tools for english teaching

1. Family Photos. Any beginner-level class will involve a unit on the family, and using examples from your own family will be far more interesting to students than a lesson from a textbook. Be sure to bring photos of extended as well as nuclear family so you can use them to demonstrate words such as "niece," "brother-in-law," or "aunt." Before you leave home, consider taking some photos to a copy shop to blow them up to the size of 8x10 and then laminate them. This will make it easy for your students to see them during a classroom presentation, plus they will be more durable if laminated.



2. Calendar. A calendar will have large photos that you can use for descriptions, and it's easy to find one depicting the different seasons. Plus, you can use your calendar for lessons on the months of the year and the days of the week.



3. youtube: You Tube remains a powerful classroom tool, As English teachers, we are truly blessed to be working in the YouTube era.


4. blogs: as teachers we can ask the students a blog and there they can upload everything what we’ve seen in class.

5. Email
If you’re going to use Electronic Mail to communicate with students, the first thing to do is create mailing lists of your students, grouped in whichever way is most appropriate. Most email programs have an address book that allows you to do this. Once done, you will then be able to email all of your students in a particular group with a single mouse click. You will still, of course, be able to email them individually.


6. Newsletter/Newspaper/Magazine
Working together, but not necessarily in the same location, students can write and edit a publication of some kind. This might be a one-off (for example, for a short-term course) or weekly or monthly (for a longer-term course). It could be related specifically to the group or to any other subject of interest to the group. The way you organise this is up to you. You might give each student a different role (editor, advertising manager, journalist etc) or you might let them work in any way they wish. But you should probably set some clear objectives: number of words, editorial/advertising ratio, editorial policy etc.
The beauty of email is that the text can be written, transmitted, rewritten, edited, retransmitted etc easily between any number of students working in any location. Text can be either in the body of the email or attached as a file. Manipulation and correction is particularly easy.
The final product could be published as an email, as a printed document or as a web page. If you have your own home page, or if your school has a web site, it should be a fairly easy matter to publish your students’ work. This would give added motivation.


7. Vocabulary Builder
Explains difficult English Vocabulary. With this tool, English language students can extract meanings of all difficult words from arbitrary text.

English language teachers can prepare lesson vocabularies of unknown words. This program may be a useful vocabulary reference and first draft resource for translators. Useful for ESL/EFL and other English language study.

Ex: http://www.online-utility.org/english/vocabulary_builder.jsp

8. Teaching Audio & Video (podcast)
Podcasts in English are not just listening activities for efl and esl students. The supporting worksheets and transcripts also provide valuable English language lessons for those who learn English at all levels.
Podcasting provides a means of publishing audio programs via the Internet. Users can automatically download podcasts (usually mp3 files) onto their computers and transfer these recordings automatically to portable music players such as Apple's extremely popular iPods. Users can then listen to the files anytime and anywhere they choose.

ex: www.LearnOutLoud.com

ex: http://esl.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ&zTi=1&sdn=esl&cdn=education&tm=117&f=00&su=p284.9.336.ip_&tt=2&bt=1&bts=1&zu=http%3A//www.apple.com/itunes/

Template

The Land Lady template



http://www.mediafire.com/?ecp4nfcz560jzcd

course book

this is my own criteria for coursebook assesment.

use a coursebook has its pisitive and negative side.

In favour:

1.framework : teacher and student knows where they are going and what is coming next.

2. syllabus: the book serves as a syllabus.

3. ready made texts and tasks: provides texts and learning tasks.

4. economy: a book is the cheapest way of providing learning material for each learner.

5. convenience: is a convenient package.

6.  guidance: can provide useful guidance and support.

7. autonomy: the learner can use it to learn new material.

Against:

1. inadequacy: it doesn't supply every need

2. irrelevance: topics may not be necessarily relevant for our class.

3. limitation: is confining

4. homogeneity: see the class as a group in the same level, all equal.

5. over easiness: teachers follow the book and limit their own creativity.

I'm in favour but it's good to do other things sometimes to change the style and do something new, something interesting

SYLLABUS

a syllabus is a public document wich consists, essentially, of a list. this list specifies all the things that are to be taught in the course.

the syllabus generally has explicit objectives, usually declared at the begining of the document, on the basis of wich the components of the list are selected and ordered.

characteristics of a syllabus:
1. consists of a comprehensive list of content items and process items.
2. is ordered.
3. has explicit objectives.
4. is a public document.
5. may indicate a time schedule.
6. may indicate a preferred methodology or approach.
7. may recommend materials.


The syllabus has different types of languages:
1. grammatical
2. lexical
3. grammatical lexical
4. situational
5. topic based
6. notional
7. functional notional
8. mixed or multi strand
9. procedural.
10. process.


in my opinion this is the best way to have students alert of what are they studying,  they can know what's next and they can study according this syllabus, they know also where is the information, so for me it's a very important part of learning.

in my opinion the proyect technique is the most efective one because it covers most of the abilities that the students need to develop and re enforce.

and the least effective one is Dictation because it's only usefull to vocabulary and  they don't learn about grammar.

Survey of students opinions

this survey was made in 38 students.

in my opinion this  survey reveal the students thoughts but that doesn't mean that that is the right way to teach, for example some student think that teacher have to take over the class but we know that's not the idea, students have to participate in classes, work in teams, give opinions, etc.
some students think that teacher can hit them ocassionally, that's not a possible way at all!
for me, this survey was only to have an idea of what are thinking our students...
this kids are between 13 and 14 years olds..

Questions

• How important do you think motivation is for success in language learning, compared to, for example language aptitude?

I think it's very important because you learn faster and you enjoy what are you learning, motivation can be part of the process of learning, in this case of second language is something that you want to learn, you search information about it and learn by every possible way.
and learning aptitude is the capacity to learn a new language but not always is what you really want to know and you don't enjoy it.

• How important is people's past success in language learning for their motivation to learn in the present and future?

Sometimes is very important, but not always because some students may have a good relationship with 2 language and he will be more open to keep learning, but if the student had a bad experience, that doesn't mean that he won't be able to learn it.