Experiences of a teacher of English

Teens like coherent adults: they fulfill and carry out what they say.  Behavior and words coincide.  Otherwise they, teens, think the adult, the teacher for example, is hypocritical. / Photo from: ire-wiki-Clonmacnoise-castle-cows www bargecharters com. obviously the picture is an illustration

“Flipped classroom”. It is a new trend and tendency which is being carried out in some schools of the USA.  The terms are inverted. First, teams of students prepare some new material to present in the classroom, like a grammar point.  Then the teacher acts as a moderator and facilitator of new points in the classroom, and may play a video.  After that the teacher assigns “homework”, but to be accomplished in the classroom.  As I said, it’s being utilized in some centers and it is turning out good. Now what I don’t know is how we can combine “flipped classroom” with the communicative approach or methodology: here first the students listen massively to the teacher… / Photo from: celtslineup www historic-uk com. the photograph is merely an illustration

We teachers tend to educate our pupils concerning knowledge, its performance, its practice, but often we forget to educate our students regarding feelings and sentiments.  Partially I agree with this trend, because home and family are the protagonists of this part of the education.  Nonetheless, we teachers, if we can count on individual tutoring sessions, could educate those kids, always with the strong background of the whole person and true love.  And better boys would have these tutorials with male teachers, and girls with female teachers, because in these conversations we reach confidence and trust. / Photo from: Old_Federal_Building_and_Post_Office,_Cleveland commons wikimedia org. the photo is just for illustration sake

At tutoring sessions with each student, don’t despise what he is telling you: it isn’t trifles.  All that the student is worried about also concerns you as his tutor you are.  Listen to him, patiently, with no hurry, maybe paraphrasing what he is telling you.  When a person is an adolescent, he may get worried about many things he is discovering and encountering; he is starting to face up life afresh, as almost an adult, not like when he was a child; he is encountering himself.  Listen, listen carefully, and ask him questions tactfully, with an excellent care. / Photo from: www photosof org. the picture above is just an illustration

The learner of English or another language is the protagonist of the endless process of learning and acquiring the language, and the teacher is a facilitator but also an engine of the process and a guide.  To learn and acquire English is nice.  It is nice when the learner actually WISHES to learn and acquire, and applies the means.  This learner embarks in that adventure, which is a nice thing with time passing and when applying all his forces and strength. / Photo from: learningsupreme com

We teachers (and today’s man in general) must humanize our students: they’re people, persons, in a process of education, also in general terms, though we would have to specify the fields of knowledge, attitudes, vision of life, vision of work, of labor, feelings and sentiments, human will...  We aren’t just numbers of some statistics, but people, human people, human persons.  Let’s not forget this essential point. In my opinion it’s primordial. / Photo from: meeting-casual humanergy com 

When learning and acquiring a foreign language there are psychological points that influence on that learning and acquiring the language, and they are extra-linguistic.  So not only are there linguistic points but also extra-linguistic ones.  Namely the learner’s real capability of learning and acquiring the target tongue, and also the self-awareness of the process.  This latter includes some learning and acquiring awareness.  The more aware the student is, the more he will learn.  The student will run and organize and plan his study and practice.  All this is taken partially from scholar Susana Pastor. / Photo from: tltc shu edu

Great Krashen published in 1985 about the learner’s affective filters when acquiring and learning a second or a foreign language – they are paramount:  Foreign and second languages are only acquired if there’s an understandable input and if the affective filters are so low as allowing input to enter. When the filter is low and input is exposed and understood, acquisition is accomplished. As a matter of fact you cannot avoid mind organism to function; it is as automatic as any other organism.  The words are not exactly the same: I have translated from Spanish. / Photo from: www callcentrehelper com

God created man for himself, to have somebody else who could reach happiness, through knowledge and love to God.  His mission (man’s one) was to take care and look after the world. And today that mission has not declined, but all the opposite: man and woman have to take care of our world through work, through their professional labor.  When we be in the classroom or planning a class we are taking care of the world, giving each thing its own idiosyncrasy, its peculiar and particular way of being.  We are doing something awesome.  Every single day.  Plus in that way we are cooperating in Jesus Christ’s redemption of ourselves, from our sins. / Photo from: earth_00396732 hdw ewe4 com

The way babies acquire their mother language is taken by the communicative methodology of learning and acquiring the target language, English in our case, up to some extent.  They receive a day-long input from their relatives, moms for example, who treat their babies with a great affection. All this helps to acquire a language.  Alike, those relatives, moms and dads in the first place, make their babies repeat phrases or sentences, more phrases and words than long sentences.  Little by little those babies acquire the language, but before speaking they receive the massive input. This latter is rather long, and then, after 2 years, depending on each baby, he or she starts to speak.  Krashen said babies have a potential of grammar capability that is innate. / Photo from: MOTHER-AND-BABY oxygenhotel hu 

