lunes, 24 de junio de 2013

A taste of hell

It is a sublime fragrance that attracts one's, and at the same time, it smells. All of us can use it to save people or to destroy them, to bring to life or to kill their soul. It is one and only has one constant: it transforms anyone who exerts it. Supreme Authority; in other words power, is a vital force, which penetrate the arteries of those who have it; it dictate to flesh and bones as well as turn upside down its masters, completely, has carte blanch. Although, power is a vital factor proper to man life. Us cannot conceive an established society without a source of authority that orientates the people; Power itself is not unique predicament, its difficult relationship with human beings, its presence is not exclusive problem, but its provocations, to which mankind without even trying succumbs. It is necessary to set up some rules and mechanisms in order to control its outcomes, something that should be done through education and nothing else with knowledge, the idea of power will be significant; the capacity to change, and this capacity is inside every one of us.
Judas Iscariot sells down the river Jesus for coin of the realm; maybe it is the reason why a world of does the same thing in a certain point of this life. As educators, Almighty Dollar is controlling the last vestige of dignity, identity and social responsibility; students are the martyrs of those economical arrangements that we are doing with the executive sides. Somebody would ask about the way that I call this I would say human trafficking, not taking into account that detrimental it could be, we are trafficking with their grey matter. Educators are condemning us to the eternal slavery of these parties, which are giving birth to the human race without dreams, without a life project, including each and every this behind the scenes that they hint. The above-mentioned are taking possession of the last throb of the heart, even worst one's last sight. In the pedagogy of the oppressed, the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire (1970) describes the education as a narrative. The relationship between students and teachers, this person put up an argument, plays out according to a script much like that of a play. In this script, the teachers and narrators holding all the facts and the students are empty receptacles to be filled up with the facts. For Freire, the dilemma with this model is that the plot written by those with political and economic power for the purpose of perpetuating oppressive social modus Operandi. The only way to end the tyranny is to rewrite the scenario and construct a different narrative, of what it means to engaged in education[1].
Being in the tight line between the genuine and wicked confuses us when thou are a child in a school. Students take place examined with the perspective of those who neglect, what is the importance of lifeless object; numbers and letters interfere with your in classrooms, with the exception of thy self does not be familiar with their utility. All of us do not imagine the infinite greatness hidden inside them; without may concern you with too much information, learners are a delight in and luxuriate in each moment there. Might be more than a few people do not acquire too much academic knowledge, but they become well versed in how to live in a society. As educators, we cannot play hide and seek from this tangible existence. There are no other possibilities to provide color to our community; it has now. We have to chance the perception of education as soon we get away from our turmoil; we have to give to critical-thinking a room for debate, give them a possibility to think differently. Furthermore, I consider that going to school is just one of our multiple experiences as social beings has to complete and that only knowledge are schools located.
Both dignity and virtue, which have within an ace of fade away from the right side of the earth, are latent in honest men, but they succumb to the mediocrity of those who govern our communities. They will never be true leaders, but criminals. I feel remorse for all the blood we had sacrificed, aside from I bear in mind there will be a true to life, one with hope and honesty. All those who follow tyrant leaders are as despicable as those people are. Those are traitors of their societies that are why I despise them.

[1] Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the oppressed. [New York]: Herder and Herder, 1970.


viernes, 7 de junio de 2013

Speaking and Listening skills


Retrieved from: listening-ear.jpg listening-ear.jpg
As mention in the last entry, English language teachers can assess progress in language or skill acquisition and usage. There are four key language skills that the students will acquire: listening, speaking, reading and writing. The order in which these are list coincides with the class of skill acquisition and the instruction. One cannot learn how to read before learning how to speak. It is crucial when developing lesson plans always keep this sequence in mind, to allow the most natural progression in language attainment.  Language skills are grouped into the categories of receptive / productive or oral / written.  In this entry,  we will focus on listening (Receptive and oral) and speaking (Productive and oral).

Retrieved from: canterburylink.com
listening_to_music_152075.jpg
Listening is an active process in which the listeners select and interpret information (visual and auditory) and relate this information to what they already know. During the process of listening,  we are subject to the following steps: receive an aural stimulus, convert it into words, attach meaning into words, relate the message to past experiences and choose a proper response. Why is it necessary to teach listening? ‘Listening has used significantly more that any other language skill in daily life. We can expect to listen twice as much as we talk, four times as much as we understand, and five times as much as we write (Rivers, 1981). Therefore, an urgent reason for teaching listening skills is because listening is the basis for communication. 

On the other hand, speaking skills are closely related to the listening skills. In conjunction, listening and speaking can be taught as communication skills. Meaningful communication is a very challenging skill for the students as they often feel that they understand their teacher and peers but have trouble communicating outside of the classroom. Therefore, it is necessary for teachers to present to students patterns of real interactions. According to the British linguist D.A Wilkins (Rogers and Richards, 2001, 154): the communicative approach stressed for the real communication in the classroom so that the students are inspired to develop their language system, not just proving them the opportunity to practice what they already know. Students will learn the language by struggling to communicate and the teacher will help them by motivating them to work with the language. As
stated earlier, effective communication (listening and speaking) is the number one reason that most of your students take English lessons. Even though your students, especially the adult ones, understand how useful and valuable this communication is, motivation may still be a challenge for the teacher.  


Types of Listening and Speaking activities 
Listening activities and Speaking activities in the classroom. 


H.D.Brown (2007) offers a simplified list of micro-skills and macro-skills (for conversational listening). The macro-skills isolate those skills that relate to the discourse level of organization while those that remain at the sentence level continue to be called micro-skills. [1] 



Speaking
Listening
Micro skills
Refers to producing the small chunks of language (phonemes, morphemes, words, collocations, phrasal units)
Attending to the smaller bits and chunks of language, in more of bottom-up process

Macro skills
Imply the speaker’s focus on the larger elements; fluency, discourse, style, cohesion
Focusing on the larger elements involved in a top-down approach


In spite of the two models of listening and speaking are identified: the bottom-up and the top-down processing models. For example, bottom-up strategies are based on the language found in the discourse and include listening for details, recognition of related ideas, and word order patterns. The top-down strategies are based on the listener's background knowledge of the topic and include listening for the main idea, forecasting the outcomes, and summarize the discourse. 

For EFL/ESL students,  both approaches are needed when teaching listening skills. (Nunan, 1997).

In the same way,  there are particularly aspects of the spoken language that can influence the listening process and comprehension. H.D. Brown (1991) presents a comprehensive list of these factors:


What makes listening difficult?

To conclude, listening and speaking are difficult skills to master, specially for non-native speakers because of the differences between written and spoken language. As a language teacher, we aim to train to all students to become effective communicators, so active communication skills must consider incorporating other linguistic skills such as stress and intonation and morphosyntax. Instead of making use of activities that acquire repetition and memorization of sentences and grammatical patterns, activities that required learners to negotiate meaning and interact with the world listening and speaking is more that coding and decoding information. Nevertheless, since speaking and listening are so closely intertwined, we must pay attention to challenges students face when listening to authentic discourse.  Listening and speaking includes: paying attention (eye-contact), understanding (reflect what they just heard) and responding (give feedback either verbal or written).




[1] "Receptive Teaching Skills. Brown ,( n.d.) Web. 7 June 2013 <http://fabitateacher.blogspot.com/>.
[2] Preparing Listening Questions: Assessing Listening Skills. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.ingilish.com/preparing_listening_questions.htm