I do not even want to write about a possible "END". You don´t imagine how sad I feel. I´m just writing in this moments and my tears are about to come out, believe me. There is a very beautiful song that says "it´s hard for me to say I´m sorry" from chicago, well, it´s hard for me to say good bye.
I learnt plenty of things and I´m always thanking robert and my classmates for being part of this important teaching team. When talking about successful topics I could say that all of them were and the most useful for me were: autonomy, learning styles, abcd objectives, rubrics, interactive PowerPoint presentations, among others. The least relevant was aural/oral skills, hot potatoes because I already knew about them and used them in class.

THANKS ONCE AGAIN PEOPLE!!!!!
I SEND YOU MILLONS OF KISSES AND HUGS!!!
I LOVE YOU ALL!!!!

WEEK 8 REFLEXION... THANKS A LOT!

Hello everyone!

First of all I´d like to express what I feel and it is that I am really happy and proud because we are in our 8th week of the online course. Congratulations everybody for being here too and thanks Robert we are now more technological English teachers and I do love it!

It´s amazing the amount of web pages we have to create our own exercises and tests. In fact, I had already used Hot Potatoes before. When I was studying at the university, some teachers gave this tool to students in class with the purpose of creating new activities for our own learners at school. Since then, it is always part of my interactive PowerPoint presentations to make it more practical and participative. Students love Hot Potatoes, they love interacting themselves and they see this activity as an amazing one.

Now a days, there are easier, more interactive and technological tools for learning English language. Let´s take advantages of it and enhance our teaching process!!!

Love you all!

CLASS BLOG!

Hello Industrial Safety Students! Welcome to our class blog!

I hope you had a great weekend! Now, our week discussion is going to be about "English Importance in Industrial Safety Studies". 

Instructions: Answer the following questions and post your comments about the topic:

• Do you like English?
• Where have you studied English?
• Why is English part of the Industrial Safety program?
• Is English important for this career?

Please, be sure you comment on your friends posts!  

One computer class!

This question concerns many teachers. Sometimes we just have a computer and we feel unable to develop any activity. There are always thousand of ways to enhance our classes and get students involve in the English learning process. Now, limitations do not exist for me. There is no reason not to use that computer and there it is where teachers have to use creativity and constructivism.

In my case, I do not even have a computer in the classroom, but I got my own, so the idea is to design an interactive powerpoint presentation where all my students can participate. How?, that´s part of planning and organization. Teachers must find the way so that their students learn in a cooperative way.

Interactive Classes with PowerPoint. How to engage our students into the English World?

Hello Colleagues! I hope all of you had an interesting and wonderful week the way I did. Interesting because I see that every week we pass through is a wonderful knowledge world and in this sixth one "Interactive powerpoint presentations in our classes". Having large or small lecture classes has been a big issue for a lot of teachers who sometimes lose control on them. They do not know how to manage the content of the PPT presentation and make their students interested and involved in them. This is because the classes are not interactive enough and the learning process turns to be very slow and insignificant for some students. 

The idea of implementing interaction in our classes makes students be in a more direct contact with the learning,  and they can undesrtand the class in an easier and  more interesting way. For this reason, it is highly recommended to design PPT presentations that include different activities and tasks where the learners can write, make questions and answers, play with different techniques, use true or false questions, answers selection, etc. 

As for my task project, I already though about evaluating my 8th grader students through a survey. It must be one of my first steps because I need to measure how much they know about technology, programs, web searchers or at least, computers. The survey will contain questions such as: Do you know about computers?, What do you use them for?, Have you used one of them before?, Do you know about internet?, How much do you know about it?,etc. All this questions will be measured by a rubric and it is going to be designed in order to evaluate results. I think this survey application will be for next week. My main goal is to let students know about technological English studies and make them see that it is an interesting,  easy and funny way to learn ESL.    

I wish another succesful week!!! Warm hugs from Venezuela!!!

