Class #12

Irene, Nelsy, and Vanessa

Monday, November 18th, 2019

WRITING SKILL

What writing is?

-          Writing is a medium of human communication that represents language with signs and symbols. It is a method of representing language in visual or tactile form.

-          Writing, in other words, is not a language, but a tool used to make languages readable.

-          Also, writing relies on many of the same structures as speech, such as vocabulary, grammar, and semantics, with the added dependency of a system of signs or symbols. It is a means towards self-improvement.

The significance of writing skill:

      Writing skills is an important part of communication.

      It is one of the rarest and most undervalued skills among students, and few professors have the time, resources, or skills to teach writing skills effectively.

      Good writing skills allow you to communicate your message with clarity and ease to a far larger audience than through face-to-face or telephone conversations.

      Writing well is easily one of the most sought after and useful skills in the business world.

9 simple ways to improve your written Skill:

      Brush up on the basics.

      Expand your vocabulary.

      Master English spelling.

      Read regularly.

      Improve your grammar.

      Write something every day.

      Find a place that is well-suited for writing.

      Don't fall in love with what you write. It can always be improved.

      Monitor your progress. Date entries and keep your work well organized. By doing this, you will demonstrate to yourself your commitment to self-improvement.

Why is Writing Important?

      Writing is critical to becoming a good reader.

      Writing is an essential job skill.

      Writing is the primary basis upon which one’s work, learning, and intellect will

be judged—in college, in the work place and in the community.

      Writing equips us with communication and thinking skills.

      Writing expresses who we are as people.

      Writing makes our thinking and learning visible and permanent.

      Writing fosters our ability to explain and refine our ideas to others and ourselves.

      Writing preserves our ideas and memories.

      Writing allows us to understand our lives.

      Writing allows us to entertain others.

The writing process:

- Prewriting
-Writing
-Revise
-Rewrite
-Proofread
-Publish

Karen, and Ricardo

READING

Reading is a mean for language acquisition, communication, and sharing information and ideas. 

Like all the languages, it is a complex interaction between the text and the reader, shaped by prior knowledge, experiences, attitudes and the language community.

The Reading Process

The reading process involves three stages:

1.The first is the pre-reading stage, which allows the reader to activate background knowledge, preview the text, and develop a purpose for reading. A strategy for students to utilize during this stage is to look at the title of the selection and list all the information that comes to mind about the title. 

2.The second stage occurs during reading, when the reader makes predictions as they read and then confirms or revises the predictions. For example, double-entry journal enable the reader to write the text from the reading on one side and their personal reaction on the other side. 

3.The final stage occurs after reading and allows the reader to retell the story, discuss the elements of a story, answer questions and/or compare it to another text. For example, students can create summaries, where they take a huge selection and reduce it to its main points for more concise understanding. 

To improve your reading skills you need to:

•      Have clear reading goals

•      Choose the right text

•      Use the right reading style

•      Use note taking technique

Reading Comprehension has two elements:

1. Vocabulary Knowledge

2. Different Comprehension Strategies

TECHNIQUES TO HELP YOU IDENTIFY AREAS FOR DETAILED READING:

SCANNING

Scanning is the technique you might use when reading a telephone directory. You pass your vision speedily over a section of text in order to find particular words or phrases that are relevant to your current task. You can scan:

•      the introduction or preface of a text

•      the first or last summarising chapter of a text

•      the concluding or summarising chapter of a text

•      the book index.

SKIMMING

Skimming is the process of speedy reading for general meaning. Let your eyes skip over sentences or phrases which contain detail. Concentrate on identifying the central or main points. Use this technique to:

Pre-view a selection of text prior to detailed reading;
refresh your understanding of a selection of text following detailed reading.

Readers use a variety of reading strategies to decode (to translate symbols into sounds or visual representations of Pech) and comprehend.

Readers may use context clues to identify the meaning of unknown words.

OTHER TECHNIQUES:

  

UNDERLINING and HIGHLIGHTING: To pick out what seem to you the most central or important words and phrases. Do this in your own copy of texts or on photocopies - never on borrowed texts.

KEYWORDS: To record the main headings as you read. Use one or two keywords for each main point. Keywords can be used when you don't want to mark the text.

QUESTIONS: To encourage you to take an active approach to your reading. Record your questions as you read. They can also be used as prompts for follow up work.

  

SUMMARIES: To check you have understood what you have read. Pause after a section of text and put what you have read in your own words. Skim over the text to check the accuracy of your summary, filling in any significant gaps.

Reading goals

Clear reading goals can significantly help with your reading efficiency. Not everything in print will be of use to you. Use reading goals to select and prioritise information according to the task in hand.

Reading goals can be:

•      an essay or seminar subject

  

•      a report brief

  

•      a selected subject área

•       a series of questions about a specific topic.

SUMMARY

*Have a clear focus for your reading.

*Set your reading goals.

*survey the text before you spend the time and effort involved in more detailed reading.

*Scan and skim to select the text for more detailed reading.

*Scan and skim after detailed reading to reinforce your understanding.

