User:Alejandra

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Alejandra R.

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group paragraph

Lesson planning is an essential process that requires a lot of aspects to take into consideration. First of all the students profile is required to decide what content the educators are going to teach. This will allow them to clarify the objective which will lead to the selection of the activities. After the previous steps it is important to consider the time and the material for each activity. All the tasks should be based on the different stages, which are: warm-up, presentation, practice, and application

Action Plan
English language learning students have various problems when speaking in a social context. The occurrence of this problem is more frequent when dealing with beginners. This quandary is important because speaking is a very essential skill in any language. Without this skill students or language learners are unable to communicate with others, which defies the purpose of language learning.

3 paragraph essay
How much emphasis does teaching speaking in an English language classroom have? There are different approaches to teaching a language; some argue that teaching grammar is most important while others say that communication is the key. Hatch (1978) says, “Language learning is believed to take place through conversation “, thus validating the communicative approach. It is essential to consider how speaking might be approached and what strategies could be portrayed. Teaching speaking may be more effective when applying extracurricular activities such as internet-based exchange and conversation clubs.

Teaching English is more effective through emphasizing speaking skills because when students learn to speak they must already know grammar structures and word order. On the other hand if they only memorize grammatical structures it becomes more difficult to apply them in actual discourse, “Among the four language skills, speaking is increasingly important in second/foreign language settings” Shen and Suwanthep (2011). One way of stressing this skill could be by reinforcing activities such as conversation clubs and internet based conversations. As mentioned by Muge (2008) “Communicative approach values time spent on learner talk and supports the use of a variety of functions of language”. Giving verbal communication more magnitude would allow the learners to practice speaking and at the same time the students would apply grammar by structuralizing the words equivalent to the ideas they want to express.

In many occasions speaking is given little to no importance in the English language classroom, when in reality its importance is very significant. The speaking skill could not really be taught focusing on it only one hour per week, instead it should be reinforced through activities such as dialogues, discussions, debates, conversation clubs, and online chatting. Something very important that we should take into consideration is that speaking allows students to practice more than just speaking.

References Satar, H (2008) Computer-Mediated Communication in Foreign Language Education: Use of Target Language and User Perceptions. Online Submissions, Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education, 9(9). Retrieved from http://www.eric.ed.gov

Shen, L. and Suwanthep, J. (2011) Professional Teaching Articles : E-learning constructive Role Plays for EFL learners in China’s Tertiary Education. Asian EFL Journal 49. Retrieved from http://www.eric.ed.gov

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 * Alejandra, you gave me the following research questions today: (a) What strategies can I use to implement speaking activities? and (b) How can I implement more speaking activities? I have a few suggestions to consider before rewording your research question.
 * (a) Think of possible answers to your research questions and determine if this is really what you want to know. For example, do you really only want to know which strategies to implement?  Or do you want to know why one or two particular strategies do or do not work.  Or do you want to how a particular strategy motivates students to have more confidence to speak in class.  Think about a possible answer to the question and formulate the appropriate question.
 * (b) Instead of asking how can I implement an activities (too general), ask How can blogs or wikis or some other ICT promote confidence in ELLs to speak more in class? How can cultural topics promote confidence..., How can different types of student interaction promote confidence..., How can task-based learning promote confidence..., How can less teacher-talk time promote confidence...,etc.  Do you see what I mean?