"Here and now" as a teacher

- What was useful, what wasn’t so useful in terms of your classroom practice?

Sincerely, at the beginning of the semester my knowledge about approaches was not the best. Nowadays, after the lectures, the activities I have designed and the texts I have read I have not only learnt about new strategies and their theoretical foundation but also I have been applying them at school and analyzing what works and what it does not and how to improve them.

I would never thought about leaving my students to speak aloud at the same time during classes. I was always concerned about what other teachers and coordinators would think about the noise. In that sense, I would like to highlight a point that I have applied during the semester which is to let my students speak aloud, despite the noise and the “mess” that they could create.

From this course, I learnt to try new things and encourage my students and myself to different activities. They are able to follow new instructions and it motivates them. At the end, I am investigating what types of activities do work out with my students and which one do not.

I do not have a negative comment.

- What things you enjoyed/didn’t enjoy about the sessions

I enjoyed reading in class all together and talking about the article/ text immediately. When we read at home there are few things which we forget, therefore it was helpful to reflect about them during classes.

At the beginning I didn´t know what the aim of the course was, so I felt a bit lost. I think what happened was because of the lack of knowledge we had before starting the semester.

- What you think would improve this module and why.

Doing the presentations is very useful, but while my classmates presented each approach it would be better to hand in something written (a summary) in order to have the main ideas of each one.

Developing our profesional competence: some relfections

What type of "New Year resolutions" do you tend to make each new school year?

At the beginning of 2011 I had many ideas and goals I wanted to reach as a teacher, but since it has been my first year working I did not know exactly what I expected. All the ideas I thought at the beginning have changed because of the Master´s program. Nowadays I have already many ideas in mind for next year. First of all, I do not want to rely too much on the Students Book, as I have done this year. I asked the English coordinator if I could apply different activities in relation with the topics and the answer was a positive “Yes!”. Secondly, I want to develop speaking and reading (I have read only two books with my girls). This year I have had more a controller role than a facilitator. I want to change that!!

Is it easy to keep them?
I think that we forget all the resolutions we have thought before, but it would be a great idea to write them down and each month take a look and evaluate whether I have been applying them or not.

What practices would you like to see your institution adopt?
I would like to feel freer in planning my classes. The school has a very structured view and the main goals are the results and in second place the process.

Why do you think this article appears in a book on methodology?

The article shows and explicits the importance of teachers´ development, which is the base of the teaching practice. A dedicated teacher has to work based on principles and skill, but also with knowledge!

Noticing

I have never heard about this “noticing” before. It is interesting to think that it is a MUST to continue investigating about ELT, because there are always new ideas and concepts which researchers are coming with.

From my experience, during the first stages of learning a L2 (German in my case), tasks were focused on making senses on form and meaning at the same time. I was in a bilingual school, therefore all the subjects were in the target language. As we had good input, we were internalizing meaning and implicitly the form. As the text mentioned, this process is called intake. We were able to produce concentrated on two objectives, giving our meaning across and be accurate.

But my experience related to English is much different. I learned English as a teenager and we had two hours per week. The teacher focused mainly on being explicit with grammar rules.

Medgyes' Communicative Teacher

According to Medgyes there are many characteristics which have to be in mind in a communicative teacher. The most important one is that he/she has to be like a SUPER-PERSON, because the teacher has to provide an adequate environment, be aware of how the are students learning and improve if there is a problem and have many personal characteristics to complete these tasks. Teachers have to focus on a learner centered teaching, have to be down to earth, far-sighted, high-tech, confident, judicious, ingenious, techically skilled, and also have to be psychologists.
They have to reduce "teacher talking time" and let students get to the knowledge, instead of giving them the knowledge.

Queries from a communicative teacher (Peter Medgyes)

The article is very interesting, it reflects whether it is possible or not to implement the Communicative Approach “in real life”. On one hand there is the theory (very clear statements and the goal teachers and students have to reach), but on the other hand the practice (issues which teachers have to face in order to build the teaching practice following Communicative Approach).

It is a relief to know that there are many teachers facing the same doubts and problems that I do. I agree that the theory sounds very engaging and it leads me to think that I want to teach in that way.

In my case, working with a text works. I am aware that it is very structured and limited, but if I weren’t working with a book I would use worksheets and at the end it´s the same… because I have to follow what the school syllabus says.

Creativity/Imagination

I liked the way he talked about creativity! In fact he talked in an engaging manner, where creativity and dynamism prevail over the speech. It is interesting to analyze how creativity affects our performance and how teachers unintentionally break down with it.
I would like to share something that caught my attention "If you are not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original."
As teachers, MA students, friends, sisters, daughters, etc we can´t loose simplicity of life. I think that there starts creativity. We don´t have to be the best, we have to give the best and leave fear behind and do something useful that impacts others!

Communicative Competence

1. BACKGROUND

1.1. GRAMMATICAL AND COMMUNICATIVE APPROACHES

- Page 2, paragraph 1: Differences between Grammatical Approach and Communicative (functional/notional) Approach.

