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    • Observation number 3 – May 5, 2010 – aulas 7/8

    May 11, 2010 by

    Teacher starts the class c haging Ss according to their behavior. She doesn’t want Students talking to each other frequently. She also gives Students a paper to be signed by Students parents to let them know that the kids will need tutoring. T tells Students all in English about things they have studied recently, including some details like questions and possible solutions to the problems.

    T takes 4 Students out of the class and talk to them, possibly giving them instructions for the next activity. She tells Students inside the class that they should guess/ imagine the dialog the 4 Students who went out of the class will act out. The outsider (pretends) acts like he has a health problem while the other s tries to help him. They don’t say any words, so the insiders have to use what they learned to guess the dialog among the students. They accurately practice the simple dialog for health problems after the exercise; she wants to checks Students homework. She walks around the classroom correcting Students homework and cheking if they have done it. T starts presenting another topic. She teaches Students how to change affirmative sentences into questions and negative sentences. She drills the students with some examples teaching how to use the auxiliaries 3rd person singular and different sentences  aspects. T gives Students a handout for them to practice the uses of third person singular and also how to change sentences into another aspect.

    Students should now open their books to page 18. The book provides Students with more practice. Third person singular interrogative. She corrects the exercise with Students to play the game on their books on page 19.

    Posted in Estagio 2010 | | | 1 Comments

    Observation number 3 – April 27, 2010 – aulas 5/6

    May 3, 2010 by

    Teacher gives tests back tell students who will be having tutoring. She starts class checking parts of the body with students. They seem to remember the vocabulary quite well. The instructions are all in English and she speaks in the language most of the time. The topic now is “aches”. Different kinds of aches are presented with the teacher using her own body as example.

    After presenting the main problems, they discuss how to fix them using different kinds of solutions, including medicine, asking professionals for help, etc. When all the problems discussed are written on the board, she asks students to repeat the words. They start playing a game. A ball should be thrown to different students so that they would choose one health problem. If any student repeats a word such said by another student the one who said first can choose a forfeit to the last student.

    She teaches how the sentences “what’s the matter?”, “I’ve got a/an ______”, and “you should ______”. They discuss what they should do to fix each problem. Most of the students have a chance to participate saying a problem and the other student says the solution. Following, the next activity is to create three dialogs using the information learned.

    Students had an fierce argument during the class. Teacher tries to resolve the problem talking to students and finishing the fight briefly. She goes around checking if students did the exercises properly. Teacher corrects exercises on the book. She explains the homework.

    Posted in Estagio 2010 | | | 0 Comments

    TASK 3: Talking about language teaching

    April 26, 2010 by

    Talking about language teaching

    The terminology we need in language pedagogy, thought as neatly defined and totally unambiguous, is often ambiguous and sometimes downright confusing. This chapter will discuss the terms ‘second’ or ‘foreign language’,
    ‘bilingualism’, ‘teaching’, and ‘learning’.

    Second language

    At a more technical level we find for the ‘mother tongue’ or  ‘native language’ the terms ‘primary language’ and ‘Ll’ and for ‘second language’ or ‘foreign language’, ‘secondary language’ and ‘L2′. We can tabulate the two sets of terms as follows:

    Ll                                        L2

    first language                    second language

    native language                non-native language

    mother tongue                  foreign language

    primary language             secondary language

    stronger language             weaker language

    Some terms fall into more than one category. For example, ‘foreign language’ can be subjectively ‘a language which is not my Ll’, or objectively ‘a language which has no legal status within the national boundaries’. The Ll terms are used to indicate, first of all, that a person has acquired the language in infancy and early childhood (hence ‘first’ or ‘native’) and generally within the family (hence ‘mother tongue’). Secondly/the Ll terms signal a characteristic level of proficiency in the language./rhey suggest an intuitive, ‘native-like’, ‘full’, or ‘perfect’ command ot the language.

    It would be best to reserve the term ‘native language’ for the language of early-childhood acquisition and ‘primary language’ for the language of dominant or preferred use when this distinction has to be made, with the terms ‘first language’ or ‘L l’ to cover both uses, allowing the context to make clear the distinction.

    Posted in Theory | | | 0 Comments

    Observation number 2 – March 31, 2010 – aulas 3/4

    April 4, 2010 by

    Teacher starts class correcting Ss homework and checking it. She checks all the homework one by one even asking some students why they haven’t done the homework.

    Teacher asks students to open the books to page 12. This is the homework. She corrects it with all the group sometimes asking ss to answer a question. The exercise is about the 3rd person singular for routines.

    They should now go to page 14, reading. She asks ss some questions in english and they anwer based ont he text.

    She checks with one student whether he is reading the text or not. She asks students to read the text. Every s will read a part of the text. She corrects students  on the spot while they read. Some students get anxious when the Teacher corrects students on them, others are resisting to do the task. Teacher asks ss to find words in the text that are similar to Portuguese. She checks with s if they understood the text.

