1 Entry

1- How can we raise student awareness about how students can best learn and help them find more ways of learning English more effectively and productively? Exemplify this through the lens of a student and a prospective ELT practitioner. 

                   It is through the learner training in which students realize that they are learning, because they can see their own results and compare them, they can realize if they have learned some new things than when they started. It involves every study skill in which students increase their knowledge. Students want to know that they are learning and how to increase their knowledge. 

                  It is pretty important to include study-skills in our lessons because of this way students can take in account how increase their knowledge. I remember a technique that a teacher told us some years ago, in which we could use our cell phones to record our voice and of this way we could identify our mistakes in pronunciation. Using these techniques we get aware of our own progress. It’s important to explain our students how is going to be every activity, so students will understand why we are doing that activity, what is its objective and finally what we are going to reach. 

                     Sometimes there are many students that don't care about English, but at the same time there are many who like English and want to learn, but they don't know how to improve. They sometimes feel afraid to ask. They think they could make a mistake or other students could laugh at them. However our role is to help them to achieve their goals as students. To create a safe atmosphere will help to make them participate in the class. We as teachers must expose them to the language in order to make them think in English. We should give them exercises to make them practice. 

 2- How would you deal with error correction in your classroom? 

Watch the DVD and see how to work with Error Teaching Technique. What's your take on testing? 

Error correction is important because we have to tell our studens when they are good or bad in order to make them push themselves. We have to take in account that they are learning, so we don't have to be very rigid because they will not want to participate. We have to know when we have to correct them because if we correct a student many times on the spot he or she will be afraid or angry with us and he or she will not want to give his or her opinion anymore.

 3- What seems to be more difficult: teaching teens or teaching large classes? Teaching teens is more difficult because you have to focus in every student and realize that every student has his own challenge. 

                       It's quite demanding for a teacher to focus on every student, but that's our job. Let's suppose that we have 50 students, and some of them have many problems with their pronunciation, others have problems with grammar structures and others with their listening, then we have to focus in each student; otherwise, at the end of the semester many students will pass the subject, but many will continue with their problems, because we gave a class intended to the whole class instead of focusing in every student. In this book (Learning teaching) there is a phrase that attracted my attention; ''the price to pay'', I don't know if this phrase made me feel angry or disappointed, maybe both. The matter is that we as teachers can't think of this way. We have to pay close attention to every student, involving each one and helping them to achieve their goals as learners.