A topic in language education that I want to know more about

I really would like to know more about writing teaching language, even though I know that that is my weakness, I discovered that is very important to know how to write, and not only knowing how to speak English.
Since my experience in Lewis and Clark high school, I realized that student must know how to write properly in order to be understood, and also to reach more in life that just a lower job. I would like to know how can I fill in the gap that students may have in some way during the process of language acquisition, I think that is not good to leave that space empty because then the kids are going to have that emptiness for the rest of their lives.
I found some interesting places on Internet to teach writing in different ways, but i could not find places about the topic itself.

WRITING LANGUAGE TEACHING MATERIALS
Some factors to consider: an action list.

http://www.webofenglish.co.uk/ltmat.htm

Teaching Index

Approaches & Methods in Second Language Teaching

point n° 11

Writing in the Second Language Class

http://www.btinternet.com/~ted.power/teflindex.htm

Writing/Language Arts Ideas!

http://www.ilovethatteachingidea.com/ideas/subj_writing.htm

Podcasting my way to mastery of English

I found a way to master my English in my country, and that is having access to listening comprehension through podcasts; I search for several places on the net, but I liked only one, it has topics that are really interesting for me, like politics, animals, Mr. Bean :) and so on. I think that I'm gonna commit myself to hear those podcasts at least daily, so in that way I'm not gonna lose my listening comprehension that I already reach just been here.

http://www.podcastsinenglish.com/pages/level1.shtml

Response to a question about English teaching

Re: Cross Cultural Awareness

What are some strategies I can use to promote cross cultural awareness in the classroom?

by Cristina Ramos on Nov 20 2008 2:14 AM

You can do some activities with your students in order to them understand each other culture, as an example of that, you can put them in groups (depends on how many students do you have) and try not to put more than 2 students from the same country together, if you classroom has computers ask to the student to log in and look for tipical things of their country in pictures and ask them to show them and explaine it in front of their classmates, I think that images and the fact that kids really love technology, is going to make the class more interactive and meaningful for them, then the student can share some of their native language, explained it what is the name of those especifics things that he/she showed to the rest of the class. If you classroom doesn't have tech, you can do something similar with a map and some draws. Would be a good idea if you introduce the activity to the students by saying that each of their culture (where they are from) is important, it's what they are or something like that :).
I hope this can help you good luck.

http://www.everythingesl.net/askjudie/index.php?r=10401

Websites that might help

This day I realized about something that made me feel not good with my internship in the high school that I am. As I have been saying in all my reflexions, we as a prospectives teachers, we had to make classes meaningful for students, and not only that but have high expectations of them too. What I am going to mention is something that I think change everything about how I see my way of teaching in the future.
This morning I saw a student having problems doing his assignments , with writing and not only him but the others two Russian students, they don't really know how to write, they mixed their language with English and the writing is something hard to understand; I realized too that the teacher didn't care too much about it because I told him: "hey Mr. X, what about this kid, he is not doing anything..." and the only response that I received was a gesture with his face, like trying to say: "hm I don't care", then after that I pulled together everything, last Friday with the visit of some man looking for jobs for the students in the classroom because they already have enough age to work; and I know that it is OK in someway because they don't have enough money in their families but on the other hand that means that the teacher doesn't have high expectations of their future. After a while the teacher said that to me (I mean the gesture), I felt like I didn't know what to do I felt useless for them, because we had to help them with their writing, but in what I could help if they don't write anything just because they don't feel like they can do it. I took some minutes to thing about it and then I tried to start helping a Russian student with his writing, when I went to his desktop he immediately stopped what he was doing, and I started to speak to them about the first line, and we talked a lot so I told him you have a really good English!!...and he was kind of surprised about it, but it was true he really speaks very well, the problem is when he tries to put the ideas on paper then it is a mess and that because he have the problem of their first language as a interference he writes with the Russian alphabet some words, and he didn't know how to speaks well his own language either, so I told him if he is really interested in doing well, you have to put some of effort on this and do extra assignments for yourself, at the beginning he seemed like interested because I explained to him that he is not stupid (because his little brother bothers him because the little one knows how to speak English Russian write and everything very good), he just came to America not in a good age for learning another language, and even more because in his country he just started writing when he came here; and the other student who was complete ignore by the teacher didn't do anything and the only thing that he received was discipline from the teacher, nothing else, and it is even more sad because he is going to change school next week.
For an activity I really tried hard to look for something for them (the Russian students) but I could find anything good enough for them, but I found interesting thing about how to teach to struggling writers.

Interesting article:

http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst;jsessionid=JvnbhQ2mM5gZ3WjwlmmJK0M8pv5mKdz0s1PLCQdF4krwYB0LndTk!-488057137?docId=5000635371

Some assignments that can be helpful for students:

http://www.jimwrightonline.com/php/interventionista/interventionista_intv_list.php?prob_type=writing


And some podcast:

http://podcasting-in-education.wikispaces.com/Examples+of+Educational+Podcasts

http://www.slideshare.net/pafarrells/reaching-struggling-writers-through-podcasts-presentation


I really think now that for me is more meaningful to teach English to students that really need it , like here, where you know than they can't survive without a good level of English, they are just been taught for having any job that a person can offer them, and that they can do it, not something more, not university nor something higher, and those kind of jobs are the ones that American people are not willing to do. On the other hand to teach to students that don't really need a second language, like in my country because we are surrounded by countries who Speaks only Spanish, they don't have the necessity as the students from here.

A case of efective language teaching

The most common fear that you can see in prospectives teachers is if their lessons are going to work or not, have a meaningful class with the engage students on it is one of the best feelings that a teacher may have in her/his life; just if you become a teacher because you love to teach and not if you only do it because you feel forced to do it.

On my second day of shadowing I already saw an effective way of teaching that I found really good for students; and that we studied in classes, learning through content and realia. This thursday morning we started the lesson with questions that had a lot of meaning for kids, then the teacher asked them to moved and looked outside the window, then the teacher asked them to watched very carefuly, and think; what things do they think that weren´t there 100 years ag, so only with that questions the students begun to brain storming their minds and think about it and they really were engaged on that, they said a lot of things like, the cars were older and oldfashioned; but another student said: "nooo!!, by that time the cars weren't exists"; and with that the kids started a kind of a little debate. After that the teacher asked us to get together with students, "two for each chilean teacher" he said, and the kids got together with their thinking partner, that is a very good strategy; because the teacher engaged us with the students in their work, and we started to think about how people come to the United States in the begining of times.

The class had a very good environment and the students were engage on the class because since they are from diferents countries, the topic that the teacher chose was meaningful for them, they started to think about how they came to this country and they gave their opinions about what hapened before in this country.

What Would you Like to Know about your Future Students?

I would like to know:

- What their backgrounds are.
- What they would like to learn in English class.
- If they have any kid of problems in their families.
- and what they expect for their future and how can i help them to reach that goal.

I think as a teacher I need to know everything about my students not only some superficial things but also something depper than that; our students are going to be kids with social problems, we already know that, we are going to teach in public schools in Chile. So we need to pay attention in what we are going to teach them, has to be something with meaning in order that we can make a difference.

My Mistake!!!.....

1-. ... would like to know who are you, what are you interest in, what are your hobbies or things that you really don't like, if you want you can upload some pictures of you or some stuff that you really are interested in or just a picture of someone you admire, can be a singer, actor, artist what ever you want. Be respectful on what you are going to upload.

Correct:

... would like to know who you are, what your interest are, what your hobbies are or things that you don´t like, and if you want you can upload pictures of you, or pictures of your favourite singer , or anything that you want to upload. Please be respectful on what you are going to upload.