3 Principles

Teaching Language Through Content

I think that this principles as the majority of them ir very important the students can acquire the target language faster if you teach English with things that students are interested in. If you only based your classes on grammar or structures they are not going to feel the laguage they may feel that they are learning something that is not interested to them. Moreover now we have the tools to apply more things in a classroom, such as technology, internet where you can find a lot of stuff that for kids can be real and have a true meaning.

Learning Takes Place in Social Interaction

We know that students learn better if they have exposure to the target language and if they can practice it, even better so that is why I think that working in groups can really be a big help to them to improve their speaking and realized that it is much better if you have help from your classmates. If a student is isolated I think that he/she can feel very frustated or she/he is not going to be very succesful at learning.

Faith in the Learner Expands Student Potential


Me as a future teacher of English in my country I can not allow me not to have faith on my students I really want to make a difference on this, because most of my teachers said to me and my classmates in our senior year in highschool that none of us will be succesful in life that we were lazy and all those kind of things that really made me feel stupid in a point of my life and I think that that was something that we are going to remember for the rest of our lives, I still have contact to some of my old classmates and now we are friends in facebook and all of us had success in our lives in many ways, some of them are happily married, others girls are studying what they wanted to study and they are in the last year of their course of studies, I knew that some of us are in a foreing country (Europe, USA, Canada), so the teachers that said that to us they didn't have an idea what we were capable of, that is why I think we have to have faith i our students every person has differents abilities and our labor as a teacher is to help them to reach their goals and let them know how valuable are their abilities.

Chapter 6: Learning take Place in Social Interaction

5.- Choose two od the many activities that will lead to social interaction that you can most see yourself using as a teacher in Chile. Describe how these activities can work and why they appeal to you. p. 156-168

Since we do not find that the activities that appears in Chapter six make sense for our teaching reality in Chile we have chosen just one, Cross-Age Tutoring.

We believe Cross-Age Tutoring activity can be the most suitable for our students in Chile. Owing to that most of the students feel that they can't not succeed in life, so they are not motivated with learning. However, if they see that someone older than them is interested in what they do or think, students realize that it is possible to learn any subject and be successful in it.

Now, We are involved in a program from the Ministry of Education called "Mentoring from Abroad", where we have to guide high school students who have a higher level of English in comparison to the average students of their class.

Despite the fact that it's a new project (Mentoring from Abroad) and we don't know which will be the results of its development, we think that it will be successful because those students have already participated in "The English Winter Camp", so they are already motivated in terms of learing English. That's why we think that they will be willing to participate, and the program will work.

Bilingualism & Biliteracy: 1st homework

I. Give a description of the students in your school.

For this profile I chose a public school (Liceo Tecnico Femenino)'cause I'm teaching English in several places.

Generally speaking the girls that attend classes are between lower and middle class. Most of them having serious problems at home. They are not the ideal student but many of them are fighting to obtain the best grades so they can have access to a better education environment. Girls are between 13 and 19 years old. Some of the girls are pregnant and attend classes in regular basis.
They wear a grey uniform and books from the Government are given to them. For the lower class students there are some special programmes to help them study normally.



II. Describe a learner in class:

Yassna Maldonado:

She's a 17 year old. She's in 12th grade (1ºE). She's a mother of a one-year-old baby. This student has just received a grant from the government (beca presidente de la república) given to
the highest scores in this high school. She's quite concerned on her physical appearance and her studies. She also helps her mother at work while she is taking care of her baby. She lives in Casablanca (about an hour and half from Valparaíso) Despite the fact that she has lots of problems with his fiance (the father of her baby), she attends classes in regular basis and have a clear view of what English means in her curriculum. She is always taking notes on every single matter in classes. She's good at learing new things and keeping things in order. She's also the treasurer of the class.

Fabrizzio Araya M.


Analysis:

I think that this situation is very often in my country with the public education, poor school with students who have a lots of problems in their houses is sth that you have to face daily and you have to know how to deal with that. As the teacher mentioned there are some students who really wants to have a better education and that is why they are motivated to have better grades in order that they can entered to a good University and change their economical situation.

In the case of the student that he chose Yassna Maldonado, I can say that is a great example of motivation, you can tell how she is fighting for having sth more in life and with the grant I firmly belive that it is her big first step to succed in life, it is going to be hard but she has the willing to reach all her expection and goals.