Chapter 5. The circle of learning

 Chapter 5. The circle of learning

    When discussing the various methods of planning and executing a lesson, we're faced with the TBL planning method, which we've been covering in the English Methodologies classes lately.

    Task-Based Learning (TBL) is a method that perceives language as a tool for communicating meaning using functions, vocabulary, structures, and discourse. Its followers argue that languages are learned by practice, by using them. Accordingly, the activities that form the TBL are based on a series of problem-solving tasks unraveled by communicating. Here, the learning process is less strict than, for instance, the Structural Approach method since teachers take mistakes as an expected part of learning. Thus, learners play an active role in the classroom and learn the language, sharing ideas cooperatively by solving issues in meaningful, authentic tasks.

    As Nunan (2004) perfectly explains, "My definition is that a pedagogical task is a piece of classroom work that involves learners in comprehending, manipulating, producing, or interacting in the target language while their attention is focused on mobilizing their grammatical knowledge in order to express meaning, and in which the intention is to convey meaning rather than to manipulate form. The task should also have a sense of completeness, being able to stand alone as a communicative act in its own right with a beginning, a middle, and an end." (Nunan, 2004, p. 4) Thus, tasks are meant to be well-structured, thought to make students learn the language by using it in noteworthy and natural discussions while attending the learners' pace.

    During one of the previous lessons, the teacher asked us what we thought was a significant aspect of the TBL method. This discussion was truthfully inspiring and got me thinking about everyone's interventions.

    There is undoubtedly a variety of strategies, methods, and activities regarding how to make students learn best. While some dated theories argue that the best methods involve memory and minimizing group interactions, more recent ones defend a positive atmosphere, in which communication between the teacher and the students is indispensable for a more productive learning experience.

    No matter the method used to conduct the lesson, the teacher's primary focus must always be the students and their learning process. Thus, planning is as important as engaging them in motivating activities and giving feedback. Apart from this, teachers should also be flexible and humble enough to change their tactics. That can occur if, for example, they notice that the students aren't making progress or learning competently. It's always necessary to pay attention to them and make sure they feel motivated by the pace and activities of the class. This is why being open to feedback from learners as a teacher is undoubtedly a great way of improving planning skills and promoting an overall better class environment. As a future teacher, I will do my best to achieve that someday.

    References

• Nunan, D. (2004). Task-based Language Teaching. Cambridge University Press.

Chapter 4. The classroom pedals

Chapter 4. The classroom pedals

    One of the matters we discussed in our 5th class was the distinction between time and pace of activities, which made me think about how these should be handled in class, especially from student to student.

    So, being 'time' related to the length of each part of the class and 'pace' connected with its rhythm, during this session, we looked at some activities that can stir or settle the pace of the class. I've found this extremely useful for my future career since getting a good balance between these two kinds of dynamics in the classroom is a crucial step to thriving in reaching the students in the learning process. Therefore, we verified that by selecting lively activities, such as oral works or competitions, teachers could hold the risk of stirring the class up too much, causing inattention and behavioral issues throughout the lesson. On the other hand, maintaining solely still and slow-paced activities, like reading, writing, or reading activities, could pull the motivation away from the learners, making them associate learning with feelings of boredom instead of fun or curiosity. "A lesson that is conducted at the same pace throughout can risk students switching off and losing focus. Rushing through stages of the lesson can also lose learners and mean that you have to teach remedially later on because they missed key points" (joannemilesconsulting, 2013). Thus, it's essential to maintain harmony in the class by being aware of which tasks stir up the class and what will settle them afterward.

    According to a relevant online source, "When you consider the flow of stages in your lesson, it’s worth asking yourself these questions. They can also be used by coaches who are working with staff to reflect on lesson plans or an observed lesson:

• How does pace vary in this lesson?
• Do I have a lot of static, sit down activities that may drain learners? How can I break them up with relevant activities that have more pace changes and movement?
• Where might I need to increase pace and energy and how could I do that in an appropriate way for learning?
• Is there a complex, challenging stage that would benefit from a slower, more reflective style of delivery?
• How can I use roles within group work to keep up a good pace and help learners stay on track?" (joannemilesconsulting, 2013)
  

    As a future teacher, I expect to have these questions in mind to effectively organize the lesson plans considering the disposition and attitude of the learners.

