Supplementary Materials

We don't only have the Coursebook, but also Supplementary Materials which is additional data files that contain information directly supportive of the document. Well It includes several materials but I think these are the most important for me :

- Podcast: The Podcast is a radio programme that is stored in a digital form which the people can download from the Internet and play on their own computer, MP3 or even a phone.

Well- I have here a video about What is a podcast? if my explanation is a bit difficult to understand.

          

- Ebooks: Ebook means E( electronic) Book ( a set of pages to be read or written), i.e. a "Electronic Book" which is more comfortable to be used.

- Wiki: It is a piece of server software that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content using any Web browser. Wiki supports hyperlinks and has a simple text syntax for creating new pages and crosslinks between internal pages on the fly. Well I have here a video which explain to how to make a wiki:

Box 13, 2: Criteria for Coursebook Assessment

Well The Book which I'm going to express my criteria is called "Go for Chile!" Students' Book 1 (1er año de enseñanza media), so I'm going to evaluate it with the following criterions. these are:

A) Criterion 1: Objetives explicity laid out in an introduction, and implemented in the material.
Rating: 6.0

It has all the tools to carry out  a good work of the material, but I guess it needs some details of clarity according to the introduction, but in general it's good enough.

B) Criterion 2: Approach educationally and socially acceptable to target community.
Rating: 7.0

Yes, because the book has good terms, phrases and after all it shows all about Chile. so Educationally is very important the students know about our own country , and Socially some of them should join in the class because there's a lot of ideas they could tell.

C) Criterion 3:  Clear attractive layout; print easy to read.
Rating: 7.0

yes It is, because it has interesting pictures and the print is enough visible.

D) Criterion 4: Appropiate visual material available
Rating: 6.0

 It has many pictures, but the most important is that it has a lot of exercises with questions and answer, and I think that's excellent because it's necessary that the students have liberty to write an answer of themself.

E) Criterion 5: Interesting topics and tasks.
Rating: 6.5

I think so because it shows a lot of good exercises that the students can develop, the instructions are very clear, too.

D) Criterion 6: Varied topics and tasks, so as to provide for different learner levels, learning styles, interest, etc..
Rating: 6.0

It has good topics and tasks which allow that the students can improve his/her good learning.

E) Criterion 7: Clear instructions.
Rating: 7.0

The instrucctions are quite clears, and there's nothing that can misunderstand- well sometimes even our own students can comment about a mistake.

F) Criterion 8: Systematic coverage of syllabus.
Rating: 6.0

It has a good planning of syllabus, and it allows to the teacher have a good timing to mix between the book and what the teacher wants to explain.

G) Criterion 9: Content clearly organized and graded (sequenced by difficulty).
Rating: 6.5

Content is excellent, it has all very well organized, besides it shows things very important about our country, I guess the sequency is a little weak, because there's no so many differences between a unit and another.

H) Criterion 10: Periodic review and test sections.
Rating: 6.0

Well, in the page 68 there's a Extra practice that is part of our review , it is important have one , because our intention as a teacher is to impede to the students forget something so valuable as the learning and practicing exercises.

J) Criterion 11: Plenty of authentic language.
Rating: 5.0

It has some sayings, imperatives and a little of phrasal verbs.

K) Criterion 12: Good pronunciation explanation and practice.
Rating: 6.5

There's no so much explanation, rather there's a lot of exercises to practice such as listening ( his/her own pronunciation improves if they listen to a native say it) , writing ( through exercises).

L) Criterion 13: Good vocabulary explanation and practice.
Rating: 7.0

The vocabulary of this book is a WORKLIST which is between the last but one and the last pages. so if the students have a problem can see in the Worklist, anyway it's important they learn by heart the most of them at least.

M) Criterion 14: Good grammar presentation and practice.
Rating: 6.0

Yes, it has a good grammar, anyway the students have to know a good order of the words in a grade as is 1ro medio, so we have to give priority to more exercises-sayings, imperatives, exclamations and phrasal verbs, etc.. that they perhaps don't know, and the last but not least the listening to get better his/her pronunciation and understanding ( at least what they can understand).

