UNIT 10: Implementing the learner centered approach

This chapter is focused in how teachers have changed their ways of teaching in order to make learning more successful. According to  (Timothy, 2015) learner centered approach is when learners are the key to improve their own learning. That is to say, they have the power to choose what and how to learn according to their interests. 

In addition, this approach also includes advantages; such as, improves participation,retention of knowledge,boosts performance at work, develops problem-solving skills,fosters collaborative learning,makes learning fun and facilitates personalized learning.

On the other hand, according to (Hetsevich, 2016) states that there are ways to apply this approach in the class and the most useul is through technology. He said that technology allows students to experience and exposure new things because of they can find programs or special websites to practice the language. Besides, I agree with this point because nowadays technology is the key for learning whatever thing.

To sum up, it is best approach that a teacher can put into practice because learners can discover many things by themselves and they can feel more comfortable knowing they are the ones who run the class. Besides, it benefits learners with the learning of whatever skill but it is important to emphasize that the teacher also have to guide the activities in the classroom to avoid the disorder. 

REFERENCES:

Hetsevich, I. (2016). How to Apply a Student-Centered Approach to the ELearning Environment. 

Retrieved from https://www.joomlalms.com/blog/expert-interview/student-centered-approach-troy-

patterson.html

Timothy, A. (2015). Learner Centered Approach: Does It Really Matter In eLearning? Retrieved 

from https://elearningindustry.com/learner-centered-approach-elearning

UNIT 9: RESPONDING TO RESISTANCE

This chapter is about the resistance of teachers and students to make changes in the classroom because they are accustomed to do things as they did before. Besides, it establishes that student-centered instruction works when it is well applied but most of the time it is difficult because students are afraid of doing something new. Talking about teachers we can notice that they also feel uncomfortable with this situation because they need to have responsibility and self-direction from their students.

In addition, it mentions some ways to recognize resistance from learners. For example, they fixate on the details or ask irrelevant questions.   According to  (Wiley, 1991) there are other ways to detect resistance; such as, verbal aggression or  when learners don't do the assignments.

However, teachers should look for strategies or methods to encourage their learners learn in a different way.(Loder, 2014) points out that learners can lose their fear by applying five strategies in the classroom. For example, making learners reframe their goals,visualize the obstacles,uncover their story and ask three powerful questions.For example;  What did I learn from this situation? or How can I grow as a person from this experience?

In conclusion, I believe learner centered approach is too difficult to manage for a teacher but it is possible by doing interesting activities in the class; such as, applying games or activities with topics that they are familiar. 

REFERENCES:

Loder, V. (2014). How To Conquer The Fear Of Failure - 5 Proven Strategies. Retrieved from 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/vanessaloder/2014/10/30/how-to-move-beyond-the-fear-of-failure-5-

proven-strategies/#6bd58aae1b78

Wiley, J. (1991). Students' resistance in the classroom. Retrieved from 

https://www.jstor.org/stable/3195659?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

UNIT 8 : SPEAKING

I learned that it is also productive but it involves using speech to communicate meanings. According to  (Zaher, 2006) speaking is an autonomous medium and the main goal that a teacher has for the students because it is used in everyday life situations . Moreover, it counts with several subskills which are making use of grammar, vocabulary and functions; making use of register, using features of connected speech, using body language, producing different text types, oral fluency and using interactive strategies. The interactive strategies that are used most of the time are gestures, facial, expressions, movement and eye contact.  (Nordquist, 2015) states that turn-taking is another interactive strategy because all students can have the opportunity to speak in a conversation.

(Roy, 2014) points out that speaking also has register; it means the use of the appropriate degree of formality or informality. In addition, this skill also has features of connected speech; such as, intonation, accurate individual sounds, word and sentence stress, linking and contractions to help convey meaning. Furthermore, there are other points that play an important role to improve this skill. These points are fluency, accuracy and appropriacy because they help to have a successful oral communication. Some activities that can be applied here are drills, conversations, discussions or presentations to allow learners to practice the language.

To sum up, speaking skills is better developed by using interactive strategies so people can understand us when we speak. Also, activities should be chosen carefully in order to make students do something with a specific purpose.

