyze, apply, co evaluate, and self evaluate, it is a good model to planning classes.

The Instructional Scaffolding; by Jerome Bruner: gives students more freedom. It could be a good idea to try this model; it shows the way to students not only to learn, but they appropriate and internalize knowledge; they are interested in learning, and the teacher supports and helps them.

Perhaps it can’t work all the times however, teachers can start working planning by following this model and little by little the students will ask them to work in this way. Even when teachers don’t thrust on students self learning it could be a good option to get them to work for themselves.

Page | 51José Antonio Carrillo Tejeda My Learning Experience

My English language learning awareness

In module 2 “Learning to learn English through internet tools and resources” I practice different things I needed to know to have the idea on how to use the computer as well as to surf on the internet. I already knew the vocabulary that I had to know such as Mouse, clicking and double clicking, drag and drop, scrolling, pointing, check box, menu.

I also realized that working with competences is very important in order to improve my practice. I had to think about my abilities such as organize my own learning, overcome obstacles in order to learn successfully, work collaboratively and evaluate my own work. I learned that I’m a Visual/Spatial - Picture Smart learner. I also realized that I had to continue working on my grammar weaknesses such as: how to apply grammar in the reading and writing process (essays) and how to develop more confidence in my grammar abilities. 

In module 3 “Reading” I learned how to apply new reading strategies that I didn't know before and that are very important in order to have a better understanding of the text as well as better comprehension reading. I also learned how to do scanning and skimming reading which are very helpful techniques in order to have a quick understanding of a text. I learned the difference between fact and opinion. I also learned that there are four text types: instructive, descriptive, persuasive, and informative. I also read about the 20 strategies for reading comprehension.

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In module 4 “Listening” I learned how to apply different listening strategies, such as: top-down and bottom-up. I also improved my listening because I practiced stress and intonation.I understood different topics such as: minimal pairs, reading along, word stress, intonation, pause, rhythm, and tag questions.

In module 5 “Speaking” I learned how to apply different useful expressions such as "to start with", "moving on to", "another point to mention", and "to finish", among others. I also think that my speaking ability improved because I felt more confident when I had to talk about a topic. I really liked the idea of recording my own voice, it was a lot of fun and interesting as well.

In module 6 “Writing” I learned what a “tall tale” is. I also realized that I have some poem writing skills, which was something new to me. I think that commenting on someone else’s work was very interesting and enriching as well. The bookr and the comic strip websites were a very fun experience!

Cultural learning awareness

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The content that I had the opportunity to study thanks to the Diploma it was very interesting as well as fun. I think that being open to new ideas such as exploring different websites opens up a path where there are no limits to keep improving our practice but also gives us the chance to share all this information with our students in order to achieve better results.

I remember that during this Diploma there were many important activities such as: American stories where the first story I read was " A horseman in the sky", this reading is about the civil war in 1861 and how this war divided The United States. The second story I read was "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge", it was my favorite; this story was also about the civil war in the 1860's. It was about a southern prisoner who was hanged at Owl Creek Bridge. I really enjoyed the narrations.

I think it’s very important to promote activities that our students enjoy, and students love the internet, so we as teachers have to guide them and help them so they can really explode this great tool in the best way, just as we did it in this Diploma.

Some of the activities like the “Cell phone safety”, for instance, it was fantastic because our students can reflect what they’ve learnt using a website that promotes the culture of being safe while driving.

The voicethread and the comic strip websites are very helpful in order to get our students attention because these kind of sites show pictures and situations that are funny or interesting.

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To sum up, I believe that learning English can be fun and interesting, but in order to achieve our goals, we need to promote interesting-catchy activities that our students really enjoy, because I’ve learnt that there are no limits to teach and learn.

New teaching strategies discovered.

I think that the eight strategies are very much related to our practice because I totally agree that we have to be open to changes, if we want to be a 21st century teacher.

I’m a young teacher and I understand that we must be innovative and have knowledge of the technological changes. Sometimes many of our students know more about computers, websites, etc. than many teachers do, so I hardly believe that we must continue learning about the ICT (information and communication technologies).

Sometimes the economic situation in many of our students is not the ideal but I think that if we as 21st century teachers try to facilitate an innovative activity, for example when we record a dialogue from a lesson we’re being innovative and our students have the opportunity to share and practice as well as having fun when they’re listening to themselves.

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Collaborating with our students using internet tools such as: Blogger, Wikispaces, Bebo, MSN, MySpace, Second life, Twitter, RSS, is a something that we really need to use because nowadays our students spend more time in the computer; therefore we as teachers have this opportunity to

make them feel more interested by sending a homework through an e-mail rather than just handing it on a piece of paper (which is not bad though) but the real deal today is the internet so we have to be up to date.

Page | 56Reading teaching strategies

The most interesting reading activity was the: “100 short English stories.” Where I selected the reading: “English is confusing.”

I’ve chosen this activity because the website offers a great variety of readings, all of the readings are very interesting. What I liked about this activity was that I was able to check my reading comprehension. I did the following exercises: A (Yes/No), B (Wh-Questions), C (Ask Questions), dictations, vocabulary, and a crossword.

I think the activity was very complete because I was able to read and listen. The text was very clear and very well written. The task was about to mention at least one cultural element that I found in the story, so I wrote:

1.- Language: When the teacher enables students to think and communicate in the classroom.

2.- Norms: Because of the internal social control that the teacher practice with her students when she says: “Is there a soccer game tonight? It seems like there’s a soccer game every night". So the students are aware that the teacher's putting special attention to the attendance. 

3.- Values: Because the teacher wants to achieve the best results by guiding her students through a difficult topic such as participles as adjectives.

4.- Beliefs and ideologies: Because even though the students did not understand quite well at the first time, the teacher kept believing that with more practice they would understand the lesson.

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5.- Cultural integration: Because of the integration and interconnection between the students and the teacher.

*Strategies I used:

1.- Activate prior knowledge: Remember experiences, or stories regarding this topic.

2.- Ask Questions (Before, During, and After Reading): I clarified the content through all the text.

3.- Sequence events: I can identify the order of events shown in the text. I also identified steps in the process of reading.

4.- Use context clues to decipher unfamiliar words: It's very common not to understand all the words, but if I examine clues from the selection then I would be able to understand the unfamiliar words.

5.- Visualize images from text: I can create a picture in my mind of what I’m reading so I can support my comprehension reading.

Listening teaching strategies

Well, first I think that before playing the full speed version of the activity, I’d play it in a

slow mode so the students can listen to the pronunciation more carefully. Next, I’d play a

song where an African American person sings, for example Mr. BB King in “Blues Man”

where you can literally listen to the real pronunciation of a native African American

speaker, what’s more, a blues song is a very good option when we want to listen to a slow

singing performance. After that, I’d make a vocabulary of the most important words from

the activity and the song, so the students can practice along with me and the recording as

well. Then, I’d dictate some of the words from the vocabulary in a “filling blanks” activity,

so the students can practice what they’ve listened in the previous recordings. Finally, I’d

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play the recordings again and pause it as many times as necessary so everybody can be able

to listen and pronounce the difficult words.

Speaking teaching strategies

First of all I’d like to say that this module was my favorite because I really like to speak English.

I liked the activity where I recorded my own voice by using the “audacity” software, I actually have been using it since then to record many useful lessons that I’ve sent to my students.

But the activity that I like the most was the “voicethread” one because I not only had the opportunity to record my own voice but I could also listen to my colleagues when describing the images presented on the website.

I definitely think that the “voicethread” activity is very dynamic and also very helpful to our students as they can share their recordings with their peers and thus be less shy when they try to speak English.

Depending on the subject being reviewed in class, I’d choose an image of importance to my students. For example, if the subject we are studying is “clothing” I would ask my students

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to describe a picture where there are different items such as sweaters, pants, shoes, etc. The image that I’d upload to the "voicethread" website would be referring to a clothing store.

Writing teaching strategies

I’d like to mention 4 strategies that I used in order to develop my writing abilities.

Shared Writing: In shared writing, we presented different writing activities, for example, “my funniest tale” where everyone wrote about a personal experience and then we all were able to review and make comments about the works. It was very interesting to write about something funny because I think this type of activities make a more dynamic way of learning.

Interactive Writing: We all practiced on how to make an interactive poem book by using the “bookr” website. The experience was incredible because I realized that I have some poem writing skills.

Guided Writing: Another activity that was very interesting and helpful was the one at the “photopeach” website because we were able to watch a video from one of our tutors which gave us a good example in how to write captions to a slide show of pictures of our own.

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Independent Writing: We wrote a book review in which we all had the chance the opportunity to combine and practice the strategies learned.

About ICT tools

ICT plays an increasingly important role in the lives of both students and their teachers. ICT can be used to help sutdents to integrate and to enhance their English-language skills.

It sets out three principles that are essential to developing a more inclusive curriculum:

setting suitable learning challenges responding to pupils' diverse learning needs

overcoming potential barriers to learning and assessment for individuals and groups of pupils.

To support the development of students’ skills in ICT, it is particularly important to establish their degree of competence. Many schools in economically developing conditions have little or no access to ICT.

It is also important to consider a student’s competence in speaking, reading and writing English when planning suitable learning challenges. Teachers need to assess the reading demands of websites that students will use.

In order to achieve a successful teaching-learning process using ICT, we need to consider the following points:

ICT skills support basic word-processing skills

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sound-recording and/or music software which lets students participate without language barriers

using ICT as a source of information

using ICT as a research tool

using the internet

being paired with a buddy.

I’d definitely select module 5 (speaking) because I consider that this module has an excellent teaching strategy. By using the tools including in this module we have the opportunity to put into practice a more dynamic lesson for our students. This module has the essential idea of the ICT.

The tools that I consider useful for me and my students are:

Audacity software (students can record themselves)

Voicethread (students can observe images and share their opinions with their classmates)

Audio 1, 2, 3 (this is a great activity because music is always an excellent way to evoke feellings and ideas)

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The tools are out there… let’s use them!

Final comment

Being a teacher is such a wonderful experience and I consider it as great opportunity to make a difference in this life. We’re able to pour knowledge into our students and I believe this is a privilege. And exactly because of that privilege it is our responsibility to keep ourselves up to date in all the changes that come every day.

I’d like to say that I’m very happy and proud to be part of this change. I also want to send congratulations to all the teachers that participated in this Diploma.

This might be only a small step but I’m sure that it’ll be of great influence to all of our students.

I’m thankful for the opportunity given to me to be part of this wonderful experience. I would like to thank our tutor teacher Adriana Aceves Martineck because she did a great job.

Thank you very much!

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Gloria Chavarrin Millan

My Learning Experience

 I will write about the main aspects of my language learning along this program. We are

reaching the end of this program and it is time to make an analysis of the learning during all

the modules and reach some conclusions that will improve my teaching strategies and

learning. I will start by telling you that at the beginning of this diploma I was afraid,

thinking that maybe this was something I couldn´t do. I was always thinking about the

purpose of teaching English to students with different social levels and how will they have

access to different present and past cultural expressions that will help them to develop an

analytical and responsible attitude towards the problems in their communities. Having the

opportunity to learn from all the information you gave us in all the activities I was getting

in contact with some new approaches. For example, Now, I can see the difference between

the way  I can work with my students using some new strategies. They are motivated and I

am sure my students will be able to satisfy basic communication needs in a range of

familiar situations. I have improved my language learning a lot and I am sure I will

continue learning more.    

 

CULTURAL LEARNING AWARENESS                        

 

At the end of this Diploma I can say that the experience of sharing cultural knowledge

includes an awareness of multicultural heritage including popular culture. All the

information and the opportunity to improve our language and developing the essential skills

for communication involve the appreciation of cultural diversity. Having the opportunity to

share and practice with our students all the new tools to learn English while enjoying their

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favorite activities like the internet surely they will find a useful resource  that will help

them to improve their abilities. According to the interest of the students all the activities

were relaxing and they were always motivated to keep searching for different activities.

Communication in foreign languages requires knowledge of vocabulary and functional

grammar and an awareness of the main types of verbal interaction. Having the ability to

understand, express and interpret concepts, feelings, facts and opinions in oral and written

form and in an appropriate range of social and cultural contexts according to one´s wants or

needs always will represent a challenge depending of the cultural knowledge and ability to

express in other language.

Working with my students and trying to help them to develop their knowledge and the

ability to speak in English is always a challenge, but having the opportunity to learn all this

new way to teach, I think everyday will be easier to help my students.

READING TEACHING STRATEGIES

I was checking the activities on module 3 and it was very excited to experience this

opportunity again. When I did the activities I decided to practice some of them with my

students at the secondary school. I made a selection of readings, that I thought were of

interest to them, I decided for the ones where we can read and listen at the same time. The

activity in the classroom was something new, because we had been doing something similar

but listening to me or to the CD, but now they were listening and reading on the computer

screen at the same time, and that was something different, they really enjoyed the activity

and now we decided to do this kind of activity once a week. They are interested and the

motivation is great.

This kind of activities require some work setting up every time we are going to work with

them, because our classrooms are not equipped with the electrical devises and computers,

but we can arrange the material needed every time and my students are happy to help.

The strategies used in these activities are related to the habits mentioned in the text written

on the Interface article. The first habit said Adapting and that is what we do, to adapt the

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tools we have in order to make the class more interesting and motivated to our students.

The fourth habit is taking risks. Yes, have a vision of what we want and what the

technology can achieve identifying the goals and facilitate the learning. The fifth habit we

must endeavor to stay current, I wonder how many people are still using their lessons and

unit plans from several years ago, to be a teacher, you must learn and adapt as the horizons

and landscapes change.

I also pointed out that, as educators, we need to be doing the things we should be teaching

we should be teaching our students to be competitive when they leave school for the

working world.

 

LISTENING LEARNING STRATEGIES

 

The most common problem when we are learning a different language. Always people say

that their problem is listening, they can write and read but when they need to talk or listen,

difficulties appear. We listen to this problem very often and what are we doing to help our

students with it? On module 4 we    had the opportunity to learnt about many new strategies

from teachers involve in education and I found that all the activities are really interesting

and that they will help a lot our students.

One of the activities that I liked the most was the one about Intonation. What is intonation?

It is about how we say things, rather than what we say. Without intonation, it’s impossible

to understand the expressions and thoughts that go with words. Intonation can be as

important as word choice, we don’t always realize how much difference intonation makes.

Listening to the exercises in the activities I found that it is really important to teach to our

student about intonation. First we need to think that it’s difficult to hear our own intonation,

so we need to ask for help or record our voice. If we have the opportunity to practice with

somebody else reading aloud, the other person can help us listening and paying attention to

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the intonation. Some techniques I find useful for raising learners’ awareness of intonation

are:

Provide students with models.

Let students compare two examples of the same phrase.

Ask students to have a two minute conversation in pairs talking with no intonation, so they

can listen to the difference-

Get students to imitate my intonation-

.

Because reading aloud and talking is one of the most difficult activities to do with my

students I think that: it’s important that students are aware of the strong link between

intonation and attitude. Motivation is a key in this kind of activities.

WRITING TEACHING STRATEGIES

 

All the writing activities were very interesting and gave me the opportunity to learn a lot

about writing, but my favorite was listening to music to generate writing productions and

descriptive places. It was the first time I did something like this, it is often said that music

expresses the soul of  people; even without a text we can share a feeling or a mood,

particularly with instrumental music. The culturally sensitive individual is often the better

language learner and culture assimilator. At the end of the melody I was able to write and

describe a place giving the opportunity to my senses to emerge. The experience was unique

and I decided to give the same opportunity to my students, so I prepare a musical

assignment for them. It was a great challenge to choose the music, because I was thinking

on what would they like? Finally I did everything and took it to my class. First when I

explained the activity their faces were expressing excitement, so I played a short piece of

familiar music for the class and ask them what it makes them think of. Then we listened to

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another one and I asked them to be more specific about the scene they could see, and

described it. I was remembering them that there was no right answer or image, just different

interpretations. At this moment they were ready to write about the place the selected.

All the writing was very interesting and the students were motivated to do this activity. The

time required for the students performance of the activity will depend upon the language

ability of the students. We need to remember that higher level students will produce longer

stories. Talking about materials they are very easy to arrange, just need a tape player and a

pre-recorded tape. Also we need some sort of evaluation sheet to assign a grade.

Music is a part of our history and also a part of our every  day lives, we should be able to

talk about it and express how we feel about it. Even if you don’t care about music you will

find this activity with a lot of fun. However, many students have said how much they

enjoyed creating and telling these imaginary stories. Now I can say that this kind of

assignment will stay with me.

SPEAKING TEACHING STRATEGIES

I decided to give my students the opportunity to record their voices and have the experience

of listening them speaking. Well, we worked with a CD recorder and my students were

excited about the activity. What I did? First I explained to my students the purpose of the

activity. I divided the group into two parts. Then they arranged the CD recorder to the

middle of the group and they chose the person in charge of the activity. After that I began

giving the instructions:

First look carefully to the CD recorder and then explain the other students the use of the

different parts of the recorder next take your places and wait for instructions.

Before you begin you should be ready with the text you are going to record. Don´t forget to

talk directly and close to the microphone because that is the best place to record.

The next step is to begin recording so as soon as you are ready begin by pressing the

recording button and begin talking. By pressing again you will stop the recording. If you

want to listen to the recording go to the play button and press it, next you will listen to your

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recording. If you are not agree with this recording you can do it again by doing the same

procedure from the beginning.

The last thing you do after checking the recording is to save the CD and save it for the next

class. Thank you

 

LESSON PLANNING

 

I chose Madeline Hunter’s plan model because is the one that goes with my context, beside

it is the one that has all the steps that we use and that I like, First the Anticipatory set, it is

important to get our students attention. Second State the objectives, always our students

need to know what are they going to do and make them sure that they can do the activity.

Third Instructional input, we have to be sure our students understand our instructions in

order to have success in the activity and the learning. Fourth Modeling, demonstrate our

students, give them enough examples. Fifth Check for understanding, if you are not sure

that they understand, you must repeat the instructions until they understand, be sure to ask

questions. Sixth Guided practice, be sure to help your students with the practice of new

skills and knowledge. Seventh Independent Practice, now the students work on their own.

Teaching implies a series of organization tasks. The teacher needs to determine how to

optimally arrange the physical space in which learning is happen. Interaction is

fundamental to learning. It is the teacher´s responsibility to establish and encourage

respectful and purposeful interactions with students.