N) Criterion 15: Fluency practice in all four skills.
Rating: 7.0

Well  the 4 skills are good determinated in the syllabus, besides I think that the book has a good mix of all in general.

O) Criterion 16: Encourages learners to develop own learning strategies and to become independent in their learning.
Rating: 6.0

The development of our students depend on themselves, if they want to learn and they like english, they'll look up new words, idioms, phrasal verbs, exclamations, imperatives ( i.e  informal phrases) etc.. that would great, but not all of them think the same, the important is they understand that  we are here because we want they learn a motivating and challenging second language, anyway the book always is our tool of supporting.

P) Criterion 17: Adequate guidance for the teacher, not too heavy preparation load.
Rating: 7.0

It's good enough, it's not complex, it has exercises, listenings and reading.

Q) Criterion 18: Audio cassettes.
Rating: 7.0

What is a cassete? ( a joke) but this question a little boy will ask for it some day, because we live in a world where all is technological, so we use audio CD's.

R) Criterion 19: Readily available locally.
Rating: 5.0

I'm not sure but it seems to be that I can't find a dowload   about of this book, Not even a link. but at least I have a photo of this, mmm I guess that's all.

CHECK THIS!

Syllabus

A Syllabus is an outline and summary of topics to be covered in an education or training course. It is descriptive (unlike the prescriptive or specific curriculum). A syllabus is often either set out by an exam board, or prepared by the professor who supervises or controls the course quality. Here I have a list of some characteristics of syllabus:

1. Schedule of time : It's important to have a timetable because it must exist an order to carry out our planning, it can get if there are reviews in the class and test dates.

2. Materials: It refers to the type of tool that it's going to use, for instance, a book, a powerpoint.

3. Objetives: It's what we want to our students achieve at the end of our course, it is always hypothetically because we don't know if it all our students will pass and more important if they will learn.

4. Give class expectations: We have to expect our students can express if they want to talk about the topic we're checking.

5.  Give hours and times you are available for conferences or tutorials: Sometimes we have to pause until a certain time and we explain to our pupils again if they don't understand, and it's necessary they also ask for us all his/her doubts that they have to do.

well, There's a organization for each syllabuses types of them, and these are:

1. Grammatical syllabus / based on the structures of a language.
2. Lexical syllabus/ based on entirely on activities involving real language use.
3.Situational syllabus/ to prepare learners to cope in a foreign language with concrete situations of the world.
4. Topic-based syllabus/  it uses activities that the learners have to do for noninstructional purposes outside of the classroom as opportunities for language learning.
5. Notional syllabus/ vocabulary and language concepts.
6. Functional- notional syllabus/ a way of organizing a language-learning curriculum.
7. Mixed syllabus/ mixture of the previous syllabuses.
8. Procedural syllabus/ based on a structure that can best be learned when attention is focused on meaning.
9. Process syllabus/ focused on the skills and processes involved in learning language.

Testing Techniques

We were watching a powerpoint about some pages a book called " a course in a language teacher" and the teacher said: your task is blog the following:
 Which do you think that is the most and least effective test techniques?  Choose and Blog it,

So I think that these are:

THE MOST EFFECTIVE TECHNIQUE:

Questions and aswers: Simple questions, very often following reading, or as part of an interview; may require short or long answers.

I guess that it's very important for the students, the most effective technique has to be something simple, they have to aswer the questions, so they use what they know, but it has to be linked with a grammatical learning right, if they know the basic like : pronouns,verbs and places or objects, they should try to answer.

AND THE LEAST EFFECTIVE TECHNIQUE:

Translation: The teacher write some sentences in english and the students copy it, and then they have to traslate it, it's sometimes part of a class or It's sometimes homework.

I remember that I had a teacher that did the same in class, he wrote on the blackboard many sentences and we had to traslate them, but I thought it was monotone, Look the words up because we didn't even when a word in past like EAT it was ATE, It's important that the english a language who nobody could take into account were view like something new and interesting, because many people in our country like it, for instance, Sing along in english, watch sitcoms, watch mtv, telling mother, father, computer, etc..

