Constructivism

This theory is aimed to detect who people learn through observation and critical thinking. This approach is a method that teacher use to motivate students in their learning process, this theory makes students to construct their knowledge such as critical thinking, it creates   meaningful activities through problems solving, learner will be able to students play an active role solving problems also constructivism engages students with its interactive role.  Use the body appropriately, like actin or performing as a surgeon, learners would rather make movements, make things or touch. They prefer to learn through body language and be taught through physical activity (Gardner, 1977).  Interaction is required to develop this theory to achieve cognition is the aim of social interaction (Vygotsky, 1929). For teachers is important that their students can manage successfully the target language to achieve this objective, it is needed to allow learners to raise their own doubts, create their own hypotheses with innovates and interesting topics such as: role plays, debates, cooperating learning groups all of them are imputes to acquire the language.in my point of view as teacher is crucial to apply theory to our classes lead to our students to produce language and think critically, 

references

Constructivism - Learning Theories. (2015). Learning Theories. Retrieved 22 April 2017, from https://www.learning-theories.com/constructivism.html

Gardner's Multiple Intelligences. (2017). Tecweb.org. Retrieved 22 April 2017, from http://www.tecweb.org/styles/gardner.html

Learner centered approach

This is a technique that teacher uses in order to involve learners as center of the class, this approach get students use strategies to apply in classes to test their thinking skill.  Active learning, learners get attention of others to explain any classwork o presentation, it involves students for this reason are called learner-centered students. The learner-centered approach lets the opportunity to focus on knowing and understanding deeply each learner situation and displaying the learning process itself, to foster high standards of learning, encourage, and learner’s goal achievements, it involves both learners and their educators (McCombs, J. 1997).  Learner centered approach is a great leaning experience focus on students, classroom environment must be friendly and calm furthermore, students can participate in the class without any concern and they skip any topic that they are not interested in (timothy, 2015).

In my position as future teacher, I consider learner centered approach a great tool to allow students to show their knowledge and strengthens in any topic they are willing to share, for example, nature, video games or universe.  I think this approach very useful to forest student’s abilities to convey ideas fluently without hesitation.

references:

McCombs, J. (1997). The Learner-Centered Classroom and School: Strategies for Increasing Student Motivation and Achievement. The Jossey-Bass Education Series. Jossey-Bass Inc., Publishers, 350 Sansome St., San Francisco, CA 94104; Tel: 888-378-2537 (Toll Free); Fax: 800-605-2665; Web Site: Http://Www.Josseybass.Com ($30.95). Retrieved from https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED423496

Maryellen Weimer, P. (2012). Five Characteristics of Learner-Centered Teaching. Faculty Focus | Higher Ed Teaching & Learning. Retrieved 22 April 2017, from https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/effective-teaching-strategies/five-characteristics-of-learner-centered-teaching/

Learner Centered Approach: Does It Really Matter In eLearning? - eLearning Industry. (2015). eLearning Industry. Retrieved 22 April 2017, from https://elearningindustry.com/learner-centered-approach-elearning

Unit 8 Speaking

This skill is one of the most difficult because it involves producing language rather than received it means that is a productive skill. It is a human ability to produce sounds into large sentences or phrases to convey a message. We have developed this skills through the centuries, to develop a good speaking we must use some techniques such as complex vocabulary, register, fluency, appropriacy and accuracy. all these elements will help to improve our way to speak without hesitation and pace. Speaking is an active process of making meanings that involves producing and receiving information (Brown, 1994; Burns & Joyce, 1997).  Speakers attitude leads to have a success in speaking (Van Duzer, 1997). They must also be able to produce series of utterances for specific language functions (Burns & Joyce, 1997). As future teacher speaking is requirable skill to express ideas to others and learners need to understand it. To improve their skill is suggestable to use those subskill that are useful for having a good speech. For instance, be prepared them formal situations for apply language gained. A subskill I will to make easier speaking is taking a strategy from reading called brainstorm to write ideas as much they can to produce them in orally way.

What speaking is. (2017). Area.dge.mec.pt. Retrieved 22 April 2017, from http://area.dge.mec.pt/gramatica/whatspeakingis.htm

CAELA: ESL Resources: Digests. (2017). Cal.org. Retrieved 22 April 2017, from http://www.cal.org/caela/esl_resources/digests/Speak.html

Unit 7 Listening

Listening skill consider by several students as a harder subject. it is a receptive skill as reading, it means that all utterances produced by speech mechanism are picking them up for our ears. The capacity to produce words, sounds and interpreting them as messages is awesome. We have developed this skills for communicating, even though, learning other language and understanding it is a difficult process that is essential understand complex words (Vandergrift, 2008). Thera are sub strategies that help us to understand with ease audios, speeches, lectures and conversations to identify the main points of them. Listening skill is the basis of a language reproduction. Listening is consider as interpretative skill, it is the analysis of a discourse that leads to understand spoken context (Richards , 1990). In this topic I consider interesting to foster students’ skills because there are several activities that I can add to my classes such as songs, audiobooks, new reports, it is improve their receptive skills. Listening will be meaningful to because students know the subskills to deal with the different listening types which ask you for specific information. 

