918. Asking for help



One day teacher of English A said to teacher of English B, “One way of making the students communicate in the target language has to do with the functional methodology. The teacher has to provoke saying something in English, the target language.
The teacher describes in the first language a situation, a realistic one, where the student has to use English to communicate about what this latter one needs, or wishes, or demands, protests, shows gratitude, just says a statement, etc. For example, ‘María, ¿cómo expresarías en inglés la necesidad de que tienes que cambiar los pañales al bebé, en el aeropuerto?’, which is ‘María, how would you show the necessity you have to change your baby’s diaper?’. And the student could say, ‘Excuse me sir, where can I change my baby’s diaper?’
Like you see, I used translation: sometimes it is necessary and helpful, but use it not too much.” / Photo from: chagrinvalley times com. By Joan Demirjian us. police officer on duty

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

840. Are you eager to learn a language?

Image
One day teacher of English A said to teacher of English B, “One difference in favor of good language learners? I believe a good learner does wish to learn, for example English or Hindi or... This is a remarkable and clear trait of that person. He or she makes good use of any situation where they can speak, or practice in general. He offers himself to some South Korean gang in an ice-cream parlor to help them with their poor English, so as to order some ice-creams of this or that flavor... albeit in the end the assistant-girl also did speak English – this happened here in Granada, near Alhambra palaces. This learner takes notes in his diary or smartphone in English. And he likes to do so. He takes advantage of being on a British Airlines plane to talk to a flight-attendant in English. He listens to something recorded in his iPode, while traveling by bus. He’s not lazy and speaks only in his L1. He does use English, and not only in the cases where it’s totally necessary
Read more

3677. Should I Foster Positive Motivation in Class? Some Guesses

  Today I’m talking about positive motivation and other topics alike.  The first premise is that when our dear students get involved in lessons and the activities we as teachers implement, they will likely work nice and keep on behaving that way. A person who is getting interested in studying something, that one will carry on doing that way likely.  And we teachers I think ought to also give them oral presentations about the topics involved in the school subject we teach. Presentations and explanations alike. A teacher has to speak a lot in class, in a good manner.  If we teach a second or foreign language, we have to give them a lot of correct pronunciation and we must speak for a lot, plus we must have them speak also for a lot, thus the lesson is something like a nice conversation between the teacher and his or her students.  Also we may utilize audios and videos where native speakers talk.  As well in that way we will be getting them involved in class.  Positive motivation helps a
Read more

839. Learning to learn

Image
One day teacher of English A said to teacher of English B, “A teacher of math, literature, English... cannot confine his work to pass on, to teach, information, knowledge, math operations, the theoretical part of English..., but he or she has to teach their students to learn; to learn what? That information, knowledge, linguistic competence for communication... Obviously it’s true that the teacher for example tells his students about historical deeds, their connection to our present history, etc. The English teacher’s mission is not just to teach English but also to teach how to learn English, and this latter thing in a practical way: aimed at communication. The point is not to teach information about the language but to teach to use English for communication between, among people. Within this context, moreover the teacher’s role is to better his students, and he himself too. The first showing or sign of this bettering of the student is the learning itself, the fact
Read more

2796. Our Students Can Also Be Great at Manual Activities. Look!

Image
We may have students that cannot reach farther and fulfill our school minimum goals, okay.  They may be very valid for other things, for example manual work, and may not be good students, this is, good at mental activities.  I’ve had some students that got bad grades. We teachers made up a special curriculum for them, individually, but neither then could they get sufficient to pass an elemental level, say. Well then, they may be an ace at other activities, like working with their father at an aluminum workshop for example, as some real case I’ve encountered, and he earned his life much better than if we had insisted too much at his studies.  As well now I’m thinking of the very groundkeeper of the condominium where I live: his dad was pretty worried about his son’s school progress – or rather lack of it! -, but believe me, he’s an ace as a groundkeeper.  Einstein, Newton, Joan Miró, and other geniuses were not quite good at their school-age, till the precious mom
Read more

3144. Communicating with Overseas!

Image
I was going to write about the social media in the classroom, do you remember? And I’ve remembered an anecdote or story of my mid-90s of last century. Emailing was starting. And we in our school thought of communicating with students over the Atlantic, with students from the US. Said and done. All regarding emailing was starting, as I said, and so another teacher, one expert at computing, assisted me in this nice enterprise. Now emailing is so basic, but then communicating with overseas was all a historic fact. So first I had to take all my class to the computing classroom, where my students composed their texts on the computers, both in English – for them to practice English, our common target language – and in Spanish, for the American students to learn and acquire that language. Summing up, my colleague compiled all the texts and sent them to the concerted American school in a single email. You know, my students were expecting their emails, from the US! I took their
Read more