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Sunday, 5 June 2011
Sunday, 24 April 2011
Class Research Observation
Group Lesson 2: (Daniela, Vanesa & Fernanda, April 6th)
Topic: Student- Teacher talk interaction
Field Notes:
*Students are from elementary school
*T present the menu
*Teachers presents new words using visual aids
*Teachers talk about “Likes”
*Teachers use a story of a rabbit.
*Teachers do mimicry most of the time, gestures to show words and questions. Do you like…? Do you know…? Can you say…?
*Students have to listen the story and repeat words
*Teacher points to the pictures in the story and repeat the sentences twice.
*Teacher rewards Sts Participation saying Very Good!
*Teacher checks comprehension by asking questions and Sts answer YES or No aloud with gestures. Some Sts say the words into Spanish. Does Bun-Bun likes to…?
*Teacher uses ICT to show the story and powerpoint.
*Sts pay attention and look to the story, laugh and repeat some sentences
Analysis:
Conclusions: Were you able to arrive at empirically valid and robust conclusions based on your observations? Explain why or why not?
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Group Lesson: Group 6 (Nicole, Bárbara & Katherine)
Topic: Student motivation and engagement
Field notes:
*Teacher present topic: Seasons
*T gives instructions: listen the name of the seasons and activities. T gives examples.
*T uses mimic and body language while Sts are watching the video.
*Use of ICT: youtube video and powerpoint
*Interaction between teacher and students: While listening Sts are in silence and looking to the teacher.
*T asks questions about the video What season is missing? How do you say? What activities do we do in…?
*Worksheet: T ask for volunteers.. Can you help me? Can you stick…? Sts go to the board. Sts show the pictures to their classmates.
*Use of flashcards
*Use of reward like: good, excellent
*T checks and repeat Sts answers.
Analysis:
Conclusions:
Friday, 1 April 2011
Website Analysis: Learning Spanish!
Among all the Websites, I have decided to write about learning Spanish through this educational page http://www.studyspanish.com/ which provides free web-based services to Spanish students and teachers.
First of all, I think that this website is focused on the Grammar translation method. Why? Well, it is important to remember that this method requires students to translate whole texts and learn by heart grammatical rules as well as vocabulary lists. The goal of this method is to be able to read and translate everything. In this educational website you can find a lot of sections about pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary and verb drills. For example, I got impressed with this words "Anyone who has studied Spanish knows that one of the biggest challenges is to learn all of the verb conjugations". I got the idea that this educational website rather attempts to teach language through rules and not by the use of them in real context.
So, students will start to use them automatically in their speech.
To support my words, I would like to show you this example from the lesson topics:
"Hace ..." to mean "ago
In a previous lesson, you learned to use the verb hacer with the present tense form of a verb to indicate the length of time an action has been taking place:
Hace + time + que + present tense form of the verb
Hace un año que estudio español.
I have been studying Spanish for one year
Hace + time + que + present tense form of the verb
Hace un año que estudio español.
I have been studying Spanish for one year
Learning a language means acquiring receptive and productive skills but throughout this Website via Grammar translation it can be difficult to achieve that goal. Certainly, it has a lot of weaknesses. Is it meaningful to learn Spanish by this way? I really want invite you to think about it.
Friday, 25 March 2011
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