Listening: theory and practice in modern foreign language competence | LLAS Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies. (2017). Llas.ac.uk. Retrieved 21 April 2017, from https://www.llas.ac.uk/resources/gpg/67

(2017). Professorjackrichards.com. Retrieved 21 April 2017, from http://www.professorjackrichards.com/wp-content/uploads/teaching-listening-and-speaking-from-theory-to-practice.pdf

Unit 6 Writing

This skill as important as other ones, it is a productive skill as speaking. It means that it involves making sings on a paper. To communicate in written texts, we need to be able to make letters, join them together and make series of sentences to convey our message. There are techniques to develop our writing skills we likely will use them to make our thesis according to University of Leicester (2015) we consider some aspects focusing on readers' needs. Remind simple rules for good written English, set up a writing routine to have confidence, make drafting and re-drafting, ask for Feedback about. According to Spratt, Pulverness, and Williams (2011) there are subskills that also involves writing those are accuracy and communicating those are requirable to have a better application in letters. Patino (2015) argued there are children who straggle to form letters, writing, spelling and organization is problem is called dysgraphia. Parents can talk to with your child’s teacher to cope with this trouble. I consider very useful to know those techniques for having good writing skills allow you to convey clear ideas to a far larger audience in order to put in practice for my students and also is suggestable to know what problems could have our children or students to adapt new material to make meaningful teaching. 

Develop Your Writing - Writing Skills and Technique — University of Leicester. (2017). Www2.le.ac.uk. Retrieved 17 April 2017, from http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/gradschool/training/eresources/study-guides/thesis/developing

Understanding Your Child’s Trouble With Writing. (2017). Understood.org. Retrieved 17 April 2017, from https://www.understood.org/en/learning-attention-issues/child-learning-disabilities/writing-issues/understanding-your-childs-trouble-with-writing

Unit 5 Reading

In this unit, we just remembered about reading. It is one of the four skills well-known as receptive skill because it makes you to read to catch the ideas to your mind rather than producing such writing and speaking. Reading skill is essential to develop critical thinking and understanding the words written. There are crucial skills for L2 learners to understand the text. According to Dudley-Evans & St John (1998), select what is important, skimming for the meaning, understanding the sentence. That makes easier for learners to get the idea in a reading text. When we are going to present a new topic we always have to present some help to students can understand unknow words, after we can make predictions to develop critical thinking and finally we can discuss or summarize, those strategies are used by teacher to foster students’ reading, British council Institute Language Teaching (2006). To deal with reading skill we can adapt several strategies to our classes to develop reading skills and teach students understand the text. We can doing apply the strategies given by the fault like skimming or scanning also, we can apply intensive reading and so on. Another one could be making some warm up to catch students attention and jeopardize using useless activities that could spend our worthy time. 

(2017). Fl.uni-mb.si. Retrieved 16 April 2017, from http://fl.uni-mb.si/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/BOJOVIC.pdf

Theories of reading 2. (2017). TeachingEnglish | British Council | BBC. Retrieved 16 April 2017, from https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/theories-reading-2

Unit 4 function

In this unit, I learnt language we use to expresses thought or ideas is called function. I mean that all we produce have a purpose, the content how speaks and what was spoken has their own definition. According to Spratt, Pulverness, and Williams (2011) the words or language we speak has a function, it is used to address to something we want to express each time we produce language is for a reason, for example we say, “let’s play soccer” its function is making a suggestion about going to play. There are more functions such as apologizing, greeting, refusing and so on. Krashen and Terrell (1983) suggest that basic utterances spoken can be defined as terms of situations. This function is taught by context, language teaching should be done within notional (relating to meaning) and functional (relating to communication) in communicative language syllabus Wilkins (1970). Since there has released book with functional approach focus functions in the classroom. I think that teach functions could be interesting in my classes because it could develop my students’ fluency and grammar in any situation they will need to apply these utterances, for example when they are not sure about something they could apply the function asking for clarification. Another way to deal to this topic would be making role-play where are integrated those language functions, it could be meaningful and joyful in their language learning process because while they are learning they interact each other. 

 bibliography: 

Krashen and Terrell's "Natural Approach". (2017). Web.stanford.edu. Retrieved 16 April 2017, from https://web.stanford.edu/~hakuta/www/LAU/ICLangLit/NaturalApproach.htm

Functions of Language. (2017). Sites.educ.ualberta.ca. Retrieved 16 April 2017, from https://sites.educ.ualberta.ca/staff/olenka.bilash/Best%20of%20Bilash/functionsof%20lang.html

Mary Spratt, Alan Pulverness, and Melanie Williams. (2011). The TKT course (Second edition ed.). Cambridge ESOL.

