Interactive Class.

The traditional environment in a classroom constantly has the teacher at the whiteboard and occasionally looks at over student’s shoulder to finally criticize their work.

At the beginning it seems no sense since we were taught to teach a language with an apparently failed academic system that never helps teachers to learn how to teach a language when they are at school and force them to do wrong things and completely different.

Without exception, we should teach entirely in English, even with those that begin a course because this forces them to communicate in English, rather than seing the language as list of rules. Many traditional academic courses teach English through the mother tongue of the student or who learn, which makes it more artificial and less like means of communication. We absolutely have to use the language way more than just occasionally.

Talking about grammar,  it is recommended to teach it using examples or discussing cases or giving them real life cases, so that will give the sense that there is not really grammar because at least you are  a grammarian, grammar boring. It must be taught, but in a communicative context as some suggestions were given in methodology. DO NOT forget to make fun classes, when you take teaching away from the blackboard and copybooks and replace them for games, puzzles, competitions, activities, interesting assignments, among others, rather than a simple homework it adds important vocabulary along the way and help to correct mistakes that they would make; learning process is more effective, and your students will be more able to participle in class because it is fun and those strategies work perfectly for children and adults.

No matter how small the achievement is, encourage your students to participate and congratulate them on their efforts. If a correction is needed, do not embarrass your students, it makes them feel stupid and they suffer about a marking system that emphasizes their mistakes rather than their progress. Finally, the most important thing is that learning English can be fun and not all is about mistakes and feeling stupid, grammar or vocabulary. It’s up to you!

  

 The use of technology in Language Learning

 

In the past, to learn a language was just through a book and follows the indication of the professor, and now we can use new technology in our daily life to make easy our learning process and make it great and enjoyable for us.  New technology provide us with tools to improve and reach our goals in these four important skills in language learning because languages are taught and evaluate in listening and reading skills  that are willing to receive information while speaking and writing  are able to produce information.

This technology has change language learning because students can use internet to watch videos and audios that can be paused, repeated and played slowly for more understanding, therefore we can find any information in any languages on the web. The cellphones and tablets are other tools to use because we can download dictionaries in any languages, educational games, books and other stuff or applications that are helpful for us. Now we can record our speech and analyze them and have an outside view of our speech. So teachers should use tech in classrooms to their advantage and make the class more interesting for the students of any level. In other hand, we the help of our teachers, new tech and accepting our mistakes we can go beyond our expectations.

No matter your English level, just talk!

As we know Education is a process where any experience that has formative effect on the way one thinks, feels or act may be considerate as educational. That is way, when we are acquiring a new language, it is very important the environment that is surround us  because our success during the divelopment process on the language depend completely on that.
However, never is too late to learn a language, you  must has the disposition to be positive on you can do it because it is going to happen in the same way as children acquire a language, naturally.

This is an exorcise is going to help you to improve your fluency and vocabulary in order to express your thought in a better way.

You have to selec a topic for reading or for listening, it could be about Deforestation, World Hunger and Poverty, Environmental Issues, etc. You can even talk about, what happen to you daily, with your friends. If you select a video, you must listen  and repeat it out aloud. Repeat it as much you can, this will help mouth, lips and vocal chords get into action, this also help on losing the mother tongue influence.
Through this type of exorcise, you will get good results, just if you have the disposition for doing it. It is not embarrassing, in fact, it is the only way we learn speakin, look a little kids, how do they communicate? How do they start speaking? How do they learn? The way on anything is developed is throught practice, practice and more practice.

Pre-nominal Adjectives.

Syntax is the arrangement in the accommodation of the words, taking into account its importance when we are learning a second language specially the English one we must know and pay real attention about this phenomenon: (pre-nominal adjectives) as an important topic to evaluate considering that not all of people who are studying English are so clear about the position that adjectives have between the determiner and the noun, it could be useful to know if you don`t have any idea about this because usually we use no more than three or four adjectives in order to describe someone or something as much. So the arrangement of words in utterances and sentences are very important, the same happen with  adjectives because each one on them have an order to describe nouns or pronouns, specifically the pre-nominal adjectives, being these types of adjectives answered by the questions, -What kind?, -Which ones? or –How many? According to this, each adjective gives something more about the noun. We often use adjectives in our writing and even in our oral speech, for that reason it is important to know or to reinforce the position that they have in order to modify words. Sometimes we can observe the influence that other languages have in the translation of a text to another, for example: from Spanish to English and how this same influence can permit that people get confused putting the different adjectives changing the position affecting syntax. As an example here are the types of adjectives and the adjective´s position.

·         Types of Adjectives:

-Numeric: six, one hundred and one etc.

-Quantitative: more, all, some, half, more than enough etc.

-Qualitative: color, size, smell etc.

-Possessive: my, his, their, your etc.

