International Spot

Correcting written work

2008-11-18T22:00:00.000-08:00

Errors as mistakes on written texts must be seen by the teachers as an opoprtunity to help students. In other words, this should be a tool not a measurement. Since effectiveness is more important then accuracy in language learning, errors should not something essential. Nevertheless, is important to give student's feedback, but not only error feedback but also positive feedback. Teachers can correct by correcting only certain errors, or they can let students identify and correct their own errors. When talking about mistakes, teachers should make student's aware of mistakes and clear out any doubts on the matter.

Reflection:

I have always thought that correction and feedback go together, since a teacher can correct a text, but if the learner does not receive feedback, learning will not happen. But knowing what and how are we going to correct is essential. It's essential because our puporse is encourage student's to improve not to discourage them. For marking every single mistake, every single error, will defenetely discourage student's we must be correct only what makes difficult to communicate the idea, the essential, not word by word.

Context for writing: the use of visual materials

2008-11-17T14:00:00.000-08:00

There are several writing activities that are picture or visual based, therefore is important to take them into consideration. Narration, dialogues, descriptions, directions, are example of written work that students may develop from a visual add. Teachers, therefore, ought to search for suitable pictures for the language proficiency that they are currently teaching. On the other hand, is very important to know the language needed to carry out the activity, for this teachers can use previous knowledge or give a whole new lecture about the topic, in both cases, learners should feel prepared for the task to come in order to be able to make it succesful. Of course there is also writing for fun involving pictures, just like picture linking, lost and found, desert island messages, cartoons, post cards, and many more.

Reflection:

Since everyone likes pictures, is important to consider these visual aids as a powerful tool, to creat writing tasks, it makes it more communicative, more realistic, and fun. The good thing about this is that we can use just one picture for multiple tasks, in different levels, and ages. I liked reading this since I had no idea, in what ways we could use picture sequences, picture descriptions, and all that. Please teachers use visual materials.

Developing skills

2008-11-17T12:33:00.000-08:00

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.

General Principles for teaching writing

2008-11-17T12:00:00.000-08:00

When teaching writing teachers might choose among a variety of approaches. Fluency focus will be used if you want students to express what they want but in a free way, where it matters most how much and how fast you write. It can be teachers that consider more important to teach how to construct text, focusing on paragraph's structure, and not much on speed or quantity. And there's of course the approach that aims for purpose, meaning, this means we must teach students the communicative purpose of writing something. The teacher's role then will be to give students "realistic task" in order for them to understand it's importance and relevance in real life situations. Although teachers need to guide students throughout all the writing learning process, students should be given more flexibility and freedom when it comes to what, when and how they are going to write.

Reflection:

Of course, it's almost impossible follow just one focus, so why not used them all. Yeah use them all, but choose, or create the right activities for them. Remember to keep student's writing in an extensive level.

Learning to use the resources of the written language

2008-11-11T13:48:00.000-08:00

While the copyright for this cartoon by Jerry King belongs to From Now On, readers may distribute and republish provided they reproduce the credit with a link to Jerry's Web site http://www.jerryking.com/ and to From Now On http://fno.org.

The most effective resource when it comes to writing is reading. It is not that a good reader will become good writer, but it will certainly help while developing meaning through writing. Nevertheless, in actual practice, students need to be aware of the purpose of the writing. In other words, teachers ought to set communicative writing activities, and first they have to point out the purpose of writing. Secondly, a purpose comes a reader, so teachers should emphasize the importance of knowing to whom is that text written for, in order to adequate the information, to the reader's level of cognition and schemata. Thrirdly, the text's structure should be taught paying special attention to the linking devices, sentences and paragraph formation.

It is also important to make clear, the difference between oral communication and written communication. Since they often have the same purpose, it is not expressed the same. While writing tends to adopt a formal structure, speaking always carries an unformal way of expression. So, student's need to learn that we do not write sounds.

Reflection:

As hard as it might seem, teachers should not give up on teaching how to write properly. I agree with those who state that student's might not know how to write correctly in their mother tongue, fact that makes our task a lot more difficult. Nonetheless, I strongly believe in the power of formal writing. As in speaking we have a formal way and an informal way to express the same message with the same meaning, but the decision upon using formal or informal expression will lay is to whom we will send the message, and it happens the same thing in writing, we might use informal writing will using IM and it is acceptable, but we will never use this kind of writing in academic writing to give an example. While for some IM writing will be the only way of writing, I have to say is up to us teachers to not let this happen, we need to teach the importance, relevance and communicative purpose of all kinds of formal written texts.