Week 5 reflexion! Project Based Learning in an "English V Memory Book"

Hello everyone once again. Here I am writing about how interesting this week was and how successful this online training has become. PBL is an important strategy where our students can develop more than one skill, where they can discover that the teaching-learning process is beyond the classroom. A PBL can be done outdoors, too. It helps students to feel autonomous and see that they do not depend on teachers to do everything they want, learn and create to.

Based on what a PBL is and according to Susan Gaer, I took a very nice example for all of you. This is my “English V Memory Book” that my teacher “Luisa Cristina” and group of classmates did in the fifth semester at the university four years ago. The idea of creating the book was to compile all the term indoor and outdoor activities such as: Own dramatic stories, a native speaker presentation, review essays, today´s news, answers to legal cases, fairy tales own versions, unit previewing and an activity back to 60´s, 70´s and 80´s. During the semester, all of us did a great job and everybody wrote funny dramatic stories and fairy tales. “Back to the 60´s, 70´s and 80´s” was A field trip in an occasion when students go somewhere outside the University to learn about a particular subject, and one of these was organized as one creative and original activity for English V students. So, on May 9^th, 2006 the class of Professor Luisa Cristina Alvarez had the opportunity to go to “Monte Libano Club”, wear costumes and share with a native speaker, in order to improve their knowledge of the language. The trip was based on the 60´s, 70´s and 80´s with the purpose of getting “a touch” from those decades and learns about them.

For the book creation, we needed an organizing tasks group, and editing group, a production crew, a designing group and a general coordinator. All the students had to participate and we developed more than four skills. I really feel blessed for having this activity and many others in my life. We also changed the lyrics of “Hips don´t lie” one of Shakira´s song (a Colombian singer) and created a new one for our professor.  It was really funny.

To conclude, I give you my example in order to compare this memory book with Project Based Learning. The results? Well, everybody learnt more than simple class knowledge. All of us communicated with that native speaker and could create a book of more than 50 pages from our own term work. It was baptized through a very nice ceremony in class and it is now part of the university English Library.

Note: I have the “English V memory book” PowerPoint presentation, I´ll try to load it in my authorstream site. Register yourself in this web page for downloading this presentation. Here I will show you some pictures.

Thanks a lot. I hope you like it and I feel very happy to share this important experience. !!

 ENGLISH V MEMORY BOOK

EDITING GROUP

PROFESSOR LUISA CRISTINA IN THE BAPTISIM OF THE BOOK

BOOK BAPTIZED

GUEST SPEAKER IN THE FIELD TRIP

MY FRIENDS AND I WEARING THE COSTUMES

Week 4 Reflexion!!! Sharing with a great group of teachers around the world.

Another amazing week, isn´t it?

Technology is a great tool once again. I read and commented on my  friends´project tasks and it was really interesting to know about their teaching issues. However, there is not a problem without any solving. My project task is based on students which ages range between 14 and 16 years old. They do not know about studying with technology; they just know about engines such as: GOOGLE or using their messenger and facebook.

It would be a pleasure for me to take them into a real technological world. Make them see ESL is beyond books and a classroom, as I already mentioned it before in one of my posts. The easiest way to do it is taking them into a cyber cafe nearby the school, rent all the available computers and sit them in front  in order to start teaching  English from another perspective and develop the four skills. I am really sure they will love this interesting technique, because they love computers and playing video games. The fact is not only playing, but also learning by doing or learning by playing. They will discover that studying ESL with internet is as interesting as using their facebook every day. 

Remember that MOTIVATION IS THE FIRST STEP TO HAVE GREAT STUDENTS!!!

Pictures of my outdoor activity "An unforgettable Experience"

This is Andrew and I... He is really tall (LAL)

His name is Williams, He speaks English really good! All his friends were listening to him talking to Andrew.

This is the Native speaker "Andrew" talking to my students.

This is my group of students, having great moments together and Speaking English.

