The implications for learner training in a language classroom

When facing a group of self autonomous learners, the teacher has to take into account several things in order to promote Learner training. The teacher's service in this case is to encourage the learners in positive attitudes and prepare them through effective strategies. By encouraging the learners, we mean trying to convince them they are capable of acquaring greater independance through experiences of independant learning, and also giving them the posibilities to exercise their independance.
It's the teacher's job to help this group of learners become independant and confident with the language, so the selection of material and tasks plays and important role in the learning process. Helping students feel confident with the language and create a good atmosphere in the classroom, is necessary to establish and promote successful learning. The selection of activities and material, are necessary for the learners to develop their independence and make them feel conficent to master the language. This last concept also has to do with the selection of useful strategies and techniques.
All things considered, it is important for teachers to be organized when dealing this group of learners, by organizing the lessons and programmes in a way that the learners should feel confident with the language. Having a successful autonomous learners lesson means looking for different and relevant strategies that will help this group of learners to exercise their independance when acquiring a second language.

by Osvaldo Mammino
Source Teaching and learning in the language classroom by Tricia Hedge
Chapter 3 question 2

The role of grammar in a communicative lesson

The knowledge of grammar in a communicative lesson is essential because learners are ready to develop their own strategies in order to make the role of communication successfully. This means that the student needs to know the rules and how to apply them. Acquisition of grammar in a communicative classroom will probably involve the students to know about grammatical concepts, categories and rules.
Let's take for a moment the use of modals, those are important and also essential in a communicative task because they allow the students to express what they want to say in different ways. This has to do with the attitude of the speaker when using them, so they will be able to express a suggestion, or requesting something or asking permission to do something. Younger learners need to know that the modal verb can, is for sure the one by we can make requests or ask permission to do something (polite or informal), That is to say they need to apply the rule but also try to discover the rule by themselves in order to use them in different situations or context settings.
Modality shows the students how we express things by their own attitudes, and as we said before they show different ways of how people communicate by using a foreign language. It's the teacher duty to motivate students to use these kinds of expressions through different activities, games and tasks.

Developed by Osvaldo
Source: Teaching learning in a language classroom By Tricia Hedge
(Chapter two, points for discussion- question 2)

THE EXPLICIT TEACHING OF GRAMMAR AND VOCABULARY

DURING my english lessons I try to concentrate first in the selection of the material for my students. This is crucial as regards teaching, adolescents tend to be bored easily and this is something I take into account before planning a lesson. Basically we need to bear in mind an specific aim we want to show to the learners during our lesson.

As regards grammar, I do not take into account the idea of teaching grammar explicitly since I have to give my students to reflect upon in, trying to let them discover the rule by themselves (deductive grammar) so I try to teach it implicitly rather than explicitly. Activities related to grammar in connection with the topic chosen need to be clearly linked in order to prioritize the aims of the lesson, i.e. the material that the lesson contains is to show the learners the use of the "s" in third person singular, for example, I will try to guide them and make them understand by themselves how to deal with the grammar item, once they have produced their own examples, it is good to make students write or reflect about the rules for understanding third person singular (grammar aims) The selection of relevant activities will guide them about how to apply the rule correctly.

As regards vocabulary the use of visuals is useful when I present a new vocabulary item, where the learners will be ready to produce their own examples. Pictures or concrete material is also relevant to be mentioned as the learners have the opportunity to see and identify the new vocabulary item. The selection of good activities when presenting vocabulary is something we need to put an eye on this since the learners (especially adolescents) tend to be bored when they developed uninteresting actvitities. The idea of setting games in the classroom or group work is also useful since the learners get involved easily in the lesson itself and of course enjoy what they are doing. It is important to mention is the necesary interaction between teacher and learners, If the teacher takes this into account, the lesson will be successful.

Osvaldo

Source: Hedge, Tricia, Teaching and learning in the language classroom OUP (2000)
Points for discussion, Question (4)

Time out, take five How teacher feel when being observed

When an authority or a colleague of us enters the classroom, we tend to feel nervous and with a bit of anxiety, because most of the teachers (and in general human beings) do not like being observed. This will bring a problem during our lesson, because we are worried to develop our lesson without making mistakes and we forget sometimes the topic of the lesson itself or we give an instruction in a way that our students do not understand, just because we are worried about the observer rather than the lesson and the students.

In my opinion, I think that the idea of being observed is something that teachers need to have in the sense that we share our experience with others and this makes us reflect upon the activity suggested is useful or not. Being observed by our peers is a way of finding solutions or making our classes better than we expected. Making mistakes during our lessons will help us to reflect with our peers what things we need to change in order to develop our classes successful.

My personal profile

Hi everyone!
It is a pleasure to me to introduce myself to you. My name is Osvaldo Mammino and I am a Third year student at the liceo Cultural Britanico TTC. I am attending my last two subjects for the secondary level and I am really happy to know that this course of studies is about to come to an end. Of course studying a second language like English or any other language is " a never ending story", since there are new methods in language teaching, courses to attend and other things that it will be necessary for us to take if we want to be updated.
Hopefully the group we are attending "Talller......." is really great since I know all the girls who are attending the course.
Hope we'll have a wonderful year to all of you! (Including our teacher of course, ja ja)
Regards
Osvaldo

P.S. I would like anybody of you to teach me how to publish a photograph of myself since I donot know how to handle with it