Journal

September, 15th 17th

Up to now, we focused on some of the major issues and questions that concerns L2 researches, linguists and teachers in the field of second language acquisition. Regarding this fact, we students were supposed to present a topic involving L2 acquisition. Each student had 9 minutes to present the topics.
You may follow my presentation below:

COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES

On the basis of the theories of on-line speech processing and the problem-solving mechanisms in L2 speech (Bygate, 2005; Kormos, 2006; Levelt, 1989), eight strategies that might enable learners to overcome potential communication problems at different stages of speech production for teaching.
The definitions of the targeted strategies are presented below.

RESOURCING

The speaker resorts to the vocabulary, structures and ideas
suggested in the task instruction sheet to help him/her solve
problems with ‘what to say’ or ‘how to say it’.

PARAPHRASING

The speaker uses alternative expressions with similar meanings to
replace those that he/she does not know or cannot think of ‘what to
say’ or ‘how to say it’.

SELF-REPETITION

The speaker repeats what he/she has just said as a stalling device to
gain time to think of ‘what to say’ or ‘how to say it’.


FILLER WORDS

The speaker uses empty words such as ‘well’, ‘actually’, ‘you
know’ etc. as a stalling device to gain time to think of ‘what to say’
or ‘how to say it’.


SELF-CORRECTION

The speaker hears himself/herself make a mistake in pronunciation,
grammar, choice of words etc. and immediately corrects it.


ASKING FOR REPETITION

The speaker asks the interlocutor to repeat what he/she has just said
to facilitate comprehension.

ASKING FOR CLARIFICATION

The speaker asks the interlocutor to clarify the meaning of what
he/she has just said to facilitate comprehension.


ASKING FOR CONFIRMATION

The speaker asks the interlocutor to confirm the meaning of what
he/she has just said to facilitate comprehension.

ERROR ANALYSIS AND THE EFL TEACHING

Ø Teaching is one of the easiest jobs in the world...
...Teaching WELL is one of the most difficult!

Ø It is inevitable that learners make mistakes in the process of foreign language learning.

Ø Errors are a means of feedback for the
teacher reflecting how effective he is in his teaching style and what changes
he has to make to get higher performance from his students.

The sources of errors can be categorized within two domains:


INTERLINGUAL TRANSFER / INTRALINGUAL TRANSFER


INTERLINGUAL TRANSFER
It is the result of language transfer, which is caused by the learner’s first language.

INTRALINGUAL TRANSFER

Ø Intralingual errors result from faulty or partial learning of the target language rather than language transfer.
Ø They may be caused by the influence of one target language item upon another.
Ø Intralingual errors result from faulty or partial learning of the target language rather
than language transfer.
Ø They may be caused by the influence of one target language item upon another.
Ø Use of past tense suffix ‘-ed’ for all verbs
Ø intralingual errors occur as a result of learners’ attempt to build up concepts and hypotheses about the target language from their limited experience with it.

Ø EXAMPLES

* He made me to smile.
* I want learning English.
* The meat smells freshly.
* Doctors always give us good advices.
* I don’t know why did he go.


September, 10th

Stds filled out the chart writing their conceptions and beliefs about English teaching methodologies and posted on their blogs so that classmates could compare and discuss the ideas and share experiences.

September, 8th

I was absent on this day. I fell sorry. It was my first absent since the beginning of this semester.
=D


September, 3rd

Teaching Metodologies (part II)

LF wrote a chart on the board and commented on the benefits of some methodologies taking into account his viewpoint, stds participated in the discussion giving their opinions, suggestions and sharing experiences. It was worth!

September, 1st

Teaching Metodologies (part I)

Teaching methodologies was the issue of this class, stds were supposed to read the text and write the aims of the methodologies in a chart comparing the pros and cons.

August, 27th

Critical Reading

Stds were supposed to check a lyric from a song and work on it. Critical reading, this was the purpose of the task, many stds had problems in dealing with the text, however, they had different viewpoints. We noticed that some ideas can be found out of the text.
It was a hard task because stds do not use to do exercises like that. I suppose that it was worth.
When we think about applying a theory in the classroom, we must take into account the profile of the group. As teachers, it is worth being aware of our practices so that we can not make them like an eternal pattern, we must adjust them according to the class. This is the biggest challenge for the teacher, He/She must be aware of new practices.

Aims: as teachers we might want to check how effective the activities we do are or if the way it was done was correct or to know ourselves as teachers. Anyway, accordign to the text, it is important to have a specific purpose to be more effective on our research.

Methods: Keeping a journal - the way we have been doing as stds.

Observation Tasks: recording what it has been said in class.

Interviews: direct answers from stds and colleagues

August, 25th

Theory vs Real practice

Stds were supposed to make a comparison between the theory and the practice in class in order to check if all of the author’s idea work the way he says. Stds took some notes in a piece of paper and read aloud to the class.We could realize that not always the theory works the way it’s written.This was a good exercise to check writing, reading and speaking.

August, 20th

Speaking activity

Discussion in class: stds had the chance to express their feelings based on the theory of the book (Teaching and Learning English), the topics discussed were: Autonomy learner, using video to teach in class.
Discussion and debates are always good activities to instigate stds so that they can speak in class, of course there are always those stds who talk more than the others but in general everybody ended up expressing themselves.


August, 18th

Activity: Parody (Another brick in the wall)

Stds were supposed to write their parodies, after that they had the chance to read it aloud to the class, some of them were really funny.
It was a good exercise, it was not so easy to do this task, it’s hard to combine words and make fun of some song but it was worth doing that.


August, 13rd

Activity: Song (Another brick in the wall)

Proposal of the class: reading, interpretation of the song through not only based on the lirycs but watching the video in order to get meanings.
We could realize the messages hidden in that context, messages against a society that shaped people the way they wanted. In the song we could notice that the words “brick” and “wall” were puns, of course we needed a background before so that we could understand the messages. If we didn’t know the whole story about Naziism, we might be lost, I suppose.

The activity itself ranged some abilities like Reading, Listening, some grammar (the use of “them” instead of “their”) and so on.

Activity: Parodies

Proposal of the activity: check up on pronunciation, translation of words by words, English to Portuguese and vice-versa like some Brazilians do.
The contrasts in language, different people speaking it

A good exercise would be as follows: HOW WOULD YOU SAY THE SENTENCE?

Stds get the “wrong” sentences and try to express the idea so that a native can figure them out.

Example:

In my viewpoint, exercises of speaking must be involved during the classes of parodies,
maybe teaching right pronunciation, different from that one pronounced by the artist in the song.