Communicative Approach

In this session the group continued with the presentation groups about the listening comprehension and oral expression topic.

Communicative language teaching (CLT), or the communicative approach, is an approach to language teaching that emphasizes interaction as both the means and the ultimate goal of study. Language learners in environments utilizing CLT techniques learn and practice the target language through interaction with one another and the instructor, study of "authentic texts" (those written in the target language for purposes other than language learning), and use of the language in class combined with use of the language outside of class. Learners converse about personal experiences with partners, and instructors teach topics outside of the realm of traditional grammar in order to promote language skills in all types of situations. This method also claims to encourage learners to incorporate their personal experiences into their language learning environment and focus on the learning experience in addition to the learning of the target language.

The emergence of English as a global language, technological innovation and a growing need for learner autonomy are changing the contexts of language learning rapidly and profoundly. Recognition of the current complexity and diversity of these contexts has led some to suggest that we have moved ‘beyond methods’ to a postmethod condition (Kumaravadivelu, 2002), that the quest for a better method has been or should be abandoned in favor of the identification of practices or strategies of teaching designed to reflect local needs and experiences.

Strategies for Oral Expression

In this session the group continued with the presentation groups about the listening comprehension and oral expression topic.

Look this information presenting in the class

Teaching Speaking

Earlier views: Methodology consisted of repeating after the teacher, memorizing a dialog, or responding to drills, reflecting the sentence-based view of proficiency (audiolingual and drill-based views of the 70’) Grammar-based syllabuses

Later views: In the 80’ emerged the communicative language teaching, until today.

Current views: Communicative approach+  intercultural competence. 

Talk as interactions: It refers to “conversation” and describes interaction which serves a social function.

When people meet, exchange greetings, engage in small talk, recount recent experiences.

Skills involved: opening and closing conversations, choosing topics, making small-talk, joking, reacting to others, turn taking, using styles of speaking.

The best way is to provide examples embedded in naturalistic dialogs that can serve to model features how to open and close conversations, making small talks, recounting personal incidents and experiences, and reacting to what others say. Teachers should select safe topics.

Giving feedback (back channeling) involves responding to a conversational partner with expressions that indicate interest and a wish for the speaker to continue. For example: yeah, that’s interesting, really, etc.

Asking one or two follow up questions could help prepare students to interact.

Teaching Speaking

'I can understand my teacher's English, but when I speak to 'real people' I can't understand them'. This is a comment I'm sure many teachers have heard.

While it is a bit of an exaggeration, students clearly feel that classroom-based speaking practice does not prepare them for the real world. Why do students so often highlight listening and speaking as their biggest problems? Partly because of the demands of listening and speaking and partly because of the way speaking is often taught. It usually consists of language practice activities (discussions, information-gap activities etc.) or is used to practise a specific grammar point. Neither teaches patterns of real interaction.

There are three types of teaching speaking skills. Let's check them out.

Talk as Interaction:

This refers to what we normally mean by ''conversation.'' In other words, when the participants exchange ideas and thoughts during classes for a required task. In this one, there are some skills that have to be  used such as:

- Opening and closing conversations

- Choosing topics

- Making small talk

-  Joking

- Recounting personal incidents and experiences

- Turn - taking

- Interrupting

- Reacting to others

- Using an appropriate style of speaking

Talk as Transition: 

This type of talk refers to situations where the focus is on what is said or done. Some skills to be developed in this type are:

- Explain a need or intention

- Describing something

- Asking questioning

- Confirming information

- Clarifying  understanding

- Making comparisons

- Agreeing and disagreeing

Talk as Performance:  

This is the third type of talk and refers to the usage of speaking. For instance, public talks.

Some of the skills involved in using this talk are:

- Using an appropriate format

- Presenting information in an appropriate sequence

- Maintaining audience engagement

- Using correct pronunciation and grammar

- Creating an effect on the audience

- Using appropriate vocabulary

Implications for teaching:

For every English teacher teacher speaking skills is a challenge due to the shyness of students at the time of speaking about something when they are in a very basic level. They fear to make a mistake in front of others; therefore they avoid participating in classes.