The only thing that I would add to this plan is evaluation, it is important to understand that

evaluation is in fact a mechanism to obtain information about students achievement, but at

the same time, it is a source of information for the teacher to learn about his / her own

performance.

 

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ICT TOOLS

 

The use of Information and Communication Technologies in teaching a second language is

a great tool because nowadays our students are totally involve in technologies, the use all

those accessories make them people with different abilities to manage and work with new

possibilities of learning. Now you can see our students sending messages all the time or

listening to music, all of them have cell phones and they even have computers in their

homes, so technology is there. Then why not take advantage from all this situations.

At our school we have science classrooms and there you can access to internet so all our

students can work at the same time with the same activity, this helps us a lot because

they really like to work with computers. When I was working on module 6 I found very

interesting activities that I can work with my students. I think we need to take

advantage of this opportunity.

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Tomás Cordova Lara My Learning Experience

Main aspects of my language learning

Undoubtedly, I have learnt from the many possibilities available on internet to improve my English skills in writing, reading, speaking and listening. I improved my social competences interacting with my classmates. My cultural awareness was increased with the information I read in the interesting sites that were given to me in the course, and my digital competences improved, according to the time I used the computer and the tools that I found in it, which are very useful for my teaching practice.

Using the technology was a very important aspect in the course, because it helped me to identify my weaknesses and strengths, through the usage of internet websites and a wide variety of activities that I found very helpful in these sites.

Being aware of learning needs, helped me to find the way to reach a higher English level, reflecting on my own learning and strategies I used, to solve problematic situations presented in the several aspects of a foreign language, such as reading, writing, listening, vocabulary and grammar.

According to the English competence level I started with (B1), my writing, reading, speaking and listening skills improved significantly along this diploma course.

Using several tools such as movies, websites, forums, videoconferences, chartrooms, recordings, reading techniques, etc, it was possible to improve my language learning.

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Cultural awareness

When students have a certain knowledge about something they are studying, this cause in them an interest that motivates them to continue learning and to know more about some topics.

The section of cultural awareness studied along the course, provided a lot of information that I think is very important and useful for the students, so they can understand the usage and purpose of a foreign language. Besides that, when several issues such as the origins and the history of the foreign language that they are studying, as well as the contextual elements of the tongue are explained to them, they feel motivated to continue researching that information that help them to have further reflections on the use of language. So if students work with the several websites that were provided along the course, they would have a background that will help them to understand the several meanings of the expressions used in a foreign language. So, I think that using movie clips, helps to students to reach a good level of communicative ability.

When students compare their native culture with cultures from other countries, they can find differences and similarities in each culture as well as bring off some values that can be found in the clip film.

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New teaching strategies

As teachers of a highly spoken language around the world, we are demanded to be updated about our profession. As a professional in education we have to develop some skills necessary to comply with the needs or requirements of our students. So as 21st century teachers we need to apply some of the following abilities for our 21st century learners:

Adapting: we must be creative adapting all the elements from several contexts to apply them in class according to our students´ needs, including technology. Teachers must be able to use a variety of strategies to make the class functional.

Being visionary: As teachers, we must research tools and several resources to use them in class. Teachers of nowadays have to look for new ideas to improve their teaching practice.

Collaborating: According to the new approach of teaching foreign languages in secondary school, teachers must promote collaborative activities through the use of websites and forums, besides of other activities, so students can exchange ideas and knowledge.

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Taking risks: Something that we as teachers have to understand, is that sometimes we can´t assist every need of our students. In that way, is necessary to trust in the skills that our students posses and let them to use them to get them involved in their knowledge process.

Learning: Every day we spent in our lives equals to a set of knowledge we get, so we as teachers have to try different ways to teach a topic and promote the continuous learning in our students.

Communicating: According to nowadays needs of our students, teachers have to find the way to assist students anywhere and anytime, no matter the distance or schedule. So keeping in touch or communicated through the use of technology and its advantages is very necessary and useful for teachers and students.

Modeling behavior: According to the expectations about what a teacher has to teach, including values, teachers teach to students with their behavior, that they are reliable people and that is possible to accept opinions from students when something is wrong with the

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teaching practice, as well as the ability to reflect themselves about their own teaching practice.

Leading: Besides the other skills I have mentioned before, teachers must be able to lead student to achieve the most of the goals that were set in each unit or topic.

Reading teaching strategies

Reading while they listen a text is something that students can really enjoy. Some stories could be easy and funny for them, as well as they can improve their reading skills using some strategies like facts and opinions, scanning and skimming. When students read more, they have more chance to understand the texts. So, here you will find some of the activities for reading practice that I choose:

The first activity I choose was “Health and safety in construction identifying information.” In this activity, students used both: skimming and scanning. I considered both were necessary to get first a general idea of the text and to answer the questions of the activity.

The second activity was “Words in the news”. This kind of sites helps students to learn vocabulary. It is a very useful tool that help students to improve and expand their vocabulary through the readings and listening the audios of the texts and with the several

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meanings of a word that they can find in this kind of sites that I consider are very attractive to students because these sites aren´t boring and they can interact, listen and repeat the words or phrases in each section for vocabulary.  

Some difficult activities

One of the most difficult activities that I found in module four was the practicing dictation. Probably because the selection of the text was not adequate to the interest of the listener. The listening comprehension of the text was a kind of confusing and several words were changed when were written because of the accent of the narrator. The instructions were clear, the length of the text was acceptable and the intention of the task was good, even though the details that were mentioned before.

Another difficult activity for secondary students that I found in fourth module was top down listening because of the complexity of language for students with a basic level of vocabulary and how difficult could be for them to understand the meaning of the phrases according to context they are used.

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And finally the Funky phrasal verbs which even though some of them were familiar for me, I consider that for a very basic level of language in students of public secondary school could be a kind of hard and confusing for them.

The most useful activities: Speaking teaching strategies.

Well, I actually found all the activities in the fifth module very useful and helpful for my classes. These kinds of activities were an excellent chance for students to dialogue and practice their oral skills. For students of English as a Second Language, to develop oral activities is the most difficult, because of the time they use to practice the language. So having access to the several websites, allows them to raise their level in that foreign language. These places are interactive and students can communicate each other.

In addition to that, the activities I enjoyed the most were the ones where I used Audacity program and Voice Thread. This was an excellent experience as a learner and as a Teacher. I decided to use the recordings with Audacity for my students because of the short time for English classes( three hours a week)and we have to develop Speaking strategies so they can record and hear themselves and practice a Foreign Language

Even though, this module was for me one of the most challenging, I feel very glad of could share comments with some people of the Diploma course.

Writing teaching strategies

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This course was very helpful for me because I had the opportunity to practice several skills, especially in the writing module, where I really enjoyed doing several types of writings.

I consider that is possible to apply this strategy to my students, not pretending very long and complex texts, but maybe encouraging them to express their ideas in a very simple and clear way using very basic vocabulary.

Watching movies with grammar is another excellent choice, where you can design exercises from a film clip and develop writing skills in your students in a fun and attractive way.

About the activity for writing poems, I think that February is the perfect time to implement this strategy, because of the romantic staff and the Valentine´s Day.

By the other hand, accessing to the websites to get the elements to write a funny story is a good strategy to improve writing skills that can be used at any time of the year.

About ICT tools

Nowadays, ICT is a very necessary and important tool that we as ESL teachers should consider to use in our everyday teaching practice. Because of the needs and features of our students that use technology in their daily lives, ICT helps them to develop skills to learn a foreign language and to react better before the learning-teaching process.

Along the module, we realized a wide variety of tools on the internet, but I have to choose three of them, so the ones I consider are more useful and practical for my English classes are:

Recording audio (audacity): Because promote in students an autonomous learning and detect mistakes from their voice recordings to improve stress, intonation, accent, etc.

American stories: Because students can find and compare a text with its audio and expand their vocabulary.

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And the sites with music and lyrics, because it is a very attractive way for them to learn new words and practice their pronunciation, besides express ideas in a more clear way using and practicing tough groups.

Lesson plans

Planning is one of the most important elements of our teaching practice that should be considered to set the goals of each unit and the activities that students need to practice such as group, individual and pair work. So, the closest lesson plan model for my needs was Hunters´ seven steps:

1. Objectives: Explaining to students the purpose of objectives necessary to be achieved in each unit that they are studying.

2. Anticipatory set: Because is necessary to know the prior knowledge of our students to present them the topic´s information.

3. Instructional input: Presenting to our students the information in written texts4. Modeling: Because students can generate ideas from model texts from their text

books.

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5. Guided practice: To students can improve oral skills and to interact with their classmates.

6. Independent practice: To generate autonomous learning in our students generating their own ideas and reflecting how can the use the language to exchange information and ideas with their classmates.

7. Checking for comprehension on each activity: The teacher has to check that students really understand each activity and the process of each step in every unit.

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Carlos Cornejo Carbajal My Learning Experience

In these past months I discovered many things about my performance as an English

as a Second Language teacher that I must have denying during a long time. The routinary

and bureaucratic activities have passed me out. This course it has been totally satisfactory

for my teaching practice and self-esteem growing.

One of the things I consider is

very important for an English teacher is

to discover your own communicative

skills in order to transmit these to other

persons. I understand that teaching is an

evolving professional activity and if

you are aware of that you definitely lose

an important point of your career.

Applying successful reading

techniques like scanning and skimming because they help you to improve the process of

acquiring information. The constant reading practice focus on clarification of your ideas

becomes a habit where you must make your own definitions clearer than when you were

not taking special attention on important details.

This personal introspection serves me to clarify my goals on the developing of

reading and writing habits. The personal image of high performance professional makes

you design special programs to encourage you to progress as an English non native speaker

and not stay in mediocrity.

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Reading, listening speaking and writing are skills that sounded quite trivial and

obvious to me, but after these course I realize how significant are to establish a solid

grammatical language structure. When you pay attention to details the whole figure gets

more understandable and comprehensive.

Different ways you could focus your students’ attention to English language and

culture

It is not “mission impossible” but it sounds very struggling from the start. Nowadays is

very important to demonstrate in a practical form to our students that English is not only a

subject in their curricula but a key tool to enter to totally different world, no matter what

your socioeconomical condition is.

Is very urgent to get in touch with our students before we lose the in this sea of

information. The immense majority of them they are not involved in cultural language

activities, not even we as English Teachers and we could find out the a distinctive life

perspective is in front of ours without getting notice.

The major problem I detect in my students is the shamefully attitude toward

speaking in a different language and is easy to understand because they make a direct

comparison with native English speakers, but they do not dissertate the major differences

and similitude among all world cultures. The unusual capacity of get and give information

trough the web is our allied in this battle. Find out links that are specially designed for

teenagers devoid of prejudices, revise sites

and give them links that could result

interesting for their age, be empathetical.

Try with catch-eye images that

resemble their interests no matter is not

directly related with the English course.(Your

job is to establish a relation of the attractive

activity with the curricula) .

As an example in the Unit 1 People

and Animals in first grade I use a coloring

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book with professional wrestlers ( John Cena, Big Show, Randy Orton, etc…) and with the

same adjectives they use to describe their classmates they described their favorite wrestlers.

I used the media in my favor not against me.

Hi ! I´m John Cena.

I´m a Professional Wrestler.

I am handsome and attractive.

I have blue eyes.

I have short, straight, light brown hair.

I have pale skin.

I´m friendly, charming, eccentric, unpredictable, aggressive and audacious.

YOU CAN´T SEE ME!

The Habits of Highly Effective Teachers of the 21st Century

The upgrading of teaching skills must obey directly to the problems we are

confronting directly in the classroom. Innovation and adaptation to the new shifting society

is a personal goal for every teacher. The problem consists objectively in present these

varying actions in the most

attractive possible way to our

students.

The pragmatism in

combination with job and

life competences is a major

step we should take without

letting any of our students

out of this transformation.

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We are not merely information reproducers, but instead we are the guides to a new vision

of life.

Today’s educator is pressured in any possible way with important curricula changes,

ICT skills, and major sociocultural changes. We should be proactive collaborators in the

building of the new social knit. The technology factor is a very important teaching resource

because it deals with the immediacy of commentaries of the learning outcome.

Working in education pairs (teacher-student) put us in an interchanging position

with our students who become sometimes our own teachers. We do not have to hesitate in

actualization because we are serving as role models in society. Social and intellectual

leadership gives our student confidence in the pedagogical interaction.

Political leaders are now turning their heads in the direction of educators because

we are now more involved than other social actors in the problems that inflict in the people.

The adoption of this fresh and innovative posture to confront tribulations should obtain

tangible results in the conformation of the new generation of learners.

Reading Teaching Strategies Used and the Effect They Had on Your ESL Learner

In this module READING I learned a lot about the different texts we could use to

introduce our students to reading. The real life and news texts are very useful to keep the

students attention and at the same time give useful information.

Teach student’s strategies like inferring form a context and deducing a complete

message from a text. In order to get a personal a whole personal idea you should encourage

students to do general questions (What, Where, Why, When, Who, etc…) to predefine the

reading objective.

The identification of texts types (Instructive, persuasive, informative, descriptive) is

very helpful to recognize the author´s purpose and how the text should interpreted.

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A group of hints and tips applied directly while you are reading make this more

effective and significant to the beginner reader because gives an instant reward on the

knowledge acquisition.

The use of skimming and scanning techniques is one of the exercises that becomes a

must on internet sites reading because highly upgrades to identify ideas that could be

valuable to our own objective.

The use of images and multimedia resources certainly improves the reader’s

attention and focus to the text. Using these sensorial tools to make more vivid and

comfortable the reading experience for a better comprehension.

Explain how the listening activity could have been easier

The cultural awareness we have as ESL teacher is one of the factors we must

consider to move up to the next level (B2). Recognizing the different stress types definitely

facilitates the recognition of ideas trough listening so we can predict the most relevant parts

of a discourse.

Identifying the models of bottom up and top down listening help we to understand

the thinking process that should be

selected instinctively after have the

habitual practice in quotidian and formal

activities.

Paying special attention to details

and intonation would make easier to define

the emotional characteristics of the audio

message that it is should be understood.

The rhythm and pace applied on

the listening activities could be

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homogenized with the way we express the ideas to make a coordinated relation transmitter

–receptor.

Conversational and read along activities develop listening skills necessary to

reproduce native speaking models that we could not easily have the opportunity to confront

during our life. The detection of a specific accent to modify the mental mechanism that it

will use to decipher the message without putting a barrier in the search for acceptable

meaning.

Practicing listening in a practical way devoid of formal devices builds up the sense

of confidence and sociocultural integration to the English language.

Identify the Main Teaching Strategies Used In Order To Develop Your Writing

Ability

Writing is a process that requires ten percent inspiration and ninety percent transpiration.

The difficulties to start writing come directly from the lack of motivation and apathy to

obtain the writing habit. The acquisition of the writing skills is a long and steady process

that has to be cultivated trough the years. Today´s culture of synthesis of written texts has

placed the writing skills in one of the lasts in the list of job and life competences.

The first step is the hardest because you have to dust off the brain with easy mental

exercise to wake up the imagination and

launch up the grammatical and

semantical brain fields. Establish a good

strategic foundation will increase the

possibility of continue with this activity as

a routine.

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The use of templates to write poems and short stories is a simple method to warm

up the sensibility. As long as you continue to create written products the quality of these

ones will be better. You must follow some procedure that have been used for many years

like writing easy short stories that have to be published and revised to complete the entire

process.

Using quotidian activities to describe or anecdotic situations, like vacations,

holidays, or significant events in your life that could generate the extra incentive that is

need to craft a good piece of writing.

Use any opportunity to express yourself in a correct written form no matter if it is

an e-mail response or a twitter contribution use the appropriate grammar, spelling and

composition rules that certainly will differentiate from the whole.

Writing is the beginning for reading and these two habits are the ones that can be

suitable for define a role in today’s English learners and teachers.

How You Could I Use the Speaking Activities my Students

The developing of speaking skills in a language it should a major priority. The

interchange and exposure of ideas conform one of the most important aspects of the social

practices of the language.

In order of enhance the students’ abilities to a new level we should dedicate a

minimum quote of the class to speaking. These two starting levels (A1, A2) are basic for

future productive contacts with the language.

Is extremely important that the English student can recognize his own level of

fluency and naturalness in the use of the language in oral productions. Make

comparison trough recordings of his oral skills displayed as a group of articulated

sounds that can be evaluated by himself as external listener.

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The Audacity program is exceptionally useful because it is friendly software that

does not further technical training, specialized installation or pay a costly fee for it. The

Student can simply record a conversation, discourse or any speaking production (poems,

jokes, articles, songs, etc…) to analyze the speaking results.

In the voicethread program is a technical advantage that it could be use in the

native language to express with audio caption a visual presentation, The addition of voice

opinions to any illustration it simply boost the pedagogical power and significance to the

leaner’s mind.

The videoconference and phone conference can be used as the real life activity

simulator with the use of two computers and with the use of a script or conversation guide

the students can imagine instant penpals or foreign students.

The use of technology on the beginner´s level is essential and nowadays the

language learning websites and multimedia equipment it open undiscovered gates trough

learning.

Information and Communication Technologies

Information and communication Technologies (ICT) have been used in Language

Learning for a long time. The main difference between today´s ICT´s and yesterday´s is the

affordability and the capacity to get in touch with a vast number of people in matter of

seconds.

Analyzing this course according to the amount of information employed it has been

extremely satisfactory. There are websites from different institutions and organizations that

fulfill all your expectations and so much more.

It is hard to believe that for every aspect of English Learning process there are many

options to practice and exercise the English skills.

I have already used some of these websites in my English class because I have an

Enciclomedia equipped classroom that is especially adequate for this purpose.

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I used one of the BBC skillwise site applications that describes people, places

and things in one of my second grade classes. The students really like the game style

format of the site. The instant gratifications of the test results as well as the digital

certificate of the activity are very attractive for English students.

I selected the makebeliefscomix.com site as one of the most interesting and practical

because it is easy to use and suitable for any age and language. This tool gives us a

practical variety to produce written texts or oral illustrated scripts.

In the speaking module the user can record their own speeches using Audacity Program

that simplifies the use of a digital recorder that actually compares rhythm and pronunciation

in short audio texts.

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LESSON PLANNING

After the analysis of the different lesson plan methods I consider that the one who

fits the best with my teaching style and class needs is:

The Madeline Hunter lesson plan format:

(Seven-element format:  just one way to structure a lesson; developed for math classes)

Anticipatory Set (setting the stage)--attention-getter and focuser

Statement of Objectives--tell students what they'll be able to do as a result of the

lesson.