What is writing?

2008-10-24T11:11:00.000-07:00

Writing, just as speaking is produced to infer some kind of meaning. In other words, the writen symbols must be arrange in such a way that it means something. The symbols can be arrange in words, sentences, paragraphs, horizontally, vertically, in lists and as long as it infers meaning it is consider writing. Nevertheless, there are ways to comunicate a message, in order for someone to get the right meaning. For this, we have to put our thoughts in paper and make sure that it is completely well written, since someone else is going to get our message, and is up to us if they get it correctly or not. But what do we write? As students we might do some note taking from time to time, but our academic writing is certainly the most recurrent activity of all. With essays, summaries, reflections, research projects, our academic writing takes place. Besides school writing we use it to send an e-mail to a friend, to chat on messenger, make the groceries list, and other spontenous writing. Where I want to go from here is to the reflection of why should we (as teachers) should teach writing, well the answer is simple, due to the different learning styles, some students will feel relieved if they have some visual aide to support their speech, and of course the class can rest from all the communicative learning while doing some writing, and for the teacher this writing will serve as some sort of evidence of student's learning progress.

But, of course, as in learning how to write in a mother tongue, it will take some time and sometimes it will not be the strongest skill of languages students.

Wrap up reading

2008-10-15T10:44:00.000-07:00

Lesson Plan

Reflection:

It is so much easier to work and develop a classroom when you have everything planned, so why not do a daily lesson plan. What we learn by doing this excercise is that we do not need a lot of material to make a dynamic class, in other words, we can make tons of activities from just 1 reading, which for us teachers is great news.

Reading lesson sequences

2008-10-09T23:00:00.000-07:00

Teachers use 'extensive reading' in classrooms as a tool to develop all sorts of skills in students, but this does not mean that there is only one way to do so. On the contrary, the best way to read in classroom is under certain 'sequences', this is, skimming the readings to get the whole meaning, so students can discuss about it, then give them questions to answer, this will make them scan the reading in order to get specific information, or they can just read the text that's going to be followed up by an activity. These are just examples of what we can accomplish from one reading, we can create are own sequences, in order to fulfill the learning objectives.

Reflection:

This is a great way to obtain so much from just one reading, I think is just wonderful, I hope to be able to be up to date all the time, and see if we can do good use of 'extensive reading' in my own classrooms (that is if I ever become a teacher). I guess I will have to experiment a lot, to get to know what activities, strategies and readings are suitable for our local situation.

Reading Strategies

2008-09-22T17:01:00.000-07:00

Teachers must choose their strategies (but shouldn't use more than 2 at a time) based on their aims, activities and teaching methods. Moreover, the activities should fit the student's level, meaning, the tasks should not be too difficulshou t nor too easy. At the same time, students should the strategy practical and useful, but not only for language learning purposes, but for a guide variety of fields of their interest. In addition, teachers ought to make an awareness of the existence of such strategies, so that learners can choose what strategies to use, while learning. The whole aim for this is for student's to be able to apply their strategy knowledge, in an un-familiar field, and make it familiar, with what they already know. Last, but not less, students should be able to evaluate themselves, so they will notice what strategies are really using.

Reflection:

It was a total surprise for me to know that we, as teachers, should openly talk about the learning (or reading) strategies with students. I thought it was more like a subconscious learning, that the teacher should teach without saying 'today we are going to learn some reading strategies. This is, in all, new for me.

Reading at Intermediate and advanced level

2008-09-22T16:34:00.000-07:00

In intermediate and advanced levels the teacher will guide students to become independent and gain certain domain on comprehension skills. When using textbooks, it will be up to the teacher to set up the appropriate aims, depending on the groups demanding. Along with the aims, come the methods, which would be determined by same aims the teacher has developed.

Reflection:

As with everything, the teacher has the hard task of deciding the aims, and the methods. Subsequently, the teacher should be able to choose carefully the texts, aims, methods, materials she/he uses in order to achieved her/his initial aims. And more important, to be able to fallow up, in order to achieved learning objectives. Certainly, having clear aims will facilitate teachers work. Now the thing is, being able to set clear, down to earth aims.

