USEFUL ENGLISH RESOURCES !!!

sábado, 15 de mayo de 2010

What is teaching English as a second language like today?

Teaching English as a secong language nowadays has positive and negative aspects that we as teachers have to take into account in the classrooms. First of all it is important to say that in our country and in many other countries English is necessary in different fields like in businesses,job,etc. It has been one of the most important requirements to get a job too.
A positive aspect to learn a second language could be that it is a necessary tool to succed and also to get a lot of job opportunities that help people to find a better lifestyle. A negative aspect could be that teachers in many classrooms do not have the student`s interest to learn a second language, I think that is the major problem that we as teachers face in our classrooms.

jueves, 14 de febrero de 2008

LESSON PLANING

ENGLISH - III CYCLE - 8Th GRADE

TARGET CONTENT N° 1: IDENTIFICATION OF Family members and partner’s relatives.*

OBJECTIVES

LANGUAGE EXAMPLES

PROCEDURES

VALUES /ATTITUDES
AND CULTURE

EVALUATION OF LEARNING OUTCOMES

LISTENING
· Guessing the general meaning of a short passage.

SPEAKING
· Eliciting basic information from both friends and strangers.

READING
· Understanding a range of written materials

WRITING
· Writing several sentences to convey familiar factual information.

Family relationships.
This - that - these - those - are -
-He/she works at ______?
-How many do you have?
-I have brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles...
-My mother's sister is my .
-Her brother is my _____.
-Is he/she your _______?
-How old ?
-Who ______?
-How many _____?

Functions:
Identifying people.
Asking for and talking about people and their families

Warm up:
The teacher uses the computer and shows students a little presentation (power point) using pictures of family members and students have to guess the name in English of each one with the correct pronunciation.
Presentation:
The teacher uses some important flashcards about family members with the respective names and explain students the function of each person in a family, the differences, and the similarities that each one have.
Also the teacher makes a comparison of her family with other student to explain it better to the class.

Control Practice:
The teacher asks students to work individually.
Then the teacher gives them a paragraph related with the family, after they read it, then they have to Elicit basic information of it and Finally each student have to give ideas and opinions about their understanding of the Written material.
Then teacher asks students to make ten sentences using the vocabulary of family members (individually).
The teacher makes feedback around the class.
Consolidation:
The teacher makes a round table to discuss important details about student’s families and also make comparisons of each one, at the same time the teacher makes questions to students to prove students learning.

§ Love for other people
§ Tolerance towards gender and people’s feelings.
§ Responsibilities among family members.

CULTURE
· Nuclear and extended family in Costa Rica and in English speaking cultures.
· Importance of long-term family ties in our country.
· Differences and similarities in gender roles among both cultures.

· Guess the general meaning of a short passage.

· Subtraction of basic information from both friends and strangers.

· Comprehension of a range of written materials

· Production several sentences to convey familiar factual information.

jueves, 31 de enero de 2008

AUTHENTIC MATERIALS VRS NON AUTHENTIC MATERIALS

I’ am going to talk about two contrast topics.
First of all I’m going to mention something important about authentic materials.
Authentic Materials are those which were not created or edited expressly for language learners. This definition means that most everyday objects in the target language qualify as authentic materials.
The use of authentic materials in the classroom is a benefit for the students understanding and learning, it is the best way that the teachers use to increase the motivation using positive ideas to achieve the goal in the language. When the teachers use effectively, authentic materials help bring the real world into the classroom and significantly enliven the ESL Class.
Second I’m going to talk about non authentic materials. The Non Authentic Materials are those that help students to learn but in a difficult and tired way. It means that the teacher has to find different ways to teach to involve and maintain students in the classroom; it is because students lost the motivation to see always the same materials to study, they see the class boring and they prefer to do other things. When the teachers have this problem students feel that they do not have a goal to achieve with the language and sometimes abandon the classes.
As a conclusion with these topics is important that we as teachers take into account the differences between them and try to be better using and doing new things to teach and increase the students learning in the classrooms.

miércoles, 14 de noviembre de 2007

Tourist Aspects Worldwide

By Deykelin Vargas. V.

Nowadays, we have a paradigm of worldwide tourist development, not only in our country also around the world.
The tourism worldwide is an opportunity to visit many different countries that help us to know their cultures, their attraction to visitors in their geographical natural beauty which seem no everlasting resources; also some interesting destinations that people enjoy when decide to travel.
These sorts of destinations which seem to have a higher level of conservation are also vulnerable; they require an appropriate action plan for their preservation and management.
The interest of these people is to preserve their cultural elements, among them the main characteristic that supports a sustainable socio-economic development.
Some important countries such us United States, Japan, Brazil, Argentina,etc have the opportunity to offer different beautiful places or sculptures that permit tourist enjoy and come back to visit it again.
It is important take into account that people of each country around the world have to value the differences or characteristics that each country has because it help us to increase as persons and also we can travel to compare cultures, ways to live, etc.