Week 4:Lessonplan

Dear all,

It has been a taft but interesting week. Personally, I traveled home last night to a place in Chile near the mountains, buy anyway I am doing my best to be connected.And so far so good I have been able to connect today. Fingers crossed.

First of all, I read all the material suggested for this week, and it has been very helpful for my professional development.
In my University we are very devoted to writing, so the article"Process writing and the Internet" has given me interesting tips about how to enhance the writing process.
Taking into account the article,there are three things to consider at the moment of plannig a lesson:Pre-writing,peer revision and teacher feedback(Ferris and Hedcock, 2005).
Something else I learned is that we have to consider;needs, worldview and social background of the students. I believe we have to consider the previous factors to propose topics for writing. And we should not forget they are part of the social network(Dudeney and Hockly, 2007).
Well, blogs are very useful tools to promote writing, the same as Ning. But I have never used Ning I hope in the near future to have more time to explore it.
keeping in mind all the above,technology enhances the lesson plan, but we have to focus on the objective and then choose the best technological tool.

Looking forward to your comments,
Cheers,
Laura from Chile

WEEK 3: Audio Oral/Aural Skills

This week has been a real challenge for me. First of all, I was struggling with "delicious" because it was not easy to create my page, I tried several passwords, and finally I could access. Then, to understand how it works  took me some time, but finally I could do it.
Then, I read the arcticles suggested in this Unit. In particular, I liked the article" Teaching pronunciation to adult english language teachers because learning and teaching pronunciation in Chile is one of the most difficult skills to develop. Indeed, one of the most difficult skills to improve in my own case has been pronunciation, since when I was studying at the University we didn´t have the chance to meet many foreigners to practice our Oral skills. Basically we tried to acquire phonetics through drilling exercises and listening to cassettes, just imagine!! how hard it was. And the article mentions something that is exactly what happens in Chile, the difference between Sh and Ch is very difficult to acquire.
And in many of the courses we are teaching nowadays, we tell our students  what Harmer, 1991, mentioned, that they can acquire good pronunciation but not necessarily perfect accent.
Keeping in mind the ideas from that book, cultivating positive attitudes in the classroom is the key to succeed in our teaching, because motivation is highly relevant to encourage our students to learn a foreing language.
The techniques suggested in the second article about video activities were also helpful. Using videos is worth the effort, because it  become more meaningful specially for kids and teenagers.(Rucynski, 2011)

In lesson plans you could also find resourful material to include in your classes, drama activities,gameboards, etc. In fact, I saved the link and I uploaded them to Delicious, to try to include them in my future lessons.

Now, I am getting ready for the Project activity.

Cheers,
Laura from Chile

Week 2:ABCD OBJECTIVES (Second post)

Dear classmates,

It has been really useful to read and learn about The ABCD method. Setting objectives is one of the most difficult tasks and following this method has helped me a lot to clarify muy own doubts about how to write objectives. Concerning Bloom, I used to study the verbs a long time ago, bu now I have remembered them again.

Excellent activity.

Week 2: Web searching comments

Dear all,

I want to share my viewpoints about the Web searching activity and the readings.

Web searching: It was a very useful activity, because I have always used  "Google" like the only one search engine, and now through that activity I have become acquained with new search engines, which certainly seem to be very useful for the kind of job I do. I selected one subject from one of the Units from the Level 1 Starter, it is "Alternative diet for cancer", and I used this topic to use the different search tools.

In fact, from one of the groups, "iseek" had images, detailed information about the kinds of articles we need at the Faculty of Medicine, and the best is they can fit different levels.
"Surfwax" had video related topics, that could also be of  great help to complement our material in classes.
From another group the most outstanding is "Libguides.com", due to the fact you can find more academic information related to the subject I have been searching about.

Readings:
I read the article on Objectives, Technology tip of the month-better web searching by Deborah Healey and Making the net easier.
Indeed the reading on Objectives was something new, I had no idea about the ABCD.
Then, concerning the Tips, it has been interesting to see three new concepts: query, hit and entry , the same as pieces of advice to use Google.
Finally, the reading on websites, seem to be useful, howewer It is not for medicine.

This is my reflection about this Unit.

Week 1:Reflection

Hi everybody!! It is fun to be working with blogs again, after 3 years.
Actually I started to work with blogs in 2006 and I was using them a lot, but suddenly without any reason I stopped using them in my clasess. And now, It has been nice to be back on track again, trying to remember things that I have forgotten.
So, I am eager to start posting again!!