Instructional Input--lecture, but not necessarily lecture: demo, explanation,

instructions.

Modeling--demonstrate, show what you tell.

Check for Understanding--watch faces, asks questions.

Guided Practice--help students start practicing new skills, applying new knowledge

Independent Practice--turn them loose to work on their own, homework,

assignment, etc…

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This is my interpretation of the Madeline Hunter´s lesson plan format using

military terms.

Today´s education is a war that cannot be fight without a tactical plan. Even the

greatest, clever and most experimented General needs a strategy to win battle after battle.

You must be very careful in the selection of the weapons of mass instruction you are going

to use in every minute of the 50 minutes combat.

To define this class-battle planning must designed with the following characteristics:

Use your objectives plan obtained from

your superiors ( English Secondary

Program 2006)

Investigate the battlefield to confront the

objective.

Choose the correct method according to

your enemy´s weaknesses and strengths.

Be clear on your orders and instructions so your troops can attack the objectives

with confidence and determination.

Encourage the soldiers to give an extra effort to be triumphant in the daily battle.

Every single aspect of organization is as important as any other.

Be careful with your material supplies. ( Don´t let you students go to fight

barehanded against missiles)

Change your strategy continuously do not let the enemy predicts your attack.

Be creative remember that the best leader is not the one who confronts the opponent

in a tougher way but the one who can make the more alliances.

“So be brave and do not hesitate against the vicissitudes you could find on the path

way of victory”

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Diana Eréndira Fernández JaimeMy Learning Experience

“Growing internationalization, the rapid pace of change, and the continuous roll-out of new technologies mean that Europeans must not only keep their specific job-related skills up-to-date, but also possess the generic competences that will enable them to adapt to change. People’s competences also contribute to their motivation and job satisfaction in the workplace, thereby affecting the quality of their work.”

Ján Figel’

The practice of English; speaking, reading, listening, writing, of course, grammar,

vocabulary, pronunciation, and others are important, so it is s to learn the way to do it by

Internet, how to use the Internet tools, and this Diploma for English teachers gave us an

excellent opportunity to learn much more about it. It’s amazing the material for teachers

and students we can find in the internet, they are great, easy, fun and for all kind of

students.

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Working with large groups as I do, it is imperative to have students work sometimes in

groups and some times in pairs, always with meaningful, interesting activities. They feel

very comfortable and feel confident this way and like to participate in class, It is very

important to give a variety of activities to avoid boring classes including games, songs,

competences, grammar, stories, movies when possible, and outside activities.

 

It is a big responsibility to work with children and teens, it’s up to us to make them

successful and glad to learn English language, but it also is a great experience!. I feel very

motivated when I see the results of this effort.

Cultural Learning Awareness

In the sites and different speaking activities, I learnt more about the English speaking

community.  English from different countries, diversity of people from different

contexts, different culture and their typical expressions.  All these activities enriched my

knowledge of the language and the world.

About the English Speaking Community, I could differentiate between the English spoken in

England and the English spoken in America.  I could understand better the English from

England and I realized that my pronunciation it's not too bad, only when speaking with

native languages speakers, sometimes I could get nervous and fail.

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I was very pleased to be in contact with the English language from another countries and

places. It was great.  For me is very interesting and important to be aware and well

informed about what’s happening in the world. l will try to have my students experiencing

this maybe linking my subject with technology class to have access and help using the Web,

and another resources could be magazines, newspapers, articles, etc. Of course I want

to continue with these helpful practices.

New Teaching Strategies Discovered

As a language learner and teacher, I know that it's very important the practice of English

language, speaking, reading, listening, writing, of course, grammar, vocabulary,

pronunciation, etc, .  In this Diploma I discovered for first time many places existing in the

Net Web to learn and practice English every time we can, with a great variety and for all

kind of learners, where we can have a great language progress in  all areas, but, most

important, I learnt the way to do it, how to use the Internet tools, the interesting material

we can find there.  

I learned to prepare a speech using the strategies you taught me and I hope to teach my

students: The correct way to prepare it, the best way to do it, knowing how to start, how to

catch the audience attention.

The activity with the karaoke system is some of the funniest for students as well as: “How

to make tales”, “How to tell stories”, “The Bookr site” and the “Make beliefs

comics.com”.

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The readings and the movie segments were great. This kind of activities make classes more

interesting with more variety and fun if we select movies which students like, and they are

very helpful to teach grammar and whatever.

That’s why when I read the “Eight habits of highly effective 21st century teachers”,

according with the Common European Framework for Key Competences, I realized that

you were preparing us to be one of those ones.

1. Communication in the mother tongue

2. Communication in foreign languages

3. Mathematical competence and basic competences in science and technology

4. Digital competence

5. Learning to learn

6. Social and civic competences

7. Sense of initiative and entrepreneurship

8. Cultural awareness and expression

Reading Teaching Strategies

When I have a Reading activity with my students in Secondary School, I use to start with some images or questions to activate prior knowledge. It could be questions about the images, or questions about some topic or about the title of the reading. In this phase I make my students practice skimming of the reading looking for the main idea and scanning looking for new words or something else.

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Listening Teaching Strategies

Listening to me and listen to others in my situation was very helpful to improve in speaking,

among the appropriate and important use of the stress, pauses and intonation when

speaking. 

Although I thought there was one more difficult than others; In BBC Skills Wise there were

listening that once you listened you have to follow instructions or answer questions in

worksheets.

In the final step of the activity the students will summarize information, maybe they’ll do some predictions and will write it down or draw the main idea of the text. Some students will read it to the whole class.

I already practiced some of the strategies you gave me for the class and I have to say that it was a satisfactory experience. I have learned many others that I will put in practice in the future.

I liked all the activities in Module 3 about reading strategies, but the best one is “Texts from BBC World in the News”. This activity integrates Reading, Listening, Watching a Video and Vocabulary Activities, the best way to learn.

In the “Listening Module” I found many activities to practice listening and strategies to learn. All of them creative, interesting and useful.

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This activity was more difficult because there was no reading or lyrics. The speech was

very fast and with strange accent, with no opportunities to rewind or read, but when I

used the strategies you taught me, I could do it easier.

The strategies I used were:

Try to choose familiar topics to use my previous knowledge.

Top down listening and Bottom up listening. (Sometimes I had to rewind and listen

again)

Word stress, pauses, rhythm, intonation.

Speaking teaching strategies

Writing teaching strategies

I am aware that I need and must practice a lot of listening activities regardless of what I do in teaching school. The better I do, the better my students learn!

I think the activity of developing oral production through the stages of planning, practice and publishing was one of the most interesting, funny and quite entertaining. I liked to learn about the program Audacity; recording my stories and describe situations and listening myself because I didn’t use to do it before. What a experience! we can know a lot about ourselves just listening to ourselves. I enjoyed all the activities but the one that would be more practical and funny to use with my students is definitely de Voice thread site because students could have variety: fun, cultural awareness, practice speaking and vocabulary. After preparing the classroom with multimedia, my students had been preparing a speech about some one given for me to students. Maybe 50 min. in not enough, but they can do it in more.

The Writing module was one of the most productive and interesting in which we had to boost our brain and with the great help of the net sites to create different types of writing such as: Tales, Poems, Stories, and describe people and places.

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About ICT Tools

The ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) is nowadays a tool absolutely

necessary in our daily jobs teaching English due to the kind of students we have on these

modern times. Students react better working with technology.

When I read the “Eight habits of highly effective 21st century teachers”, I realized that you

were preparing us to be one of those ones.

It was very funny and interesting to do our own commix strip in the net site “make beliefs.com”.

“The 21st century teacher is fluent in tools and technologies that enable communication and collaboration”.

“They see the potential in the emerging tools and Web technologies”.

“Visionary teachers can look at others’ ideas and envisage how they would use these in their class”.

We also learned how to do it, how to follow a sequence, the correct use of the tenses and new vocabulary as phrasal verbs and typical expressions.

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The best tools that I found more useful for my learning and appropriate for my students

are:

The Randall’s ESL Cyber Listening Lab. Excellent for all kind of levels and very

complete, with quizzes, vocabulary lessons, language learning and life tips.

The Australia Network, English bites Site is excellent, there we can find different

stories, world culture, and many others options as listening, exercises, vocabulary,

etc.

The BBC Learning English Site, excellent to practice pronunciation, intonation,

grammar and vocabulary. Excellent for teachers and students.

Of course the sites with music and lyrics, identifying thought groups and the sites to

learn word stress intonation, pause, and rhythm.

Movie Segments and Grammar.

The Audacity Program where students can practice recording and listening their

voices using a correct intonation and pronunciation.

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Lesson Planning

The lesson plan model I consider more appropriate for my context is the “Madeline

Hunter’s Seven steps”, due to the kind of students existing in the Secondary school where

I work and the way I plan my lessons every day.

This is Madeleine Hunter’s seven steps Plan Model:

Anticipatory Set (setting the stage)--attention-getter and focuser

Statement of Objectives--tell students what they'll be able to do as a result of the

lesson

Instructional Input--lecture, but not necessarily lecture: demo, explanation,

instructions

Modeling--demonstrate, show what you tell

Check for Understanding--watch faces, ask questions

Guided Practice--help students start practicing new skills, applying new knowledge

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Independent Practice--turn them loose to work on their own, homework assignment,

etc.

I have students with absent parents, many times living with only one, always working in

factories or low paid jobs, the students are neither well fed, so, I need to help them to be

interested in learning a new lesson.

First, I need to grab their attention with images, questions, tape listening, play or reading

of their interest concerning to the new lesson. After the exposition to the topic I do

questions or give examples to make them reflect about it.

After working with the new information with students and they have more comprehension I

proceed to ask them to work freely using the new knowledge.

Finally, at the end of the activities, the students show their final work o the whole class and/or

share their works with others to compare or check.

My Final Reflection

We began acquiring abilities to learn through internet, discovering our learning styles,

learning to organize our time, and identifying our grammar strengths and weaknesses

where I found out that I need more practice with phrasal verbs, phrases with other

meaning and  expressions regularly or commonly used in United States, so I need to read

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more books in English, to speak English with other persons and visit places where English

language is spoken.

We continue learning and discovering more strategies and improving our skills in

grammar, writing, reading, listening and speaking. Although sometimes it wasn’t easy due

to external and not expected situations, it always was enjoyable and satisfactory to learn

new things and discover new interesting net sites everyday.

We learn more to have our students enjoying these kind of classes in the future. Having

the advantages of technology in class, we may prepare  excellent, interesting and  fun

classes for our students.  

Finally I want to thank you all (SEBS-SEP, CELE-UNAM, TUTORS, TEACHERS), for

giving English teachers this great opportunity to get the tools and learning to improve our

skills as teachers. To our tutors for their excellent guide and valuable help every day.

Congratulations to all the teachers for their good job, good attitude and comments. They

did a great effort working everyday to accomplish this great Diploma.

Thanks,

Jannet Flores de la Cruz.

My learning experience

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Distance education innovation enables to respond to the educational necessities of different

sectors. The teacher should know variety about they face in the process of teaching and

learning with elements of the Internet, aid to be properly trained in this educational method.

We know that technology changes rapidly, more cost effective and more powerful

technologies will continue to emerge of potential use in education. At the same time,

evidence shows that, once installed in schools, ICTs continue to be used for the life of the

functioning life of the technology, whether or not newer, more cost effective and powerful

technologies emerge.

Some months ago, I decided to apply to this Diplomado in order to devote to study and

achieve a higher English level through Internet.

This has been worked followed the recommended web tools in each activity as listening

and Reading along, matching games, asking quizes, listening songs or radio podcast for

stress and intonation. It was used technological ítems as microphone and headphones to

record monologues using a software(audacity). It was very interesting and funny to write

short texts, the poems, the video. Those were shared to the web.

I’ll say that all the strategies learned in each activity have to be practiced to developed the

abilities (listening, speaking, writing and reading), our teaching is going to be successful

and the students are going to use the language as a mean of communication that can be

useful in their cotidian life, now and further more.

About Reading.

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The objective in this module was to develop fluent and independent readers .It was used a

number of skills and strategies to facilitate comprehension through Reading interesting

texts, listening and reading along, filling exercises presented in different web sites.

Important Reading strategies as skimming, used for knowing just to what the text is about,

scanning, to locate specific information, understanding relations between parts of text

through lexical cohesive devices and identifying the main point in the piece of discourse.

Also vocabulary, its knowledge is important and necessary to start reading in L2,

strategies like deducing and inferring meaning from unknown words were put in practice.

By Reading, could help to know and learn about other cultures. Reading a variety of texts

in another language makes us be aware of our cultural differences and similarities in beliefs

and attitudes.

About listening.

In this module, the objective exposed was to improve our listening skills and strategies by

means of top-down and bottom-up listening as well as listening for stress and intonation.

A bottom up and minimal pairs listening that were recommended in some sites were

designed for working a little every day, the listening are on a variety of topics, and are

relatively short in length.

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Minimal pairs are words which have exactly the same pronunciation except for one sound.

I`ll say that the exercises about listening minimal pairs were very useful for noticing the

difference in pronunciation which many times it`s difficult to identify. The exercises were

not so difficult to me but I think that practicing more exercises like these help us in our

learning and teaching

English. Besides, to listen many songs, many conversations, videos, films, news, can help

too.

About the importance of having a correct pronunciation following some rules, as in multi-

syllable words where the stress falls on one of the syllables while the other syllables tend to

be spoken over quickly. It was new to know the 8 common word stress patterns in English

and tonic stress, emphatic stress, contrastive stress in order to have a proper intonation.

English uses variation in tone (how something is said to indicate importance, an emotion,

seriousness, irony, sarcasm, etc.), pitch (voice going up or down), word stress, and in

general a sort of melodic variation or rhythm in speaking which if it were absent would

make English sound very monotonous. Several links on intonation were explored , several

of them on YOU TUBE. This could help to pay attention when it was listened, knowing

when someone will stop speaking, listen for questions, answers, tone, etc.

Songs were listened in order to notice though groups, it means the pauses between ideas we

have to do when we speak. This is necessary to keep related words together so that we are

comprehensible. Finally, practicing dictation was an activity that I liked very much.

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About speaking

In order to develope this skill it was recommended to practice and record some activities

having access to resources and tools which allow to plan, practice, record and publish

activities which let raise my English level, through to be able to produce simple

connected text on topics which are familiar to describe experiences and events, so as briefly

give reasons and explanations for opinions.

It was used technological items as

microphone and headphones to record

monologues using a software(audacity

program and voice thread) being

evaluated by a rubric in each activity.

Through this software I could listen my

own voice in the records giving

opinions about topics from current life

and famous people, as well the other

participants. Also I had the opportunity

to have a videoconference with a

partner to talk about the raise of taxes.

When you communicate orally with other

people, you need to pay attention to several

aspects of your speech. Being honest, this is

the most complicated skill of the four ones for

me; continue practicing it is the way as I am

going to be fluent in.

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About writing

I have had a good time writing, illustrating and publishing writings, it was funny. I used

some tutorials and templates to create my writings as well as web tools to publish them. I

have to say that this module was my favorite. About the Works whose were doing that I

can name are:

Tall tales, a very interesting activity where it was possible to practice the use of nouns and

adjectives.

My first poems. I really enjoyed to make my book of poems, when I read it I feel myself

so glad. I sent it to my family and friends.

Photo peach, It was a really good experience to do this activity, even though I took time

doing it.

The comic was short but could make my Little cousin laugh.

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The book review was difficult; I have to work more on this kind of activity. As well as the

Eyewitness account and News writing.

A very rich and helpful in our teaching in order to work grammar in a funny way is by

using the blog recommended “Movie segments to asses grammar goals”, excellent!

In conclusion, this course has been an

opportunity to improve my

teaching, I have learned many new

tools whose are helpful in my

actualization as teacher. It made me to realize deeply that our work have to be better day

after day, the life has changed our students. We have to think in being effective teachers

who must plan classes, a very important tool to follow, organize the learning environment,

have a real manage of what we are teaching, promote the interaction and never stop on

learning.

Karla García Ruiz My Learning Experience

Page | 108English language learning awareness

While doing the exercises I could notice that the best way to improve my English is

through practicing in real conversations and reading about different topics to get

different kind of vocabulary. In view of the fact that there are different purposes for

reading, it is very useful using diverse strategies as skimming, scanning, inferring,

etc.; the strategy depends on the purpose of the reading. In the other hand, listening is

not an attainable skill, it requires much practice. We often think that listening is easy

since we can hear as a natural ability because it is the first language aspect that we

acquire. Listening is not only hear what people is says, listening is understand and get

what the person is trying to say not through merely words but through rhythm, pause,

and intonation. To construct meaning while speaking is important to know who is

going to be our audience and purpose of the speech. Because speaking is a skill that

turns into a competence, we need to be communicatively competent, that means the

understanding of sociocultural contexts of language.

Cultural learning awareness

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When we do not have cultural awareness it is very common to misunderstand and

misinterpret situations causing confusion. We are teaching a different language, this means

a different culture with different

principles and situations and if we do

not teach through culture the kids are

more tend to make jokes and laughs

about the other. It is a bit difficult to interest

students in English literature production

since they are not used to it. Scaffolding

my students through lessons like those

where we just add some words to

produce poetry have been surprisingly an

exit since they feel confident when

finishes. I like literature to teach culture since this is the most accurate resource for it but

another good and funny way to do it is through TV series according to the student ages. The

most important point here is that attracting students’ attention to other culture customs and

lifestyles make them get conscious about their own.

New teaching strategies discovered

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The strategies we followed during the course

were those mentioned in the article about 21st

century teachers. For example I could noticed

that when the technology failed because of

some problems when logging in, the people in

charge of the course designed a side link to we

could continue with our schedule, they were

able to adapt the program to a different

situation. We worked in collaborative groups

when we were studying speaking and writing

skills through tools as MSN and Photopeach.

We listened to each other in order to get an opinion about a topic and some of us are still

doing it. Some of my classmates even help others to deal with the technology showing them

how to manage some tools like when we were doing the comic strip. The most important

thing I got in this program is about the new e-technologies and e-resources that updated my

way of teaching. Students are very keen about gadgets, and I learnt that if I use them as a

resource in my lessons, my students will acquire the knowledge in a more interesting way

(for them). Since the knowledge is for them I have to prepare my lessons in a student

centered way. I have been working with my students by mail like in this program because it

is the only way to get in touch always with them and in this way I can cheer them up to

continue practicing outside the classroom. One of the strategies that is crucial is the leading

factor, I am glad of having an excellent guide that without her it could not be possible to get

until this point, the end.