REFERENCES:

Nordquist, R. (2015). Turn-taking (conversation). Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/turn-taking-conversation-1692569

Roy, A. G. (2014). Speaking Effectively. Retrieved from

https://onlinecourses.nptel.ac.in/noc17_hs15/preview

Zaher, A. A. (2006). The Effectiveness of a Task- Based Instruction program in developing the 

English Language Speaking Skills. Retrieved from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED523922.pdf

UNIT 7 : LISTENING

It is another receptive skill and involves making sense of the meaningful sounds of language. In other words, it means that listening includes understanding of the spoken language. According to  (Chandrakesan, 2014) listening contains examples of incomplete sentences, hesitations, utterances , simple grammar and general vocabulary which are useful in a job and in the personal life. Besides, it as the other skills has subskills. These subskills are listening for gist/global understanding, detail, specific information and infer attitude. (Burns, 2010)states that there are other ways to listen; such as, listening intensively and extensively. It means listening in a detailed way or putting emphasis in a general idea.

In addition, this skill counts with complex features that prevent a message from being understood.  (Cotter, 2014) says that these features are colloquialism, accent, intonation,inflection and stress. One reason that he explains is that English is not spoken in the same way in all countries and this is why it is difficult.

Finally, I believe it is the most difficult skill to be developed; nonetheless, the best way to deal with this problem is through activities that give learners the opportunity to be exposed to a range of accents, text types, speeds of delivery and listening skills.

REFERENCES:

Burns, W. (2010). Intensive and Extensive Listening. Retrieved from http://www.englishadvantageblog.com/2010/05/20/intensive-and-extensive-listening/

Cotter, C. (2014). Listening: What Makes It Difficult? Retrieved from

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140709212858-26665973-listening-what-makes-it-difficult

Chandrakesan, G. (2014). 10 Key Qualities Of Listening Skill That Will Help You To Win In Work And

Personal Life. Retrieved from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140804090214-30730729-10-key

qualities-of-listening-skill-that-will-help-you-to-win-in-work-and-personal-life

UNIT 6 : WRITING

In this unit, I learned that writing is a productive skill because it should be developed by the students. According to (Orwig, 1998) writing skill is the hardest skill even for native speakers because it includes structures. Besides, it counts with two kinds of subskills; the ones which are related to accuracy and the others which are focused in communication.

Firstly, I will mention the subskills related to accuracy. They are forming letters correctly, writing legibly, spelling correctly, punctuation correctly, joining letters together correctly, using grammar correctly, choosing the right vocabulary and correctly using paragraphs. Secondly, there are the subskills related to communication as appropriate style and register, organizing ideas, using the typical features of a text type, joining words and sentences clearly and using appropriate functions to express meaning.

(Ramadan, 2014) points out that gap-filling, sentence transformation and sentence completion help learners to practice accuracy whereas jumbled pictures stories, writing birthday cards and writing emails help them to practice communication through writing. In contrast, this skill not only employs subskills when someone writes, but also goes through some stages. According to  (Luke, 2016) these stages are planning,drafting,redrafting and editing. Besides, she said they help to improve the quality of the final product.

In conclusion, I think writing can be guide through its process within a class because it allows students to be aware of their mistakes and correct themselves. It usually can be done when learners write a draft and then they make changes to improve it.

REFERENCES:

Luke, A. (2016). The Four Essential Stages of Writing. Retrieved from http://www.aliventures.com/essential-writing-stages/

Orwig, C. J. (1998). Writing skill. Retrieved from http://www-01.sil.org/lingualinks/LANGUAGELEARNING/OtherResources/GudlnsFrALnggAndCltrLrnngPrgrm/WritingSkill.htm

Ramadan, M. (2014). Accuracy and Fluency Activities. Retrieved from https://eltguide.wordpress.com/2014/05/29/accuracy-and-fluency-activities/

UNIT 5 : READING

Reading is one of the receptive skills because it instead of making learners produce something they have to answer it. Furthermore, it is presented by a written text which most of the time is too long and also contains discourse. (Ring, 1996) establishes that discourse also shows functions of sentences and are divided in sentence types; such as, declarative or interrogative. Another important point about this skill is that it involves coherence and cohesion. According to (Gordon, 2011) coherence is how writing is understood and cohesion refers to the connections that are found in a text as transition words.      

On the other hand, I could also learn that it has seven subskills that allow learners to read in distinct ways according to the purpose of a task. They are reading for specific information (scanning), reading for gist (skimming), reading for detail, inferring, predicting, deducing meaning from context and understanding text structure. Moreover, it includes two ways of reading (extensive and intensive). Extensive is also called reading for pleasure and contains long pieces of text. Intensive are activities to make students focus in the language that is used in a text.