Teaching and student's age

2008-09-08T20:51:00.001-07:00

Reading is a complex multi-skills process, therefore children will learn, among other things, to read critically. To do so, teachers ought to let children to answer questions openly, and discard the yes or no questions; because children do think critically. The reading material must be wide varied, so children will have the open possibility to choose what they want to read. We also have to have in mind that in real life situations we read for different purposes and with this comes the way in which we read a text. For this student need to learn or domain certain skills, but they will only be helpful in the measure they practice.

Reflection:

As we have mention before, in a second language course or class; in Mexico, is almost impossible to have the right amount of English books. But now imagine French books? Italian books? One thing is certain; reading is not being promoted in our schools, moreover critical thinking or reading is not even an option. Is sad to say, but of course it helps us to see our reality, and focus our goals towards a better educations, because we can make a difference by becoming excellent teachers.

Reading at elementary level

2008-09-08T20:15:00.001-07:00

Reflection:

Extensive and intensive reading

2008-09-01T10:47:00.001-07:00

Extensive Reading

Extensive reading means non- stop enjoyable reading. But not just reading for pleasure, but reading because it's so easy to do so, and you just enjoy doing it.

Now, in order for students to develop their extensive reading skills they need to be provided with the right materials, this means the teacher should teach them how to enjoy reading by choosing the right material readings, which means easy, understandable and enjoyable for theudents. There are also, some extensive reading materials that have been specially written for this purpose and have reading levels that matches student's reading level.

With this the need of an extensive reading programme seems so obvious, here are the steps to get it done:

Setting up a library
Teacher's enouraging students
Extensive reading tasks

Intensive Reading

Reading intensively is reading for specific purposes. Teachers while teaching intensive reading, according to Harmer have these role models:

Organiser, explain student's the purpose of their reading and give clear instructions of what they are supose to do.
Observer, students need their space to read, but the teacher should observe their performance from a distance.
Feedback Organizer, when student's have finished the tasks, teachers should check their performance, in order to be able to give feedback.
Prompter, when students have finished reading teachers can prompt students in order to clarify texts issues, and make some conscious knwoledge of what they have read.

Nevertheless, if students ask for the meaning of unknown words the teacher should have in mind the following:

Time limite, you can set your own time limit to look for answer.
Word/phrase limit, you can answer only certain number of questions.
Meaning consensus, this is activity that involves team work, each team member help each other and talk about the unknown words, and decide which words they need to look in the dictionary in order to understand the text.

Reading sequences

Intensive reading sequences are useful when you want students to practice specific skills like reading for specific information, or reading for general understanding, comunicative purposes. Reading sequences usually involves more than one reading skill. Teachers must guide students while doing the activities, by asking them to identify the topic, main ideas, or to look for specific information, depending on the skills tha are being promoted.

Reflection:

I found extensive reading my favorite so far. I like the idea of helping students to develope their love, passion, curiosity, and concern about reading. Of course you need to teach them how look read for specific purposes and develop other skills, but of course you can give a greater input while using extensive reading as your basic tool, and the intensiveness of reading can come later on, when the students feel already bond to books and new information.

Interesting blog

Problems and Solutions

2008-09-01T10:46:00.001-07:00

As we have seen before, there are certain aspects that make a text dificult for the reader, here we will talk not only about these problems, but about it's solutions as well.

The problems that students encounter while reading in a second language are often the encounter with unknown words, and the long sentences that contain these many strage words, which make almost impossible for the students to make any sense of the texts. At this point, students will feel disencouraged to keep reading, and will think of how much they don't know, instead of ganing confidence in their reading.

For these the author claims these solutions:

Pre-teaching vocabulary

Extensive reading

Choose the right topics

Create Interest

Activate schemata

Vary topics and genres

Testing and teaching

Appropiate challenge: i + 1, not too easy not too difficult.

Manufactoring success

Agreeing on a purpose

Reflection:

Providing student's with the right material is usually a problem and not to mention the sense of failure that students might perceived from their school activities and readings. Therefore, teachers must fallow up this easy, but effective solutions. You want your student's to feel that they are learning, that they can read, that they know enough, not the other way around.

Take them step by step, hand to hand, and they will respond.

How we read ?

2008-08-28T10:54:00.000-07:00

When reading we usually need some background knowledge 'in order to make sense of any text' says Cook. This 'background knowlodge' is called schema. This schema is 'activated' when needed, while we read, this way we can identify what we are reading. In written texts we can use our shemata to identify the type of text we are reading, whether if it's a dictionary, a brochure, a newspaper, a letter, and so on.