*Use a form of note taking whilst reading in detail, to keep you concentrating.

* Aid understanding and provide you with a record of your reading.

*Using clear reading goals and a variety of reading skills is more important than increasing your reading speed.

      

Class #11

Everly, Adriana, Yohanna, and Yarithza

Monday, November 11th, 2019

Listening Skill

Teach your students to listen:

·         In today’s technological age, it’s much harder to get and keep students’ attention.

·         Our students’ minds are filled with texts, e-mails, social media updates.

·         It’s a struggle to get our students to actually engage in active listening while we teach.

·         How could there be any learning when students aren’t even listening?

Strategies to teach your students to listen

1.      Get to Know Your Students: Teachers should take the time to know their students, like wich are their hobbies, friends, and so on.

2.      Use a Hand Signal: For example to ask you students to hold up one finger if they agree with a statement, or two fingers if they disagree with it

3.      Give Students a Listening Task: For example to ask your students to make a discution about what they heard

4.      Hold All Students Accountable: If you really want your students to listen to you when you talk then you must hold them accountable for listening. Instead of giving them all of the notes or key concepts that they need to know, only give them half of them.

5.      Listening for Questions: Have your students listening for a purpose; for example, ask your students to write down a question that they have about what they just heard

6.      Break the Monotony: Be sure that your students are always alert. If they think they can be called upon at any time to answer a question, they will be more apt to listen

Strategies to teach listening in the English class

1.      Use plenty of recorded material.

2.      Prepare the learners for listening by setting the scene, introducing the characters, pre-teaching vocabulary etc.

3.      Before the learners listen, set a listening task which directs them to an overall 'gist' understanding of the passage.

4.      Check the answers to this task, playing the recording again if necessary.

5.      Set a further task, or tasks, which direct learners to a more detailed understanding.

6.      Only use the tape script (if there is one!) as a last resort.

7.      Make the recording, and the tasks, as 'authentic' as possible.

How You Can Help Your ESL Students Improve Their Listening Skill at English Language Through New Ways of Teaching?

Good reasons for using recordings:

·         To listen different voices into the classroom:

·         Male and female

·         Different ages

·         Different accents

·         Different voice qualities

Disadvantages and limitations

·         The range of accents on commercial available listening material is limited

·         British accent is predominant

·         Non-native accents are neglected

·         Most learners of English nowadays are more likely to interact with other 'non-native 'speakers than with' natives'

·         Recordings are particularly for practicing the kind of listening where the listener has no opportunity to interact with the speaker, like listening the radio or announcements at airport etc.

Importance of interaction for listening skills

·         Listening happens in the context of interactions such as conversations and meetings

·         To have the opportunity to give feedback to the speaker

·         To interrupt the speaker to signal understanding, lack of understanding, need for repetition or reformulation.

·         To give learners more opportunity to listen to 'live' voices like visitors to the class.

·         The listeners can give the speaker signals both non-verbal (e.g. nodding, frowning) and verbal (e.g. "I see", "So, do you mean .....?", "I'm not sure what you mean by .....")

Visual components to teach listening

·         It is more realistic, to make more use of video recordings rather than purely audio ones

·         The visual component provides a wealth of information about the setting, the characters and the relationship between them, without which a listener is severely disadvantaged.

·         by depriving learners of this visual information, we're actually contributing to their feeling that listening is inordinately difficult

From Passive to Active

·         There is a wrong idea that he/she will passively improve his/her listening skills just by listening

·         Students must be active in their listening exercises.

·         They must be thinking of answers, options or ideas.

·         Give them questions to answer or information to find out, and have them report back their findings.

·         Separate them into groups, listening information, and then get them together to share. Just make sure they are not simply “sitting and listening”

Clear Instructions

·         Students must be absolutely clear on what is expected of them.

Keep it Real

·         Take advantage of listening available material, but don’t forget to use some real audio from time to time.

·         Use not only movies or TV shows but also TV commercials, weather reports or podcasts that are sources of real audio too.

Do the Work

·         If students are really committed to improving their listening, they must understand this one crucial fact: they have to do the work.

·         This involves doing at least one short listening exercise, several times a week or every day.

·         They can watch a short video on YouTube or CNN.com every morning.

·         Then can listen to an audio book for 10 minutes every day.

·         In class, be sure to give them listening comprehension exercises every day, maybe even several in one class.

·         The more work they do, the faster they’ll improve.

Class Simulation 2 (LISTENING SKILL)

Activities

Pre-listening

·         Students are divided in two groups.

·         There is going to be a bag with some sheets of paper that have verbs written on them.

·         One of the members of each group is going to come and pick a paper up.

·         She/ he is going to do mimics about the verb in order his/her group guesses what the verb is.

·         The team with more correct verbs is the winner.

Got up	Walked	Shouted	Happened
Took	Waited	Tried	Used
Had	Got off	Said	Screwed over
Left	Rushed out	Felt	Hung up
Drove	Saw	Found

While-listening

·         Students are given a worksheet about a song with blank spaces, they will listen to it in order to fill in the blanks using the verbs in past that are going to be mention in the song. They will listen to the song three times.