Reflexion for week three!!! CALL, NEW WEBSITES AND OUTDOOR ACTIVITIES FOR TEACHING EFL!!!

Hello everyone!!! Good evening from Venezuela!

 It is still a very rich week, full of interesting readings, links, teaching experiences and more and more technology day by day. Now we know delicious.com. I never thought we could have a web page for saving our links, which I consider a wondeful tool for everybody and can make a teacher be more  orginized with his/ her teaching process. Just clicking on the link you need to use for and there it is, all the information you need right in your hands.

After reading Lindsay Miller´s text, I did realize that Teaching English is not only giving some grammar to the students, asking them to practise with an choral repetition and asking them to do researches and  bring that information to classes. We have to develop the four English skills (Reading, writing, listening and speaking) due to fact that this is the most important step in the teaching and  learning process.

NOTE: All my teaching experiences are based on a lesson plan first of all and after studying my students needs, as well. I want to talk about myself and the activities I do regarding these skills. If I want to develop WRITING, I ask them to write simple sentences and make them feel confident with what they are writing about, I do dictations but most of the students do not like them. I try to dictate interesting sentences, or at least, words, if we are studying some specific vocabulary. It´s important to take into account the student´s English level and ages.

For READING, I usually use songs and their lyrics. Most of students do love English songs, soft rock, pop, among others. They work under the syndrome of imitation. They try to imitate the singers pronunciation, but they do not have any idea of what they are singing about. In this order of ideas, we discover new words, new expressions and they learn how to pronounce under their own likes. Not only songs, but also Choosing interesting readings according to their interest. For instance: I got a thirty-five students section at the university. They study Industrial safety. I ask them to bring a text about what they are studying, safety equipments, implements, a supervisor labour, etc. They  feel really interested in that and they have to read it aloud in front of their classmates. They would feel ashamed, but after they finish the task, they feel very proud after some applauses. They discover this skill by themselves.

For LISTENING, I usually work with movies, videos and tv programs in English. That is why I identified myself a lot with Lindsay Miller´s text. For movies, I use the technique of watching the movie with sound off and the images, then sound on and no images, images and subtitles in English. It is a very funny activity where students feel they are part of the movie and they are as native as the characters when undestanding. Another activity is listening to some English songs as in the previews paragraph but with a different strategy. I write a list of words in the board. Most of them are related to the lyrics of the song. While listening to it, they have to circle all the words they hear from the song and then we start debating about how many words they could listen to and their meanings if they do not know any of them.

For SPEAKING, there are thousand of activities. but I´m going to mention just one. They know I´m  Spanish speaker, but I pretend to be an american person in class,  NO SPANISH AT ALL. They get close to me just to ask for the meaning of a word or any permission to go to the bathroom. If they ask it correctly, then I answer them, if not, I do not talk or even pay attention to them. They like it because they have to use their dictionaries or previews classes to communicate with me and also see it as a challenge.  

Regarding CALL, there are millions of meaningful activities for students at different levels, for all the skills and needs. I already used some web pages to find some interesting games and songs, grammar activities, quizes etc. Their links are:    http://www.agendaweb.org/     http://www.isabelperez.com/

http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/ They really work and students love them, specially the one for children. They will be also in my delicious page.

OUTDOOR acitivies are really helpful and good, this is because the students are in their own living context, real life and see this activity as one of the most interesting ones because they do love going out and sharing among friends. I want to share my experience with you. I already did it and I got great results. Last year, I was teaching an intermediate group of fifteen students in "The Language College". As a final oral exam, we decided to go out for lunch and they had to speak English while the trip. People looked strangly at us, but we never cared. After ordering for some hamburgers (Burger King), four tall, handsome american boys got into the restaurant. My students were in shock (LAL). They said: TEACHER!!! LOOK AT THEM, THE ARE NOT FROM VENEZUELA, ARE THEY?, TEACHER, CAN YOU SPEAK ENGLISH WITH THEM? (LAL)

After some minutes, I went straight to one of them and said: DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH?