Schemata is what makes comunication easier for both writer and reader, or speaker and listener. As we have review before, both writer and reader must have some shared 'background knowlodge' (schema) in order to avoid any comunicative problems. If chemata shared by both parts is lacking, then problems may arise.

Now here we'll revise some aspects that the reader encounters when reading:

Reasons for reading:

Instrumental: In this case we read, becuase we are going to use the reading for some useful pupose. You might read some instrutions, directions, a manual.
Pleasurable: The word explains itself clearly, reading for pleasure this is, like comics, novels, magazines.

Ways of reading:

Top-down reading: which is just having a panoramic view of what we are reading.

Bottom-up reading: with this reading, the reader analyzes every single word, and puts them together to creat meaning.

Processe of reading:

When we read we make usage of different skills, which will be determined by what we are reading. Here are the skills that we come across when reading:

Identifying the topic
Predicting and guessing
Reading and listening for general understanding
Reading and listening for specific information
Reading and listening for detailed information
Interpreting text

Reflection:

It's very important for teachers to know the process, and the reasons of reading, so it can do a better performance when encouraging student's to read. Obviously, there are more information useful for the teacher to consider, nevertheless this can be a good guidance on how to.

Teaching Reading Skills in a Foreign Language, by Nuttall, C.

2008-08-14T16:17:00.000-07:00

What is Reading?

According to Nuttall, C. oughts to have 3 elements:

1. decode, decipher, identify,etc.

2. articulate, speak, pronounce, etc.

3. understand, respond, meaning, etc.

In the #1 the author is encouraging teachers to help student's identify the foreign words and to be familiar with the second language code.

The #2 talks about the 'reading aloud' feature that helps a lot to second language beginner learners. Teachers should used this tool, to teach pronounciation, practice fluency says the author.

Finally # 3 Nutall talks about meaning as the main idea of her article, this is, the transfer of a message from writer to reader.

To start with a definition of reading I shall adress to the definition that my classroom put together after reading the article, and here it is :
Reading is a process that involves decoding written symbols, in order to find and understand the meaning of someone else's message.

Now we are going to talk about REASONS FOR READING:

People read in different ways for different purposes, says Nuttall. This is, you can read slowly (way) in order to get all the details (purpose) or you can read quickly(way) just to find a specific detail(purpose).

People read because to obtain something in return, this something is called by Nuttall, the message. This message can have ideas, feelings, descriptions, etc.

Now, why do people read foreign languages?

In this matter, motivations plays an important role, because if students are only reading school assignments. and not reading for pleasure, then the teacher's role is in danger. The teacher should motivate students by making foreing language reading 'interesting in itself', in other words, the teacher should carefully choose the reading material, according to student's own interest. Nevertheless, the reading must be used for rael life purposes.

Reading and the communication process

The communication process deals with 3 esscential parts, which is the encoder (writer) that encodes a message in order to share it with some body else. Then we have the actual message that is transmitted to a decoder, in order words the reader that is going to interpret or decipher the enconder's message.This is the simple way to explain this process, since there are a lot of interfierence when it comes to communicate with others.

The reader can be either active or passive. The passive reader let's all the information gathered by the author just go in his/her mind. This kind of reader, tells us that he/she might not get everything in his/her mind. Wich, depends on how difficult a text can be for a student.

An important question is, what makes a text difficult?

Here are some of the ways in which texts can be difficult:

Not being familiar witht he code (language)
The amount of previous knowledge (schemata)
The usage of complex words
And the vocabulary

With this in mind, we must say that is important that writer and reader share some of the 4 points mentioned above, so that communication can take place. More over, some assumptions about the world and the way it works must be shared too. As it shows below:

So, now we can talk about the schema, which is a mental structure (mental map or reality). In communication the "way we interpret depends on the schemata (plural) activated by the text". Consequently, the succes of our interpretation relies on our area of good understanding shared witht he writer , in other words in the being the reader's schemata similar to the writer's schemata.

Schemata are build up from experiences, this means that new experiences are constantly changing ones schema. Moreover, our "schema grows throughout our lives for as long as we retain the capacity to learn".Thus, reading at the same time as we learn changes our exising schemata, this is calles active reading.