I said on post # 2402 that a nice value youngsters should have is capability of making up and running initiatives.  And now, in summer vacations in the north hemisphere, young people should have inventiveness to make good use of time. I say this because unfortunately anyone can see on the streets teens that are just doing nothing, sitting in a bench, whatsapping and playing with the cell phone, and that’s it.  And this fact can be the origin of taking drugs and drinking alcohol, for instance.  Thus parents should meet and know their sons’ and daughters’ friends. Let them come to our home for a snack for example. It is a nice chance to meet those friends. / Photo from: Sailing-pic-460x250 www jewishnews net au

Each one of us has received a temper from his parents, yet personality can be educated, ought to be educated.  Here parents are the protagonists together with the kid, and it is a labor that cannot be derived to school.  Anyway, we teachers can help educate personality.  At tutoring sessions, chattering with our students, in classes… What is necessary is a peaceful personal struggle plus God’s help, his grace, in other words.  In this way we acquire virtues and values, like environmental friendship,  joy,  hard working,  solidarity,  capability of getting excited with exciting things,  helping others,  chastity,  spiritual life,  love of God,  faith,  hope,  charity,  a sane humility,  empathy,  temperance,  obedience,  capability of initiatives,  self-examination,  joy,  discretion,  perseverance… and I’ve...

How to foster communication in English, the target language?  I could tell you a lot, but now I’m going to tell you the ones I did lately.  The students are given a worksheet, with sentences about a semantic (meaning) field plus a story, composed by me.  The sentences include useful expressions for real communication when in the foreign country for example.  In classes we used to describe pictures, say the meaning of a word, summarize the story, and others now I can’t remember.  Also on post 259 you have more than one hundred games to apply in classes. Concerning that post, now I would polish some explanations of the games, but there you have them. I hope this be helpful to you. / Photo from: learn-to-ride-a-bike kensav com. the picture is for illustration sake

The main goal of the communicative methodology or approach is to get a communicative competence, a real capability of communicating with others in the target language.  That methodology is the one I utilize, together with a notional-functional one.  All three are related to one another.  Thus the core of class activities should take you to communicate in the classroom, with the teacher, and among the students as well. / Photo from: caminoalagrandeza wordpress com

We teachers of languages can teach conversation strategies, when for instance some student is speaking to somebody else and has problems to continue.  When you don’t know a word in the target language you can give an explanation of its meaning.  Just that is enough most of the times.  I tell about this to my students, and I utilize this strategy myself. It’s like providing a periphrasis. / Photo from: friends www bbetterdaily com

Obedience isn’t something just from the past.  We teachers have to fulfill the rules and criteria of our heads of department.  It’s the way a school works. Plus our initiatives, of course.  I would say that if there’s something we think otherwise, we can always tell the department head about our criteria or thoughts, with trust and peace.  All of us are pulling the cart toward the same direction, aren’t we?  All this stuff isn’t naive: it’s the way I’ve seen schools work well: all people in the same direction and with good manners and affection to one another. / Photo from: Second-Grade-Data-MeetingInside azednews com

As I said, I’m out of Granada, with little access to the Internet, but I hope to post very soon.  In the meanwhile you can have a peek at the latest posts or use the search box or... whatever you consider ok.  I’m trying to compile stuff  to publish. See you soon!  / Photo from: libraries mit edu

Currently I'm out of Granada, and I have little access to the Internet, but as soon as possible I will post further.  I have encountered printed and interesting stuff to publish.  By now you can revise older posts or use the search box, or the labels. I recommend you my last posts especially. As Irish say, Sláinte! (Cheers!). / Photo from: www flcker com

Acquiring a language, English in our case.  I have seen in my classes how learning and acquiring were interwoven.  My adult students were acquiring English from my speaking and their classmates’.  You’ve got to listen massively before speaking, and quite more a lot for speaking well.  This doesn’t mean you cannot be capable of speaking until having listened to loads of chances.  Often we can't be aware that we’re acquiring the language. It has something of naturalistic matter. / Photo from: trititiou weekly com

We teachers evidently can count on God’s help, and also the students we have entrusted can turn to Him and seek His help.  If you do this, if you seek God’s help and pray to Him, you will get amazed of the results.  In God there are Three Persons: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Now we have that the second Person incarnated as Jesus Christ, the master, the magister , the Teacher.  Ask Him for specific things: you’ll notice His aid.  Jesus Christ was a joiner and carpenter. And He knew how to have a job, in the hamlet and small town of Nazareth. He learned from His father, Saint Joseph. You aren’t alone in the classroom with just your forces and strength. / Photo from: jesus-and-joseph