Reading teaching strategies

The most interesting activities I did in the Reading

module were American and British English, a listen

and read along activity from the Interesting Things

for ESL Students web page and Amistad Incident

from Awesome stories web page. The first text is

about the history of the differences between both

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languages. Those differences were made by Webster who made changes in the spelling of

some words, and that he was inspired on Franklin's attempt to create a new system of

spelling. The strategies used here were activating prior knowledge, when I did the exercise

I did it with some information about it (spelling differences) and after reading it I

completed and reinforced my knowledge about it. Rereading, the text was designed to read

and listen at the same time, and the best part is that the reader says the lines twice to clarify

what he is reading. Identifying main ideas and supporting details, the activity was to answer

a question about facts and interesting aspects of the reading. The second text is one of the

most important episodes in the American History. The most important thing I found in the

article is the links that it has to the original documents where you can learn more about it. It

functions as Gerard Genette's "paratexto", where one thing leads you to another creating an

interaction between the reader and the story (history in this case). In both texts the use of

those strategies mentioned before made me enjoy, learn and participate in my learning

process.

Listening teaching strategies

The fourth module was difficult because I did not know about some aspects like pitch,

intonation, thought groups, etc. The

activities were correct designed, the text

selection was interesting and meaningful

but the most difficult activities were those

about pitch and rhythm because I’ve never

used them. Although the activities were in

a way easy, they were difficult since I as a

Mexican do not have those characteristics

in my own language. Teaching pitch,

rhythm and intonation is difficult for me. I

think that would be easier if each one is

teach separately and in a more graphic way specially with the bottom up skills because we

as a listeners depend more on the text than on our previous knowledge and there is when it

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turns difficult because of the lack of knowledge. Using some kind of visual back up to a

better understanding give questions and tasks in order to clarify the things in our minds, etc.

After those strategies we will understand how to use the environmental clues, the speaker's

facial expression, posture, eye direction, proximity, gesture, tone of voice, and that general

surroundings get us more information because visual materials (even face to face) are

useful for contextualization.

Speaking teaching strategies

I think that there were not worthless activities, but the activity that my students liked the

most were those about voice thread and audacity. Although downloading the program was

kind of troublesome for them, finally we did it. For me was a terrible experience hearing

my own voice recorded but for them was the most exciting

and funny activity. When it is time to read aloud in the

classroom they get panicked because they do not like to do it

in public, they do not feel confident about it. The most of

the students used to suffer every Friday -which I decided to

use only for reading aloud-because of this activity. Since I

took the Speaking module my strategy changed. I ask them

to download the program in order to record their voices. I

asked them firstly to record their voices reading a paragraph

in Spanish. After that, I asked them to record the chapter of

the book we were supposed to read that Friday. The book we are reading is an abstract from

the Gulliver’s Travels, this time I selected this book because I am teaching a 3rd grade and

the most of the information is about travelling. Well, after comparing both readings in order

to identify if they had a reading problem, I could notice that they were improving their

confidence while reading firstly for themselves and finally in front of the classroom. I must

admit that they are not reading better but at least they are confident now when it is time to

read aloud in front of the rest of the group.

Writing teaching strategies

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Writing is sometimes difficult because we do not know how to express what do we want to

express –in a correctly manner. Writing in a foreign language is more difficult since there

are different rules to do it. Identifying the main teaching strategies used in order to develop

my writing abilities is difficult since everyone was very useful. I could notice that the

activities and strategies selected to us to work on were put in the way that we could begin

with the easier and every module

turned more difficult, in the end we

were asked to write short essays

about a specific topic. The first

activities were the most important

–in my opinion- they gave us

confidence to write. The Wacky

Web Tales page was the most

amusing, hilarious activity I have

ever done. It was very easy to

accomplish it and the best was the

end when reading what we created,

I love it and my students more

since they create funny texts with

no big effort. Another very special

and meaningful strategy to improve

my writing skills was the Instant

Poetry Forms. I really love poetry very much but I am not good when writing it. So, when I

did this activity, I felt incredibly well, and since that day I respect poetry more than never.

If writing is difficult, poetry is even more. To write poetry is to say what you cannot say in

merely words but images and that is very difficult to learn.

About ICT tools

Page | 114Today, in an open world, culture is the better way to become skilled at other languages but

in order to do it we have to learn how to manage and interpret the information. The

computer and the Internet with all this free access sites are the best way to invite the

students to know and learn about the outside.

INTERNET: The biggest and most useful tool at this moment. Sometimes called simply

"the Net," is a worldwide system of computer networks - a network

of networks in which users at any one computer can, if they have

permission, get information from any other computer (and

sometimes talk directly to users at other computers). Today, the

Internet is a public, cooperative, and self-sustaining facility

accessible to hundreds of millions of people worldwide. I use it because it gives me a lot of

resources to use in my classroom and for my students give them the opportunity to know

other “worlds” in a real way.

Is a video sharing website on which users can upload and share videos.

I like this web page because it has lot of tutorials to use with the students and to learn

myself.

MESSENGER: is a type of communications service that enables us to create

a kind of private chat room with another individual in order to communicate in real time

over the Internet using text-based communication. Using messenger with my students

allows me to get in touch more time with my students and because it is mainly a text-based

tool, they practice writing.

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Finally, I would add that now that we are on the way of finishing the course I have the

sensation of something missing. Every time I learn something new, I know that there are

lots of things to learn. The first thing we have to do after finishing is to apply all the

knowledge to our teaching strategies in order to improve our students’ ways of learning,

and some day, they could have the same sensation as I have, to learn more.

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Juan Antonio Lonngi Vélez My Learning Experience

Module 2 “Learning to learn English through internet tools and resources”

Was my first contact with an on line learning course, and first of all I learnt that computers

are really valuable and real means of learning – teaching processes, next I could know and

practice many elements and technical vocabulary that I needed to know such as; what

exactly a mouse and menu are, clicking and double clicking, drag and drop, scrolling,

pointing, check box.

I understood what the Common European Framework for Languages’ levels of language

competence are, and what the description of each level is.

I knew that I must manage my time for learning activities and tried some strategies to use

the time, finally I could understand the Key Competences for Lifelong Learning and the

relationship among the sections 2, 5 and 8 that says that a foreign language teachers have

the huge responsibility to transmit to their students the needing of appreciate the cultural

diversity and the intercultural communication as a means of knowledge interchange,

through reading, listening, writing and speaking activities on the target language,

developing at the same time, which are the spine of our teaching practice. I applied a test

about abilities of learning and the result is that I’m a kind of mix of Intrapersonal,

Visual / Spatial, Kinaesthetic and Linguistic abilities.

I practiced computer using skills, different teaching strategies like filling gaps, choose the

correct answer, thick the answer, etc. I think the learning of English language using Internet

sites has many advantages like, it’s a means of support for the student, he can repeat again

and again the same lesson until it’ll be completely understood, Internet sites are very

attractive, dynamic and encouraging to students. There are lots of advantages on learning

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English using free access internet sites , for example when sites contains colorful and

moving graphics they become attractive to students, and if we add sounds and interactivity

it becomes the best learning experience for students and the best auxiliary to the teacher

professional practice.

I could identify some of my grammar strengths and weaknesses, and I had chance to work

in some pages that help me to correct some of them.

Module 3 “Reading”

Was one of the most useful for me, because I had chance to learn and practice Reading

Strategies such as: Scanning, Skimming, and my first contact with a brand new strategy for

me; “Read While Listening”, at the beginning, it was a very difficult and frustrating

experience to me, and it wasn’t enjoying at all, because I didn’t know what I was

practicing, so where should I focus my attention and skills?? But thanks to the Tutor, I

tried several times more and now I recognize this strategy as one of the most useful for

develop and practice Reading Comprehension skills. Other interesting topics were Facts

and Opinions, Type of Text identification, Vocabulary Learning, giving many sites which

are extraordinary tools to learn not only vocabulary, pronunciation or grammar, they use

real evens happened in the real world, so students can learn vocabulary at the same time

they know about the events in the real world (world knowledge).

I have my first contact too with “Intensive Reading”, watching a video and vocabulary

activities, Read, details and inference/ Vocabulary, Grammar and reading comprehension,

Reading for Pleasure, and other strategies which proved to me that Reading is a whole

process, it isn’t only to know lots of English words and read, is a complete process of

meaning construction.

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Module 4 “Listening”

I’ve had my first chance to learn and practice some new strategies like: top-down and

bottom-up, minimal pairs, reading along, word stress, intonation, pause, rhythm, phrasal

verbs, and tag questions.

I think this module, was a very important new experience, it’s the first time I have

experienced a comparative activity about sound’s construction, or face up to Phrasal

Verbs, that are in the spine of the English teaching and it was amazing! Because it’s a

powerful way to show the students how Spanish’s sounds are different of English ones, and

how the meaning changes with a mistaken pronunciation, I think for teenagers this is a very

interesting and important point in the English class.

As a language learner and teacher, I discovered the importance of listening during the

English classes some strategies and websites to study it, and that we can’t talk about an

English class without paying special attention on topics related about listening.

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Module 5 “Speaking” .

The main goal of learning a foreign language is to communicate principally speaking, in

this module, through some strategies used like “How to Tell a Story”, “How to Describe a

Situation or Place”, “How to Describe People”, “How to Give Instructions”, “How the

Express Agreement and Disagreement”, “How to Present a Short Talk”, “Giving

Opinions”, I had chance to improve my speaking skills, because I could record my voice

and listen it several times to make corrections, and I think now I can speak more

coherently, slowly, clearly, with rhythm, and understandable, and now I know, people have

many resources on line to learn English properly because English language, authorities are

very worried about the preservation of the English speaking community, and I discovered

that it’s real!!! Anyone can improve their speaking skills, by using properly the free sites on

the web.

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Module 6 “Writing”.

It included strategies like: “Grammar and Writing”, “Correcting a Piece of Writing”, “A

Book of Poems”, “Creating Stories”, “Sharing and Using your Pictures”, “Describing

People, Places and Things”, “Using Punctuation”, “Sequence of Tenses”, “Other Writing

Models”, “Movies and Grammar”.

Some teachers consider this ability as the most difficult to teach and before this course I

was agree, but now after tried the interactive strategies such as The bookr, comic strips,

Photopeach, Quizzes, "Movie Segments to Assess Grammar Goals", etc. I think, writing

mustn’t be a nightmare, it could be a great experience if the teacher use the correct strategy,

the students will be enjoyed, interested on the topic and they will take a real advantage of

the experience. I think, this was my best experience in the whole course, because it was

innovative, enjoying and brand new.

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English language learning awareness:

The most important learning I got in this course, is the use of Internet in teaching – learning

activities, Now a day’s I’m absolutely sure it could be the best teachers’ ally.

During this course I had chance to see the world culture and cultural diversity about the

English speaking community and I discovered I have not to forget to support the English

class with the foreign and own cultural aspects that involves a language as a human

characteristic.

I have learnt how to look for some specific language topics and teaching and learning

strategies in some free sites for language learning and teaching support, and now I know

that to raise my reading comprehension skills I need to study very hard and visit very

often, the web sites I knew in module 3 to be in direct contact with the living English

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language, and to structure my lessons following the three steps included in the unit, and I

should to choose authentic readings and formats. Strategies are absolutely needed to take a

real advantage of the topic, during the learning - teaching process.

Today I know that learning process of a living language is continuous and permanent, and

for become a good teacher is very important to be in a permanent process of actualization.

Cultural learning awareness:

I’m convinced, as foreign language teacher, I have to explain to my students that culture is

the main component into the language construction, during this course; I could learn a

different way to see the world culture and cultural diversity of the English speaking

community, as example I can mention the different speaking accents representative of a

specific country like American accent, British accent, African accent, Australian accent,

Canadian Accent, etc.

The materials used during the course, were representative of a different world, for example;

I read about Foster Children, Foster Parents, The city of Sacramento has a big needed of

Foster houses, children as witness in a legal process, some specific aspects of daily life of

some English speaking cultures, and others.

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In the websites and different speaking activities done, I learnt people have many resources

on line to learn English properly because authorities are very worried about the

preservation of the English speaking community, and they show the great value that

English language has in speaking countries and for the English speaking community.

New teaching strategies discovered:

In my opinion the habits contained in the reading, are the different topics in this course

summary. Today I know that I have to become adaptative, and the only limit that I have to

make arrangements on my lesson plans is my own imagination, I should to become

visionary and see the potential in the emerging tools and web technologies and manipulate

them to serve the students needs.

Tools like Blogger, Wikispaces, My Space, Twitter, etc. Are excellent resources to promote

the interchange of information and to do collaborative learning, because they facilitate to

students’ sharing, contributing, adapting and inventing, and take risks with my students,

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using their abilities on technologies because they can teach the teacher too, and I must

endeavor to stay current, because technology advance and knowledge too.

Another very important task is to communicate, because teacher must be anywhere and

anytime being fluent in tools and technologies that enable the communication and

collaboration.

The English Programs used in “SEP” now a day, say that teacher must teach values and

model the students’ behaviors, so tolerance, global awareness, reflective practice, etc. are

task to be considered on the lesson plan, and educator never has to forget that he’s the

leader of the learning process, and integration of the different elements and tools it will

need.

About ICT tools:

Now a days, technology of information and communication is one of the most important means of communication, and they have proved, they’re becoming an important pedagogical resource, on education on line or as a tool into the classroom, because it facilitates synchronous and asynchronous communication, and brings a huge quantity of extraordinary visual, reading, video, printed, etc. resources.

During this course I particularly I liked these three sites:

Writing ideas, a book of poems. Using Bookr

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Students write a little poem and go to http://www.pimpampum.net/bookr/, then a very attractive screen appears with the instructions to illustrate their composition, first they need to load a picture and next they write a piece of their text, they change the page and the share their illustrated composition with the rest of the class. I think this is a very attractive tool and students have the chance to improve their imagination, writing skills, learn new vocabulary and share their work with others.

Sharing and using your pictures. Using Photopeach

Students write a story using a set of photos or images, they order the pics and choose the piece of the story that represents each image, then they go to: http://photopeach.com/album/137atr5?ref=more, and load them to the Photopeach following the instructions, first the images, secondly the text and finally the sound or music. In my opinion, this technology is a great tool that combines creative, grammar, vocabulary, imagination and esthetic skills, I’ve proved with my students and all of them became really motivated, interested and happy.

Movies and grammar. Using the “Movie segments to assess grammar goals” site.

For me, this tool is the best !, A teacher select a short from a movie that contains a specific Grammar Goals and activities to assess or practice grammar points through fun, challenging exercises.

The teacher selects the grammar goal the students will practice, and the movie segment which the students will use, they go to the movie segments site: http://moviesegmentstoassessgrammargoals.blogspot.com/, locate the movie the teacher has chosen, they copy the exercises on their notebook, solve them and show the teacher the results obtained.

In my opinion this is the most attractive and accepted tool by students, because they can learn with their favorite character or movie, the teacher has a marvelous material to design activities specific for a topic or a special group of students. This tool is very attractive and motivating for the young learners.

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Lesson Planning:

Every real teacher should plan his lessons because, they have to select materials, strategies, activities, topics, etc. And preview the goals desired as a students learning, and he must organize and achieve a lesson properly.

My Final Comments:

This course was one of the richest and intensive experiences in my life. I had the chance to explore the real world of the English language teaching, enjoying myself, interacting with some partners in very distant points of the country, and I knew some new strategies using the electronic technologies, that many teachers think are “the big enemy” of education.

I want to thank the UNAM and SEP, for this opportunity and mainly my tutor Adriana Aceves Martinek, to be always professional, attentive, tolerant, patient, and... the PERFECT TUTOR!!! I

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really hope to have a new chance to be in another course.

Omar Lucio Bustos My Learning Experience

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Cultural learning awareness

As I was studying this unit I leaned many important things to consider while teaching a

good and interesting class to my students. The first part to have clear at the beginning this

process is to identify previous knowledge of my students. After this it is important to

clearly show to the students the type of couture of the natives from the 2nd language.

When a student get to know more thing about the culture of the 2nd language the learning

process became easier and more interesting y many ways.

New teaching strategies discovered

All groups are different from each other; I work with fourteen groups of students, from 35

to 40 students each one. While I apply any technique I can do this differences, some group

work in a perfect way while other work completely different and in some cases I have to

use a other technique to have the same result, this completely depends on each group and

the characteristic of some of them. Here are some of the things I do in the class.

Adapting is important for all technique this has to be applied when something

changes in the class or where we identify improvement opportunities.

Been visionary help us to be ready to any situation that might happen

Collaborating is god because we can make the learning process richer when we

involve other teacher an also the students.

Taking risk my result might result in a good experience for the class

Learning from every technique is very useful for further application of these

techniques.

Communication help everything, is good among the teacher and the students at all

the times.

Modeling behavior can be done by the correct application of techniques

Leading has to be done by the teacher in every technique applied in the class

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Reading teaching strategies

Reading is an activity that government from Mexico try to promote in all students, techers

from all signatures invites the student to develop the ability of reading but this only can be

done if the teachers develop this ability. The other thing that help student to begin reading

is to teach them some techniques focused on this. In this unit I found many but the text an n

the technique that I chose is this:

“The text that I decide to use is “the books don’t grow in trees”, this texts makes reference

to the high cost of books and tuition. In this activity the students have to identify some

words that students remember, then they have to check a text and fill the blanks working in

pairs, and at the end they have to complete a crosswords, all this have to be done by a

simple skimming of text, this means that the students have to quickly read the text and

identify the some important ideas, after this it becomes easier to do the activity. Here the

important thing is not to understand all the text but have an idea and make an effort to

complete the exercises, it is not to important that the student complete all the activity.

Doing this the student develop the ability to quickly check, analyze text, get a general idea

of it and then develop his own opinion.

I use this technique on students on second or third grade, students that already have

studied at least one year under my supervision, and I always try to keep them motivated

and ready to participate in many other activities that I apply in the classroom by surprise.”

With this the students begin to like and develop this ability.

Listening Teaching Strategies

The ability of listening is something that has to be developed in a proper way, we usually

listen to many word and noises around us, but which of these sounds are interesting for us,

what do we really find useful.

