READING FOR LIFE...

I remember that when I was a child, reading was one of the common activities that I used to do at home, but I don’t remember that my teachers were interested in motivating me to read at home or apart from the reading tasks I had at school. Reading tales was the starting point to gain this habit, but it was me and nobody else who wanted it to happen; neither my parents nor my school teachers told me about the importance of this activity.

I wanted to introduce this writing in that way, since nowadays there is the same situation but the difference is that the students have a lot of other things to do and it seems that books are being led behind or under their beds. Regarding this, I would assume that if I am a teacher that does want them to read and understand, I have to come up with a lot of innovation, strategies or activities that make them involved in the process; or at least that make them aware of the importance that reading has when presenting tests for example, and not only as concerns of passing or failing the reading comprehension section, but understanding the whole exam: every instruction or structure must be read in order to be done. But, do we really concern about it? Do we mediate our students to build a consistent reading habit for life? Or only for scanning information without skimming the deeper ideas or meaning of the text, test or any other reading passage?

When I ask myself those questions, I come to the conclusion that neither students, nor  teachers worry about it, and we would be quite wrong if we think that students will accomplish any other objectives (regarding all the skills), without a sufficient level of reading comprehension. This skill not only makes the students familiar with the language but also allows them to question themselves about the meaning, the reasons why and the message that is implicit in any other skills. In order to develop and perform successfully in those, we need to take into account that the big input we get when reading, will provide the quality of the output our students have when writing, speaking, listening or understanding grammar.

Regarding this skill, we can even notice the gaps our students have only by giving them some patterns or instructions for an activity or a test; most of them do not accomplish the task not because of they don't have a clear understanding  of what the instructions mean, but because they don't have a general and detailed knowledge about the topic  they´ve been working on. It happened to me that one of my students wasn’t the most responsible when studying or paying attention to the class, and she used to say that she did not study or practice much, but when she took the paper, she read and re-read and associated everything with the topic seen in class, and for her, that was the way to answer whatever there was. María Camila, was her name, also used to tell me about books she liked and what those were about: Everything fits, when you like it and practice it for enjoinment , it will be easier to perform well in academic objectives.

We have a behaviorist educational system that teaches us to learn to do something only for a specific objective, but that is not the idea: we cannot limit ourselves to do so; we have to construct  our own meaning, speculations. Every professional field requires reading comprehension. If you read a letter, if we look at a picture, if we want to do numeric exercises: we need to read it!In conclusion, we as teachers, have the tools to make our students aware of how meaningful reading can be. Implicitly, we can motivate them to do it, we should set up challenging reading tasks, first we guide them, then we offer a little help, and then we let them be, that is the way how we can construct a holistic knowledge and a critical vision in our learning process.

LISTENING
 WONDERFUL OR BORING!

 

 

 

 

Listening is often ignored in second language classrooms because sometimes (most of the times), teachers opt for giving students activities regarding grammatical structures. I think there has always been the belief that everything must be connected to grammar,  grammar, grammar and all that boring stuff; but what if we used some other strategies, the ones which are more practical and suitable for a real life context.

If the activities we set up are interesting and funny for my students, it would be easier to assess them too. In this entry I interviewed two friends of mine: One of them was always motivated to listen to songs and he used to like it; instead, my other friend was always asked to fill in the gaps according to the book activities and topics, she said that was a boring strategy.  Have a look at these videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4IOKm3BQ8Q

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xixge6A45Os&feature=youtu.be

 

So, If I am a teacher, I think it’s not a good idea to follow those standards: If we are working on present perfect or simple past structures, we not only have to focus on them, It is more reciprocal when we set up a specific context, ask them to make associations about it and, If they discover that there is something present in those tenses, good! They found it out by themselves but just as a sub-part of the whole purpose. Structures are not always required, functionality is.

To have a successful listening assessment and have students be familiar with meaningful tasks, I would like to point out some kind of “Follow, do and create” criteria for this assessment process: LISTENING. This is a little summary I did and It was taken from an interesting video I found out by surfing the internet.

1.       Even we don’t give students grades; we have to find out a way to give them feedback about their listening performance.

2.       We have to set up authentic listening tasks and make sure you find the way to give students feedback after having finished those.

3.       It is important that you know if they’ve done a task like that before, because we cannot pretend to assess something that they’ve not been familiar with before. They need to practice it several times before being assessed.

4.       We have to make sure that our task be integrated into your teaching, we don’t have to wait for finishing the class period, It’s better to take notes and  observations after doing those activities, so we’ll be informed of how my students are assimilating them and improving or worsening their listening performance.

5.       We also have to take into account what language functions I’m assessing: If it is communicative language or if it is academic language. I think they enjoy the most the functional/communicative ones: songs, movies, video or even video games.

6.       We must make sure they can assess themselves too. Make them familiar with pair work may be by recording themselves and then listening to what they said. It is fundamental that they listen to their own speech as well as the teacher’s: That’s the first context they’re supposed to be in contact with. Your job is making yourself sure they’re listening correctly.

7.       Finally, take into account that peer listening is essential, but always take up a communicative purpose even when you’re regarding structures:  Ask them to have a partner conversation and give feedback one another, so they can experience a kind of “self/peer assessment”.

E.g: If you ask some of them to give a short presentation, while the ones in charge of the presentation are assessing their speaking skills, the rest of them are assessing their listening skills, and you can assess both as well. This is practical, reciprocal and they wouldn’t be as frightened as when they have to fill in a test.

 Thanks!

Andrea