I will try to present interesting Krashen’s five main pillars for language acquisition shortly, in case they be of any interest to you, likely!:  1. Difference between the processes of learning and acquiring.  2. We have something natural that facilitates the acquisition of rules and grammar patterns.  3. We need a monitor who helps us by correction for example.  4. Input should contain language which is a bit above our level.  5. We have a sensitive and affective filter, which also helps us to acquire the target language, like motivation, self-confidence… As well that filter might block and stop the process. / Photo from: deeper-conversation shannamann com

My students, as anybody else, I would say, have an active vocabulary and a passive one, regarding the language they’re learning and acquiring.  The first one is used by them, and the second one is words they know but don’t use.  I realize that when writing, for example, I use words that I had some kind of guess I knew, and I use them for writing as I said. And Word corrector tells me if they exist or not.  The same may happen to students after years of learning-acquiring English. You are making up a store with both kinds of words, and retrieve some or many of them for using them.  I also utilize Wordreference as a dictionary and as an aid. / Photo from: well blogs mytimes com. jogging. The photo is mere illustration: learning a foreign language can be like sport: you invest effort

This morning I realized more clearly that now, at least in Spain, youngsters tend to learn English at least, to find a job.  And specifically they train to pass B1 or B2 within the Common European Framework.  Those levels correspond to PET and First Certificate, within the system of Cambridge University examinations.  PET stands for Preliminary English Test.  So the teacher has to adapt his regular stuff to those patterns. For some teachers this may imply an updating of their methods and methodologies. A lot of stuff may be found in the Internet, for this updating. 

Many families now have few children, maybe one or two, at least in my country, Spain.  Thus parents focus on the child or teen too much, in the sense that they are super-protectors: all the attentions are focused on the kid.  Moms more than dads tend to be super-protectors – dad is so focused on his job, etc., and all the attentions or many come from mom, mainly school but also dressing, manners, meals, protecting from cold or heat, homework, many extra-school activities, possible dangers on the street, etc.  Besides parents are rather young when they become so protectors.  Kids tend to become whimsical and capricious. And the teacher often has more problems at discipline and class management. Because of that parents, or parent, ought to keep in touch with their teachers, as much as possible. And for those kids it’s sound to have them connecting and meeting new friends. / Photo from: fox-hunting www telegraph co uk

Often teens don’t know how to make good use of their free and spare time.  Let’s talk about a teen example.  Then his friends make up a gang where they conduct a behavior of boredom and lack of challenges and imagination.  So then it is easy and simple this gang try drugs, alcohol, etc., I mean, activities that aren’t very demanding.  And drugs for example make that he and they all conduct even with less effort and fresh ideas.  I guess his parents should meet his friends someway, and talk with his son like friends, but without stopping conducting as comprehensible parents. / Photo from: satishcontradicts blogspot com

Yesterday I was at the semi-Olympic swimming pool which is near my house.  After having swum for a while I was in the locker room (changing room), and I heard two twin brothers talking; I know them because of other days.  One of them said he had to make English exercises, and math perhaps.  What I mean here is that I felt as if English was just one more school subject where you work and study, but not a practical and communicative subject.  At my tutoring sessions at Alayos I listen that they make a lot of translation, textbook exercises, and some other rather theoretical things.  Fortunately things are changing among youngsters, and schools and teachers, and they train to pass B1 or B2 for example – it’s the way the levels of English are displayed, according to the Common European Framework of reference for languages.  There are three letters A, B and C, with two levels within each letter; for example the CAE, Certificate of ...

Scholar Susana Pastor, from Universidad de Alicante (Spain) states that in the communicative and functional-notional approach or methodology of teaching/learning a language, like English, the teacher is a facilitator of the process of learning a language, a second language.  The protagonists so would be the students, who are the people that work with the language.  This has something in common with the flipped-classroom theory: the students search and research about the language, and the teacher, as I said, facilitates and conducts that getting knowledge.  I personally would have to research further because we’re talking about learning a language whose first principle is listening to the teacher and teaching/practicing the four skills of any language, namely, Listening, then Speaking, Reading and Writing.  Thus, how can we overlap the flipped-classroom theory with the communicative approach?  I would have to carry on with this researc...

Once I heard or read that Saint John Paul II had that force and strength when giving a speech or something similar, like Wednesday’s messages, because he identified with the message: both The Pope and the message were like a single figure.  He identified with what he was saying, so also his body language was communication.  Moreover he had been a theater actor when young. / Photo from:  www chwalmyboga pl

The importance of silence.  José Ballesteros, in his book about speeches and communication, says that silence can be a part of a speech, for example at a parents meeting in the school, one of those meetings along the academic year, for instance when the oldest students (2nd of high secondary education) finish their stance at the school.  These latter meetings resemble or remind us of the graduation at college.  These silences serve the purpose of highlighting and emphasizing what has just been said, or what’s going to be said immediately after the brief pause.  It may be interesting then to look at people in their eyes. / Photo from: speech-3137 www scienceclarified com