The Teaching Of Listening

In the previous entries we will certainly exposing some features in general regarding the teaching of speaking and listening skills.

Listening as comprehension is the traditional way of thinking about the nature of English. In other words, this view of listening is based on the assumption that the main function of listening in second language learning is to facilitate understanding of spoken discourse.

Characteristics of Listening/Spoken Discourse:

• The listener must process it ''on-line''' and there is often no chance to listen to it again.
• It strikes the second language listener as being very fast, although speech rates vary considerably.
• It is usually unplanned
• It has a linear structure compared to a hierarchical structure for written discourse.
• It is usually delivered one clause at a time and longer utterances in conversation generally consist of several or adjuncts.
• Variation of accents.

I invite you to watch this video about Listening Comprehension by professor Jack C. Richards.

Listening Comprehension

In the second session of the module, we began talking about chapter 3. Then, some group work. But in this entry I want to do is to reflect on the reading ''Teaching Listening and Speaking from theory to practice''

In this material, I found many important facts regarding teaching and practice. For example, how listening and speaking can be taught. However, I was primary focused on the teaching of speaking because in the previous entry I reflected on listening somehow. In order to, these two skills are connected because you listen what others speak or say.  So, in this material, professor Jack Richards make us to be conscious about how we as teachers can implement different ways to teach listening and speaking.

Is it appropriate for an English teacher to translate new words into the students’ mother tongue? If so, how much and how many words?

If the teacher decides that the word is useful and important, he or she should also ask:

Can the meaning of the word be inferred from the context or because it is similar to a word in the students’ mother tongue?

Can the students make an intelligent guess about the meaning of the word?

Can they check the meaning of the word in their dictionary?

it is important to continue explaing Listening is a receptive skill. This means that listening is a process in which you do not produce but receive, deal with and understand a language. Listening is an important skill in our daily life, especially when we talk to someone. We have to understand the person we talk to in order to have a satisfying conversation.

You can practise your listening skills by listening carefully to and extracting information from a text. Then consider the content of what you have just heard. We provide a lot of opportunities to train your listening comprehension.

LISTENING COMPREHENSION

Listening comprehension is more than just hearing what is said; rather, it is a child’s ability to understand the meaning of the words he hears and to relate to them in some way. When children hear a story, for instance, good listening comprehension enables them to understand it, remember it, discuss it, and even retell it in their own words. This is an important skill to develop even at an early age, because good listeners grow up to become good communicators.

Reflection on the video by Jack C. Richards regarding Listening

Listening Comprehension is compounded by two different strands which are: Bottom Up Processing, and Top Down Processing. These may vary depending on the students' learning background. Let's discuss a little bit deeper the topic.

Bottom up:  students are taught an specific topic. The following strategies can help teachers to put into practice the bottom up processing while teaching: 

• listening for specific details
• recognizing cognates
• recognizing word-order patterns

Bottom-up strategies are text based; the listener relies on the language in the message, that is, the combination of sounds, words, and grammar that creates meaning.

Top down: this one depends on the background knowledge of the student on a certain topic.

Let's take a look to the strategies that can be done while teaching:

•          listening for the main idea
•          predicting
•          drawing inferences
•         summarizing

Top-down strategies are listener based; the listener taps into background knowledge of the topic, the situation or context, the type of text, and the language. This background knowledge activates a set of expectations that help the listener to interpret what is heard and anticipate what will come next.

To sum up, listening comprehension is really important for teachers to implement or develop this skills into their students no matter if they teach it inductively or deductively. It has to be mentioned that sometimes is necessary to expose students to real world material for creating interest on the classes.

LAST REFLECTION ON CBE AND DIDACTIC SEQUENCE

In the previous entry, we were discussing something related to Didactic Sequence. But in this last session we continued discussing about some important aspect that we have to included or develop as a teacher in a real life.