    Students should do the next exercise on page 15 about the text. It’s a T/F exercise. She corrects the exercise. Teacher moves two students face the back of the classroom to the middle. She moves to another reading exercise with the listening. Teacher does the exercise with students.

    They should do the next exercise using their notebooks. The exercise presents questions on the text they have read. Students are told to study for the test that is going to take place next April 14. They tell the teacher that they have not studied neither the alphabet nor the numbers. Teacher tells them she will teach them the alphabet and the numbers as soon as she has time. She corrects the exercise with students.

    Class is divided in two groups. Leaders should mime the action in a slip of paper to the other colleagues and they should guess what the action or thing is.

    Posted in Estagio 2010 | | | 0 Comments

    Chapter 4: The Audio-lingual method

    April 4, 2010 by

    This method is mainly based on repeating model sentences several times (drills) focusing on a specific grammar point. It tries to make learners respond automatically to the new language and, in the same time trying to remove the native language’s influence on learner’s behavior. Through conditioning, the speaker would be able to stop thinking in his native language and use just the foreign language. Students are seen as “parrots”, repeating dozens of sentences the instructor provides them with.

    The author will now describe an audio-lingual classroom. She mentions that as the teacher enters the classroom, the Ss know they are expected to memorize the dialogs that will be used during this class. It is, right in the beginning, a sight of boredom that will follow. Ss should not talk while T presents the dialog. It is fixed and should be repeated as it is presenting, they can’t change or adapt the dialog. The class now should repeat the sentences in unison, one by one. Teacher sees that one 5 had a problem repeating the sentences, and uses the “expansion drill”. It consists of breaking down the sentences into smaller parts and adding the last parts one at a time. This process completely exposes the 5 to the rest of the class and may make the students correct in this way hate foreign languages.

    All the class has to do is try to copy the teacher as closest as they can. Every time the teacher thinks the class has not repeated the sentence correctly, she stops to make sure all the students are happily parroting her. Communication with other students is extremely limited as the dialogs are ready to be used. They often can’t see the point repeating those lines time after time. Not all of them have a chance to work in pairs, maybe next class.

    The instructor moves on to the next stage of the process. She gives the students a model sentences, and afterwards she provides them with the “cue”, a word or expression that has to be properly replaced in the sentence. This part has some variations with the same purpose of repeating the sentence changing the time or the verbs, for instance.

    Another very important aspect of this class is that the students should respond to the drillings quickly. Those who can’t will obviously face huge problems in this EFL classroom. Correction is made on the spot. No mercy. Grammar is not presented to ss, they will have to guess the rules while doing the strenuous exercises.

    Posted in Theory | | | 0 Comments

    Observation 1 – March 24, 2010 – aulas 1/2

    March 25, 2010 by

    Teacher starts with the roll call. Class is generally quiet. There are around 20 students in the classroom. Some students are finishing their homework. The book used is the Must 2. She starts the class in English asking the students if they knew a game called hangman.  They say no until they see the spaces for the letters . Some students don’t understand what they should do. She says “A, B, C” and asks for a letter. One student refuses to say a letter but she insists. Some students laugh when other students pronounce the letters incorrectly.  Class has good space between the students. It allows them to remain quiet and cooperative. Students were very interested in this first part and the teacher made sure that every student had a chance to participate.

    Next, students should do one exercise in the book. She corrects the exercise with students. Teacher asks a girl to read a short text. She reads almost to perfection.  No major mistakes, no mispronunciation. She surprised all of us there. Later on, she told me that she was American  and also that she had contact with her grandparents in the USA.

    Teacher explain the uses of “do, does, doesn’t”. She assigns the homework. Students should now choose a pair to do the next exercise. She gives students slips of paper with pictures to form a story. First, she reads the whole story so that students would be able to unscramble the pictures. After reading the text three times, she gives the students some worksheets where they have to do extra exercises. The exercises are aimed to overall text comprehension. The material used was suitable for both the flow of the class and for the level of the students. Teacher tried to bring lots of varied material.

    Posted in Estagio 2010 | | | 0 Comments

    Task 1 – Estagio 1/2 Experiences

    February 26, 2010 by

    Both experiences were very valuable to me. In Estagio 1 I could see what is was to teach in a public school classroom. That was the most significant experience I had for I could realize what my expectations to my future career were. It also helped me decide and define where and how to start my career.  The many observations I made enabled me to see the many problematic situations teachers have to face when dealing with such big crowded classrooms. The discussions we had in classroom helped us understand that; yes there are ways to make it possible to teach those students in an acceptable standard.

    Following we had Estagio 2 in which we studied many of the principles and techniques used to teach English around the globe now and in the past. Those discussions along with the more precise class observations we made, allowed us to figure out the correct way to use the strategies we studied. Every observation was more accurate than the last because we gradually broaden our educational view of teaching English.

    Posted in English Literature 3, Theory | | | 1 Comments