HANDS ON ACTIVITIES

There are many existing avenues for teachers to learn about and gain experience with hands-on teaching, including workshops, visits to science museums, and other teachers.  The responses of students to hands-on experiences will be infectious, and concerns about materials and instructional strategies will diminish over time. Like everyone else, teachers learn best by getting involved, trying things out, starting out with what is simple and interesting, and continually searching for new ideas, experiences, and resources.

However, paths for teachers to gain experience in specific programs need to be better developed. Administrators need to give teachers time, resources, and encouragement to participate in some of the available programs and prepare classroom activities. Just as an activity-based approach to instruction requires materials, activity-oriented teachers require direct experiences from which to build a personal repertoire of activities and techniques. If we endorse learning through activity for school students, we must also recognize the value of learning through activity among teachers. We all construct meaning from the experiences we have.

Methods and Keywords presented by our classmates:

THE ORAL APPROACH AND SITUATIONAL LANGUAGE TEACHING

• The learner has to listen and repeat
• The teacher has the control of the content
• Languag learning is habit-formation
• It´s useful for beginners
• Put emphases in grammar and pronunciation

COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING (CLT)

• Communicative competence
• contextualization (social-culture)
• Learner-centered and experience based 
• Meaning is paramount
• Group and pair work, interaction between students

TOTAL PHISICAL RESPONSE(TPR)

• speech-action (repeat)
• Positive mood
• Teacher plays an active and direct role
• Student- Listener -Performer
• Activities- role plays- slide shows

SUGGESTOPEDIA

• authoritive
• performance
• unconcious
• music-therapy

THE SILENT WAY

• responsibility
• autonomous
• grammatical and lexical items are discovered by the students
• experienced learning
• rods, charts, symbols

Our Power Point Presentation about Communicative Language Teaching

Groupwork: María de los Angeles Rojas,Bárbara Valenzuela y   Jana Strohbach

We are convinced that this approach is one of the most flexible methods to be considered as a very good possibility in classroom procedures. It is easy to combine with other methods to amplify the four important learning skills to ensure good results in meaningful learning and cover the proposed objectives.
Here is our link for everybody to share, enjoy it!!!!

http://www.slideshare.net/simbyana/communicative-language-teaching-12210772

Practical work Team work:

 Bárbara Valenzuela, Jana Strohbach, Claudia Cabrera 

•  Type of school: Public school (Juanita Fernández) 
•  Number of students per classroom: It is an average between 40 and 46    students per class 
•  Numbers of hours a week: Three hours per week 
•  Textbook: Ediciones Cal y Canto Aproach: Structural view 
•  Design: only Textbook activities
•  Student’s and teacher’s motivation/ roles:
• Teacher: Provider
•  Student: Receiver of the information 
•  Assessment (tests, instruments): Psychometric evaluation, e.g. multiple choices, true or false tests. 
•  Use of technology: 15 computers with internet access for nearly 600 students.

 What design would you propose to improve the English subject in that school? 


 In our consideration the design in this particular school has to be completely improved. The teacher didn’t encourage the students to speak the second language, only the content of the textbook was the objective. The teacher’s and students motivation were very low, because she didn’t develop a design for an instructional system. The student’s role of learning should be the role of a processor and performer. The teacher should be achieve the role of consultant catalyst and guide, for example by encouraging the students of speaking the second language and include more teaching activities.

Summery of Chapter 2 (Richards and Rogers)


THE NATURE OF APPROACHES AND METHODS IN ENGLISH TEACHING


1. Approach 

• approach is a set of correlative assumptions(general)
• describes the nature of a subject matter to be taught
• approach is the level at which assumptions and beliefs about a language and language learning are specified

2. Methods

• overall plan for the orderly presentation of language material
• an approach is axiomatic, a method is procedure
• method is the level at which theory is into practice and at which choices are made about the particular skills to be thought, the content to be thought , and the order in which the content will be presented

• axiomatic =an accepted statement or proposition regarded as being self-evidently true.
• procedure=  an established or official way of doing something

3. Techniques

• technique is the level at which the classroom procedures are described
• a technique is implementational , which actually takes place in a classroom
• techniques must be consistent with a method, and therefore in harmony with an approach as well

Summery last 2 classes:


The nature of approaches and methods in language teaching


Teaching English in Chile
Problems:

• low motivation
• not enough time
• lack of techniques
• lack of control
• cultural context
• lack of materials and resources

How to resolve the problems:

• committed and qualified teachers 
• Roleplays
• Situation
• projects

METHODOLOGY

Skill based (systems)

Strategies

Procedures

English Practicum

Assessment

Teaching resources

SKILLS -LEARNING LANGUAGE SKILLS

COMMUNICATION:

• Pragmatic (Use and context)
• social skills
• exposure
• interactive context
• relevant content

lessons should be: -interactive

                                  -relevant

                                  -fully content

Approach= an initial proposal or request(enfoque)

• coherence
• teacher´s methods 
• beliefs
• principal ideas 

Theory of language

STRUCTURAL

• descriptive
• functional
• system, rules

FUNCTIONAL

• topics and dialogues of function and meaning
• intention restricted

INTERACTIONAL

• Vehicle of social interactions and transactions
• meaningful learning
• learner´s experience
• exchange, natural communication

Theory of learning

1. Process-oriented: habit, induction, inference, hypothesis, generalization

(system-steps)

2. Condition-oriented theories:Nature of the human and physical context
Most important authors of differnt theories and methods:

• KRASHER 1981
• TERRELL 1977
• CURRAN 1972
• ASHER 1977
• GATTEGNO 1972 76