viernes, 9 de mayo de 2008

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.