Yes, of course!!!!

My name is Teacher Maria, nice to meet you. But I need some help from you! ( EVERYBODY WAS LOOKING AT ME IN THE RESTAURANT). I´m here with  group of fifteen English student teenagers and I´d like you to go there and start asking some questions. This is part of their oral evaluation. WOULD  YOU MIND, PLEASE? and all my students were really scared because they have never faced with native speakers along their English course.

They were very pleased and happy because they could communicate with an american person for the fisrt time. After meeting the boy, HE WAS A FAMOUSE BASEBALL PLAYER FROM ASTROS DE HOUSTON  WHO WAS IN VENEZUELA PLAYING FOR A VENEZUELAN BASEBALL TEAM. HE LIVES IN BOSTON, but I do not remember his full name, Just Andrew. We took pictures and were the center of attraction in the restaurant. My students felt very proud of themselves, in fact, there was a girl who was really lazy for speaking and since the boy was handsome, she forced herself to speak and said: I LOVE THE COLOR OF YOUR EYES DARLING (LAL) " I felt very ashamed as a teacher"

 But everything was great! unforgattable moments!!

I hope you like and share my teaching experiences!!! thank you very much!

INCREDIBLE TEACHING PROCESS IN VENEZUELA. I CAN´T REALLY STAND IT!!!

Best greetings to all my colleagues. First of all, let me congratulate all of you for doing a great job for this two weeks. I´m very happy because week two is coming to the end and all results have been really good. 

 "I CAN´T REALLY STAND IT" may be a  rude expression to be used when writing about something we are disappointed with. Sorry if it is this way. I sat on my chair and started to think about what to write in this week blog. I said: YES, I´LL WRITE ABOUT THE WONDERFUL TASKS AND READINGS ROBERT SENT TO US!!! but suddenly I remembered the unbelievable situation I´m living in the high school right now.

We are at the begining of a new school year and we ( teachers of all subjects ) were told about teaching in "COMPONENTS". We have about five components: language, endogenous, science and some others I do not remember right now. For instance, English and Spanish teachers have to work and plan togheter; the same contents, almost the same activities, evaluations, etc. The problem is not planning, the thing is that if the school has lack of spanish teachers, English ones have to substitute them and it´s become an OBLIGATION now. We are ENGLISH TEACHERS and our duty is to grow this language in every student. Our university degree says ENGLISH TEACHER no SPANISH TEACHERS. This is our mother tongue  but I think we  are not prepared for that. I do teach spanish to one of my students in the company. He´s from Brazil and he needs to learn spanish. I´m prepared for that. But there are already teachers in some schools who are complaining about this new change in our educational system. 

We need to plan together. The same contents, activities and evaluations. Due to the fact that I need to do so, I feel limits in my teaching process. If the Spanish T wants to talk about "communication" in the first content, then I have to do same but in English. If I want to talk about the parts of the body and create a dynamic game  or any other activity and the spanish T doesn´t agree because it doesn´t match with her activities, then I CAN´T DO IT!!! noooooooooooooooooooo I caaaaan´t stand it!!! 

Most of those English T who simultaniously work teaching spanish are not prepared enough and it means that the students´learning process is not going to be succesful because the teachers are not well prepared. It´s not only happening with English and Spanish; Social studies T have to work with subjects such as Geography, History, Art and Family education. A math teacher has to work with Math, Physics, Chemestry  and Biology!!! CAN YOU IMAGINE HOW THAT LESSON PLAN IS GOING TO BE???

That´s the education our " Government " wants for venezuelan students. and WHAT ABOUT ME?? I just try to relax and do my best in the classroom. I´m not following the rules because I simply do not agree. I´m going to work together with the spanish teacher, but I won´t do the same she will do.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH! I HOPE YOU UNDERSTAND ME!!!

What does teaching English as a foreing language mean?

