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!