Reflection

Active reading is what teachers are looking to promote among students. Invite your students to find meaning in everything they read, and choose carefully the meaning that texts carry, so they can feel confident about their reading, and not frustrated because of the lack of shared schemata with the author or the poor vocabulary they have in order to get the meaning.

Caballow

2008-08-11T09:58:00.000-07:00

Caballow es el nombre del juego de Howrse mencionado anteriormente, pero ésta es la versión en español. Si a ti, a tus hijos, sobrinos, nietos o vecinos les gustan los caballos este es el juego ideal para ustedes, ya que puedes tener tu propia granja de crianza, tu propio centro equestre y mucho más. Es un juego sano y divertido. Visiten la página para que comiencen a disfrutarlo. Aqui está el enlace www.caballow.com.

Por favor mencionenme como padrino este es mi log in xochitlbarney.

Banco Santander vs Banamex

2008-07-27T17:32:00.000-07:00

Cuenta Universitaria en Santander

Problemas :

Si pierdes la tarjeta inteligente se tardan meses en reponerla, si es que lo hacen, así es yo hace 3 semestres que pedí mi reposición y nada.
Al perder tu tarjeta, no puedes retirar tu dinero en ventanilla.
No cualquier banco o persona te puede atender sobre tus necesidades.
La tarjeta no es aceptada en compras de internet, paypal o mastercard.

Con todo esto, para que quiere uno está cuenta, bueno si tu intención es sólo tener tu dinero guardadito y hacer compras en el super, está cuenta es para ti. Ya que no te cobra absolutamente nada y no tiene un límite de crédito.

Ahora si lo que quieres es poder tener cuenta paypal, hacer compras por internet, y además tener un exelente serivicio banamex es tu banco.

Cuenta Perfiles Banamex

Solución al problema:

Abrir una cuenta perfiles de Banamex.

Aquí te daré los pasos a seguir para que tu operación sea éxitosa, ya que he oído algunos comentarios de personas que dicen que su cuenta perfiles no les sirvió para usarla en paypal, les diré exactamente lo que yo hice, por que conmigo si funcionó, la uso en paypal y en ebay, amazon, etc.

Pasos:
1.- Acudir a tu Banco Banamex más cercano con: Identificación

oficial (si tu dirección actual no coincide con la de tu identificación lleva un comprobante de domicilio) y él déposito inicial de 1,000

pesos mexicanos.

2.- Pide tu tarjeta personalizada (osea con tu nombre) tardará
aproximádamente 10 días en llegar a tu casa. Pero vale la pena llevará
tu nombre y a mi parecer ese puede ser uno de los problemas con
los que no pueden utilizarla en línea.

3.- Activa tu servicio en línea, pide tu netkey y tu código de activación.

4.- Tu netkey te permitirá entrar a la Bancanet del banco y realizar tus
operaciones en internet junto con una clave numérica que tu mismo
crearás al contratar el servicio.

5.- Una vez dentro de tu Bancanet el servidor te pedirá activa tu
contraseña alfanumérica. Está clave será enviada a tu domicilio de 3 a
5 días hábiles después de haber pedido tu códig de activación. Si no la
pides en el banco está nunca te llegará, te recomiendo lo pidas todo el
mismo día, yo no sabía esto y tuve que regresar para pedir ésta clave
y tuve que esperar más días.

6.- La contraseña para tu tarjeta te llegará antes que la tarjeta así que
no te asustes, y tal vez el código de activación también.

7.- Una vez con que te llega tu tarjeta, tienes que ir a un cajero
banamex y consultar tu saldo para activar la tarjeta. Y listo !!!

Bueno amigos espero no tengan problemas en usar su tarjeta en el ciberespacio. Recuerden tomar todas las medidas de seguridad para tales transacciones. :D

Comentarios, preguntas, son bienvenidos !!!

Game Fever

2008-07-15T19:13:00.000-07:00

Yes, as strange as it sounds I have a game fever called Howrse. This game is for children I know, but is amazing how much I enjoy playing it. Of course I enjoy it cause I'm a horse lover :P. Anyway, this is a way of owning a horse ;).

If you have a daughter, niece, grandaughter, little sister that loves horses or pets in general, I totally recommend this game for her.

If you have decided to take a look here you go: START PLAYING

Have a lovely day !!

The last lecture

2008-07-15T18:38:00.000-07:00

In a more serious tone. I want to share with you this video I found. Just watch it and think about it. I hope it helps you with something.

I think it's great.