Post-listening

·         Students are going to listen to an audio called “LATE FOR WORK”, they will have a sheet of paper with some questions about the audio and they have to answer them.

Questions

1.      Did victor get up at 7:00 A.M. today?

2.      What time did he get up?

3.      Did he leave for work at 8:00 this morning?

4.      What time did he leave for work?

5.      Did he drive his car to the repair shop today?

6.      How did get to the train station?

7.      Did victor get to work on time?

8.      Did his supervisor get angry at him?

9.      What did the supervisor do?

10.  Did he have a small breakfast?

Ana, and Adriana

How to teach speaking skills

What is the Speaking skill

Speaking skill gives the ability to communicate effectively. Speaking is a crucial part of second language learning and teaching. Many language learners regard speaking ability as the measure of knowing a language. Professionals consider speaking as the most important skill that the people can acquire, also, evaluate their progress in terms of their successes in spoken communication. speaking skill involves fluency, vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation by providing a highly interactive and customized environment for the teaching learning process.

Why Teach Speaking Skills?

In today's teaching climate, it's easy to forget the importance of oral language, or speaking and listening skills. With all the focus on reading and writing, sometimes teachers neglect this more basic aspect of language! Yet students need to learn speaking skills and have opportunities to practice making their voices heard in a safe and constructive environment. Speaking skills are important because:

Skilled speakers can effectively present their own points of view.

Skilled speakers are often better readers and writers.

Skilled speakers are more confident participants in a variety of contexts - both in and out of school.

Skilled speakers are able to advocate for themselves and get their academic and emotional needs met

What  Is "Teaching Speaking

What is meant by "teaching speaking" is to teach ESL learners to:

-Produce the English speech sounds and sound patterns

-Use word and sentence stress, intonation patterns and the rhythm of the second language.

-Select appropriate words and sentences according to the proper social setting, audience, situation and subject matter.

-Organize their thoughts in a meaningful and logical sequence.

-Use language as a means of expressing values and judgments.

-Use the language quickly and confidently with few unnatural pauses, which is called as fluency.

Goals and Techniques for Teaching Speaking

The goal of teaching speaking skills is communicative efficiency. Learners should be able to make themselves understood, using their current proficiency to the fullest. They should try to avoid confusion in the message due to faulty pronunciation, grammar, or vocabulary, and to observe the social and cultural rules that apply in each communication situation.

The purpose of real communication is to accomplish a task, such as conveying a telephone message, obtaining information, or expressing an opinion. In real communication, participants must manage uncertainty about what the other person will say.

Communicative output activities allow students to practice using all of the language they know in situations that resemble real settings. In these activities, students must work together to develop a plan, resolve a problem, or complete a task. The most common types of communicative output activity are role plays and discussions .

Structure of a speaking  Lesson

A language lesson should include a variety of activities that combine different types of language input and output. Learners at all proficiency levels benefit from such variety; research has shown that it is more motivating and is more likely to result in effective language learning.

An effective lesson has five parts:

• Preparation

• Presentation

• Practice

• Evaluation

• Expansion

The five parts of a lesson may all take place in one class session or may extend over multiple sessions, depending on the nature of the topic and the activities.

The lesson plan should outline who will do what in each part of the lesson. The time allotted for preparation, presentation, and evaluation activities should be no more than 8-10 minutes each. Communication practice activities may run a little longer.

The materials for a specific lesson will fall into two categories: those that are required, such as course textbooks and lab materials, and authentic materials that the teacher incorporates into classroom activities.

Activities To Promote Speaking

Discussions

After a content-based lesson, a discussion can be held for various reasons. The students may aim to arrive at a conclusion, share ideas about an event, or find solutions in their discussion groups. Before the discussion, it is essential that the purpose of the discussion activity is set by the teacher. In this way, the discussion points are relevant to this purpose, so that students do not spend their time chatting with each other about irrelevant things

Role Play

One other way of getting students to speak is role-playing. Students pretend they are in various social contexts and have a variety of social roles

Simulations

Simulations are very similar to role-plays but what makes simulations different than role plays is that they are more elaborate. In simulations, students can bring items to the class to create a realistic environment.

Brainstorming

On a given topic, students can produce ideas in a limited time. Depending on the context, either individual or group brainstorming is effective and learners generate ideas quickly and freely.

Storytelling

Students can briefly summarize a tale or story they heard from somebody beforehand, or they may create their own stories to tell their classmates. Story telling fosters creative thinking.

Interviews

Students can conduct interviews on selected topics with various people. It is a good idea that the teacher provides a rubric to students so that they know what type of questions they can ask or what path to follow, but students should prepare their own interview questions.

Picture Narrating

This activity is based on several sequential pictures. Students are asked to tell the story taking place in the sequential pictures by paying attention to the criteria provided by the teacher as a rubric.

Picture Describing

Another way to make use of pictures in a speaking activity is to give students just one picture and having them describe what it is in the picture.

Internet and apps