lunes, 17 de noviembre de 2008

Developing skills


At intermediate level is important that students acknowledge their progress, for this teachers should adequate the writing program to their level, this means, not too easy and not way too difficult, but just about in somewhere in the middle. While choosing the activities that will be used int the writing program it should be taken in to account the variation, since is important to avoid boredom among students, give more importance to free expression activities with guidance, instead of the controling ones used with beginners. The activities that can be used with advanced levels can be the same that we use with begginers, but with a little twist, we will teach more advanced parts of the activity, such as, writing business letters, apologies, formal complaints, and within every writing we might teach something more and more difficult, such as, linking words, paragraph and sentence's structure. We must not forget, nonetheless, about the communicative activities which are, roleplaying and report writing, as well as the extensive writing, in other words enjoyable writing or 'writing just for fun' activities, such as graffiti, games, crosswords.

Reflection:

I think that for these student's in particular, as well as for advanced ones, is that we must study a bachelors, masters, any degree possible. Because we want to give them the right guidance to enter to the English spoken countries, with all their formal and nonformal way of writting. For this can only be acquire in school, we cannot expect them to know how to write, we must teach them word by word, sentence by sentence, and paragraph by paragraph. I know that if it wasn't for the Licenciatura I would not be able to teach this, because you as a teacher have to master all the knowledge before trying to guide someone through it. And, teachers, please !!, try to add some fun in all the activities that you do, so you and your students can enjoy the experience of good writing.

1 comentario:

Margaret dijo...

Hi Xochitl

I think it's hard to be an intermediate student because you are expected to be able to do a lot of things in the language even things like writing that hasn't been shown to you yet. (Wow, that was a long sentence! I hope you can understand it!)
So I agree that both the students and the teachers must acknowledge their progress but also make sure they have the skills to move forward to more difficult tasks.
Margaret