Chapter 5 : The Responsability for Learning

This chapter focuses on student responsibility for learning and how to promote it. According to Weimer, she pays attention from what the teacher can do to what the student should do, with the idea of transforming passive students into autonomous learners. Weimer describes it as a challenge, for example:lack the basic skills ,students are busy with other concerns, lack of confidence in themselves as learners or don’t take time in thinking about  learning decisions, Students’ procrastination

In response to that teachers have made more rules about attendance, deadlines, number of required sources, word lengths. Weimers suggests to abandon rules and structure is not the solution  but to understand their obligations, use them carefully, and try additional approaches that create an environment that promotes autonomous learning.  

Weimer explains several strategies for creating a climate that produces self-regulated motivated learners. Make the student responsible for learning decisions on logical consequences rather than punishment. For example, to deal with lateness, present important material or assignments early in the period that you do not repeat, rather than deduct attendance points for lateness, give frequent tests.

Be consistent in administering policies. If your syllabus says late homework is not accepted, never accept late homework despite the excuse offered by the student.

Reference

http://site.ebrary.com/lib/uta/docDetail.action?docID=10653948&p00=language%20eaching

Chapter 4 THE ROLE OF THE TEACHER

This chapter focuses on the principles that contain the role of teachers, it  describes the changed role of the teacher in a classroom in the different stages of students , when the teacher dominates the learning, students take superficial approaches to learning. Teachers uses active, cooperative, and inquiry learning strategies that promote deep learning in students

Furthermore Weimer suggests some principles to guide the instructor:

Teachers do learning tasks less.  It is important assign to students some of the tasks of organizing the content, giving examples, summarizing discussions, solving problems,diagrams, and charts

Teachers do less telling; students do more discovering. It lets students discover information in assigned readings without presenting it first or summarizing it later.

 Teachers do more design work Teachers design activities and assignments that give students  opportunity to new skill levels, motivate engagement in the content by doing the work of practitioners in the discipline, and that develop self-awareness of their learning of the content.

 Faculty do more modeling. Demonstrate how an assignment could be done. Show them drafts of your articles, notes on your own reading in professional journals; talk aloud as you solve a problem, in the way they develop thinking process.

  Faculty do more to get students learning from and with each other.

Create work for small groups to do in class.

 Faculty work to create climates for learning.Create a climate that promotes interaction, autonomy, and responsibility.

 Faculty do more with feedback., the teacher is responsible in assigning grades, or use other ways of providing frequent feedback

Those principles will help teacher mainly to become a master in the classroom management, but only could be acquired through time gaining experience. 

References:

http://site.ebrary.com/lib/uta/docDetail.action?docID=10653948&p00=language%20eaching

UNIT 8: SPEAKING

I learnt about the last skill "Speaking" which is related to writing, both of them are productive skills because we are reciving information and at the same time we are producing it. Speaking involves speech to communicate meanings to others. for example: Intonation, ask for explanation, greet people, or paraphrase. When you combine all of them is possible, to play accuracy and appropriacy in the oral communication. Furthermore, the communication depens on the register that you use, it can be in the appropriate degree of formality or informality to treat the listener. 

It is necessary that the teacher makes students involve in interactive speaking strategies to make them aware about what they are saying, also these include gestures, facial expressions, turn taking which will help them in order to work out in a natural fluency conversation or maybe controlled practice activities, those in which teachers make drilling activities in order to students repeat, memorize and saying things learnt by heart that are memorised.

Those kind of activities can help students to motivate themselves, but it is not an easy job because teachers need to create frequently speaking activities in order to students get confidence at the moment to speak and dont feel embarrased in front of their partners. 

I want to show a really good video in which give us advices to become good english speaker

References:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVWFGIyNswI

UNIT 7 LISTENING

On this unit I learnt about listening. It is a receptive skill that  can be responsive instead of be produced, giving sense to meaninful sounds and the context what we are listening. 

When you make listening activities, generally contains conversations with incomplete sentences that have utterances, simple grammar and general vocabulary. I those activities there will be different text types like: conversations, stories, songs, etc, where you will have to recognize interaction patterns, according it is developed. 

In the same way that the others skills, listening also have subskills, those are: listening for gist, global understanding, specific information, which each one has its purpose respectively, according the kind of activity propose. 