Good evening to all colleagues!!!

I am very interested in a common topic that is being disscused by many teachers now a days, EDUCATION IN VENEZUELA. I Studied in a forming teaching University. We are tought about how to use new techniques in the classroom, how to use technology, how to work with many other resources at different levels, etc and It´s really hard studying education without being at the schools yet! What´s the result?, after you graduate as an " English Teacher" you have many expectatives on how your students are going to be, what their needs are and what you are going to teach taking those needs into account.

Most of teachers plan their classes, create wonderful teaching environments and look forward to motivate their students. If you are a Public High School teacher in Venezuela, this is not your reality; this is a dream. Not only teachers, but also students even count with available and good computers, no Cd players, no video beams, No extra material such as paints, posters, updated english books, etc. So, It tends to be a little bit difficult and unconfortable for teachers.

We learn great activities, when, how and where to apply them, we attend to excellent workshops and conferences along our career development and then, we you go to the classroom, you are lack of resources and you loose a little bit of that extrinsic motivation. According to  Carol Bainbridge "Extrinsic motivation refers to motivation that comes from outside an individual. The motivating factors are external, or outside, rewards such as money or grades. These rewards provide satisfaction and pleasure that the task itself may not provide" . In this order of ideas, we do not care about money or grades, but on the quality of students we, as teachers, are forming. Motivation in the classroom is the key to success and it must begin with teachers, if not, we won´t be able to accomplish our goals.

Now, it is not only that teachers cannot use technology as we may want.. as a very useful and easier resource for leaning a second language, but also the lack of respect students have towards us. Now a days, they have all facilities to study and pass their subjects. The activities cannot be demanding at all, they MUST be EASY. If you ask them to draw a "Mental Map" about their lives, they do not take it to the class or do not even bring the materials for it. Later, they complain because the activity was VERY DIFFICULT and the teacher speaks ENGLISH in the classroom. Minutes later, the head of the department goes to the classroom and complain at me saying: MARY! REMEMBER THEIR LEARNING PROCESS HAS TO BE VERY EASY, THEY HAVE TO UNDESTAND YOU, SO COULD YOU ASSING ANY OTHER EASIER ACTIVITY THAN THE MENTAL AND DO NOT SPEAK ENGLISH, PLEASE?

Come on teachers, It´s a reflexion!!! We are very smart professors and we want to make our classes interesting for the Ss but we can´t because of the lack of resources. I do not mean I cannot create other activities or apply new techniques, but that won´t be anough. In spite of the fact we use our imagination and become creative and loving teachers, we have a very high wall at the end of the hall!!! we have limits for teaching in most of venezuela public high schools.  Why may I not speak English in my class??? Am I not an English Teacher?? Why the heads have to complain at me because of speaking and teaching a second language??

I love my job in Private Institutes, universities and also companies. I´ve got all motivation for working there and I am able to use technology in a bif field. Use the tools I´m getting through this online course and take them to the right way for their English studies. Make them see that we do not only need a book with plenty of lessons, that we do not  need papers, sissors, glue, crayons and a book to study. WE, AS ENGLISH TEACHERS MUST MAKE THEM SEE BEYOND  a book. WHY NOT DOING THE SAME AT SCHOOLS WITHOUT LIMITATIONS??

I need some help!!! Thank you very much!!

TEACHING EXPERIENCE!!!

Hello everyone!!! First of all I´d like to thank  prof Robert Elliot for giving us this important and unforgettable opportunity, which is being part of this great online course for teachers. I could open my blog and I´m very happy because of that, due to the fact that I had some problems with it and It did not want to open a couple of days ago. I wrote "Teaching Experience" as a main title because It is one of the most interesting topics I am going to write about in the next days. Also, I welcome all of you to read my lines and share all different comments, opinions and ideas you can have. 

This is a short note just to saying Hello and Thanking for  being sharing with me through this wonderful free service!!!!

Kisses for you all!!