Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Week 6: Extra Help for Speaking Skills

Read articles:
* Using Original Video and Sound Effects to Teach English ( Shahla Yassaei)
* The Employment of CALL in Teaching/Second Language Speaking Skills (Julia Gong)


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Karla Diaz

What surprised me in this article is to know that speaking activities are still in the developing stage. This means that the base of a communicative language it is not approached yet. We have been forced to produce certain utterances in English; however, we have received only written, grammar, vocabulary and listening inputs. It seems kind of illogical. Regardless of this, I believe that we know where the weaknesses are and what we can improve to be the difference as teachers. We have lesson plans, creativity, materials, and technology. Now it is time to blend all these resources into one to deliver a great class and developing at the same time speaking skills.

There are programs which aids students to create a conversation and receive feedback at the same time. Even though some authors considered that using CALL in speaking activities have more disadvantages, I consider that our students are willing to practice in front of a computer rather than in the classroom. We need to use real materials and technology makes it easier. It is possible to let students to encounter with the target language by using any software they might consider better for them.


I had not any idea that there are several activities to improve grammar and writing, such as “Freeze Framing” and “Picture-Less Listening”. I will definitely apply one of them because it is possible to combine speaking activities to it. Also, I learned that we can create our own materials and get inspiration by our environment. So there is not excuse that we cannot extra help from technology to develop our class. I encourage my classmates to break the old routine and help our students to acquire the target language. 


1 comment:

  1. Hi Karla I agree with you when yo say that as a teacher we ehave the opportunity to change the routine of the class we can make a different and interesting activies from our students. It`s time to change and be creative using the techonology and not be just with what we have or know, it is to seek to find and apply it to our students in a classroom .Remenber that as English teachers we have
    access to the enormous variety of authentic materials
    to provide students with choice, variety, authenticity, to give
    them a real purpose for example in writing, also to allow them to experience the authentic written interaction with
    other people, to motivate them additionally through using computers.

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