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Developing this ability means that the student might have to avoid some sound and focus

only on what is really interesting.

Listening to songs it is a very good way to practice a foreign language because the music is

something that people usually like and listen to several times, with this repletion on

listening, the learning process become more interesting and the learning experience easier.

The rhythm and the intonation is something that our brain attends to easily and remember

for longer periods.

Writing teaching strategies

To practice that I chose is to develop some comics, this is an easy and fun way to promote

writing, as I place in mi comment of the unit:

“I liked a lot the part where I have to develop some comics, this activity is very helpful

because here we can assign the topic that we want that the student practice. Here the

teacher can develop the comics and use the words he wants the student to practice or the

words the students need to learn.

The length of the comics is according to the time we have en class and the type of activity.

With this activity I develop my writing practice.

This activity can be used in the classroom in many ways, the students might read to the

comics and develop an activity or in the opposite side, the students may have to develop

activities by himself.”

About ICT tools

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The ICT are tools that nowadays gives the students the opportunity to learn another

language a in an easier way, when most of us begin to study a language we dint have all

this tools to make more interesting an easier our learning process.

When I begin my formal process of learning English I used to have only book and copies

from other books and when I was concluding this process I begin to use video cassettes to

enforce my leaning process but now we can see that the computer gives us a great world of

opportunities to learn.

Lesson planning

This is one of the most important thing that a teacher can do to have a good class and to

assure that the class time was properly used, when planning a lesson it is important to

consider these aspects:

Aspects to consider,

About the student

1. Age

2. Culture

3. Educational background

4. Motivation

5. Level

6. Number of ss

7. Occupation

8. Schedule class

9. Group’s personality

10. Attitude towards l2

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About the teacher

1. Sense of responsibility

2. Experience

3. Materials

4. Knowledge

5. Personality

6. Skills

7. Attitude towards l2

About the classroom

1. Layout

2. Size

3. Location

4. Noise

5. Lightning

6. Decoration

7. Technology availability

8. Comfortability

9. Cleanliness

About time

1. Length

2. Time of the day

3. Weather

4. School calendar

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The concentration curve

1. Warm up

2. High challenge

3. Wake up

4. Low challenge

5. Wrap up

About the sequence of the class

1. Engage

2. Study

3. Activate

About the resources

1. Tape recorder

2. Textbook

3. Handouts

4. Ohp

5. Internet

6. Video

7. Dvd

USING THE PROPER LESSON PLAN

An aspect that I consider I have improved since I begin teaching.

I have been teaching English for six years, my main preparation is business administration

bachelor and was not aware that I´ll become a teacher some day, but this happened, I was

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invited to be a teacher and I decide to give it a try and I found out that this is something that

I enjoy a lot.

My first class was in an old secondary were the students behave is regulated by the rules

and the environment acquire by the school’s personal, I went in to the classroom without a

lesson plan, a boon nor the idea of the topics important to teach. I felt that it was a mess; I

begin with some activities that I improvised but it just made me fell bad and definitely

unprepared.

Since that day I have improved a lot, I always arrived to the classroom with a well prepared

class and I always stick to the plan. This makes fell very well and sure that my students

every day learn something new

Personal opinion

This course has been an opportunity that have helped me to develop some of the abilities

that I haven’t had the opportunity to identify and develop, while this course I have identify

many aspects that I needed to practice, by this moment I can say that things that I have

learn through this course no one has never teach me before in all time I have been

teaching. I am sure that everything I have learned will be show in my student progress and

it will be perfected by me during its application. I would really like to take more courses in

this way to perfect my work in class.

Maria Elena MacfarlandMy Learning Experience

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Lifelong learning is a necessity for every foreign language learner. We need to develop our skills and competences through our lives. Communication in foreign language is based on the ability to express in different ways, using different skills like listening, speaking reading and writing.

Learning to learn is the ability to persist in learning, including effective management of time.

I learned many things, but I think I have to learn more about understanding and producing texts. I also need to develop the ability to persevere with learning to concentrate for extended periods and to work collaboratively.

There are many advantages using free access internet sites. It is a way to motivate students to learn by themselves anywhere using a computer and internet. They can study at school, home, internet café or anywhere. They can choose any topic or article and do it any time; we just have to lead them to do things the right way.

READING STRATEGY

I liked to read while listening. Some American stories were easy and funny to me. I could improve my reading using some strategies like facts and opinions, skimming, scanning. I loved reading, listening, and watching video activity. The more I read, the more I understood and enjoyed. I learned new things like golden gate story, about American and British story too. I learned about slaves getting to America from Africa, etc.

LISTENING STRATEGY

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I learned something new: minimal pairs, words that seems to have the same pronunciation, but they don’t

I enjoyed doing top-down listening, although I could hardly understand Australian and other countries English.

I didn’t know the importance of word stress. I learned that sentences can have different meaning, depending on where you stress the word.

Intonation and rhythm was something new for me too. I can improve them singing songs using my 5 senses: hearing, sight, smell, touch and taste. I can also learn intonation through jokes. I need to give the right intonation to communicate what I really want to say. There is falling intonation to give commands and directions, and there’s also rising intonation.

Phrasal verbs were a difficult activity for me. I almost couldn’t do any of them. I need to learn more about them . On the other hand tag questions were easy and understandable to me.

SPEAKING STRATEGY

This is the most difficult activity to do for me. I think it was because I couldn’t get to audicity and voicethread sites; but when I finally did, I enjoyed it very much. Listening music evokes me to some other places. The videoconference was something real new for me. I liked it very much, and also the idea of watching a picture or a person and say all you think about it.

WRITING STRATEGY

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A book of poems was a nice starting. I didn’t think I could make it. I really enjoyed it and I think my students will too. It is a great way of writing ideas. Creating stories is a good way to boost the imagination.

I had fun doing the comic strip file, but what I liked the most was telling my summer vacation story using pictures, music and short sentences. I had fun doing quizzes, on which I learned more grammar.

Writing about incidents in my life was interesting. I could remember some sad and happy things in my past life.

I think all the strategies were amazing, useful and interesting, but I need to improve the last one, writing, so I have to keep on grammar, vocabulary, punctuation.

Finally I want to thank to everybody involved in this course. It was really fantastic. I wish I could do a better work, but now I know there are many resources and tools to make our teaching work interesting and funny for our students.

Araceli Manriquez Peña

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My Learning Experience

According to the Common European Framework for Language my English competence level is B1 and through six Modules in this Program I improved a great deal my four skills (Reading, Speaking, Listening and Writing).

In this Program I learnt how to improve my Language Learning with the help of Web Sites, Reading Techniques, Word stress, Intonation Patterns, Video conferences, Recordings, Chat sessions, Journals, Poems, Real World Stories, Forums and Movies.

I noticed that Learning a Foreign language is an Art, because there are many ways to obtain topic information or to assess grammar with the help of Rubrics.

I had developed a dual role, as a learner and as a Teacher, I need to develop more fluency in Speaking (Oral production skills) and in Reading. My favorite exercises were reading with different attitudes and reading while listening. Thanks again for this marvelous experience.

NEW TEACHING STRATEGIES

This program has prepared us to use links of Web sites, real story readings, electronic books, read along, virtual dictionaries, voice threads, comics and many other teaching tools. I agree with the text that you have to be updated with the new Technology in order to be a 21st Century Teacher, you have to know the Curriculum, you have to know what is your subject focus and what are your students goals and objectives.

Thanks to this Program, I learnt how to chat in a video conference, how to write poems and publish them. I started working with my students doing some exercises searching for word meaning, images, short readings.

Cultural Learning Awareness

To enable students to reach a level of communicative competence I am going to use last year Oscar’s winner movie titled Slumdog Millionaire, this film takes place in India a city with many working people and its culture.

To develop Cultural Learning Awareness in the classroom it is important that we help our students to compare their native culture with other cultures like the Hindu. Students can make a list of the similarities and differences in each Cultures.

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Then students will answer questions about social behavior in the streets of both Cultures and they will comment about their prior knowledge in the matter.

Finally, the students will comment on positive Universal Values that are in the film Slumdog Millionaire like real LOVE and BROTHERHOOD.

LISTENING TEACHING STRATEGIES

I liked most of the listening activities and I am practicing with my students reading exercises with an attitude. I think that the most difficult activities were word stress and intonation.

With these kind of exercises we have to make emphasis in the intonation to keep the conversation flowing. Practicing listening can make us active listeners, just to take part in a conversation or just for pleasure.

In order to practice word stress in utterances you have to know plenty of vocabulary. There are words that are similar in writing but different in meaning, so it can be difficult if you don’t know Semantics and Grammar. When you are practicing listening on the telephone you need all the concentration you can to follow the conversation because you are not face to face to see the gestures and body language.

READING TEACHING STRATEGIES

Scanning

There are many short stories Reading on the Web and I choose one about Male and Female Gorillas for my students.

First, the task is that readers have to read the text and practice Scanning (individual reading comprehension strategy to make predictions). Second, the students have to answer six questions about the reading (search for specific information)so I know that they comprehend the text. After that the students have to underline ten Cognates from the reading and produce images or drawings of the cognates on the back of the page. Finally, the students (in pair work) have to create a short text of the Male and Female Gorillas (retell the story) and they have to present it to the class (summarize information).

Students copy:

NAME: _____________________Group:_______DATE: __________________________________

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HE’S GENTLE AND HANDSOME

WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT GORILLAS ?

I.- Read the text.

II.- Answer the questions about the reading.

1. Where do gorillas live? ___________________________2. How tall are they ? Male: ______Female: ________3. How heavy are they? Male: ______Female:________4. What do gorillas eat? ____________________________5. Are they aggressive? ____________________________6. How many years do they live ? ____________________

III.- Underline ten cognates and draw images on the back page.

IV.- Retell the story and create a short text.

SPEAKING TEACHING STRATEGIES

This was an awesome experience to be able to do a dual role in this Program, as a learner and as a Teacher. I love the use of recording Monologues with Audacity especially for my students because with three hours a week we have to develop Speaking strategies so they can hear themselves and PRACTICE the target language as often as they can.

I will explain how I would do it, so my students can develop oral production skills.

Gorillas live in the tropical African forests. Male gorillas are about 1.8 m tall and weigh about 300 kg. Females gorillas are about 1.5 m tall and weigh about 260 kg. Gorillas are not carnivorous; they are vegetarian. They eat leaves, plants and fruit. They are slow and gentle creatures and they are generally not aggressive. They live up to 55 years.

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First, I will ask my students to download on their computer the Program Audacity because they will record a Presentation with their Personal Information.

Second, I will give my students a guided questionnaire so they can answer Personal questions about themselves.

Third, I will ask the students to write a text with their Personal Information like First name, Last names, Mother’s name, Father’s name, Brothers and sisters name, telephone number, mailing address, e mail address, favorite sport, favorite animal.

Fourth, I will ask the students to record their Presentation using the guided text.

Fifth, I will ask the students to make a comment after the recording and share their opinion on their Audacity experience.

Our goal is to develop fluency and intonation in our students so they can practice their target language. Audacity is a great tool to develop Oral skills.

WRITING TEACHING STRATEGIES

This Communicative Skills Diplomado for Secondary School Teachers has help me a great deal, because in each Module I practiced different communicative skills specially in the Writing Module I learnt how to be more conscious of my surroundings. When I did my first writing on a journal I enjoyed the experience because in the tutorial for beginners I learnt how to pay more attention to others.

I plan to take this idea to the classroom for my students in the month of January; my students will write on a Journal their main experiences once a week, they will need a special notebook to write important and relevant information about their life (role models). In this journal they will write about their family and friends and they will register a strange or odd happening in the week.

I enjoyed the activity of watching movies with grammar, this strategy is very attractive for ESL learners, you can mix Cultural Awareness with language structure. It is fun to select a film clip and download it from YOUTUBE to design exercises to develop writing skills and to understand the target language.

I was surprised with the activity about writing poems because words can be powerful and some people can be more sensible than others, I enjoyed publishing a book of electronic poems because I am a romantic but also I am practical.

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I plan to develop my students writing skills with the use of poems in the month of February and short funny stories in the month of March accessing the Internet.

ICT TOOLS

The use of Information and Communications Technologies in Teaching a Second Language is very attractive to students now days. Most of our students are visual so that is why they learnt through their sight.

I will use reading along with songs from youtube to develop natural pauses, a better flow to the reading, natural rhythm and fluid speech. My students are fascinated with the first song I chose titled Hello, Goodbye sang by the Beatles. My students presented in small groups (5) to the class the song and they added choreography to their presentation. They enjoyed their participation and I awarded the best presentation.

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I will use Foreign Movie segments with grammar to develop writing skills and Cultural Awareness in my students English class. First, my Students will watch a foreign film clip and then they will answer questions about the movie clip (individual work). Then they will make a list of the social behavior of the Foreign Culture (pair work). After that they will compare their similarities and their differences of social behavior from both Cultures (group of four). Finally, students will write a text expressing the Author’s message from the film.

The third ICT tool is Audacity a program to developing speaking skills, because you can record your thoughts, points of view and opinions about the fact of life. My students will use this tool pretty soon. I intend to ask my students to record a personal presentation with relevant information about their life. My students will share their favorite things and their family to their classmates. I will give them a questionnaire to fill their personal information and then they will write a text narrating their life. After that I will supervise their text and then they will download the Audacity program to record their presentation (monologue). Finally, they will share it with their classmates.

LESSON PLANNING

HUNTER’S MODEL

Planning a lesson is essential to have Teaching and Learning into consideration. The closest lesson plan model for my context was Hunter’s seven steps: 1- Objectives, 2- Anticipatory set 3-Instructional input, 4-Modeling, 5-Guided practice, 6- Independent practice, 7-Checking for comprehension on each activity.

It is very important on the first step to explain to the students the purpose of the target language and the objectives they need to achieve in the Unit that they are studying. For example: Enable Students to introduce themselves and others and to exchange personal details.

Setting the stage is the second step and here we need to know the student’s prior knowledge and present all the information they manage about the topic. (ID card)

Instructional input is the third step and we need to present to the student a selected written text. (fill in forms about personal information).

Modeling is the fourth step where students read the models from their text book and complete the fill in forms with personal information.

Guided practice is the fifth step and students will answer oral questions about themselves and they will introduce themselves to their classmates in a group activity. They will make two rounded circles and they are going to walk around the classroom when they

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hear music and they will stop walking when the music stops and they will talk about themselves (practice).

Independent practice is the sixth step and students will produce a mini text about themselves information and they will send an e-mail to a classmate and they will receive one too.

It is essential that the Teacher checks that the students are understanding the activities step by step.

I will add it to the Hunter’s Model the different interactions that students need to practice in their activities like individual work, pair work, group work.

A. Isabel Moreno de la Rosa My Learning Experience

English language learning awareness

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“Education comes from within; you get it by struggle and effort and thought”.

Napoleon Hill

The most exciting fact of this course is all the choices that it brings us

to learn and practice the language. I have learnt many new things, as

grammar rules, use of different tenses, phrasal verbs, LOT of

vocabulary, correct intonation patterns, punctuation rules, how to use

different reading and listening strategies and how to enjoy and make

the writing process easier by using templates on it.

Besides, I`ve already had the opportunity to clarify incorrect meanings and be aware on the

grammar points of different structures that I usually use but that I couldn`t explain

grammatically.

On the other hand, it was fantastic to have communication and to be able to read and listen

my classmates’ works, because in this way I could compare and improve my own, by

learning from them.

Finally, I could realize that two of my biggest weaknesses are my lack of memory and my

fear to expose my language to people who knows English, this fear usually limits my

chances to practice, that is why it was very important for me the feedback and support that

the tutor gave me because I could find the self confidence and strength that I need to

continue.

Cultural learning awareness

“Education is the transmission of civilization”.

Ariel and Will Duran

I think that as teachers, we must show and expose our students as much as

we can to different cultural aspects of the countries where the language is

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spoken, because I consider that in the way that students learn about their

history, ways of living, values, traditions and political issues, they will get a

better idea of the culture, interest in the language and a lifelong learning.

During this diploma there were many activities that taught us those cultural aspects and that

we can adapt and use in our own class.

Reading about “The Amistad incident” I learnt interesting historical aspects

about slavery, and listening about the driving rules in Canada I found out

that is dangerous to have soda cans in the floor of our car!!!

Also I got a great idea about how enterprises can work together in a reading about

Australia, and really surprised me the sense of honesty and humanity that some American

people have in “Woman Lies about winning the Lottery”.

New teaching strategies discovered

Reading Stories

Watching films

Reading poems

Talking about an interesting movie.

Reading or listening the news.

Listening to songs and music.

Reading or listening about traditions

Listening to tales and stories.

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“A master can tell you what he expects of you. A teacher, though, awakens your own

expectations”.

Patricia Neal

I think that most of the strategies and activities that we have learnt

and done during this diploma are focused on the improvement of the

new habits that as teachers in this century we must achieve.

For example, even though most of the activities are gorgeous, I have

to adapt them according to my students` needs, and thanks to the chat

and e-mail, I have a better communication with them.

Also, we are using some electronic tools that help them to improve all their works (not only

for the English subject!) and we are taking risks in the use of technology and learning from

one to each other.

Finally, the most important thing that I am experiencing, is to see in some of my students,

the joy of appreciate learning.

Reading teaching strategies

“Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten”.

B. F. Skinner

In this module we could learn not only reading strategies but

interesting cultural facts.

The activity that I liked more was the intensive reading activity “Cell

phone safety”, because I consider that in it I had the chance not only

to improve my reading strategies but to practice many other skills in

addition.

The text was about how the use of cell phones when people drive is related with car

accidents.

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In my opinion, the teaching strategies were appropriated because firstly, we practiced

different reading strategies as prediction, distinguish facts from opinions and infer and

recognize vocabulary in context. Then we could improve our listening skill by listening

different accents, stress and speeches, being helpful that we could watch the video instead

of only listen to the text because images helps a lot to understand the meaning, and finally,

we were focused on the learning and use of the vocabulary by doing some easy mini tasks.

Listening teaching strategies

“I think education is power. I think that being able to communicate with people is

power. One of my main goals on the planet is to encourage people to empower

themselves”.

Oprah Winfrey

In my opinion, the most difficult activity was a listening of

the Australian Network: “English bites” about seasonal jobs.

It was difficult because the text was very long, used a lot of

specialized vocabulary that I didn`t know , the site

instructions weren`t clear enough so I spent a long time

finding the activity and I didn`t like the tasks because they

weren`t interesting.