- Page 2, paragraph 2: Explanation about Situational Syllabus

- Page 3, paragraph 1: Approach referring to principles of syllabus construction and not as classroom teaching or materials

1.2. COMPETENCE AND PERFORMANCE

- Page 3, paragraph 2: General distinction between the terms: competence and performance

- Page 3, paragraph 3: General objectives of: Theory of competence and Theory of performance

- Page 4, paragraph 1: Importance of appropriateness in the speech (mixture of competence and performance)

- Page 4, paragraph 2: Distinction between communicative competence (grammar + context) and performance

- Page 5, paragraph 1: Questioning the relation between CC (communicative competence)/ GC (grammatical competence)/ CP (communicative performance):

                a) Page 5, paragraph 2: GC is an essential component of CC

                b) Page 5, paragraph 3: Sociolinguistic competence related to communicative competence and not communicative performance

- Page 6, paragraph 1: Summary: Communicative competence = grammatical competence + sociolinguistic competence

- Page 6, paragraph 2: Determine general principles in a Communicative Competence syllabus: knowledge in real situations in order to reach authentic communication purposes.

- Page 6, paragraph 3: CC viewed as a subcomponent of a more general language competence

- Page 7, paragraph 1: Reasons for not including ability for use in CC

- Page 8, paragraph 1: Inviting to continue investigating about the topic

2. SOME THEORIES OF COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE

2.1. THEORIES OF BASIC COMMUNICATION SKILLS

- Page 8, paragraph 2: Introduction to theories of Communicative Competence

- Page 9, paragraph 1: Theories of basic communication skills: be able to get the meaning across

- Page 9, paragraph 2: Give examples of the skills involved in the theories of communication skills

- Page 9, paragraph 3: Van Ek´s model: identify factors involved in BCS

- Page 10, paragraph 2: Analysis of threshold level/minimum level of skills is necessary to communicate

- Page 10, paragraph 3: Emphasis on meaning rather than grammaticalness

- Page 11, paragraph 1: Early stages of adolescent and adult learning: give attention to grammar as well

- Page 12, paragraph 1: Young learners acquire adequate knowledge of appropriateness for the BCS thanks to their L1

- Page 12, paragraph 2: Tolerance to grammatical and sociocultural inaccuracies

- Page 12, paragraph 3: Introduction to two different data courses: grammatical competence vs. communicative competence

- Page 12, paragraph 4: Studies where it is demonstrate the relevance to teach communicative tasks rather than grammatical tasks (adding one hour of specific communicative task)

- Page 13, paragraph 1: Study showing that grammatical competence is not a good predictor of communicative skills

- Page 13, paragraph 3: General conclusion: grammatical competence does not lead to a communicative competence

- Page 13, paragraph 4: Communicative competence has to be related to syllabus and teaching, not only to tests programs or materials

- Page 14, paragraph 1: Introduction to Theories of basic communication skills summary

- Page 14, paragraph 2: Aspects of GC should be taught in the context of meaningful communication

- Page 15, paragraph 1: Combination on grammatical accuracy and on meaningful communication (according to learner needs)

- Page 15, paragraph 2: Use of communicative approach leads to acquire basic communication skills (including grammatical competence)

2.2. SOCIOLINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVES ON COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE

- Page 15, paragraph 3: CC from sociolinguistic perspectives is more theoretical

- Page 15, paragraph 4: Introduction to Theory of communicative competence and Analysis of the ethnography of speaking

- Page 15, paragraph 5: New view and component of CC

- Page 16, paragraph 1: Ethnography of speaking: factors and rules involved in the structure of speaking/communication

- Page 17, paragraph 1: Components of the speech event

- Page 17, paragraph 2: Component´s interaction and its relation with the analysis of rules and social meaning

- Page 17, paragraph 3: Sociosemantic aspects of language and language use: behavioral options, semantic options and grammatical options.

- Page 18, paragraph 1: Direction of influence between the three levels of options

- Page 18, paragraph 2: Perspective on second language learning: relation between the 3 options

- Page 19, paragraph 1: Relation between semantic options (what is meant) and social behavior options (what speakers can do)

- Page 19, paragraph 2: How interaction of social context, grammar and meaning influence a Communicative Approach

2.3 INTEGRATIVE THEORIES OF COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE

- Page 19, paragraph 3: General ideas of an integrative theory of communicative competence

- Page 20, paragraph 1: Munby´s Model of CC: sociocultural orientation + sociosemantic view of linguistic knowledge + rules of discourse

- Page 20, paragraph 2: Discourse components: Distinction between cohesion and coherence

- Page 21, paragraph 1: Discourse views from a literature analysis (factors)

- Page 21, paragraph 3: Sequence of grammatical forms to reach the sociosemantic component

- Page 22, paragraph 1: How to combine grammar and communication skills

- Page 22, paragraph 2: Aspects of grammar in communicative approaches: some are based on functions, others aren’t still organized

- Page 22, paragraph 1: Introduction to the overemphasis on communicative functions in communicative syllabus organization

- Page 23, paragraph 2: First argument: concern that language is communication

- Page 23, paragraph 3: Second argument: grammatical form follows CC

- Page 24, paragraph 1: Third argument: To concerned with language use instead of grammatical usage. Nonetheless grammatical usage has to be seen from a meaningful context.

- Page 24, paragraph 2: Invites to think about grammatical forms and communicative function related to learner´s sociolinguistic needs

2.3 GENERAL COMMENTS

- Page 25, paragraph 1: Introduce to the conclusions about theories of Communicative Competence

- Page 25, paragraph 2: First conclusion: Develop the idea of communication strategies to handle difficulties in communication

- Page 25, paragraph 3: Second conclusion: Develop the sequence of communicative functions

- Page 25, paragraph 4: Third conclusion: Develop the way of evaluating (criteria and levels of achievement)

- Page 26, paragraph 1: Explanation that the evaluation topic will be defined in deeper in the following chapter

Section 3 is missing... I will continue :)