In addition, I could notice that there are different text types   that can help leaners to become good readers. Some examples are articles, stories, letters, leaflets and postcards. However, as they are too difficult to use in the class it is necessary to apply specific activities to develop each subskill.  According to (Department of Education, 2016) the best activities are making students read books with easy vocabulary or reading stories in the class.

In brief, I believe that reading skill is a complex process to be managed within a classroom but I agree with the activities that were mentioned by the author because they will be useful to develop not only the leaners’ knowledge but also their critical thinking.

REFERENCES:

Department of Education. (2016). 25 Activities for Reading and Writing Fun. Retrieved from http://www.readingrockets.org/article/25-activities-reading-and-writing-fun

Gordon, L. (2011). What is Cohesion & Coherence? . Retrieved from http://gordonscruton.blogspot.com/2011/08/what-is-cohesion-coherence-cambridge.html

Ring, J. (1996). The Discourse Functions of Sentences. Retrieved from http://www.ucl.ac.uk/internet-grammar/clauses/discours.htm

UNIT 4 : FUNCTIONS

Functions, something that I learned about it is that it refers to the purpose to use the language. However, having something else to say to the previous idea according Nordquist (2015) is that a function can be determined by the position of a word. It can be for inviting, advising, apologizing, greeting, clarifying, thanking, agreeing, disagreeing, refusing, interrupting and expressing obligation or preferences. Besides, the language that we use in each function is called exponent. According to Tutor (2012) exponents sometimes are sets of phrases. For instance, Do you mind if I…? or Please can I…?

In contrast, those exponents show levels of formality and they are formal and informal. Formal language is used in official situations while informal is sometimes colloquial and it appears in conversations among friends. Nonetheless, there exist another kind of exponent which is called neutral; it is about showing neither great respect nor too much confidence towards a person. Besides, this levels of formality are useful to allow people to choose the appropriate language for a situation because of there are sometimes that people and students apply inappropriate language. For example, when they talk with authorities of an institution. According to  Nordquist (2016) functions are too complicated to make learners learn; nevertheless, they can acquire this knowledge by putting into practice some tasks; such as, showing through sentences by using whatever tense.

To sum up, functions are not too difficult to teach but the exponents that each one involves are too extensive. So, I think that in order to deal with this problem I can apply some of the activities that were listed in the previous paragraph and also make students practice those expressions focusing in situations of the real life.

REFERENCES:

Nordquist, R. (2015). Grammatical function. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-a-grammatical-function-1690821

Nordquist, R. (2016). Function word (grammar). Retrieved  from https://www.thoughtco.com/function-word-grammar-1690876

Tutor, M. O. (2012). Functions and Exponents.Retrieved from http://myonlineenglishtutor-co-uk.blogspot.com/2012/09/tefl-functions-and-exponents.html

UNIT 3 : PHONOLOGY

This unit was about phonology and something of what I realized is that it studies the sounds features of a language. Some examples of these features can be phonemes, words stress, sentences stress and intonation. Phonemes are difficult to define,but Gove (2011) establishes that they are the smallest unit of a sound and that they are presented in a phonemic chart which allows us to know the correct pronunciation of a word or sound. Furthermore, this chart groups the sounds into vowels, diphthongs and consonants.

Something that I comprehend about consonants is that they are divided into voiced and unvoiced sounds and we must be clear about the difference between them to learn the correct pronunciation of words. Thus, in order to define these terms I found that for Beare (2017) the voiced sounds are related with vocal chords while unvoiced sounds do not do it. 

Otherwise, I also learned that all dictionaries have the symbols from the phonemic chart but also this sign “ ’  “ that show the word stress. Word stress also had its categories and they were primary and secondary stress. Primary stress was the word that gives the complete meaning to the sentence and secondary stress referred to the words which were not so important. On the other hand, I believe that it is important to mention that sentence stress, contractions, weak forms, linking and intonation are characteristics of connected speech because they are words joined to make a connected stream of sounds. Another relevant point that I studied was that phonology should be practiced continuously and for that it is necessary to establish good activities. So, according to Levin (2000) sound word discrimination or blending words with different pronunciation are the best activities to make students learn it.

In conclusion, I believe that phonology can help learners to produce the language and recognize some characteristics of oral skill. For example; pronunciation, intonation and word stress are some of them although for this teachers should look for specific tasks to ask students to develop. Some tasks that can be taken into account are those which were mentioned previously.

REFERENCES:

Beare, K. (2017). Voiced and Voiceless Consonants. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/voiced-and-voiceless-consonants-1212092

Gove, M. (2011). What is a phoneme? Phonic Books. Retrieved from  https://www.phonicbooks.co.uk/2011/01/17/what-is-a-phoneme/

Levin, V. (2000). HOW TO TEACH PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS SKILLS. 

