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