Experiences of a teacher of English

We produce more information and contents and then upload them to the Internet than what we can absorb and read.  Information is different from knowledge.  A person can be informed widely, but he may not be wise.  In my opinion a wise person is more likely to acquire values and virtues than a person that is solely informed. These ideas are partially explained by Spanish scholar Antonio Barnés. / Photo from: Man_woman_using_computer jebswebs net

I am going to implement an activity in my classes from tomorrow: the word or words and expressions that are new to me will be taught to my students, in a short activity format – just for a few minutes, albeit those ways of saying things would have nothing to do with our syllabus now.  I will explicitly tell my adult students that those very few words and expressions are being learned by me every day. In that way my students will also see I’m struggling to learn more English.  That activity can work as a warmer for example. / Photo from: ireland-landscape www hajifarah com

On coming days I hope to post furtherly. I've been out of Granada, Spain. I have plenty of things to tell you, from tricks or techniques to implement in classes to more humanist short articles.  Best wishes to all of you.

While we teacher and students today were chatting before today’s class – sometimes in Spanish, some other times in English, in a naturalistic way – I told them, my adult students, that they had advanced pretty a lot.  I hadn’t thought about this in advance, I mean, about telling about their progress in listening and speaking.  I gently praised their progress.  Ok, today they’ve struggled even more to participate, listen attentively, intervene, explain something to some classmate… Today even we had a leak on the ceiling, if I can call that phenomenon a leak: quite a nice quantity of water was just falling from pipes over the false ceiling.  A girl student told me about the water falling. We needed a bucket! I then grabbed the trash can as a bucket, and told that girl in English to go to fetch someone from the secretary office.  Soon two plumbers came up and worked on that, while I was trying to carry on the class, which has turned out n...

With my grown-ups we work on worksheets I compose, from dictionaries, conversation guides…  The purpose is supplying useful expressions, speaking among us, talking about an environment or functions, as ordering a drink, for instance.  They like the worksheets, thank God.  Their goal is practicing speaking, mainly. And we do it. At first moments and up to now I haven’t wanted my students propose topic, but…, why not? Right tomorrow Wednesday I’ll or, better said, we’ll make a brainstorm of possible topics, and I will take the ones I guess they’re more useful and helpful.  They’re the protagonists, of their learning English! Me too, for granted. / Photo from: elderly-people-on-computer5 www 50shadesofage com

Learning process should be autonomous. Let me tell you.  We may have a class where the teacher draws the map of the playground and subsequently one of the classroom. The students just confine their work to copying.  On the other hand we may have a teacher that tells the students to consider and think about the best way of making the map, why so, to think and analyze all possible varieties of making the map.  Afterward he has the students think about the How to make the map, and subsequently choose the way they’re going to utilize.  He shows them different maps – of a house, cafeteria, classroom, in order for them to think of the best way to present the features, the scales... As well he tells them to think of the goal of the map.  In this second way the teacher makes his students consider the procedure of how working out the map. He makes them think, analyze, ponder about the best way, etc., while as in the first case the students just...

We teachers have to be cautious, and not to confine students’ process of learning to too basic strategies, but let’s take into account human techniques or strategies, which are at a higher level, because they are properly human.  For example: reasoning, understanding, comprehending, applying, synthesizing, evaluating, creating… This is partially taken from Spanish scholar José Bernardo Carrasco, an ace at teaching and learning. / Photo from: Fishing www coastalholidays net