A comment about Didactics

The trade of education is something great, and the satisfaction of being a teacher I consider is amazing. However, becoming a good teacher requires constant practice and an appropriate guidance.

I felt unconfident to accept a job because someone told me that it was crucial that I took Didactics, which made me muse such as case. I don’t know the teachers goals toward us as student, and I wouldn’t like to be misunderstood, so I just want to provide my point of view about the presentations.

I really need a guidance to carry out an activity in the classroom if I will be evaluated as a teacher who must deal with students, materials and time, because I have never done it before, whereas other students may have experience at teaching. Yet, they also need it. I personally commented this to the teacher, and it worries me because my grades have been low. I understand that there are aspects that the teacher can’t change, for example our personality or style while teaching, but there must be basic tips that we must know, and then, after a bit of theory, we will be quite ready to perform upon them as beginners.

class activities

The last activities my classmates presented.

All of my classmates who acted as teachers last class, did it well, despite this was the first activity they carry out as teachers. They were very precise since they went to the point, even when the activities seemed quite simple but adequate. Enrique led his activities appropriately to a lower level, and that’s how children would learn in an active way. Through repetition is haw knowledge get to stick in our brain, so children and even adult, need of this so that they can acquire new information and the right way to pronounce, in the case of learning a language.

Luis did it very well, his expertise which he speaks English, helps him to have a nice and entertaining development of his class. That kind of funny material helps to keep students attention. I have seen Luis performance many times and I think he is a good teacher; he says right things.

Xavier did it great and was very precise; he used the time properly. His activities were very entertaining and meaningful. He knew how to adequate his activities according the characteristics of Content Based Approach, as everyone has done it.

HELLO PEOPLE!
We have already developed three more activities that belong to three different methods.
I was the first one, and as my method dwells on the usage of reading texts to work on the remaining skills, I chose that activities, which I noticed that were not as amusing as the other ones. As my method involves reading activities as a base to develop the rest of skills, the activities I presented were aimed for higher levels.

Rosa Elida is very talented when developing her activities, and as her method requires, she brought very dynamic activities to the classroom. Beginners or children would learn properly in that way because children love moving their bodies, and teachers must take advantage of that, in order to teach new contents or knowledge. I know two little children who like to sing and dance, and they have learned the month days through songs as they dance, so I say those activities would do the trick with children.

Ana and Lily were very creative because they brought colorful pictures to make the class motivating. As Rose, Ana presented an activity to teach in low levels, and showing pictures of what we want them to learn is a very effective way to teach content to children because they need to see things to hold the attention. Lily developed a nice activity, which is roll play, in which students improve the speaking skills. I pretty like those activities because are very funny.

Hello people!
I would like to comment about the first three activities that my classmates, Guadalupe, Claudia, Alexander and Vanessa presented. I liked them all; they were very creative when developing the activities.
Lupita is a very talented girl; she did it very nice. She managed well with the debated topic. We all like to talk about any topic when we are working in groups since we get to know how our classmates think, and also because just practice our speaking abilities.
Claudia’s activities aimed beginners, and I consider that her activities are effectives for learning a foreign language because that procedure keeps students attention, and it is a very meaningful way to teach low level students.
Alex presented activities that help students to know grammatical structures, which is important so that they can set the basis of the target language. From there forth, the learning process will rest on the basis they have acquired.
Jimenez developed very creative and dynamic activities with us. She tried to emphasize on our skills of memorizing, which is crucial when someone has to learn a language. She told me that I am good at guessing things because I guessed the letter she was going to work with, but in fact, I already knew it; then what I exercised was my memory because she told me that, three days ago.
Particularly, I consider that all of them have been cut for being teachers.

HI PEOPLE, WHAT IS GOING ON?
I would like to comment a little bit about the last methods that three of my classmates presented.
THE CONTENT BASED INSTRUCTION is one of the approaches they presented, which has very wonderful characteristics, and I consider as a very integral way to teach students to acquire a foreign language.
This approach focus stands on teaching a foreign language by teaching contents detached from the mere purpose of learning a new language. Somehow this fact leads the students through a multi-disciplinary learning; however it would result in a lack of care to the primary objective of learning a new language.
In this approach, students develop each skill as it is needed for learning a foreign language.
We all know how important motivations is so that the learning process can be effective, so this approach seems to take into account this important aspect because it regards about the kind of content the students are going to deal with. It also matters about the needs of each student, so that the students learning can be even.
As the theory mentions, all the skills are rehearsed in this method, and that makes it essential, but students could find some loopholes in here because as the activities are not just focused on learning a language, the students might disregard the main objective of the approach.

COMMUNITY LEARNIG LANGUAGE particularly floors me, due to the dynamism in which English seems to be taught. I have analyzed such as method, and I consider I would learn easily when applied this method because I have discovered that I learn comfortably in a communicative environment. I remember the way I learned vocabulary in Basic English was similar to the active way this method describes.
I remember when I asked my classmates for explanation of unknown words, and what I won’t forget how Luis (the one who jokes with teacher Aida) used to answer my doubts in a gentle way, so I thank him.
This method seems very democratic; by the way, we have talked just about democratic methods, which I think is essential at learning because students need a very comfortable environment to learn properly. As students can choose the topics to discus in the talking activities, everyone will show interest to speak as a community.
There are important characteristics this method has; the teacher is able to translate, and this is also important when studying in low levels.
If students are permitted to think about what issue they will talk when having talking activities, they might lose time while choosing the topic, or they might not find an appropriate one.

NATURAL APPROACH

Hi people!
You have already noticed that there are methods that share certain characteristics, and I have found three of them that are similar. The natural approach, the audio lingual method and the situational language teaching are the ones that share the principle that language is learned for communicative purposes. The words natural approach leads me to think about the natural way in which we all have learned a language (Spanish). We learn from our parents, friends and different people, without noticing it. The natural approach concerns about rehearsing listening skills which is fundamental because we learn by listening, we need to develop it so that we can communicate with the others.

One of the points I consider is a disadvantage is that the students are not forced to speak English from the beginning; however, I consider that it must be the contrary because students should get involved with the language since the very beginning.

THE SITUATIONAL LANGUAGE TEACHING

Hello friends, how is it going?
The situational language teaching has similarities with previous seen methods such as the audio lingual method; these methods hold that the learning is a habit formation; that is to say, that students will learn and will develop their abilities through the process. I consider this is an effective theory that would do the trick on beginners or scholar systems because when teaching an academic learning, students must be taught the integral knowledge by rehearsing their skills and not by waiting they learn the target language through a habit that might be belated or the student doesn’t acquire as it is expected.

It says students should avoid mistakes, which is important and drags students into an investigative learning in order to avoid errors. This approach makes emphasis on speaking abilities which is similar to audio lingual method, so it concerns about students who speak skillfully.