Unit 3 Phonology

Phonology is part of the linguistic which studies human system sounds in languages. It can show how to make specific sounds using phonemes. According to (Spratt, Pulverness, and Williams, 2011). It is study´s sound and its parts used in a language and these features has phonemes, word stress, sentence stress and intonation. All of them are required to produce language in order to convey ideas, all of them differ how pronounce vowels and by the stress that human does. Another linguistic argued that “phonemes, the smallest units of speech sounds that distinguish one word from another, are complexes of binary features, such as voiced/unvoiced and aspirated/unaspirated (jakobson, 1928). Trubetskoy (1938) that the phoneme functionally as the smallest unit between the language structure, and he further put these phonemes away their distinctive features. All linguists have concluded that phonology study the humans sound and these sounds differs from how to pronounce the multiple phonemes that human´s repertoire has. As future teacher is needed to have a knowledge in phonology to control students peaking skills to lead them in the correct ways of morpheme such drills. It is suggestable teach phonemes symbols to let them know who to pronounce. 

blibliography:

Mary Spratt, Alan Pulverness, and Melanie Williams. (2011). The TKT course (Second edition ed.). Cambridge ESOL.

Roman Jakobson | American linguist. (2009). Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 10 April 2017, from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Roman-Jakobson

Nikolay Sergeyevich Trubetskoy | Russian linguist. (2009). Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 10 April 2017, from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Nikolay-Sergeyevich-Trubetskoy

Unit 2 Lexis

According to dictionary (2011), this term is defined as word features in a language and their definitions called lexis, including all forms having lexical meaning or grammatical function. It means that every word in the spoken language has meaning or perform a function such as verbs, adjectives etc. Spratt, Pulverness, and Williams (2011), argues that single forms of words or group of words is known as lexis, for instance_ tree, get up, first of all, units of vocabulary which have a specific meaning. In fact, words have several different meanings, some of them can works like a verb or adjective or can come from prefixes, affixes or compounds. There are words that must go together like collocations, idioms, and phrasal verbs as well. Lexis and the lexicon is in charge to study (a collection of words) is called lexicology. Adding words and word patterns to the lexicon in a language is called lexicalization. Yourdictionary, (2017). It also says that some lexis can share patterns in two languages but has different meaning such as homophones, false friends, homonyms, and varieties of English. I consider this topic essential for me and meaningful for foreign learners because it teaches the base or root of some word, I mean learner will increase their lexicon coming from their roots and their variables. Also, it is important to learn those words because there are some that make us to get confused such as false friends, homophones, and homonyms.

Mary Spratt, Alan Pulverness, and Melanie Williams. (2011). The TKT course (Second edition ed.). Cambridge ESOL.

Lexis and Language. (2017). ThoughtCo. Retrieved 8 April 2017, from https://www.thoughtco.com/lexis-vocabulary-term-1691232

 

Lexis dictionary definition | lexis defined. (2017). Yourdictionary.com. Retrieved 8 April 2017, from http://www.yourdictionary.com/lexis

Unit 1 "Grammar"

In this unit, I learnt the main concept about grammar, what is it?  And key concepts for referring to it, I have a previous knowledge about it is a set of rules which is essential part of language for communication. I have found information where says that all languages have grammar restrictions how words must to be arranged such as word order and word structure (Linguistic Society of America, 2011). Spratt, Pulverness, and Wiliams (2011), in their book the TKT course, mention that grammar refers to join, layout and shift part of words and group of words in a semantic way. All time we talk apply grammar in our daily lives even if we did not notice, another person how thinks that human was born with grammatical set of rules in language. According to (Chomsky, 1960) pupils were born with a systematic language structure so they easily dominate the complex operations of language it means that they have in their minds knowledge grammar of certain principles that guide them to develop language. This help too much in my teaching language training because it provides me with good information and example in order to change the way that usually teacher taught this topic. There are several activities to implement to teach grammar.

Davis, N., & Sanderson, M. (2017). Universal grammar: are we born knowing the rules of language? – Science weekly podcast. the Guardian. Retrieved 8 April 2017, from https://www.theguardian.com/science/audio/2017/jan/11/universal-grammar-are-we-born-knowing-the-rules-of-language-science-weekly-podcast

Tool Module: Chomsky’s Universal Grammar . (2017). Thebrain.mcgill.ca. Retrieved 8 April 2017, from http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/capsules/outil_rouge06.html

Grammar | Linguistic Society of America. (2017). Linguisticsociety.org. Retrieved 8 April 2017, from http://www.linguisticsociety.org/resource/grammar