Besides, as I had the written interview, I focused my attention on the reading instead of on

the listening.

Something that I do like from this activity was the information of the text and the way that

they presented the “specialized” vocabulary.

To make this activity easier, I would ask some questions about seasonal jobs, then I would

present the “specialized” vocabulary, after I would ask the students to listen to the

interview while they have a task to do that could be answer with the general information of

the text.

Next I would give the transcript to check answers, and finally, I could set some more tasks

to use the new vocabulary in context.

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Speaking teaching strategies

“You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by

working; and just so, you learn to love by loving. All those who think to learn in any other

way deceive themselves”.

Saint Francis de Sales

I consider that the tool of the Voicethread was awesome to practice

speaking not only because it has lot of themes that we can talk about

and most of them can be adaptable according to the level of each

person or the aim that we, as teachers, want to achieve, but because

speaking is a time consuming activity in the classroom and when we

have large classes, we don`t have the chance to listen to all the

students.

On the other hand, I like that as a student, we can listen to other people`s opinions and

pronunciations, so we can improve our owns.

Besides, I think that the fact that we can record, listen to our voice and eliminate the task,

as many times as we want, until we feel comfortable with what we have done, give us a

sense of confident.

For example, if we are learning “personal information”, I could ask my students to use the

pictures of people, choose someone interesting for them, give an identity, and talk about

him/her. As long as we learn about routines, they can imagine and talk about the activities

that they suppose that person does.

Also they could describe people physically or emotionally, talk about his/her likes and

dislikes, or just give his/her opinion about the person.

As I told before, we only have to use our imagination to design different tasks according to

our students needs.

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Writing teaching strategies

“Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing

that is worth knowing can be taught”.

Oscar Wilde

For some people, writing is a quite challenging activity, sometimes it

is because it`s difficult to get ideas and other times because we don`t

know how to organize and express them.

Fortunately, in this module I could find many interesting activities

that help us to overcome these problems and enjoy the pleasure of

writing.

The uses of clues and paths when we wrote our Tall Tale and our poems, make the

activities fun and easy, and it was an “extra bonus” when we had the project to design our

own “book of poems”.

Also, creating our comic strip and “My best vacation” using the “Photopeach”, I could

realize that writing doesn`t have to be a painful process if we have the chance to be creative

and write about something relevant for us.

In addition, writing a “book review” was a very useful activity because I could apply the

guide that it gave me to write a proper review with all the characteristics that it must have

(something that as a student need not only for my English class!).

Finally, even when in a way, I had used movies in my classroom, the new perspective and

ideas presented in this module, make me understand that as much as we use real life

resources in our classes, our students will be motivated, will enjoy and will achieve better

knowledge.

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About ICT tools

“Change does not necessarily assure progress, but progress implacably requires change.

Education is essential to change, for education creates both new wants and the ability to

satisfy them”

Henry Steele Commager

In a globalize world the technology and communication have a

fundamental roll, everyday new programs and tools are developed to

streamline information and get people in touch.

The use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in

education breaks with many paradigms that teachers used to have

especially in our roll as trainers and in our concept of learning.

Students must acquire abilities and knowledge which help them to

exploit ICT and learn for a long life term and we, as their teachers,

must facilitate this chore. We cannot be aside of the technology!

In this diploma, there were lot of activities and strategies that we can use to achieve our

goal, some of them required more technical skills but all of them were good to improve our

language.

Particularly, I loved the writing module because it helps me to find creative ways to write

and express my feeling and I think that these activities will be very helpful to my students:

Writing a “Tall Tale”. They can learn and practice linguistic aspects of language in

a very funny way.

Create 6 poems using the “ETCC.Instant Poetry Forms” and publish them on

“Bookr”.

They will learn how to write all kind of poems using clues and paths, and it is a

wonderful experience to select the images to publish them in a book.

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This is a great activity and tool because the students can select and adapt images

according to the theme that they want to talk about.

Finally, many new things have been learnt through this diploma; good ideas, excellent

tools, amazing activities and wonderful strategies, but nothing will worth if we don`t apply

them in our dairy teaching, if we are not able to motivate our students and help them to find

the love for learning.

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Rosa Moreno Ascencio My Learning Experience

Now I have a new opportunity to change and improve myself work as a teacher,

with this course I discovered that I can improve my abilities of writing, listening, reading,

speaking and looking for useful information in internet in order to improve my English

classes. I will improve my teaching strategies, this course help me a lot.

My vocabulary has been added with the texts I could learn more new words.

I have learned how to work a text in class, first reading individually, after listening the text

and if it is possible to watch the video, or a film. 

To raise my reading comprehension skills I need to read more magazines and newspapers

in order to choose the most interesting texts to my students.

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In the web sites I used to read other information, I read about news, advertisements, etc. I

learned that I can read other pages in internet and choose interesting exercises in order to

improve my knowledge.

I can practice the exercises that you have recommended and the tips they are useful for me.

To raise my language level, I will try to speak in English, to study in books in internet, to

read in English, to listen to music and to solve exercises.

In the sites and readings, I learned a little about the English speaking community.

I loved this practice, because I could get a grade immediately, I think that with this kind of

activities about skimming and scanning my students will learn more. I loved these activities

that I did and I got the results immediately, like quizzes about reading. I liked to read a text,

after listening, then watching the video and answer questions.

I liked very much listening pronunciation, I learned a lot, and the activity was easy, this

activity could be very interesting for my students.

Cultural learning awareness

It could be easy for my students to work exercises like The Golden Gate Bridge and

American and British English, they could learn the differences, the names of the different

text types are descriptive, informative, persuasive and instructive, this kind of sites can help

students to learn vocabulary when they read the texts, and after they check the vocabulary

that they don´t know, in order to understand the text.

This kind of exercises help as teachers as students, I´m learning topics in an amazing way, I

´d like to know more, and improve my english classes, and this course are helping me a lot.

These texts were very interesting and I liked it because has history, places, people, laws

through the time, examples of brave people.

     I consider that my students in third grade are able to work with this kind of texts

as a tale, or something about History, they can read a part of the text each week and

finally we could watch the film that was produced by Steven Spielberg. A good strategy is

to active Prior knowledge before reading because the students can remember their

experiences. Another good strategy is to ask questions before, during and after reading

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because the students answer questions for different purposes including those that clarify

their own developing understanding. It is possible to infer the meaning of unfamiliar words

if readers synthesize and evaluate information based on prior knowledge.

To visualize when reading to create a picture in our mind is helpful because the

picture is evoked by descriptive details. It is used to help readers visualized ideas and to

create images from the text.

New teaching strategies discovered

I consider that the most exciting knowledge that I got in this Diploma course has guided me

through the use of the web, to explore reading, dictionaries, publishing and interaction.

Before this course I didn´t know about this important tool, but now I understand that I can

´t stay static in the changing world of technology and education. Now that I have received

the tools I need to apply them in class and be adaptable to the new options. I have to be

imaginative and creative, I have to use the new software as a useful tool of teaching-

learning in English and check the interests of my students to improve my classes.

Eight habits of highly effective 21st century teachers is a very successful article, I haven´t

listened before, the strategies that I observed aren´t related to the habits mentioned in the

text, in my Secondary School we don´t have internet yet, maybe next month (November),

so I let homework to my students, but I can work in the classroom with this very important

tool in my strategies, I think that I have to adapt the curriculum and the requirements to

teach to the curriculum in imaginative ways. The show must go on, when I work in

classroom I must adapt a dynamic teaching experience. Being visionary is to use the

technologies, in Collaborating I don´t have enough time to check these tools, but teachers

must prepare competence students. In taking risks I need to identify the goals and facilitate

the learning, I think that I must learn a lot of tools in internet, because I don´t have enough

abilities to do this works, Teachers must take courses and learn to communicate in a

correct way.

I say thank to you, and the people to do this activities in order to improve strategies of

teachers, I like this course very much, I have learned a lot, strategies, pages for working,

etc.

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Reading teaching strategies

It was very excited experience, this kind of sites can help students learn vocabulary when

they read the texts, and after they check the vocabulary that they don´t know, in order to

understand the text, this kind of exercises help as teachers as students, I want to say thank

to you because I´m learning topics in an amazing way, I´d like to know more and improve

my English class, and you are helping me a lot. I liked Civilians escape fighting in Sri

Lanka because you can listen the information, reading it, watching the videos and working

with vocabulary. This kind of exercises are excellent for teachers and students, they could

be homework for students, and they can look for more videos with letters about

conversation, text, etc. In Secondary school students love these activities, because they can

choose interesting topics according to their age. And both students and teachers can learn

about different cultures in the world. This kind of activities require some work setting up

every time we are going to work with them. As educators, we need to be doing the things

we should be teaching our students to be competitive when they leave school for the

working world.  

Listening teaching strategies

I consider that the ability of listening is the most difficult for me, but in this

Diploma Course I have learned some tips to improve this ability. Although other activities

were very difficult, because they were real listening that native speakers would do, I

couldn´t understand anything, only some numbers, but this kind of activities are really hard

specially about an authentic listening and take some notes as I listen, I watched the video

A Marathon Around My Block

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In my opinion, the activity could have been easier if we had read the New York

Times video, I like to read the conversations or explanations in the videos. Reading is one

my favorites activities and if I can´t understand some words, I can look for in my

dictionary, I think that I´m very bad listener, so I have to improve this ability.

This activity was too long, and I prefer short videos or

stories. I prefer short interviews, because longer are more

difficult for me.

Speaking teaching strategies

In my opinion there was one exciting activity, when we had to record our voice in

evaluating my fluency and topic development, when I listened carefully to my recording

and evaluate myself using a rubric, focusing only on the two aspects selected. It was a little

difficult to fill the rubric sincerely, but I tried, it isn´t easy to be conscious of own mistakes,

but with this, I can know what aspects I can improve in my English practice, my voice is

terrible, however my daughter told me that it was so nice.

With my students I have recommended them that they record their voice and after

listened that, they are very happy doing this activity and they try to improve their

pronunciation in many topics, in all grades, with a lot of information. Now my students like

to listen conversations, stories, etc in English because they want to know the correct

pronunciation of words, they pay more attention and try to repeat immediately the new

words that they are learning.

They like to listen the cds. In order to improve their pronunciation and speaking in

English very well. They said, and I believe them.

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Writing teaching strategies

The writing teaching strategies were wonderful, I had the opportunity to learn and to

practice different ways to write. I think so that the main teaching strategies were My

funniest tale and comments on the activity, because I don´t know to write a lot, but in this

activity I used the templates to create three stories, I learned to write what words are

adjectives, nouns, adverbs, articles, etc. The three stories were funny, and this activity

could been worked for the students.

Teachers can use these small and easy projects to encourage our students to write

tales and stories, students can use language creatively and appropriately selecting phrases

from the templates and of course using their imagination and feelings to complete the

writing product.

Finally writing is a difficult skill to develop. I mean when writing we teachers and

students must be careful with the grammar, the verb, spelling and punctuation in order to

create a text with the minimum of mistakes.

In my opinion this activity was very funny, I liked it very much, the stories are wonderful, the part

of speech that I consider difficult for my students to use correctly is to understand the difference

between nouns, verbs, articles, adverbs and adjectives, teachers must work in this part every day.

 Words quiz

   'Getting the right tense' level A - results

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  Well done, you've finished the quiz.

  You scored 9/10 [90.0%] so why not print out your certificate?

1: This sentence describes an action in the present.

'He is watching television.'

You said: true

Well done! That's right. The sentence 'He is watching television.' describes an

action in the present.

2: This sentence describes an action in the past.

'The bus is late again.'

You said: false

Well done, that's right. The sentence 'The bus is late again.' describes an action

in the present, not the past.

3: This sentence describes a future action.

'The train will be an hour late.'

You said: true

Well done, that's right. 'The train will be an hour late.' describes a

4: This sentence describes an action in the future.

'I bumped into an old friend yesterday.'

You said: false

Well done, that's right. 'I bumped into an old friend yesterday.' describes an

action in the past, not the future.

5: This verb is in the present tense

'I am working.'

You said: false

Bad luck! The answer is 'true'. 'I am working.' is in the present

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something that is happening right now.

6: This verb is in the past tense.

'I started.'

You said: true

Excellent, that's right. 'I started.' is in the past tense, it is the past of the verb 'to

start'.

7: This verb is in the present tense.

'I went.'

You said: false

Good choice - you're right! 'I went.' is in the past tense. It is the past tense of the

verb 'to go'.

8: This verb is in the future tense.

'He will go.'

You said: true

That's right. 'He will go.' is in the future tense.

9: This verb is in the present tense.

'He is sleeping.'

You said: true

Well done! That's right. 'He is sleeping.' is in the present tense.

10: This verb is in the future tense.

'I will write.'

You said: true

Good going! That's right. 'I will write.' is in the future tense.

About ICT tools

Information and Communication Technologies in teaching and learning english is a very

useful tool, so that our students are involved in technologies, and teachers must use too.

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Students know how to use cell phones, ipods, computers, they send messages, create their

hi5, chat, etc. so teachers should take advantages of technology. The exercise 1.2 the

minimal pairs were useful because I listened the clear difference between the end of the

numbers. It was easy in this way. With my students I will listen news in the radio and pay

attention in the pronunciation and listen the exercises with CDs from the books.

The activity 2.1. Top-down listening, the video is about people who do exercises in a gym.

The owners described a typical day in their life. They mentioned they love their job because

it's healthy and it makes them feel young and great. In Collecting toys: The owners said

that collecting toys is their passion. They mentioned they have the biggest toy show in the

southern hemisphere by far. The activity 4.1. Thought groups, listen to one of these songs,

Bon Jovi: Welcome to wherever you are and U2: Walk, on. after I watched this video, I

learned much about thought groups, and the tips that I liked are:

- No read long sentences

- Don´t break up short statements

- Identify nature pausing

The song that I listened to was " Welcome to wherever you are" the singer is Bon Jovi, I

really heard thought groups. I learned a new topic.

Lesson planning

Like teachers of century 21st we need to plan our class, according to the groups,

times, interests of the students, their necessities, etc. I liked this Plan because it is clear

about the characteristics that I need in a lesson plan, and includes the multiple intelligences

that we need to learn a language. Teachers need to develop different activities according to

the program, to evaluate each class, to do exams for students, to work individually and in

teams, etc.

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Belem Pedrin Goméz My learning awareness

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____________________________________________________________________

In this Diploma course I learnt to improve my Language Learning level with the modules to

develop the four abilities (speaking, listening, writing and reading) using the tool provided

in the Web sites.

To have the opportunity of participating in this course was a great deal because l learnt so

many productive things for my learning process and as a teacher.

Now thanks to the Diploma course I have a different perspective of education and a better

notion of my role in education.

New teaching strategies

____________________________________________________

The Diploma course has guided me through the use of the web, to

explore reading, dictionaries, publishing and interaction, just to mention

some. After exploring the advantages of the web I understand that I can

´t permit to stay static in the changing world of technology and education. Now that I have

received the tools I need to apply them in class and be adaptable to the new options.

Adapting, the 21st century educator must adapt to the requirements to teach and must be

imaginative and creative. I must also adapt software and hardware, even when the tools fail

teacher must go on and be adaptable to all new situations.

Being visionary is crucial for a Teacher. We must look for the emerging tools and adapt

them to the need of class. As Educators we must take risks and surrender to the Students

knowledge and use it in favor. Learning is a continuous process and we need to be aware of

that to go according to the constant change of the world. Educators must teach values and

model our Students behavior, being tolerant, reflective about the use of the new tools like

blogs and media. The 21st century educator is a leader who likes to set goals and

objectives, leadership is crucial to the success or failure of any project.

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Cultural learning awareness

______________________________________________________________________

The students must be aware of the cultural aspects that impact in the

Language and that there are certain aspects that identify it, like different

expressions, accent, pronunciation, and that all of them are important in

the communication process. I really enjoyed listening and watching videos that provided

me information of other countries that speak English and been able to hear the expressions.

Reading teaching strategies

______________________________________________________________________

In the module 3, I explored all kinds of strategies for reading comprehension, (scanning,

skimming, etc.) I became more fluid in my reading and learnt new words. I learnt about

people and stories and consulted different sites useful for my class. Reading is a good habit

that we as teachers need to practice. Through reading, students approach to knowledge.

There are many activities that we can make with students to develop the ability of reading,

like skimming, get specific information, because usually students have a problem to follow

instructions and these strategies help them to be more careful and obtain good results.

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Certain narrations like the text of Ambrose Bierce are great because as you read you are

using your imagination, you never know how the story is going to end all his story endings

are unexpected. Reading can be use to develop imagination in the students, imagination

promotes creativity which is essential in the learning process.

Listening and reading along is one of the activities I think my students would like to try

because they love to hear different accents. I found interesting information about The

Golden Gate Bridge story when it was built, not as many years as I thought, that the color

of the bridge, which is orange international was chosen because of the fog, so the people

could see through it, that 11 people died who fell down from the net, and the purpose of the

construction was to have other mediums of transportation different than the ferry.

I walked in 1998 in 1 hour and 10 minutes. I´ve been in this bridge and it´s a beautiful piece

of engineering and interesting history, and this is my opinion!

I read new facts in the American and British English Story. The Americans began to

change the sound of their speech after the Revolutionary War in 1776, because before that

year it was almost the same accent as the British and they wanted to separate from the

British government.

Benjamin Franklin wanted a new system of spelling, but was rejected. But

influenced many other and Noah Webster, who wrote a language book for

schools. He published his first spelling book in 1983 and the first

dictionary on English language in 1828. Webster believed every letter of the words should

be spoken so that the immigrants could learn more easily. Now I know why the Webster

dictionary I so popular.

To apply this exercises in class I would have to choose carefully the stories, because they

have to be interesting for the students in order to get them interested.

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In the reading module I improved my skill and strategies through different texts and helped

me to be more fluent and interested in this activity.

Listening teaching strategies

______________________________________________________________________

In the listening module I had the opportunity to hear audios and identify different accents

and pronunciation, which is good because this exercises help you be aware of the diversity

of the language. I was able to identify word stress, Intonation and rhythm through videos.

Reading along with someone´s voice was great because I corrected my pronunciation. The

tag questions are very common in the native speakers and again these kind a statements and

question make a conversation rich and fluent. They are very easy to practice and identify in

texts, song and movies, a good way of practice them in the class with students. Listening is

difficult for teenagers and all the strategies I used in the sites are innovative and attractive

and this turns into a very significant learning.