We were also discussing about inquiry reflection which is a diagram in which teachers can facilitate their preparation in the lesson plan:

•    Knowledge: which refers to what he or she is going to teach or do in the class.
•   Articulation: the way he will develop his/her class.
• Resources: what he/she is going to use in order to get his/her students attention in the class.
•   Organization: in which way he/she will do it as a lesson plan.
•   Evaluation: what contents he will consider in the assessment of his/her students. Also, they will determine the time and the type of the test.
•  Justification: why he or she is going to do so.  Basically is the purpose.

To sum up, the DS was applied to the teaching of an expository text, and different pedagogic strategies vocabulary redundancy, familiarity with the ideas involved, and a checklist to encourage student autonomy were implemented to allow students to experiment this practice as a coherent, cohesive process adapted to their needs. The final DS design stroke a balance between a grammatical and a purely ideational focus and, as a result, students were able to improve their acquaintance with, and use of, the main features of expository writing without becoming estranged in the learning process.

DIDACTIC SEQUENCE

I'll be explaining what ''didactic sequence'' is about. Firstly, I'm going to give a brief definition: A didactic sequence is a group of activities created in order to reach an objective. Those activities must follow an order and an organization. That means that each activity has its own purpose and all of them work together in order to reach a bigger objective.

Another characteristic of didactic sequences is that they must have a rhythm too.

didactic sequences must have the following characteristics:

 “They must test the previous knowledge of the pupils and adapt the class to the level of knowledge of students.” (Rodriguez, n.d)

 “The contents of the class must be meaningful and must represent a challenge for students.” (Rodriguez, n.d)

“They promote mental activity and construction of new concepts.” (Rodriguez, n.d)

“They promote autonomy and met cognition.” (Rodriguez, n.d)

The didactic sequence must develop in students knowledge, abilities and attitudes. And must help the student to take his abilities outside the school. (Obaya, n.d)

A didactic sequence for English must have four main elements:

Activities: “What students will be doing in the classroom.” (Harmer, 2006)

Skills: “Which language skills  se wish our students to develop”

Language: “What language students will practice, research or use”

Content: “Select content which has a good chance of provoking interest and involvement.

 Cognitivism is based on the mental processes that students use in order to reach understanding. Some of those processes are perception, memorization, thinking and resolution of problems.

Some activities may be proposed to be carried out in a space-time context other than the classroom.

Didactic Sequence implies short-term planning (activities), which during its implementation converges with long-term planning (approaches and competency development).

A Didactic Sequence always refers to a method, a technique or an approach.

Here is one example of didactic sequence it can be similar to the PPP.

• ·         Teaching presentation (introduction)
• ·         Content study by students
• ·         Student practice (individual or group)
• ·         Applying on similar tasks or exercises

TASK ANALYSIS II

Task analysis analyses what a user is required to do in terms of actions and/or cognitive processes to achieve a task. A detailed task analysis can be conducted to understand the current system and the information flows within it. These information flows are important to the maintenance of the existing system and must be incorporated or substituted in any new system. Task analysis makes it possible to design and allocate tasks appropriately within the new system. The functions to be included within the system and the user interface can then be accurately specified.

In the class we make some activities where this can help us to improve and create and provides knowledge of the tasks that the user wishes to perform. Thus it is a reference against which the value of the system functions and features can be tested.

Method

Task decomposition

The process of task decomposition is best represented as a structure chart (similar to that used in Hierarchical Task Analysis). This shows the sequencing of activities by ordering them from left to right. In order to break down a task, the question should be asked ‘how is this task done?’. If a sub-task is identified at a lower level, it is possible to build up the structure by asking ‘why is this done?’. The task decomposition can be carried out using the following stages:

1. Identify the task to be analysed.

2. Break this down into between 4 and 8 subtasks. These subtasks should be specified in terms of objectives and, between them, should cover the whole area of interest.

3. Draw the subtasks as a layered diagram ensuring that it is complete.

4. Decide upon the level of detail into which to decompose. Making a conscious decision at this stage will ensure that all the subtask decompositions are treated consistently. It may be decided that the decomposition should continue until flows are more easily represented as a task flow diagram.