Retrieved from http://www.pre-kpages.com/phonemic_awareness/

UNIT 2 : LEXIS

In this unit, I reviewed information about lexis and I understood that it refers to units of vocabulary that have a specific meaning; such as, get up or first of all. In contrast, according to Admin (2012) lexis is the combination of vocabulary plus grammar due to it involves collocations, formulated expressions and certain patterns associated with grammar, e.g. If I were you…, I haven’t seen you for ages.

On the other hand, I also learned that a vocabulary item can be defined in different ways.The first way is to find the meaning through the same word, it is called “denotative meaning”. The second way is the figurative meaning that is based on an imaginary meaning of a word or set of words; such as, a family tree. The third way can be identified as the meaning from context. It means that we have to use the content which is around a word to understand its meaning.

Additionally,I also analysed that some words show their meaning depending on their forms. For instance, affixes, compounds, collocations, idioms, chunks, lexical sets and word family. Besides, it is important to mention that affixes are divided into prefixes and suffixes which allow us to learn more vocabulary of the language. Furthermore, it's worth say that both suffixes and prefixes have their own  characteristics of formation. For example, Shrives (2017) points out that prefixes are letters added before a word while suffixes are letters added after a word. Otherwise, I learned that there are words that affect lexis because they have a relation with other languages. Some examples of them are false friends, homophones, homonyms and varieties of English. That's why,it is necessary to make students recognize the form and the meaning of words;nevertheless, I believe that these features should be taught through interesting activities. According to Bafile (2016) the most appropriate activities can be puzzles, mystery word or pyramid power to make them learn the new vocabulary in a funny way.

In conclusion, I think it is important to teach lexis to allow students to know the meaning of whatever word, so they can avoid having problems with the target language. However, it is important to emphasize that the good choice of activities to be applied in the classroom can benefit this learning. In this way, they can improve their mistakes in the new language in an easy and enjoyable way. 

REFERENCES:

Admin. (2012). Grammar vs lexis or grammar through lexis? Retrieved from https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/grammar-vs-lexis-or-grammar-through-lexis

Bafile, C. (2016). Vocabulary and Spelling: Do Your Students Say 'Boring'? Retrieved from http://www.educationworld.com/a_lesson/lesson/lesson241.shtml

Shrives, C. (2017). What Are Affixes (grammar lesson). Grammar-monster.com. Retrieved from http://www.grammar-monster.com/glossary/affixes.htm

TKT PREPARATION

MODULE 1

UNIT 1 : GRAMMAR

                                       

In this unit, I learned that grammar is the correct use of words in order to make meaning in both in a written and an oral way. However,according to Nordquist (2017), grammar not only refers to words, but also to the description of a language or rules that deal with  syntax and word structures of a language. 

In addition, I could identify that grammar also implies all grammatical forms; such as parts of speech, grammatical structures, and words with prefixes and suffixes. Besides, I could confirm this information because Heather (2011) argues that all languages have grammatical forms, but she says that English has only eight. Furthermore, these forms are classified into nouns, adjectives, determiners, verbs, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions and interjections. On the other hand, she also states that some forms can perform one function while others perform more than one. For instance, he is writing or I took the book. In the first sentence “He" is the subject of the verb ‘is writing’ while in the second sentence “Book" is the direct object of the verb ‘took’. 

Also, I studied the grammatical uses  that refer to how the grammatical structures are used to communicate. However, it is important to mention that grammatical structures don’t have the same meaning all the time. For this reason, I think it is necessary to look for different activities to teach them. For example, Harrity (2012) points out that the best ways to teach grammar is through the combination of sentences,sentences which are expanded  or the use of realia in order to make the learning process easier.

Finally, I believe that grammar is a set of rules but also the way in which we use them to convey meaning for a specific purpose. In other words, grammar is the key to produce the language. For this reason, I think it is relevant to teach students with activities focused on form and use to help them to improve their knowledge. 

REFERENCES:

Harrity, Erin Mary, (2012).Incorporating effective grammar instruction into the classroom . Honors Program Theses. 40. Retrieved from http://scholarworks.uni.edu/hpt/40

Heather, J. (2011). Grammatical Form and Grammatical Function: A Metaphor. Retrieved from http://www.linguisticsgirl.com/grammatical-form-and-grammatical-function-a-metaphor/

Nordquist, R. (2017). What Is Grammar? Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/types-of-grammar-1689698