-Interrogative: which, whose, what etc.

-Demonstrative: this, that, those, these etc.

·         Adjective´s Position:

When we group adjectives together there is a general (sometimes flexible) rule for the position of each type of adjective, these are:

Position:

1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th
Opinion	Size	Age	Shape	Color	Material	Origin
Nice	Small	Old	Square	Black	Plastic	British
Ugly	Big	New	Circular	Blue	Cotton	American

To be studying a foreign language has its complexity, and we can say that is a challenge too because it is difficult to organize ideas in the right way especially if it is from Spanish to English, affecting syntax. As an advanced student of English language, it is important to get more information about how we place the pre-nominal adjectives in the most appropriate position. So remember their order: Determiner- 1^st Opinion- 2^nd Size- 3^rd Age- 4^th Shape- 5^th Color- 6^th Origin- Noun, maybe you see this phenomenon as the easier one because actually we do not pay attention to this in our writings or in our speeches but it is really important. So now that you know how Adjectives should be placed, try to do it well!

Some examples and definitions have been taken from: http://www.learnenglish.de/grammar/adjectiveorder,html#sthash.EAVnfcug/dpuf

Listening Skill

As everybody knows, listening is the ability to interpret messages in the communicative process. When we are listening to somebody we must be focus on the sspeaker, trying to be concentrated on the messages that are being communicated.
An effective listening involves observing body language.
Listening and hearing are totally different; when we listen we need more than our ears, we must be focus on the movements, gestures, etc that the speaker does to transmite the message;on the other hand, hearing just refers to the sounds that we hear.

There are many activities to develop and to improve listening skill; one of them could be using a radio, put one of your fingers on the pause button and play the audio, pause it when you need it and repeat some words you hear, do this activity as much as posiible, it would help you to improve it.

When you find a particuular word or sound that causes you trouble, go back and practice it several times. Just listen to the shorter parts of the audio; you would be able to say each phrase more naturally. Wen this appens it's tme to increase the challenge for this skill.

Main goals for teaching grammar in a foreign language.

One of the goals of grammar instructions is that students could develop their communication skills, but this is not that simple, because this goal has three implications; first of all students need connecting grammar structures with situations on a real context in order the learning process could be significant. Second, the students do not need to master every single aspect of each grammar point, only those that are relevant for their immediate communication task. And last but not least, error correction is not always a negative point of view of the students’ work.

Of course these three important aspects let other perspectives show up, for example mods of students get benefit from direct instructions and when they apply real life situations to grammar learning, they could develop critical thinking skills. Another way to facilitate understanding is to teach each grammar point in the students’ first language or both.

Another good step is limiting the time you devote to grammar explanations around ten minutes, especially for lower level students. Now spread grammar points in written and grammar points for students with different learning styles. Remember the purpose of learning grammar is to learn the language of which grammar is only a part, and not vice versa. Teachers need to let students know when they are making errors so that they can work improving them, because teachers also need to build students’ confidence.

Another important aspect is set the difference between knowing the rules of grammar and being able to apply those rules in speaking, listening, reading and writing this separation has two stages, the first one is called Declarative knowledge that is the knowledge about something, in this case grammar rules and structures, and the second is Procedural knowledge that is the knowledge about how to do something, in this case, it is how a student applies the grammar rules in communication.

After all this, you just need identify the student goals for learning this language, it means students who plan to use the language exclusively for reading educational texts need to focus more on declarative knowledge; students who plan to live in a foreign country need to focus more on the procedural knowledge that help them manage day by day oral and written interactions.

Finally planning a lesson that incorporates a grammar point into a larger communication task, when instructors have the opportunity to develop part or all the course curriculum, they can develop a series of contexts based on the real world tasks that students will need to perform using the language, and then teach grammar and vocabulary in relation to those contexts. 

English Teaching resources for beginners.

       Everyone knows that teaching is not an easy task, especially when we just graduate as teachers or it’s our first time teaching a specific topic. What we don’t know is that there are many websites that offer support and resources to facilitate our teaching process, and even more if to a specific audience (in this case, children).

       That said, I’ll name a specific website that can be very helpful for you!

http://www.anglomaniacy.pl

      This specific website has many sections like: Vocabulary, Grammar, Songs, Printables but the most interesting section is the Basic English Expressions learnt by Wordies in Space!

       Wordies in Space is a picture story divided into 36 episodes of different subjects. The story tells of some aliens named Blue Blue, Goldie, Pinker and Greengo, who are on their way to visit Earth. Each episode is for one unit, and each unit is divided into the 4 skills (Speaking, Listening, Reading and Writing), with a simple picture story, a short dialogue, a short lesson that explains the new vocabulary and also printable material such as reference cards, activities, tests and board games.