5.Continue the decomposition process, ensuring that the decompositions and numbering are consistent. It is usually helpful to produce a written account as well as the decomposition diagram.

6. Present the analysis to someone else who has not been involved in the decomposition but who knows the tasks well enough to check for consistency.

TASK ANALYSIS

Task analysis is the process of learning about ordinary users by observing them in action to understand in detail how they perform their tasks and achieve their intended goals.   Tasks analysis helps identify the tasks that your website and applications must support and can also help you refine or re-define your site’s navigation or search by determining the appropriate content scope.

When to Perform a Task Analysis

It’s important to perform a task analysis early in your process, in particular prior to design work.  Task analysis helps support several other aspects of the user-centered design process, including:

• Website requirements gathering
• Developing your content strategy and site structure
• Wireframing and Prototyping
• Performing usability testing

Types of Task Analysis

There are several types of task analysis but among the most common techniques used are:

Cognitive Task Analysis is focused on understanding tasks that require decision-making, problem-solving, memory, attention and judgment.

Hierarchical Task Analysis is focused on decomposing a high-level task subtasks.

How to Conduct a Task Analysis

Your task analysis may have several levels of inquiry, from general to very specific.  In addition to market research, competitive analysis, and web metrics analysis, you can identify top tasks through various user research techniques.

TEACHING ENGLISH WITHOUT TEACHING ENGLISH

In this talk Roberto discusses his three phase system which he uses to teach English without teaching English, to improve the learning experience for students and the teaching practice for professors.

I think that it's a great point to let students make mistakes, but it's so different from the modern, standard educational system. You're right. Content is far more important than form. Being able to communicate–even grammatically incorrectly–is the motivation needed to continue to copy those who speak more "correctly." But even then, language is always changing, and English hasn't always been English. There are no hard and fast rules except those we agree to.



I absolutely agree with the inclusion of a b.s. detector for students. The emphasis on analyzing, questioning, and investigating is something that should be a bigger part of educating students to create a smarter society, ready to defend against a sea of flawed information surrounding the world. Plus upon analyzing information in English, students can have an easier time using English once they are trained in their expressions of thought and analysis.

Bloom's Taxonomy

What is a bloom taxonomy according all seen in the first session class is important to define and explain the origin and the actualization that the bloom taxonomy had.

The Taxonomy is the study of the general principles of scientific classification.

 The Bloom's Taxonomy was created in 1956 under the leadership of educational psychologist Dr. Benjamin Bloom in order to promote higher forms of thinking in education, such as analyzing and evaluating concepts, processes, procedures, and principles, rather than just remembering facts (rote learning). It is most often used when designing educational, training, and learning processes.

The Three Domains of Learning

The committee identified three domains of educational activities or learning (Bloom, et al. 1956):

Cognitive: mental skills (knowledge)

Affective: growth in feelings or emotional areas (attitude or self)

Psychomotor: manual or physical skills (skills)

Since the work was produced by higher education, the words tend to be a little bigger than we normally use. Domains may be thought of as categories. Instructional designers, trainers, and educators often refer to these three categories as KSA (Knowledge [cognitive], Skills [psychomotor], and Attitudes [affective]). This taxonomy of learning behaviors may be thought of as “the goals of the learning process.” That is, after a learning episode, the learner should have acquired a new skill, knowledge, and/or attitude.

Bloom's Revised Taxonomy

Lorin Anderson, a former student of Bloom, and David Krathwohl revisited the cognitive domain in the mid-nineties and made some changes, with perhaps the three most prominent ones being (Anderson, Krathwohl, Airasian, Cruikshank, Mayer, Pintrich, Raths, Wittrock, 2000):

changing the names in the six categories from noun to verb forms

rearranging them as shown in the chart below

creating a processes and levels of knowledge matrix

The chart shown below compares the original taxonomy with the revised one:

This new taxonomy reflects a more active form of thinking and is perhaps more accurate.