Speaking teaching strategies

______________________________________________________________________

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The module five is absolutely the most attractive and productive one for me, all the

activities I did were and excellent source for my class.

Interacted with partners, heard and recorded my voice, I

heard music and described emotions, I gave opinions about

topics, it was something unexpected and positive in my

learning process.

In the Audiacity audio I had many problems, downloading

the software, but I never give up until I finally was able to

get it done. I really thought this exercise would be easy, but a

felt nervous hearing my voice and all the noise around it, my Mexican accent is present in

the recording, but did it several times until I felt more confident.

I heard 3 audio with music which transported me to different places and situations, I feel

like music is a good strategy that can help students express to talk or write about the music

or their feelings. I have experience with my students that music is motivating and relaxing.

I personally have used music in class, not often as I want to. I agree with Johanna Ketchen

about the many benefits of using music in class, just to set a mood to the class you can use

music as a background, when the class is to restless and a mess you can play instrumental

music or relaxing one. Another use to the music is to hear it and write a story to produce

writing or narration, or share with the class about the texts they developed, there are many

advantages, but as a teacher I need to know the level of English my students have, to have a

good result.

About my experience on recording, I really enjoyed recording my voice, because I had the

opportunity to evaluate many aspects, like pronunciation, word stress, intonation, etc. In the

second one in voice thread I felt more confident; also it´s a good tool to use with the

students for home works that could help develop the speaking ability. I will use it in the

classroom. Usually the reaction I get from my students are good, but some times when I see

their faces with a question mark, instead of explaining in Spanish I try to see other ways in

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English, like giving clues o describing. I always try to run out of options before I translate

to Spanish.

One of the activities I made was to express agreement and disagreement of the tax raise

with a partner of the Diploma course through the webcam; for both of us was difficult

because we were nervous and was hard to virtually get together to do the discussion, at the

end turned out well, Xochitl was an excellent partner.

Describing feelings and telling short stories was a great introspective activity.

Writing teaching strategies

______________________________________________________________________

Through writing I was able to express using different sites and tools, I wrote a poem and

shared it with my partners, made a video with images and published it, described people,

went over the elements of punctuation, used model, wrote about a movie and my weakness

grammar. To conclude my Learning experience was productive and I´m sure I did

improvement, but I know this a process that has to continue and I need to adapt to the

changing technologies the world brings in order to be the excellent teacher my students

deserve to have.

I really enjoyed doing a wacky tale and my students will too. Perhaps the part that

will be difficult is when writing adjectives because we only use a few in class and I

think is good to do a review of adjectives before doing a wacky tale, I am sure they

know so many, is just they don´t know to difference from other words.

My partners and I enjoyed publishing and illustrating my poem through this activity a got

to know my partners better.

Writing about a book following a model is a great tip to use in the classroom, this site of

model will stay in my screen to consult.

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My weird story was fun to remember and I liked to share with my partners. Following a

model I wrote about an important event of my life.

The Diploma course was an adventure to me, although I was familiar with the some tools of

web, this well structured course has cleared a few doubts I had. All the modules have been

an excellent experience, but we all know our weak points need to work on. Speaking is one

of the abilities that we all non native speaker of the English Language need to practice and

improve; the best of all is that all the strategies and tools can be applied in the class with

our students. The writing skill is also one of the abilities I need to improve, it is important

to learn more vocabulary and follow the rules of grammar.

I have obtained awareness of the importance of my autonomous learning process and I will

look for more opportunities to be a better Teacher of the English Language.

Thank you! Adriana and all the people behind the Diploma Course.

Amazing Job!

Page | 170Xóchitl Pérez Pérez

My Learning Experience

Along this Diploma, teachers had the opportunity to develop their linguistic skills with the help of incredible net sites.

As learners and teachers of a second language, we all have much responsibility because we have the future of new generations in our hands.

This course has been a wonderful experience to learn much more about the four linguistic competences, (Listening, Reading, Speaking and Writing). It is also understood the Diploma is an opened door into the world of English where all people can access to another world with the use of the technology.

During this period of time continuous listening, reading and writing become usual practices in order to perform activities which allowed understanding much better native speakers. Applying reading techniques, speaking exercises and writing models in a wide variety of interesting topics were fundamental to reach this goal.

CULTURAL LEARNING AWARENESS

Nowadays, there are many world problems, and teachers must develop students’ conscience in order to create government organizations or civil societies which offer communities assistance and support.

Some important modern life problems like healthy and ecological situations, animals in danger of extinction, anti-social behavior, air pollution and children abuse could be a good beginning so that our

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teenagers know about their origins and they can avoid actions that increase these problems.

NEW TEACHING STRATEGIES DISCOVERED

According to this point of view, teachers must be innovators and we have to focus in new techniques to teach, since the beginning of a good lesson plan. Students increase their knowledge according to the principal aim.

Andrew Churches talks about an interest position about eight habits of highly effective teachers. Most of innovator and in service teachers completely agree with his considerations. It is

only necessary to have in mind that teachers must improve their communicative skills, so that, we

can teach in a better way.

He also thinks teachers must be collaborators, sharing, contributing, adapting and inventing in

all ambits.

In addition, teachers are able to adapt their program considering the student`s capabilities. If they really involve in this process by creating tasks using Internet sites, both teachers and students could learn more and check their weaknesses and strengths using a second language.

Giving some examples, if we invite them to use Photopeach and Makebeliefs comic sites, they can create comic tales and incredible presentations posting their own pictures. Those can be used when writing about likes and dislikes, physical and felling description, also, talking about their memories. They can use pictures about family, favorite pets or others according to the topic. Tales are a good way to express imaginary situations.

If taking advantage of these sites, teachers would adapt their lesson plans considering different student`s learning styles (Multiple Intelligences), so take the risk and allow students to make mistakes when they learn while they use the technology.

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READING TEACHING STRATEGIES

Reading Module is a great option to improve communication skills. It offers a series of interesting Internet sites and useful exercises to perform efficient -. Most of the given activities are highly instructive and well designed to practice vocabulary, differences between facts from opinions, diversity of cultures, or any other kind of topic in different average levels.

One of the most interesting sites is about “Adult learning activities”, where it is possible to learn about daily people activities outside our country. Examples of this are the readings “Foster Children” and “Cell phone cautions”.

These activities are quite useful to practice spelling words, completing charts or solving tests in large groups

Watching videos is another great way to practice listening and writing and also, to learn about possible consequences if we do not pay attention to advises or keep follow traffic regulations as shown in the “Cell Caution” activity.

By means of final quizzes they offer, it is possible to check understanding, in other words, verifying the main point of the activity. In this sense “Visual activities” make the difference.

LISTENING TEACHING STRATEGIES

The recognition of a phrasal verb in a composition, often confuse beginners and even confident ESL teachers when trying to understand main ideas in complex texts.

The activity would be easier with a phrasal verb and a picture included in a sentence at the very beginning of the lessons.

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The idea to print a picture in each statement is good if you need to identify properly the right definition.

Later, proceed by listening to complete texts, where the expressions practiced in the previous activities could be in the information section.

It seems that the key to check if the order of the activities is good enough is by answering or completing test and forms from a series, taken from a book or internet sites.

SPEAKING TEACHING STRATEGIES

In this sense it is permitted affirm that students -as learners of a second language- are able to use many types of materials that allow them to practice and improve their speaking abilities with real situations.

Voicethread site is an excellent tool which gathers all valuable characteristics. It offers students new techniques to develop their speaking skill.

The activity will be success if teachers provide students new tools in order to speak easily using pictures and videos.

Teachers could select a cartoon picture or a video fragment and follow instructions step by step until the end of each Unit. For example, with second grade:

Firstly set students in small groups for the activity, teacher would invite them to make a list of personal pronouns, adjectives and verbs in order to practice what they have already learned.

Then, make them remember the meaning and pronunciation from those words using word cards.

Next, students proceed watching the provided image or video to check which vocabulary could be useful to describe a character physical description, abilities and/or habits according to the

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picture. After making comments around the teams, each teenager would give a statement using the list they wrote before.

At the end of the activity, the whole students watch and listen to their final work and they comment possible errors in pronunciation and intonation and how they feel doing the exercise.

Finally, they could try with another presentation, so that they can do it in an individual way.

The possibilities to apply this activity in schools are wide, but it depends on teacher abilities or teaching style and ITC’s resources.

Always have in mind that a modern teacher task is to promote and facilitate learning by using technology.

WRITING TEACHING STRATEGIES

Writing is considered the most difficult language skill to overcome by many English teachers. On the other hand, everybody has the opportunity to develop their abilities by practicing with marvelous strategies and websites.

Some good strategies to practice writing are:

Shared writings: Posting the exercises and other peer`s make comments about your tasks.

Interactive writings: Easy way to express about feelings in a visual way using a poetry book and comic strips using the website. These net writings motivate everybody to write.

Personal writings: Guiding by given models and templates perhaps are the best way to practice writing using own ideas. Writing is always difficult when organizing main points, but with this magnificent method, the result is amazing.

“Photopeach” is another incredible net site that any teacher or student can use to write in any language in order to develop writing skills.

Using suggested websites to practice English language surely will make you a better and more confident writer.

Page | 175ABOUT ICT TOOLS

Information and communication Technology (ICT) is an umbrella term that covers all technical means for processing and communication information. It is often used to describe digital technologies including methods for communication.

ICT allows users to participate in a changing world in which work and other activities are transformed by access to varied and developing technologies. If we are English teachers, we have to look at the websites from different purposes so that, we improve or teaching with our students.

All suggested activities have good strategies so that a learner can increase their English language capabilities. Some others are hard-working but, at the end of the lessons, all are useful to develop our communicative skills.

The greatest section is “Speaking” Module. It is a real challenge but efficiently assists speakers to feel confident and lose fears when talking.

Three excellent Internet tools useful to develop teacher or students speaking skills are:

Recording their own speeches using Audacity Program.

By means of this valuable tool students can practice recording their voices using a correct intonation and pronunciation.

Promote the participation in “Voicethread”.

Students may share their oral productions, this way that they

can give points of view from other partners. They can also check development.

Listening to some music clips.

This activity evokes many passages from their lives. It is a good way to practice speaking.

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It is fundamental teacher motivate students to get great teaching and learning results.

LESSON PLANING

A lesson plan is a plan for learning. The quality of planning affects the quality of results. Teachers must carefully select and arrange activities that will produce the desired learning outcomes in our students. It must be properly organized to achieve the lesson objective.

The suggested cycle of a lesson planning includes the next characteristics:

Determining the objectives. Researching the topic as defined by the objective. Selecting the appropriate method. Deciding how to organize the lesson. Establishing a strategy statement. Choosing appropriate support material. Preparing the introduction and conclusion of the lesson. Preparing a final outline.

According to this idea, the best lesson plan model in daily practice is the one suggested by Madeline Hunter’s where seven steps must be applied.

Anticipatory Set (setting the stage). Statement of Objectives.

Instructional Input.

Modeling-demonstrate.

Check for understanding.

Guided Practice.

Independent Practice.

The huge necessity to follow this model is because teachers need new strategies of teaching. Nowadays, the statics show a low learning in all levels of Education, especially in Public schools.

Adolescents are unmotivated, surly and uncooperative and that therefore they make

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poor language learners, but if they are to continue to be motivated, they clearly need to be interested both, in the subject they are studying and topics they are presented.

Teachers must form creative, reflexive and capable students to face daily life challenges in easy way, by acquiring good strategies to teach followed by a correct sequence in lessons plans.

MY FINAL REFLECTION

Teachers all around have a huge responsibility to assist students’ language development. That is why this Diploma Course has been a personal great challenge.

It is recognized teachers daily labor is harder to increase students’ interest on learning, mainly since they have other priorities, but it is not enough reason to avoid responsibilities or to apply same teaching experiences along years.

In addition, nowadays teachers are unmotivated and many others lost their interest to continue studying but it is fundamental to learn and apply new ways of teaching. In this sense, taking advantage of a Diploma like this, teacher encourages the task of learning more about new strategies in order to change old teaching styles.

By using a wider variety of teaching tools and techniques, teaching activity will be more efficient and pleasant and students’ communication performance more effective. In fact, students’ natural expectations are clearly higher and they deserve the opportunity to acquire the best language skills and experiences from teaching activity.

Finally, it is necessary to thank UNAM because of this great course. It gives teachers the opportunity to improve language skills.

Lot of thanks to my course mates, because I learned much from their opinions and valuable comments, for giving me enough force to end this course but especially I want to thank my Tutor Adriana Aceves Martineck for all given support and the help she gave me along this Diploma.

Without them, this amazing experience will not be the same.

Thank you very much. La Piedad, Mich.

Leonardo Ruiz Uriostegui

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My Learning Experience

English language learning awareness

My language level has improved gradually and constantly. I have been insistent that

reading is one of the most, if not the most important activity for achieving such

improvement. Reading helps to increase vocabulary and puts it into context.

I said before that if I understand English my students will understand it too. I am convinced

that practice is one of the key factors that help raising my English level as well as my

students. However, this practice is often difficult since people are not faced with the

opportunity to practice outside of the classroom. Again, reading helps with this, but by

itself is not enough. Listening to English conversation by watching movies for instance

helps complement reading as it exercises the ear and helps understanding pronunciation. I

also had the opportunity to practice with speaking exercises.

On the grammar aspects I believe my understanding has been improved.

Tenses: tenses are one of the areas my students frequently have problems. Module 6

presents this subject in a very simple way and can I am considering presenting

material based on it to help my students understand better the correct use of them.

Vocabulary: I said before that my vocabulary has increased, mostly due to reading. I

learned how to express agreement and disagreement, and which expressions could

be used for that.

Adjectives adverbs: Lessons had served me a lot in reviewing adverbs and

adjectives. Adjectives give information about the noun. Adverbs additional

information about the verb. Adjectives can e useful to describe people, places and

things. Using both adverbs and adjectives, a conversation, or piece of writing can be

more interesting.

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Sentence structure. The understanding of the structure of a sentence has helped me a

lot to create better writings. I already knew that the sentence is the basic unit of

written English language communication. A sentence must make sense on its own,

must have a verb and a subject, and must end with a full stop.

Cultural learning awareness

Cultural awareness is of high relevance when learning a foreign language because the language itself is part of the culture. There is no way to separate culture and language. This not only applies to the English language. It is not enough to understand grammar, phonology and lexis; cultural particularities are also involved.

As English language teachers, we teach foreign culture whether we realize it or not. When we tell our students how start a conversation, greetings, formulas and other interactions, we are teaching not only language but culture. Foreign language teaching involves making the student aware of the need of changing his/her behavior to adapt to the foreign culture. Teacher’s task is to make the student aware of the differences between their own and the target culture, not to pass judgment over those differences. Cultural similarities should be taught to the students as well. In short terms, a language is learned and used in a cultural context.

The main reasons for teaching culture in the foreign language classroom should be to:

Develop communication skills

Develop intercultural understanding

Understand behavioral and communication patterns in the foreign culture as well as the native culture of the student

Appreciate common communication mistakes that may arise not from simple language use, but from cultural misunderstandings and behavior.

Language learning can be difficult if the student is not aware of this cultural context. There are numerous techniques that can be used to acculturate the students, namely: cultural capsules, readings, conversations, films, games, etc.

One of the most interesting tools I learned about in this course is the use of movie segments. Movie segments present the use of language in real situations. The student can observe the reactions of the characters involved in those situations and compare them with their own reactions by asking “what would you do instead?” These movie segments can sometimes present information about lifestyles. It can also provide images and symbols of the target culture. Of course, teaching culture is not limited to the presentation of movie films.

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Teaching culture could involve discussions of daily life in the other language community, their living conditions, their school, relationship with friends, leisure, dating and marriage customs, festivals and ceremonies they celebrate, etcetera. Later on attention may be drawn to historical issues, society organization, geographical factors and how they impact the foreign culture way of life, production, buying and selling, aspects of city and country life, music, art, and so on. The objective of performing these activities is to create or increase cultural awareness among the students.

New teaching strategies discovered

These are the eight habits mentioned in the article “Eight habits of highly effective 21st century teachers”:

Adapting

Being visionary

Collaborating

Taking risks

Learning

Communicating

Modeling behavior

Leading

I would like to highlight the following:

Collaborating: When it comes to collaborating I have told my students that using the web is a tool from which we can take great advantage. It could be something as simple as sharing notes or it starting a discussion on a certain topic. If students understand the objective of the activity it can serve them for learning a new concept. Students must take the activity seriously. Unfortunately young students are not always aware of this and post comments entirely unrelated with the activity. It is the teacher’s duty to ensure that objectives are met through moderation and supervision.

Learning: This diploma course is the learning habit itself applied. “We must continue to absorb experiences and knowledge. We must endeavor to stay current.” We teachers by taking this course acknowledge that.

Modeling behavior: Language learning is a cultural exercise. We teach values and help our students understand not only use of language, but values from a foreign culture such as the English speaking community. In order for students to be able to successfully adapt when they communicate

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with a native English speaker or group, they must be aware of the cultural differences between them and us. We model behavior and teach values to help our students to communicate more effectively. This modeling behavior habit is closely related to cultural awareness in our students.

Reading teaching strategies

One of the most interesting activities I found on module 3 is Activity 2.1 Identifying facts and opinions. The reason I liked this particular activity is because I sometimes dedicate some time to read on forums of any subject. Sometimes you can discover interesting discussions about any topic and learn from the opinions people express about it. There are of course some cases in which the discussion heats up but remains civilized and others where it becomes an exchange of insults. However, when it remains civilized, sometimes one can put some scrutiny to the arguments expressed and see that people often express opinions and confuse them with facts, or use false arguments, try to elude the truth, present diversions (arguments presented with the intention to distract from the main topic or previous line of reasoning) and make use of fallacious reasoning. The ability to identify facts and opinions helps see beyond those false arguments and avoid being confused so easily. At least I feel that way.

Now I understand that when someone claims that something is a fact it must be supported by evidence. You can ask for a reference. I also noticed that people often present “expert opinions” from notable people with experience in the topic and present that as evidence. However, as valuable and important that opinion may be, it is still an opinion, not evidence. This particular activity made me think a lot. It was fascinating and simple.