COME ON STUDENTS!!!  IF YOU ALL PARTICIPATE  I'M SURE YOU UNDERSTAND!!!

Check this please!

Presentation

In this class we were checking what it's a Presentation, it means a form of teaching most achievable for the students, because the planification is complex, we have to summarize, according to the followng diagram, I'm going to explain you  each term:

The most important of this diagram is 3 steps to a good class which are:

!) Attention: the learners have to pay attetion to the teacher if they want to learn, and it can be possible if the students are silent, obviously it's very important they attend to his/her progress.

2) Perception: the students see and hear so that they can create his/her own style of learning, they have to work his/her mind, anyway the teacher will always guide their long way to go.

3) Undesrtanding: It's important we take into account the students don't learn all the class, but they wouldn't have forgotten some things at least, Understanding is last step, if they can tell me what they learnt , so we can say we did a good job.

                                                    

Activity

Activity 1

We would present this activity to the students in the following matter:

1.       Ok students, today we’re going to play a game.

2.       I’m going to show you some pictures

3.       I’ll show you the picture from a different view

4.       You have to try to guess what the picture is

5.       If you don’t know what it is, say I don’t know or I have no idea  or try it at least

6.       Then I will show you the picture of the object and we can compare answers

7.       For example, what is this?  

1.      

2.       It’s a _______________ x5

3.                Show picture

1.      

2.       It’s a bottle

Then We're going to ask some students if they can guess what the picture is in a position that is a litle complex, they all can rise their hands, and tell it quickly, the idea is that the students participate because I guess nobody would like to lose! so who guess what it is? 

-Angelo Messina 

-Axel Villagrán

-Marcelo Véliz

Survey of Students Opinion

Well, I got the results of this survey and It's the following:

So, In the Graphic according to my survey to 8 students we have Most popular choices to Agree+ ( Very much Agree) and Least popular options is Disagree-( Totally Disagree)

Well, My opinion is that some day we become teachers so if we have to be evaluated just like that, we can have a idea of ourselves to get better our own behavior and that's very important because we don't only teach our students knowledge but also we have to teach them to participate, whereas we're role models to them, if we have a good education we must teach them good values, because The Next Generation should do the same to The Next - Next Generation, our future depends on get our main goal which is the students become educated, intelligent and cheerful people ( i.e respect, knowledge and affectivity), after all some day they'll also choose their own goal and decisions.

My Main Goal is the students can express in english, I don't mean they should talk to me or their classmates perfectly, but at least they try to do their best, but I think if they can do it, they'll realize to speak english is a great step to their motivation, whereas Speaking spanish would be much easier than Speaking english.  

The following picture is not important at all, It's just to have a good time:

XD...Goodbye Readers!!

Check this please!

Learners Differences

Aspect of Learner Motivation ( page 288)


1. How important do you think motivation is for success in language learning, compared to, for example, language aptitude?

The Motivation is the enthusiams for doing something, motivation has a latin term that is called "Motus" it means "Moved" , so the students are willing to learn if they join in the class, their progress depend on Feedback. In the second point is Language Aptitude which is how theyselves know their boundaries for their learning through their skills, according to their intuitions, it refers to the “prediction of how well, relative to other individuals, an individual can learn a foreign language in a given amount of time and under given conditions".


I think the Motivation is more inportant than Language Aptitude because the first one is the most important thing for a good learning, everyday the students are learning more ideas and it's necessary they can motivate  and rise their hands to ask or aswers questions so that improve their knowledge, but if a student were a motivated person and at the same time a person who were good enough for learning language, That would be much better!

Well I found out in a website about 7 rules of motivation, if you want to check it, only click:


http://www.motivation-tools.com/elements/seven_rules.htm

2. What characteristics and behaviours you associate with the image of a motivated learner?



A motivated learner is willing to get better his/her learning not only with what the teacher says, the student should be a balance of time for doing the things, it means knowing look for information by himself/herself, watch telly ( news, cartoons, national geography, BBC, etc..), in general the students also want to have a good time when they are learning about a lot of ideas for becoming more intelligents than before at the school.