246. Training? Essential


The teacher trainer-coach told me,
"Many teachers ask me up to what extent drill is good to learn English, or should we teachers put drill aside and using all the time alloted for the class-period to, say, creative writing, talking, etc?
Drill is good practice.
The students learn a grammar pattern, ok, and then it's convenient for them to practice that pattern in the form of the common regular drill-exercise, in which your kids have got to repeat a molded kind of sentence, or using the appropriate verbal tense."
The Chosen 7 guys for the Mercury Project, at the beginning of the 60's. Oh, what were their names? Schirra, Sheperd, Gordon, Glenn, Carpenter..., Sorry. There is a novel about this thing. Tom Wolfe wrote it, The Right Stuff. Picture from www spacearium com.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

3124. Our Attitude to Our Students

Image
  We teachers should be very human and humane with our students: with each and every student. Kids need adults that would listen to themselves. And they have us: they should expect we’re going to listen to them, in the classroom, at tutoring sessions, at the school halls, at the playground. As I said on the previous post we teachers could be like their dads or moms. Be careful: we teachers might be the single persons who could be listening to them. Maybe their parents are split or engaged in busy businesses and don’t listen to them much. Maybe not anyway. We teachers have to make those parents realize they must listen to their kids. All this listening to them by us is pretty educative for students. Better if male teachers would listen to boys at tutorials and the same concerning girls. Even more: we in some way must live for them, for any of them, and they’re part of our reason we go to the school every day: we owe ourselves to them. They’re the reason of our lives,...
Read more

3711. No pain, no gain

  What does an English language teacher wish, really wish? That his or her students would learn English! One point for you, for you got it!  Like a couple of days ago I wrote down some notes, in Spanish, whose translation would be, “In order for his students to actually learn English they need to read a lot, and write a lot, and speak a lot.” And that’s it. The article is over.  Yet let me tell you more about that point, just in case it may help you out, if you’re a second or foreign language teacher, or otherwise a learner of that language.  You know, it’s my experience, and a lot of people’s one. Since I’m a teacher, I’ve had to speak a lot in class, for my students to input a lot of English, plus from the CDs, plus from their class peers, plus from our assistant teacher. And by practicing a lot, I’ve learned a lot, I mean, to speak -- and much more I’ve still got to learn!  And I’ve read massively and intensively, and I’ve written a lot of articles on this ve...
Read more

3712. Is My Work as a Teacher Any Useful?

  One month ago I wrote down a note that said something like “The teacher’s function is to get knowledge into his or her students’ minds.” In fact it was taken from a book I was then reading, by J. B. Chautard, which book was published about a century ago, and it has been published into numerous editions ever since. Actually the note was in Spanish and it sounded kind of “La misión del docente es que los conocimientos penetren en las mentes de sus alumnos.”  And I guess it’s just great, and nowadays we should say the same about our function as teachers. Well, you know, you teacher may feel some burn-out or you may be hectic, or even alienated, yet just let me tell you something which might perhaps help you out somehow.  I consider the teacher as also – or primarily – source of knowledge. For that aim he or she ought to continuously keep learning and reading about the subject they teach. Just a few minutes per day, or half an hour if attainable.  And then we have that...
Read more

3135. For Irish People but Not Only

Image
I dedicate this post to my Irish readers and so many of you who are in the US and Spain and all over the world. I miss Ireland quite much. - Be alert because I'm posting on the fact that the teacher has to be very human and humane, as you are. I'm posting on this maybe tomorrow, for I have not much time today. / Photo from Eskipaper, and it shows a cute Irish village, similar in some way to the places I've found in your lovely awesome country.
Read more

236. Strategies to win the battle of learning a language: learning strategies

Image
I have just tried to change the label 'strategies' into 'learning strategies', but i've given up. Hence, when you click on the label of strategies, consider that I mean 'learning strategies'. On the photo you can see the new Airbus A400M, the biggest transportation aircraft, for military utilities. Yesterday, in the news on tv the speaker said that Spain is going to use it for humanitarian missions, wherever necessary. Two days ago it showed several hours of flying and the plane turned out to be satisfactory. The place was a military base near Seville, south of Spain. It can contain a 'copter, a tank, troops, supplies of useful material to aid people of zones of any kind of conflict. It's a plane designed and manufactured by European countries. Thanks to laatalayainformativa files wordpress com.
Read more