Monica Ortega

I am sure that every teacher remembers his/ her first year of teaching,  during this time every experience represents new knowledge, challenges and opportunities to improve. Young teacher, during their first year, are characterized to be aware of every decision they take in the classroom, they  question their own practice and ask more experienced teachers for advice. When a teacher starts his/ her career is not afraid of been observed or receive feedback. As years go by, teacher's confidence increase because he/ she develops a teaching style with which he/she feels comfortable with. Therefore teacher starts to believe that his/ her way of teaching is the most appropriate and rarely is eager to make changes. If we think about it, this situation is inconsistent since the more we are involved in teaching, the more  we would be able to adapt and change. However it seems that experience only keeps the teacher in his/ her comfort zone. I consider that one way of improving thi...

Who is in charge of error correction or evaluation? The answer is obvious, THE TEACHER IS THE RESPONSIBLE, I mean it is his job and that is why he is paid for. Do you agree with the previous idea? To tell the truth I used to think that way and I am pretty sure most people do, however Christina's today class made me think about this topic.  Current perspectives in language teaching, and teaching in general, highlight the idea of student-centered learning which means that the student must be involved in his learning process. This means that students must actively participate in all stages of learning and this includes error correction. The idea of students correcting or evaluating  may sound strange but I think it is definitely worthwhile.  To be more specific in Christina's class we talked about error correction in written language using checklists and editing symbols. From my point of view I find checklist useful to teach students how to self or peer evaluate differ...

One of my current concerns about language learning is the extent to my students produce oral language at the end of the school year. At the more basic level I have my students repeat a set of expressions (drills) so they, in a way, master the pronunciation and are confident to participate in controlled speaking activities. I also have my students to use written language as a support to speak in English. However I know that this type of activities just address a small area of speaking skills and are not student-centered. In the last two days, in Matthew's class we talked about speaking macro and micro skills, types of classroom speaking performance and its principles. I had the opportunity to observe several learner-centered activities to develop speaking skills, what I noticed is that most of these activities were aligned with the communicative method. An activity that caught my attention was the one when we were asked to make an appointment with different profesionalist (jobs). ...

Listening is one of the skills, in my context, that are most difficult to develop. Students say not to understand anything when authentic or adapted materials are used in the classroom. They get frustrated and develop a negative perspective toward listening activities. However the problem may not be in students' listening speaking but in the king of strategy that the teacher is using. Either a selective, reactive, intensive, responsive, extensive or interactive the task has to include characteristics that engage the student. With this in mind, I want to talk about an activity we did in Mathew's class. This activity did not have a name but I would call it "the cooler". I would call it that way because in this activity the teacher tells a story or gives commands, while the students walk around the classroom. The teacher, then, says the word "freeze" at anytime of the story for the students to stay in the position they are at the moment. I consider that the m...

Colors, after Gavin's class I can't help thinking on gold color, which is mine. It is one of the personality test that I have taken that has been really accurate according to who I am. It really surprised me to read the characteristics and find that it was a description of myself. It also helped me to realize that I need to be more of the other colors. I thought about my classes and my students and I do not if they really enjoy having a gold teacher. What characteristics of a gold teacher should I change? Do I enjoy being  gold teacher? These are the main questions that come to my mind, I do not have the answer yet but I think I will spent several days to find the answer. I would like to apply this test to my colleagues and my students. With my colleagues it will help them to identify their strength and weaknesses. I would suggest them to set a goal to change a characteristic of their color that represents a weakness. With my students it would help me to make teams that has s...

I know I am writing this entry on Sunday but I want to talk about the Backward Design Model we saw on Thursday on Matthew's class. I have heard something similar when I was in the college, I didn't know the name. I did not pay a lot of attention to the idea, I juts thought that it was a crazy idea of my teacher.I tried few times to do my planning in this way and I quit because it entailed two things: I had to work harder and I had to change my way of thinking. I consider the last one is the most difficult. I was used to make my planning in one way and I was not willing to change it. When I heard the idea of the Model in Matthew's class I realized it males sense because you are focused on you goal and this avoids that you wander around when you design the activities, ways of assessment and choose the materials. Up to know I am aware of the effectiveness of the Model, how ever I am not able to apply it yet.