    Another view I took from this topic is the significance of working with the personal paces of each pupil. We need to understand that everyone has their own speed at everything. Some people are slower than others, and that goes for learning a language as well. Thus, teachers must be patient and encourage students to help their classmates instead of judging their personal rhythm. The same should occur with quick-learners. In these cases where students apprehend contents fast and finish activities much earlier than the rest of the class, the teachers must be prepared with, for instance, extra tasks to stimulate them. Another tactic could be to motivate them to help the remaining classmates with their work. Efforts like these will create a more positive atmosphere for everyone in the classroom, and I hope to achieve that with my future students.

    References

• joannemilesconsulting. (2013, January 2). Managing pace in lessons: some reflections and suggestions. Joannemilesconsulting.
  https://joannemilesconsulting.wordpress.com/2013/01/02/managing-pace-in-lessons-some-reflections-and-suggestions-2/

Chapter 3. Voicing out words

 Chapter 3. Voicing out words

  Concerning our 4th session, one of the topics we focused on was the amount of usage of the English language in the classroom – and, potentially, outside of it. How many speaking opportunities should the students have? In what way is speaking important?

   Learning other languages is clearly fundamental, especially in a multicultural and global world like the one we live in today. Knowing beyond the mother tongue can be indispensable for all kinds of situations, whether it involves traveling, applying for jobs, reading from various sources online, or successfully helping a lost tourist on the street. Therefore, communicating – in this case, in more than one language – is undoubtedly one of the most essential keys to achieving success in life. As mentioned by Richards and Rodgers (1986), "It has been estimated that some sixty percent of today's world population is multilingual. Both from a contemporary and a historical perspective, bilingualism or multilingualism is the norm rather than the exception" (Richards & Rodgers, 1986, p. 1).

As such, we see that, for instance, some of the most common tactics in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries involved activities that didn't stimulate students' cooperation and interaction. "Textbooks consisted of statements of abstract grammar rules, lists of vocabulary, and sentences for translation. Speaking the foreign language was not the goal, and oral practice was limited to students reading aloud the sentences they had translated. These sentences were constructed to illustrate the grammatical system of the language and consequently bore no relation to the language of real communication" (Richards & Rodgers, 1986, p. 2). Thus, is learning by memorizing really preparing oneself for engaging in a natural conversation and attaining a high level of proficiency in a language?

    Evidently, times have changed, and so have language teaching approaches. In contrast to previous ones, nowadays' methods revolve significantly more around interacting with speeches in the studied foreign language, articulating the grammatical part of the process with inviting practices involving reflective discussions, debates, and activities about current topics for the whole group to participate in.

   Regarding this, throughout this English Methodologies session, we observed that learners are usually very prone to engaging and interacting with one another by speaking. This aspect is what most teachers perceive as an interruption to the class. Thus, they shut them off and opt for methods that don't involve talking as much throughout the learning process. They believe that, by being quiet and attentive and solving closed-ended tasks alone, such as writing, they're learning more while not disrupting the silence in the classroom. While that may be true to some extent, in the way that silence offers focus, it doesn't necessarily mean that students will have a more effective outcome in their English skills. In other words, students might develop their writing and comprehensive proficiency to a high level by learning this way. However, if they don't practice speaking and interacting in real-life conversations, they will likely never reach the intended level of fluency in the language. Besides this, teachers often tend to talk too much and leave too little for the students to answer or come up with. (Walqui, 2018) Thus, a great way of significantly improving this while prompting learners to practice their speaking proficiency would be to leave plenty of room for thought and reflections from the students themselves. This way, the classroom would become a much more reflective and thought-provoking space in which critical thinking – one of the prominent skills in Perfil dos Alunos à Saída da Escolaridade Obrigatória (2017) – would be certainly and positively developed among the class.

    In my personal experience, as a young English learner, I rarely found myself in a position in which I had to dialogue with my classmates or focus on perfecting my pronunciation and ability to articulate sentences more naturally. Consequently, I remember that when I got to 7th grade in a different school, I felt a significant difference between me and my new classmates in terms of fluency and ease in coming up with ideas and opinions of our own and expressing them in English – despite me being a good learner. Therefore, I felt like I had to put in a great effort to become more advanced, which, thankfully, I was able to accomplish. Still, making up the habit of carrying on conversations in English was much more challenging than if, for example, my old teachers had incited this habit from the beginning in the first place. This background tells me that speaking is as important as writing or listening to the English language.

    So, as we saw in this session, I hope to become a teacher who can make students learn by writing and listening but never forgetting about the speaking part of the whole process. I expect to put them at ease with speaking with their classmates and making them comfortable with practicing so that they can make and correct their mistakes that way. I believe that by working like this, we'd create a much more productive environment toward fluency in English and, eventually, invite the learners to take the language usage outside of the class into the real world, communicating in various dynamics with no boundaries.

