martes, 16 de noviembre de 2010
miércoles, 3 de noviembre de 2010
Priorities for Evaluating Instructional Materials: Learning
By: Prof. Sandra Araya A
http://www.guapilesenglishadvisory.blogspot.com/
Learning is more than just acquiring knowledge. As the reading establishes, “Teachers make a difference in students learning, and materials with effective learning strategies can support or impede their impact”. I strongly think that the role a teacher plays in the learning process is quite important. The teacher is conceived of as facilitator, collaborator and advisor in the students’ learning process. Therefore, the teacher acquires responsibility for the quality of learning, together with the family and the educational authorities. The responsibility of the teacher is to make learning possible through a series of well and carefully planned activities where students feel engaged with learning, and they should strive to make learning active. If teachers have a positive attitude, students will respond with interest and motivation because facilitators appear to be human and caring.
Furthermore, learners should be responsible for producing something, rather than just sitting passively. Learning is doing, exploring, experimenting, discovering and reconstructing the learners own knowledge. If you can create something fun, exciting, happy and loving, students will learn more readily and the learning will last much longer.
AUTHENTIC MATERIALS AND CULTURAL CONTENT IN EFL CLASSROOMS
By: Professor Sandra Araya Acuña
http://www.guapilesenglishadvisory.blogspot.com/
By: Professor Sandra Araya Acuña
http://www.guapilesenglishadvisory.blogspot.com/
Authentic material is defined as authentic texts which are designed for native speakers, they are real text; designed not for language students, but for the speakers of the language.
Using authentic material in the classroom is significant for many reasons. First, students are exposed to real language. Second, the same piece of material can be used under different circumstances if the task is different. Third, language change is reflected in the materials, so it keeps people up-dated or aware of such changes. Finally, it keeps students informed about what is happening in the world.
As for disadvantages, I can mention that they may be too culturally biased, so they can be difficult to understand outside the language community. Also, special preparation is necessary which can be done time consuming. Finally, students with lower level of the language may have a hard time understanding the material presented.
This material requires the teacher to act as a filter to ensure that students can comprehend it through selection of the linguistic objectives that have to be accomplished.
CHOOSING A TEXTBOOK AND OTHER PRINTED MATERIALS
By: Professor Sandra Araya Acuña
http://www.guapilesenglishadvisory.blogspot.com/
By: Professor Sandra Araya Acuña
http://www.guapilesenglishadvisory.blogspot.com/
Choosing the right texts for your students is often not as clear and straightforward as you hoped. Depending on your students the wrong textbook can confuse learning, be time-consuming and waste class time, distort information and even get your students bored.
Textbooks are tools for students, and they have to be student-centered. It requires mediation beyond you as the facilitator and the subject. Therefore, when it is time to select a new book, it is as important as ever to choose one that is effective, relevant and most importantly, one which will lead students towards success in their learning process.
When choosing a textbook, there is criterion to be aware of. These include objectives, budget, readability, subject content, length, relevance, interactivity and organization.
Finally, I really like those textbooks that include CDs for listening exercises, teacher’s resource guides, workbooks and other supplemental materials.
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miércoles, 6 de octubre de 2010
Principles of Effective Materials Development
Principles of Effective Materials Development
By Sandra Araya
When talking about materials development, there is much to discover. I definitely agree with this reading because, due to my current responsibilities, I must conduct research on this topic. In Costa Rica, a wide variety of materials have been used to support communicative approaches to language teaching, and they have the primary role of promoting communicative language use. In addition, sometimes materials come from the world of realia rather than from textbooks. The primary aim of materials is to promote comprehension and communication.
Using a variety of materials in the class provides Costa Rican learners with opportunities to discover new linguistic, social, and cultural options that will allow them to communicate what they really want.
The reading brought to my mind two workshops that I have attended. The first one was about Corpus-based material, and I understood the importance of real contextualized examples of written and spoken language. It ensures that learners will encounter the most useful and widely used words, phrases and grammar in everyday situations. The point is to help learners to communicate naturally and effectively, even at beginning levels. This idea is compatible with MEP’s (Ministry of Public Education ) idea about the way we apply the grammatical rules of a language in order to form grammatically correct sentences, but also to know when and where to use these sentences and to whom. What I really like about Corpus is that it can be collected from a variety of sources. For example; newspaper, magazine, books, internet or from everyday conversations.
The second workshop I thought of was the importance of RE (Reusing-Recycling-Revising). It was about recycling of language items and features that can be useful for the learners to acquire. It stressed the importance of the elaboration that takes places when meeting a known word again and again in such a way that it will stretch its meaning for learners.
Finally, I really liked the idea I took from the reading about being emotionally involved in the learning process. I always say to my students that if they don’t enjoy the class, they won’t learn. They need to feel joy, pleasure, happiness, empathy, and excitement when exploring and using the target language. It is true that you need to select the material in a very careful way because it has a very important role in the process, but also I am quite certain that learning is all about motivation.
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