As teachers is better to use authentic material because they contain real spoken language from native people, then students can get accostume their ears to listen english conversation and understand phonemes, minimal pairs or sentece stress. For that reason, I think it is convinient to introduce the class with easy listening activities like complete tables with specific information about a

certain topic

Here I leave you a very interesting video which teach us how to combine speaking and listening activities for children.

References:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g64K8Y6cbcY

UNIT 6 WRITING

I learnt that writing is one of the four important skills part of communication. Good writing skills allow you to communicate your message with clarity and ease to a  larger audience than through face-to-face or telephone conversations. Furthermore, writing has levels of complexity and Writing, where you have to know how to use the vocabulary , the correct context and the accuracy that means the use of correct forms of language, with accuracy we can form paragraphs organising ideas in a helpful way using appropriate functions in order to request, summarise, complain expressing main ideas in a sequential way.

  

It is important the teacher help the students to develop their ideas following the next writing process.

• Drafting (a piece of writing that may be changed)
• Editing ( correcting and improving the text)
• Proofreading (checking for mistakes and innacuracy)
• Re-drafting (writing a second version of the writing) 

I think that writing can be applicable in class, the teacher has to start from the simpler to the more complex in order to students don't get confused, for example begin with filling charts, shorts letters, etc.where students dont use so difficult vocabulary until get little bit little through an intensive reading As Maryellen Weimer said in her book In the Balance of the Power; who talks about the motivitation in students to make them critical thinkers', for thant reason it could be reflected in their writings. As much they read as much they write, remember with an empty brain there is nothing to write. 

For a better understanding here I attach a video about a conference showing an effectiveness group writing activity

References: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4dneRxaojU

http://site.ebrary.com/lib/uta/docDetail.action?docID=10653948&p00=language%20eaching

UNIT 5 READING

From this unit I learnt reading is one of the four skills. It is a receptive skill which means we can be involve in the whole text and we receive a lot of knowledge at the moment we start reading. rather than producing it. Also reading involves understanding of connections, for example: Coherence means use our knowledge to see the connection between sentences. In contrast cohesion is when the grammatical links between the sentences help us see the connection between them.

Furthermore, Reading contains different reading skills, they are: 

Scanning Strategy (Reading for specific information)

Skimming Strategy (Reading for gist, or get a general idea through the text) 

Inferring (Used for readers to get the meaning from the text). 

I also learnt about the ways of reading which are Extensive Reading (It is reading for pleasure,as you read, your attention and interest vary) and Intensive Reading ( It involves reading for language study)

As we know reading in English is a necessary skill to implement it in classroom and also is diffiult  for some students try it in the second language using the correct techniques and encouraging them to understand complex knowledge.As Maryellen Weimer expalins in her book in chapter two  increasing the decisions of students can make assignments and activities engages them in the course and its content. Learner-Centered Teaching  Weimer, M. (n.d.). Learner-Centered Teaching. 

Then, that's the way how I want to apply reading in classroom, I want to make them self regulated students using motivation and increasing self- confidence, to give them option to use Extensive Reading in class. 

Below I leave you a useful video about how to develop a guided reading in class

References:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBy6Bgo7lvg

http://site.ebrary.com/lib/uta/docDetail.action?docID=10653948&p00=language%20eaching

UNIT 4 FUNCTIONS

In this unit I learnt about Functions, I think is the simplest topic learnt until now, because you have to remembre that every time we speak or write is for a reason just like that, so all functions have a purpose, and also it's  a way to use the language and describe lexis and the context  where it is used.

Each function has an exponent that is used to express a function for example: 

Context: You want to go to the shopping with your best friend.

Exponent: Let's go to the shopping today!

Function: Making a suggestion about going to shopping 

It is a clear example of a Informal way (more socially casual) use of language, because you are referring to a friend and their code is different to talk to the High School's principal as an example, the exponent would be Formal because you are referring to a person with a higher position. 

But in order to experience those and use the correct exponent , you have to recognize the kind of register o situation it has. 

On the other hand. I consider functions very relevant to teach people, because starting from here children get accostumed to good manners, so it can help them to know that there are levels of formality and they have to respect others, Furtherrmore, they can change the way how to talk. For my point of view, I would include only speaking exercises to put in practice the exponents. 

Finally, I am adding more information about functions according to Michael Halliday in the following picture