Vocabulary learning

Activity 2.1 was not the only interesting activity in this module. Activity 3.2 also called my attention as it helps learning vocabulary by using a text for reading, as well as providing support with several keywords. It is introduced with a summary and then is followed by the report. This report has an audio track which can be reproduced while reading the text. This helps reinforce the reading with a pronunciation guide. The web site provided by this activity is a very valuable resource. It provides the text for reading, the sound for both the report text and the vocabulary and new vocabulary words emphasized in bold. All vocabulary words come with their definitions which can be useful if the word is unfamiliar to the reader. It is worth noting that these reports are real reports and can be useful to be informed of the latest world news. That is the reason why I can say this is a valuable resource from which students can benefit.

The strategies that can be applied to these exercises are:

Distinguish facts from opinions

Identify main ideas and supporting details.

Summarize information.

Skimming

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Scanning

Listening teaching strategies

Module four of this diploma course is straightforward, pretty easy to follow and finish. It is really useful to train your ear. Also I learned a few facts I was unaware of. I learned about word stress. Word stress is of great relevance when we speak.

Even though Module 4: Listening is not particularly difficult, I was a bit surprised when I saw that I made some mistakes in the dictation exercises. I probably should have taken a little more time on these exercises so I could have answered them more accurately.

To be quite honest, I am not sure if this activity could have been easier, but I am inclined to say that no, it couldn’t have. As I’ve said earlier, the module is easy and straightforward, not to mention very fun. If I failed in that particular exercise is maybe because I just need to refine me ear a bit more listen to more videos, conversations and if possible, more English speaking people.

I had a suggestion from a friend who studied Computer Systems. He told me that almost all material he has to study is in English. It goes from text, tutorials and videos to exercises and sample materials. He told me that I should try to listen to more videos in YouTube with English material as a way to practice, and perhaps suggest a few videos to my students. This reminds me the movies and grammar activity from Module 6 unit 8. He showed me something like the following link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOwHiGCzZjo&feature=related

Now, even tough I do not understand much of what the guy in the video is talking about (you can surely note that he uses technical jargon frequently), I realize that videos like this are great to practice listening and use them to try to improve our comprehension. Of course I would have selected a different video with a totally different topic (something we poor mortals could comprehend much easier) and train my ear. Actually we did something like that in some of the exercises, like the songs from U2 with the lyrics on one side of the screen. Those activities were really fun! These exercises can be easier if they have text to read as we listen. If they have vocabulary words, they can be very useful.

Another interesting activity was 6.1 on Phrasal verbs. I commented that I believe that this is a difficult topic because of the nature of phrasal verbs. Phrasal verbs are idiomatic expressions in which a verb can change its meaning by adding a preposition to it. This means that a verb can suddenly have two or more meanings just because you added a preposition. Think about the verb give. When I use this verb, it could mean to present something voluntarily or to hand to someone. But if I say give up for instance, then the meaning changes.

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For us who are native Spanish speakers, this could present difficulty, since I am not aware it happens very often in our language, or even if something similar even happens at all!

After finishing this module I understand that I need to pay much more attention to word stress to ensure that I can follow better the meaning of a sentence. English is considered a stress language rather than a syllabic one. I must put the stress in the correct words to make to be understood. Put attention to intonation. Intonation and word stress are very similar concepts, but word stress, as the name suggests, focuses on the words, and intonation focuses on the sentences. We must also be aware of phrasal verbs and tag questions, so we are able to identify them and use them properly.

Speaking teaching strategies

I am of the opinion that the most useful activity in this module is the Voicethread activity. It is a great experience to be able to hear the voices of my course mates and express their opinions about a particular topic. This activity encourages group participation and we could take great advantage from it to ensure that our students remain interested in English language learning, providing them the opportunity to express a great variety of opinions. This works perfectly for them, because they could find this activity as a fun one and are able to enjoy it, no matter if they are usually shy. Using this kind of activities, students who usually remain as silent observers of their classmates start participating with greater confidence as they have the opportunity to review their answer, or comment it with other students. Besides, it could be used for a great variety of topics.

Other activities such as How to give instructions are very useful in my opinion. We can be often faced with the need of expressing properly when giving instructions. What if we want to make a recipe, or give instructions to change a tire? What if we want to help someone who has problems with his/her computer or a device like a printer?

Instructions must be expressed concisely and clearly. The links provided which talk about how to start giving instructions are helpful. Since these are common situations, students need to be able to express instructions, and need to know how to give or ask for them.

Writing teaching strategies

Grammar and writing

Grammar and writing: I enjoyed the activity My funniest tale. I had the opportunity to write a little about myself. I know that this activity was written with a template with only a few spaces to edit. But believe it or not, is like if I had written the whole text of the activity. I really love playing soccer and I wanted to share that with others. The fact that the activity was based on templates made it easier. It gives you a better idea of how to start a text and is an excellent guide for students who have problems with writing activities.

Correcting a piece of writing: This activity is something that we as English teachers do a lot. I could find a little more than 20 mistakes, but could not find all of them.

A book of poems

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Writing ideas: The book of poems activity turned out to be very challenging to me. I was not expecting the book to generate such a positive impression. I am glad to see that the book of poems I wrote was enjoyed by my peers. This filled me with great satisfaction. I have never thought of me as a poet. This exercise is great for boosting creativity.

Creating stories

Activity 3.1 was a challenge too. The makebeliefscomix.com website is another tool that can be used to help students improve their writing skills and understand better the use of language, as well as learning new vocabulary and apply it. It can be used with teams to promote collaboration among students and make the experience even more amusing.

About ICT tools

I will use this opportunity to talk about the importance of Information Communications Tools in language learning.

I believe that we as English language teachers should be concerned about Information Communications Tools for several reasons:

It is motivating for both students and teachers. It makes the learning process more enjoyable.

It offers a wide range of resources, which goes from text, presentations, video clips, vocabulary, exercises, audio, etc,

It makes worldwide communication possible

It offers distance learning opportunities, being this course one clear example of it.

The speaking module was one of the most productive and enjoyable from this course. The tools we used to communicate can certainly be used with our students to help them communicate and

practice their English by expressing opinions and sharing ideas. I mentioned earlier the importance of tools like voicethread which is excellent to encourage participation among students and make the express what they think of certain topics. We made use of recording software like Audacity to record ourselves and then we could upload the files with our voices recorded.

Another excellent tool to learn and practice is the website BBC Leaning English which is not only a site for reading; it is also useful for learning new vocabulary

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with full definitions provided just after the text, vocabulary words emphasized with bold letters and a site a track record of the report itself which helps understand pronunciation.

I have heard comments before that some people have used videogames to practice their English. How is that? You may ask. Well, it turns out that when they get to play online, they usually encounter a lot of English speakers. They can be playing with people form many different parts of the world and communicate with each other, most of the time by using English. Of course these conversations are very informal. When I heard about this I could not see any practical value. I thought it could not be used with my students or any student who is devoting time to understand the English language, but then, to my great surprise, I found the following video titled Educational uses of Second Life:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=FR&hl=fr&v=qOFU9oUF2HA

Second Life is defined as a virtual world available through the Internet. In there, their residents can interact with what are called avatars. An avatar is just a simple representation of the user in the virtual world or alter ego. It is a place where people form a virtual community with many, many places to visit, which can go from houses, to shops and even museums. It even has its own economy.

The pedagogical relevance of Second Life relies on the possibility to visit places of cultural nature such as museums, or even virtual classrooms inside this computer world. In there, students can visit replicas of historical places from which they can learn. They can participate in trivia exercises, meetings, workgroups and several activities. They can communicate with native English speakers; look for information and search for

objects with definitions attached to them (useful for building vocabulary), etcetera.

It probably would be impractical to suggest at this very moment to use Second Life with my own students due to several limitations like the hardware requirements, and the cost of such equipment. It is true that Personal Computers are affordable nowadays. However, not all students may have access to a computer even today and would be unable to enter into this game. After all, the video itself states that the possibilities of use of Second Life as an educational tool are still under development. Nonetheless, I considered it worth mentioning.

Even though I insist on qualifying these tools as “very valuable or useful” lets not forget about an important issue. It is far beyond the value of the tool the importance of the teacher and his own training. Technology by itself is insufficient. Technology is not a panacea. If insufficient effort is put in

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training teachers to use technology and to use it imaginatively, then it is probably better to dispense technology altogether. We should be reminded that the teacher plays a crucial role in the education of students, which could hardly, if it is not impossible, be substituted by technology.

Lesson planning

Lesson planning is critical for achieving a good understanding of the topics presented in classroom by the students. There are many formats for lesson plans. I believe both Madeline Hunter’s Seven Steps and Bloom’s Taxonomy. I will focus in Bloom’s taxonomy in this document. I believe this is the most appropriate approach to my students in class because is easy to understand and to apply.

Bloom’s taxonomy and critical thinking

Bloom’s taxonomy divides educational objectives into three domains: Affective, Psychomotor and Cognitive. I will focus on the Cognitive domain.

Image 1: Categories in the cognitive domain of Bloom's Taxonomy (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001)

There are six levels in the taxonomy, moving through the lowest order processes to the highest

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Knowledge: In this level, we recall facts, previous experiences and concepts which were already learned. One way we could apply this to a lesson plan is by establishing the lesson requirements that students should meet to take the lesson. If students do not meet the lesson plan requirement, the probably it would be better to present the basis needed for it in an introductory section or lesson

Comprehension: In this level we try to demonstrate the understanding of facts and ideas by organizing, comparing, stating ideas and giving descriptions. We could do this by asking the students some questions about the concepts which are being presented and how students perceive hem. Also we could ask them to make comparisons with a related topic. For instance, we could ask students how different tenses in the English language work and make a comparison between them.

Application: In this level we make use of the recently acquired knowledge. For example, if the topic being covered by the lesson is how to express agreement or disagreement, we could encourage students in this phase to start conversations or debate about a specific topic and let them express their positions on that topic so that later they can confront their opinions. This way they can apply their recently acquired knowledge on how to express agreement or disagreement.

Analysis: Examine and break information into smaller parts by identifying motives or causes.

Synthesis: Combine information I different ways so that they are easy to remember. This can involve the use of diagrams.

Evaluation: This requires the establishment of a criterion that ensures the students have learned the concepts of the lesson.

A well developed lesson plan reflects interests and needs of the students. There are a few essential parts of a lesson plan:

Objectives: what students will be able to do after completing the lesson.

Standards: which state content and developmental standards are addressed in the lesson.

Procedures: What will the teacher do to get the students there.

Assessment opportunities: What the teacher can do to see if the lesson was taught effectively.

Modifications/accommodations: for any special needs for the students in class.

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Alejandro Vazquez Morales My learning experience

When you are a teacher, your idea is that you are completed and you don’t have the necessity to learn more about your job, because you have all the knowledge for you and your students in few words, you are done. But what is going to happen if the time is changing, if the necessity is bigger now than past times? What is going to happen if the teacher is always the same? How can affect this teacher’s pride to the students?

The case mention before, is mine and I’m sure that my case is happening somewhere else, but now I know that education concept is taking major interest in society in my community, so that’s the reason that I have the answer to those questions mentioned or at least is my intention to explain that the teacher’s knowledge is never enough for this beautiful labor, and necessity is bigger so we as teachers have to increase our didactic capabilities and improve in the same measure our knowledge in order to give the students the best instruction. If we don’t update ourselves then students are going to have a huge deficiency on their school discharge.

My learning experience in this course have changed my labor in the classrooms and I hope don’t stop my own learning from here to further times; at the beginning I wanted to learn more about speaking because I had the wrong idea that it was the only necessity on me, but since I started it I found many unknown topics, and now I’m grateful with all I received from the course.

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Cultural learning awareness

Internet gives everybody the opportunity to learn about culture, and in every web site of the course culture is found, so it must be approached for teachers, to

implement in class, at least one of the huge varieties of topics.

In every program’s unit there’s always something to learn about culture, and it’s important to focus teacher’s attention on this matter, because culture is surrounding our lives every day, and the main part of culture learning is that the boys and girls in secondary school, learn to recognize their own culture, and learn about other country´s culture.

All web sites provide in the course have topics related with culture, for example History of Civil War, that I didn’t know very much, cultural differences in the same language, as the English in United States versus U.K.,“fear youngsters" article and fear of adults in U.K., Amistad incident,

taught me the justice in past times, foster homes, that solve part of the problem in US. families.

New teaching strategies discovered

The usage of ICT in the classroom is needed, and on this matter the internet tools found are absolutely a good option to implement, even when in the context seem to be impossible, is a challenge to bring the students those resources, is not indispensable to situate a class in internet, maybe a cell phone or videos can be used.

Innovation in class is gratefully received by students, they enjoy the time given to this activities and what is more the result is better and they tend to like the English matter, more, and don’t be afraid of the class

In addition is that students always want to learn about technology, here’s when adapting curriculum fits very well, and take new risks in order the young students learning, because they have high expectative in English class, it means that as a teachers we have to take care of them, facilitate learning with written, listen, and visual materials, they really appreciate it, and what is more they enjoy it a lot.

Reading teaching strategies

I didn’t use to be an excellent reader; in fact, it was always difficult for me to read a page when I was at school, that’s the reason that I never enjoyed the reading, but in this course, I experimented a great sensation, I felt well because I enjoyed narration more in English than Spanish.

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Skimming, scanning gets the perfect way to study or simply reading, this topic is a key to start the reading as a skill, because with the use of those techniques, students can improve texts interpretations and improve the time for studying.

Other resource for this skill is the fact and opinion; they give a general idea of the topic, and help to interpret the main idea, the topic looks like an easy strategy for the students, I’m sure they will feel confident at same the time of using it.

Listening teaching strategies

After the review of the fourth module, I remembered the most difficult activity, and was one of “The Australia Network on English bites” specially “Sea lions” because pronunciation on the video was new for me, I tried and tried to understand, but was so difficult, so the best form to comprehend all the video,

was with the help of the script, but even with it, at the first time I couldn’t follow the written words with the explanation but I repeated the listening and at the end I could do the activity. Then other obstacle were some idioms which their meanings were at the same video, I think the meaning comprehension of those words was necessary.

Other problem part of the module was the activity about the intonation because I didn’t realized about the importance of this part of the language, and intonation is fundamental in English speaking and listening, so now I’m not against with the intonation learning and anymore, and with my students I take the time with the pronunciation practice. At this moment I can say that intonation and word stress, can help to understand the English speaking.

Speaking teaching strategies

Oral production is very difficult in class because they feel bad if one of their classmates make jokes about the participation, and I think that in this case cell phones like an ICT resource, are very useful because students have a participation with better results than a directly participation.

Well, the activity “How to describe a situation or place” can be used as product in secondary English class, the music helps to remember situations and places seen by us during our lives, and I believe tends to improve the vocabulary and

fluency. The manner of practicing this activity in class can be done with a cell phone as an option because many students have one, and they prefer to play with the cell phone recorder, than speaking in class, and I thought this, as a project to join all groups’ recordings and burn a CD with the students’ voices and see which of the recordings is the most interesting. The CD can be used to evaluate the students and they can asses themselves in class or homes and even evaluate each other.

Writing teaching strategies.

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This module had the biggest variety of strategies of all, and it was so difficult for me and it represented a big challenge but against to this, there are very fun activities, and students can get pleasure from all of them. There’s another good strategy

and it’s about to put ideas and sentences in correct order, and I think is hard for everybody to write texts with sense, that other people understand.

There’s a good idea, the writing with patterns, and it’s very useful for people like students with not very much experience on writing, that have mistakes writing and need to be encourage. As I could see on this module, the use of a predetermined phrase is welcome when somebody doesn’t know the language at all, what is more, I have used this resource in my own language, and it helped me to explain ideas or comprehend complicated texts. I have used the activities again and guided some other texts to write, with those patterns.

Writing is an art, and the online resources like the comics and photo albums, give everybody the opportunity to share feelings, to the people, and when we transcript those feelings in an easy way, something that happened to us or something we like, is better.

About ICT tools

There are a lot of ICT tools on the internet that can help everybody to learn more English, applications are dedicated to the four skills of the language The variety of educative pages, is in different levels but the most important is that there are many English topics, easier and in a funny way; it´s true, in the books we can learn more, but the advantage on internet is that you can choose more options, and not only read the available book.

Advantages in English language learning through internet is that the student can manage his or her time, with the other daily activities,, it means at anytime.

There are some powerful and complete content web sites, that is the case of "American Stories (text and mp3)" because it’s related directly with reading comprehension, and there are activities that have, not common vocabulary to learn, and they have a resource that students can appreciate a lot, it is the mp3 file in every reading, so students can read and repeat some difficult words.

About the web sites, there’s the "BBC Learning English" web page, which activities have text, audio, vocabulary, and a variety of topics, the most important of those activities is that they’re up dated and have very common

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idioms for English native speakers, and on the web page "Reading strategies for the Journey North Teacher" I practiced with excellent topics which were very useful for teachers, because they have many

examples and

applications for the English class.

Lesson planning

About the most important studies about education it’s known that there are very good theories to apply in class and sometimes we have to adapt some contents four skills to them, but the most difficult for a teacher is the students’ learning, so I think that the Instructional Scaffolding (by, Jerome Bruner; Langer & Applebee) gives the students the opportunity to work with the teacher and the partners.

At the first part they get the topic that is the porpoise of the class, then they appropriate that knowledge and after that they’ll have the opportunity to interact between themselves or with the teacher in a collaborative way, until they can produce by a homework, activity or anything that can be evaluated by partners or teacher.

And talking about evaluation, this model provides to the teacher a good way to evaluate the students before, during and after the teaching-learning process, and I think this is an advantage in class.

The information is flowing in a non restricted form because is in the student’s hands and they can manage it, in the manner they want and need.

At the end, students can produce alone with all knowledge, they practiced in prior activities.

Instructional Scaffolding (Jerome Bruner; Langer & Applebee)

Ownership--wish to learn

Appropriateness--right level

Support--structured guidance

Collaboration--coaching

Internalization--independent practice

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Conclusion

Education has been a huge challenge for parents and teachers, adding to this, the necessi ty of English studying nowadays, i t ’s clear that a teacher has to look for the best pedagogical resources in order to give the students the bet ter way to learn, though the course I learnt a lot of contents that I didn’t know about the English language but the most important at the end of al l act ivit ies, is that as a teacher I need to update my language skil ls according with the times necessi ties we are l iving, is not enough with the knowledge I have. This course showed me the long way to cover, because it never ends, so i t’s the teacher learning, and now the last we have to do is accept the challenge and compromising with this noble work.