This blog has the purpose of complementing what we are learning in English class. You can find hereinformation about English teaching and learning methods and strategies.
About us
Deisy, Diana and Susana
We are three senior students of major Education, minor English. We consider ourselves as responsible, funny, kind, intelligent people, and engaged with our duties.
It is a language teaching method which is based on the assumption that the coordination of speech and action will boost language learning. It was developed by James Asher in the 70s He drew from a variety of areas, including psychology, learning theory and humanistic pedagogy.
Even though the group gave a very good and clear explanation about what the method is and how it works, we think that if they would have presented a class based on the method, it would have been better than just give some isolated examples about the use of the method as they did.
PPP approach, is an EFL technique. Presentation, practice and production is its meaning. In this kind of class the teacher presents the topic in a meaningful way. The students make workgroups and work over specific themes related to the idea (topic) of the class. In this kind of class, students can practice vocabulary and other aspects of the language by asking some questions and sharing opinions or by performing role plays. The theme about cultural shock, presented in this class, was really interesting. We think the team did a great job in the development of the class and they chose the most suited activities.
In Task based learning, presentation of the material is given by applying different activities. What is really important in this method is that students can learn and work based on adquired knowledges in a meaningful way.
The explanation given for the group was interesting and understandable, the activities were appropriated and easy to do for us. We consider they applied the method during the class.
The suggestopedia class was centered in metacognition and relax of students in order for them to be in an optimun mental state for effortless acquisition of the knowledge. The sounds (music), games, smells, and images play an important role in this type of technique. Its purpose is to create an environment where students can use their senses, feelings and emotions and relate those elements with the topic of the class by themselves. We tried to work on Lozanov's ideas, adjusting the class to those principles by making games and other activities in order to produce in the students a relaxing stage for better understanding of the knowledges. A suggestopedia class is enjoyable and that was our main premise and goal.
The direct method focus its strategies on communicative elements of the language. students learn from instructions, comments, ideas, orders and explanations that the teacher gives them just by using the target language in order for students to understand and communicate through it. In this class the group tried to follow the steps of a direct method class, by asking us to draw a comic based on a tale that they told us before, where we were not allow to use our mother tongue, because the main idea of the exercise was to use the target language.
Here it is the video of the activity they presented at the beginning as an ice breaker.
The silent way is an approach to language teaching, developed in the States by Caleb Gattegno, involving a highly structured system of specialized techniques and apparatus. The teacher is encouraged to restrict his own speech to a minimum, in order that students become involved in establishing meaningful language behaviour themselves.
The silent way method presented in class was focused on the idea that the teacher has to talk as minimun as possible. For that reason the team or the teachers chose an activity based on a role play about urban tribes, in which everybody had to speak and creat their own dialogue or script. Then one or more members of each team made a presentation about their topic. It was really great because the whole group had the oportunity to create and construct their own speech and show it to the others with little help from the teachers, just using their own knowledge and skills in the language.
Also, they asked us to make a sort of collage with pictures and key words about the different urban tribes presented in the class. After every group finished it, we had to present and explain our work to the others.
Brain processes have a lot of influence in the different activities people do, specially in the education area, even though when lots of people don't believe this can be true. That’s why, lots of teachers feel afraid of including techniques that would help to improve their students' brain development, because of the fact they don’t think they're able of working under this new approach. Nevertheless, recently scientists have made harder efforts to show the importance of understanding how our brain works and how it influences everything we do, in order for us as teachers to take all the possible advantage of it.
This post, talks a little bit about brain-based education. That is, the way teachers should encourage students’ brain development, through the use of different strategies which should be attractive to them. But, at the same time, teachers also must be aware of the students’ reactions to the strategies, in order for them (the teachers) to know when it's necessary to change the strategy for another one, which would bring the students more benefits to their brain functioning. It's really important to remember that brain functioning changes with time and experiences, so that's why it's very important for teachers to try to use the right strategies for the different kind of students they have, because each student’s brain works differently according to their experiences.
It's worth to make clear that “Brain-based education is the engagement of strategies based on principles derived from an understanding of the brain” (Jensen, 2008 p.1). According to this, it's teachers’ due to take in account the different aspects that influence the students’ life, and for instance, influence their brain functions; and taking this as a starting point, they can choose more suited strategies for their students, and for encouraging their brain development. Actually, this could work as an advantage for the teacher, to implement a whole interdisciplinary teaching program, which could integrate aspects such as social interactions, feelings, and so on.
At the bottom line, it can be said that we, as teachers besides of paying attention to the pedagogical aspects of our work, also must be aware of the multiple discoveries that are being done on the neuroscience area, and try to apply them into the classroom, because they can help us to find new and better ways of take advantage of our students’ and our own brain functioning, and for instance this would work as a big benefit for the students in their learning process and achievements.
Written by: Diana Peñaloza & Tiffany Rangel (2010)
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