1. Why American people celebrate Labor Day the first Monday of September?

http://www.history.com/minisite.do?content_type=Minisite_Generic&content_type_id=316&display_order=1&sub_display_order=1&mini_id=1060

http://www.dol.gov/opa/aboutdol/laborday.htm

http://www.apples4theteacher.com/holidays/labor-day/about.html

2. Why do people say not to wear white after Labor Day?

http://media.www.thehilltoponline.com/media/storage/paper590/news/2002/09/10/LifeStyle/Wearing.White.After.Labor.Day-270385.shtml?sourcedomain=www.thehilltoponline.com&MIIHost=media.collegepublisher.com

http://askville.amazon.com/people-wear-white-Labor-Day/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=8951725


3. What is the relation between the Knight of Labor and the Labor Day?

www.kinghtsoflabor.org

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_of_Labor

Comment...

Synchronous CMC, Working Memory, and L2 Oral Proficiency Development.
J. Scott Payne & Brenda M. Ross
The Pennsylvania State University


This study is about how individual differences in working memory may affect the frequency of repetition of language use in chatroom discourse.

“Speaking is improved by practice speaking” (Scott & Ross, 2005)

“Student often produce more language in a chatroom than F2F setting” (Abrams, 2003; Kern, 1995; Worschower, 1996)

In this study the researchers showed a lot of different related studies that demonstrated the importance of being exposure to the L2. Also they mentioned the errors that these researchers made in order that does not mean that was a bad investigation but to say that in these kind of investigation you have a lot of variables that can change the whole investigation.

The main purpose if this research was to examine the patterns of language use as evidence in the chat transcript (that they mentioned before (experimental groups only)) with the goal of better understanding the interplay between individual differences in working memory capacity and cross-modality transfer of skill, as I mentioned before, from chatting to oral proficiency development.

In the research they asked to the student to talk about and discuss the topics that they gave them and the most popular were: Talking about childhood memories and plans for the future, also they asked to the student to talk for 5 minutes long and if they could not do that they asked them to choose a new topic and star all over again.


With these kind of exercises they achieve first, the use of repetition and relexicalization by third-semester Spanish learners as a strategy to facilitate communication in L2 chatroom discourse, but this declined in frequency over time, an effect that was unrelated to working memory capacity also they expand their lexicon and become more proficient in producing language spontaneously as required for conversational exchange, they reduce their reliance on repetition as a strategy for maintaining continuity in discourse.

Conclusion

In this study you can see an initial attempt at using working memory and their relation to L2 oral proficiency development and the findings of this lend further support to the notion that the chatroom may provide a unique form of support to certain types of learners in developing L2 oral proficiency.

Mind Map

As Gina said I really have a very structure way of thought ...all the things that I draw or organized must be on this way pretty similar as a square and symmetric, as you can see on this mind map I believe that we are like empty boxes in terms that we can learn and fullfil this box with knowledge!!!...

Learn English in a interactive way!!!!

On this page http://englishinteractive.net/ you can find not only the best pages on the net but also the most fun of them.
It is a easy way to find different kind of activities through internet.

Conditions:

• Interaction: On this page you can find differents kind of interaction because you can find things for kids and for young people as well, this page leads you to others pages where appears listening, writing, reading and speaking exercises the four skills.
• Student-Focused: As we were saying during the clases the main point here is the student and teacher works as a guide only, with good instructions this page can be a good tool to teach English autonomous learning.
• Autonomy: The student have the autonomy to choose between many options that the page gives you, because it is separated in categories (the four skills) and when you click on one of the options this leads you instantaneously through the one that you need.
• 1Multimodal/2Integrated Skills: As I said before here you can find the four skills in differents types of activities.
  

1. LISTENING http://www.lettertv.net/pages/audioalpha.htm
2. WRITING http://englishinteractive.net/tutor.htm
   
3. SPEAKING http://www.eslgold.com/speaking/speaking_situations.html
   
4. READING http://www.americanfolklore.net/index.html

• Motivating: If we want to teach children as weall as a teenagers this is it!! you have too many options for those guys that gives you problems the page have a wide variety of everything and if you use it well good results you may have.
• Exposure to/Creation of varied language: Everyday conversation and more is what you can find here for student for advanced and kids.
• Feedback: There are so many pages that congratulates you when you do something right that I believed that is a good way to feedback in terms that if you do something right it repeats you and you received feedback instantaneously!!

http://www.lettertv.net/pages/brickwall.htm

• Appropiate to personalities, styles, intelligences: This page have everything in terms of having, as I said before, a wide variety of activities that every link leads you. So you can find things for kids as well things for teenagers and adults.
• Meaningful Activities: In the reading part I found this website that shows the American Folklore (link above reading part) and here you can find songs stories and more (cultural things).
• Authentic Audience: On this pages you can find a lot of new things to learn, like how to speak in certain occasions an so on.
• Clear Objectives: As this page is categorized in the four skills you can have pretty clear objectives in each, if it is for listening that is what you have american English, Pronunciation, alphabet etc.
• Comfortable Enviroment: I firmly believe that every teacher is responsible for the creation of a good enviroment in the classroom, give confidence to your student and make them fell that they can do everything!!...

Instructions:

1. Go to the reading part and click on american folklore, go to myth & legends click on legendary women then click on female ghosts and again click on "La Llorona", read and discuss in pairs how similar is this story in comparison with "La Llorona" of Chile (for basic and intermediate learners)
   
2. Go to the listening part and click on letter TV Then go to the Brick Wall part and click on that too and do the activity (for kids only).
   

Home Cooking

Since I arrived here (USA) the only thing that I can think about it is the food, how this is so different from the food of Chile, I do not like almost anything from here except cheeseburger, but that is not healthy at all , so I think that I have homesickness of food because every time that we go to the "PUB" I think that I would like eating some "porotos" or "lentejas"
(typical dishes of my country).
But everything it is not wrong I love being here is pretty cool being with my friends knowing new people, practicing my English, knowing new places too and buy a lot of things that you cannot find in my country and very cheap!!..but I have to control myself because I am compulsive shopper and for that I have my lovely friends that tell my if I should buy it or not...I already love the experience and I hope to enjoy it more with the time...