    References

• Richards, J. C., & Rodgers, T. S. (1986). Approaches and methods in language teaching. Cambridge University Press.

• Walqui, A. Meaningful Classroom Talk. (2018, September 26). American Federation of Teachers. https://www.aft.org/ae/fall2018/walqui_heritage

• Perfil dos Alunos à Saída da Escolaridade Obrigatória. (2017).

Chapter 2. Somewhere over the sunbow

Chapter 2. Somewhere over the sunbow

    Following up on the previous post - and also our following couple classes of this Curriculum Unit - I'd like to reflect upon the theme of 'intercultural dimension,' which we explored in class by reading the view of Michael Byram on his guide to teachers. This lesson taught me much about how I want to be as a teacher.

    It's certainly undoubtful that our world sustains numerous, incredibly diverse cultures, which raise and shape multiple peoples differently all over the globe. Moreover, nowadays, with the commonality, accessibility, and easiness of migrations from one country to another (or one region to another, within the same country), the idea that each culture lives and grows separately is gone. Numerous cultures have now been mixed up and embraced by others, and so many of them have ceased to exist. Traditions are no longer exclusive rituals of one specific people, as they have been globalized and introduced to others, who have taken them and made them into their own culture's tradition.

    As Byram (2002) states, “In contrast, the 'intercultural dimension' in language teaching aims to develop learners as intercultural speakers or mediators who are able to engage with complexity and multiple identities and to avoid the stereotyping which accompanies perceiving someone through a single identity. It is based on perceiving the interlocutor as an individual whose qualities are to be discovered, rather than as a representative of an externally ascribed identity. Intercultural communication is communication on the basis of respect for individuals and equality of human rights as the democratic basis for social interaction.” (Byram, 2002, p. 9) I fully agree with his ideas, especially since stereotypes are often so embedded in society and the school environment that it is necessary to block these generalized visions of the world, in order to avoid any feelings of isolation and embarassment related to ignorance towards diversity.

    Therefore, as teachers, we must be prepared to look beyond the scenery, face this reality, and familiarize our students with the concepts of 'intercultural dimension' and 'cultural identity,' making them aware of the differences and stereotypes that come with them, and teaching them how to be interested in cultural diversity and respect it simultaneously. That is what I'm hoping to achieve.

    References

Byram, M., Gribkova, B., & Starkey, H. (2002). Developing the Intercultural Dimension in Language Teaching: A Practical Introduction for Teachers, p. 9.

Chapter 1. Blurry days

 Chapter 1. Blurry days

  Today, my post will focus on the first Zoom session of the English Methodologies class.

  Among other topics we discussed in this lesson, this picture stood out to me the most. In a way, it opened my eyes to the perspective teachers get when going for the first time into the classroom environment.

    As the start of a new school year approaches, teachers must face that one of their responsibilities as mentors is to understand the uniqueness and respective potential of each member of their new crowd of students instead of making the mistake of blending all of them into one blurred, homogenous group and not listening to their individual voices. Thus, by encouraging the acceptance and embracement of diversity and inclusion, each learner should feel comfortable with one another and the learning process, regardless of gender, race, cultural background, sexuality, or social class.

    This case can happen with the creation of a safe and positive atmosphere, promoting, this way, a dynamic and cheerful environment where good communication and respect are the keys to a much more productive and fulfilling learning experience for students. Therefore, we shouldn't hide their different colors; instead, they should be allowed to be shown and shine.

     New beginnings can be challenging, particularly for young kids whose entire reality depends on how people see them in that relatively small space, where they so quickly get either judged and excluded or embraced and loved.

   Can you imagine how many things students are going through that they don't tell their parents or teachers?

  This is why I believe it to be so crucial to make learners aware of diversity. Educators should teach that respecting differences, instead of judging them, is a healthy and positive attitude, not only between classmates but with humanity in general. As mentioned in the Portuguese document Decreto-Lei n.ºs 55 e 54/2018, relating to "Educação Inclusiva" it is crucial to acknowledge each student's individualities and correctly respond to them, by articulating and adapting the curriculum and activities to them, resulting in inclusive learning and interactions between students.

  One of the goals of schooling is to prepare kids for their future as adults, and that doesn't only refer to knowledge but also human relationships. Therefore, teachers should contribute towards a safe and bright future, where differences are not enclosed walls but tiles to an extended, beautiful multicolored mosaic.

    References

• Decreto-Lei n.º 54/2018. Diário Da República, 1.a Série - N.º 129, 2918–2928.
• Decreto-Lei n.º 55/2018, de 6 de julho.