Grammar activity

This is my activity
http://www.mediafire.com/?ze9i7mc9t129eba

This activity is focused in developing the students skills (writing, speaking, listening) participating actively in class


I hope you like it!

Box 5.2 Vocabulary techniques

1)  Some techniques are more popular than others. What are thery, and can you account for their popularity?
The most common techniques to teach vocabulary are:
- concise definition, to present accurately the understanding of a concept or term
- examples, are used to contextualize an explanation or definition
- illustrations, are used to plot the explanation of a concept 
 These are the most used techniques and I think this is because it is simpler and more effective on the students. 


2) Are there techniques that are particularly appropiate for the presentation of certain type of words?
  Some of them are used to reinforce an explanation like techniques of demonstration (mimes) this helps the students to understand clearly what we're talking about, synonyms and antonyms to asociate better the concepts that definitely are not part of the concept and those that are part of them and detailed description, this techniques takes more time than the others and it's more complicated I think because a simple description don't help the students to understand clearly.


3) Are there techniques which are likely to be more, or less, appropiate for particular learner populations (young/adult, beginner/advanced, background cultures)? 
I think the most appropiate for young/adult category is to give a concise definition and then the students asociate with synonyms or antonyms. For beginner/advanced category is more useful a detailed description but talking about a beginner it's much more useful than an advance person and in different background cultures for this category it would be more efficient to show pictures because there are countries with different ideads about a term.


4) Do you, as an individual, find that you prefer some kinds of techniques and tend to avoid others? Which? and Why? 
  I prefer to use first a concise definition as a first step to have an idea the concept then I consider useful to give examples using a demonstration, for example by miming or illustrations and this techniques let students to finally understand efficiently. The kinds of techniques that I would avoid will be translation, even being a very good technique but this doesn't help us to teach students to comprehend a second language by listening, and finally a detailed description I think it's not as effective as the others.

Lesson plan (Pronunciation)

Today in class we finished planning a class based in pronunciation skills. This is my work:
http://www.mediafire.com/?b9u4qau6zetzops


Pronunciation I think is very difficult to learn properly because it needs a lot of dedication and study about each of the sounds I mean vowels and consonants. In a few classes is impossible to pronounce well.
If a person aspire to comunicate with natives or people who don't speak english but study the language, it will be very important to dedicate time to practice sounds in english because this will let them to speak clearly and to be understandable.
So as a conclusion, practice is the key!

Topic Content: Teaching literature assignment

The next presentation is the activity that I made with my partner:
 http://www.mediafire.com/?d4xpn8h7v1vsa81


The activity that we chose was "Discussion director" part of Literature Circles and we chose it because this activity encourage students to learn from one another, specially in reading comprehension that becomes sometimes boring so this activity makes learning more fun and bearable, sharing with our partners.
In the activity, the first part consist in reading in groups of four or five and then every member must answer the cuestions of the working guide.


The lesson plan is available here http://www.mediafire.com/?ihyp5cayi6186ds
We chose the grade 'primero medio' because the short story has a large vocabulary that students will manage then in other situations. So this demands a lot of work and it's necessary because they must get used to practice more the reading skills and the oral speech.

Supplementary materials

Criteria for coursebook assessment

1. It mentions the objectives at the beginning of the book and the implementation of the materials too, in every unit

Grade – 6

2.  The book is given by the government and the topics are not too specific, it's more general for every public but it isnt't too far to be a good material

Grade – 6

3. The layout is eye-catching for the students and that attracts them because of the colours, pictures, etc. 

Grade- 6

4. There are a lot of pictures but there's too many and that results my opinion very messy and distracting. Another good thing is that the book provides links from the web 

Grade – 6

5. Interesting topics and tasks are provided but could always improve

Grade – 5

6. They provide some variety but for the most its focus is on grammar tasks.

Grade – 5

7. The instructions are clear which makes it easy to follow

grade - 6

8. It has a very systematic syllabus witch in my opinion could be even a little too rigid in its approach and may loose the interest of some students that need more diversity.

Grade – 5

9. The content is clearly organized and graded by a sequence of difficulty this lets the teacher and students evaluate their progress and also makes the students responsible for their learning process.

Grade - 6

10. It uses reviews and final evaluations which gives the opportunity to reflect on the learning process

Grade – 6

11. They provide plenty of authentic material, a lot of pictures and works (in pairs, groups and individually)

Grade - 6

12. They have considered the importance of pronunciation and communication skills. They even consider the comparison of the Britannic English to the North American but they don’t teach explicitly the difference

Grade 6

13. It gives good vocabulary explanations and practice group work and individually

Grade – 6

14. Presents good grammar presentation in the whole book and practice through the book

Grade – 6

15. It is more focused in grammar than the other topics

Grade – 4

16. It’s not too diverse in the methods and its strict sequence in teaching it doesn´t invite the students to use their own learning strategies.

Grade -  4

17. It has an appropriate guidance for teachers but it’s a little confusing

Grade – 6

18. The book provides a CD as support and to exercise, it’s great as a complement of what the book presents

Grade – 7

19. it’s easy to obtain since it’s given by the state massively to the schools

Grade - 6 

Critical study of elicitation techniques

The most and least effective test techniques

Most effective: Dictation, Essay, Cloze

Least effective: matching, true/false, questions and answers

- Questions and answers: Open questions are more effective than closed-ended questions because  thought-provoking ones are more difficult but test better

- True/false: is very easy to design, to administer and mark

- Multiple choice: offers more optional answers but come out ambiguous

- Gap-filling and completion: we have to be aware because it has more than a possible right answer

- Matching: it's effective to test vocabulary

- Dictation: it's effective mainly to test spelling, listening or reading comprehension

- Cloze: it test (intensive) reading, spelling, some knowledge of vocabulary and grammar

- Transformation: it test the ability of the testee to transform grammatical structures

- Rewriting: It test knowledge of vocabulary but it's not so effective as transformation

- Translation: the testee has to change the sentence according to some given instruction

- Essay: good test of general writing abilities but difficult to mark

- Monologue: test overall knowledge of pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary

Three other ways to evaluate

1. Error Correction 
Find the mistakes in the sentence and correct them:

a. Ipswich Town was the more better team on the night
b. I went to the library to get as many information as I could

Errors must be found and corrected in a sentence or passage. It could be an extra word, mistakes with verb forms, words missed etc. One problem with this question type is that some errors can be corrected in more than one way.

-Error correction is useful for testing grammar and vocabulary as well as readings and listening.

2. Ordering words/phrases into a sequence and sentence construction 

a. (He/go/school/yesterday)

b. (she/sing/theatre/tonight)