       The creators of this website advise to use the material in a specific order, like:

• Starting with the reader section.
• Study the reference cards.
• Do the activities.
• Test the student.
• Have more fun with the games!

       Also, each unit has an animated screen in which you can press the buttons from your keyboard and the little aliens will speak or pronounce the expressions you want to teach!

      Knowing this, what are you waiting for? Jump on that amazing world of teaching and help yourself with these resources, you have no excuses!!

Be Comfortable with your Foreign Language.

Some EFL students normally feel uncomfortable speaking English in front other people, there is  a moment when your thoughts and your mouth do not work together. Maybe you have the knowledge in your mind, but it is very difficult to transform that knowledge in sentences, words, or phrases to say what you want to say, that is frustrating, you want to say something but you can´t express yourself.

I think we all already have been through this situation, some more than others, no matter the English level we have this is an experience we live in certain circumstances. Our brain starts to think about what people may think about you, about what you are saying, about your pronunciation, about your mistakes,  and then you may feel ashamed, awkward, and sad and then you prefer just not to talk in English.

But, what can we do to solve this problem? What can we do to avoid that feeling?

Be Brave. Just the fact you speak another language (even with mistakes) is awesome, you not only think, write, hear and speak in you native language but also in english! You have to change your chip in your mind and start to believe in yourself.

I Make a Lot of Mistakes When I Speak in English. And who doesn’t? you have to realize everybody make mistakes speaking  a foreign language, remember, it is a FOREIGN language and you have to learn it.

Be Positive.  Every mistake is a lesson, so you instead of thinking you are doing it wrong, think you are improving your new language.

Find your Weaknesses and Work on Them. We have 4 skills, reading, writing, listening and speaking, we are talking about speaking but remember those 4 skills work hand to hand, so don’t forget to improve each one of them, for a good pronunciation we have to listen the words first, for a good vocabulary to know how to express yourself we have to read a lot and the last but not the least is writing, nothing better to keep you memory in a good shape is writing what you´ve heard and read.

Keep in Practice. You have to speak in english everywhere, don’t only in class, make your foreign language part of your live and for sure in a short time you will see a big difference when you speak in english and those feelings will disappear!

English is a matter of practice!

When we want to learn English as a second language it is important to practice. Four hours of  classes in a week seem to be not sufficient for achieving the goal of learning how to handle language in an effective and efficient manner. Therefore it is highly recommended to keep in touch with the language as many times as possible. Therefore, studuying t home is the best solution for you.

While this seems to be the most viable solution, in many cases we do not practice English from the comfort of our homes. One of the reasons we give is the lack of time, or that we got tired of working, or just that we want time to do things that we like, etc. Did you know you can do fun and relaxing things while you practice the language? In this post I will give you some tips, so you can practice English enjoying your free time:

Your TV not only serves as a distraction: Usually when you get tired,  you want to relax yourself watching series or a movie. American series and movies English-speaking are a good choice for you. It is great to see a chapter or a British film with English subtitles, because when you hear the dialogs you can learn words, pronunciation and grammar without realizing it. Enrich your vocabulary is essential to have a conversation in English. After that, when you get used to see subtitled films is recommended that you remove them all subtitles so you can tune your ear to the language even more.

Music is more than a best friend: A lot of people love to relax by listening to music. If this is your case, do not miss the opportunity to practice your English. there are plenty of English-speaking artists who make great music and that can fit your taste. Find your favorite artists, find their songs, choose one and listen. Then find the lyrics of the song and try to keep up. Repeat it whenever you want. Singing in English helps you learning associated favors short sentences. It could be a little tricky at first, but as I said English is a matter of practice and gradually you will find this as a fun and relaxing task.

 Reading can help you too: You are one of those who like to read as a hobby? Reading is a good option to practice the language, while doing something you love. Search for your favorite books in English, or some magazine, pdf or any foreign newspaper. At first it can be a tedious task and probably you will need to use the dictionary, but you will see that gradually you will understand English more easily because you are adapting it to your own tastes while improving your vocabulary, grammar and writing.

 If you like surfing the Web: Are you the type of people that come home and get directly into your computer, to manage your social networks or enjoy your free time surfing the internet? Be sure to practice your English as you do that. I recommend you to change the language of your social networks into English. This seems a small task, but  it will make you even more familiar with the language. Try to participate in forums, chats, online games, etc. with  Native English speakers. This will improve your language increasingly and will allow you to learn about words and phrases used by people who speak English as their mother tongue. This type of activities is fun and relaxing because they help you not only with learning the language but to interact with English culture and make friends.

Remember that if English is part of your "daily routine" it will not be a problem. Therefore it is important that you enjoy learning the language and do not get frustrated if at first some of these activities seem difficult. English is a matter of practice and a process of growth, Remember to have fun on the whole process!