The article by Joanne Pettis is so true!
Every december (once the students leave the school) and on March (once the students come back) I find myself making new resolutions for this year. It is sort of a self-evaluation moment where I assess what I can improve for next year.

I am quite structured as a person, so it is not like I leave everything for the last day. Therefore, I never have as a resolution not to leave everything till the last moment.

A resolution I make every year is that I am not going to be too flexible with due dates. It has happened to me that I feel sorry for some students, so I give them more time to hand in things. The problem is that I actually give them more time, but in the end everything is a mess as I am running after some students for them to give their projects.

Another resolution I always make is that my classes are not going to be so grammar-oriented, and that my classes will be more student-centered.

Of course it is hard to keep these resolutions because you have to be constantly monitoring yourself. I have improved in keeping the resolution of projects due date. My students know that if they do not hand in something, they will be penalized. Of course, I am flexible with the students that have NEE or if they had a problem with the printer, for example.

The resolution of my classes to be less grammar-oriented is a little more difficult to keep for mainly two reasons. I love grammar myself (I love sentence structure, conditionals, etc), and the school also gives importance to grammar. But I think this year grammar had a more meaningful and explicit purpose than past years.

I believe this article was included in a book of methodology because making resolutions is part of our essence as people. Everybody self-evaluates him/herself after a specific situation, change or process in terms of elements to improve. I consider "resolutions" to be very healthy as they give us a clue on the elements we give more importance to. At the same time, most of our resolutinos will be related to methodology in the sense that we want to change something for our students to learn better.

And by the way, I don´t feel identified with the comic strip at all!!!

Noticing

1. Do adults and children learn an L2 in the same why?
Certainly not. when adults learn an L2, they already know an L1; therefore, they can apply some of the knowledge about the L1 into the L2. For example, they know that there is a formal an informal language, that there are some cues you use to start a conversation or to end a conversation, etc.

2. Can we teach a language or can we learn a language?
Well, I think this question is rooted in Krashen´s belief of learning. I think that a person can acquire an L1, but can learn an L2. the idea would be to acquire an L2 as well, yet the problem is that most of the times the L2 is learned in a non-native environment; consequently, people are not "immersed" in the culture of the language.

3. How is your language to be learned sequenced in your current teaching context or place of work?
English is taught in terms of unit of meaning. I mean, students are taught a unit of reading with focus on some literary elements. After that, grammar is worked explicitly (conditionals, for example), but always linked to the unit of reading. In this sense, the examples given are from the text the students have read. With the little ones, teachers teach them "My body", "My family", etc.

4. What, if anything, can we learn from looking at past methodologies?
I think we can learn a lot from past methodologies. First, we can know what "not to do" in specific contexts. But also, I think we can learn there were multiple methods that fitted specific contexts. In the end, we can see nowadays that there is not such a thing as the "pure" method. Every method has been influenced by other methods which create a kind of "hybrid".

How to be communicative teacher

Medgyes satirizes about the lack of difficulty to apply a Communicative Approach in the classroom. He claims that teachers must be "super heroes" as they must fullfil an indefinite amount of roles in order for the students to feel comfortable, not anxious and motivated enough in order to learn and acquire a language. Some of these roles are: erudite, versatile, instruments, inquiring, down-to-earth, multidimensional, far-sighted, high-tech, confident, judicious, ingenious, technically-skilled, psychologists, controller, assessor, organizer, prompter, participant and resource.

So, it is not an easy task to be a communicative teacher....according to Medgyes there is a dichotomy, a paradox between what is really taught and how teachers really are with the fact that this is not helping teachers to become communicative teachers, and worse for students to become communicative learners.
" By putting an especially heavy linguistic strain on the teacher, the communicative Approach further reduces the time non-native teachers have available for their students" (p.112)

Queries from a Communicative Teacher (P. Medgyes)

What an interesting article!! All the theorists that "build up" the Communicative Approach must read it!!
I completely agree with the author in all the aspects he mentions. Of course it is easy to theorize about something if you are not in the classroom and you are not dealing with the current affairs or struggling with the numerouseos situations teachers struggle with everyday. I believe that if you do a survey, all -or most- of the teachers will answe rthat they have as an ultimate goal to be Communicative teachers. But, concretely, I can assure that only a few actually teach following a Communicative Methodology. This is, in my consideration, the eternal dichotomy between theory and practice.
As the author mentions, being a Communicative teacher requires to have "super- powers"; they must focus in a plethora of aspects, and also with their own defficiency as a non-native language teacher.
The Communicative Approach is the one every teacher and school aspires to. Currently, if you how to communicate menas you "know" a language. Now, does somebody dare to mention the "drawbacks" or struggling situations teachers will go through with this Approach? Well, Peter Medgyes did.

Teaching creativity in our classrooms

I think the video we have just watched is really enlighting for us teachers as it explicitly says how the methodology we are currently using in education is completely vanishing creativity in our children.   

I consider Shakespeare´s example (mentioned in the video) really interesting: How annoying would be to have Shakespeare in your English class? Of course, we want our students to stick to our way of thinking, adn not only that, we teach them that is the correct -and only- way of thinking, so we are harming them as we are not encouraging them to produce something original. The lecturer said "if you are not prepared to be wrong, you´ll never come up with something original". 

Now the question is, how can we motivate, encourage and foster creativity in our classrooms? To what extent is what we consider creative, creative to our students?

Theoretical bases of Communicative Approaches to Second Language Teaching and Testing

Theoretical bases of Communicative Approaches to Second Language Teaching and Testing

Canale & Swain

1. Background (p.2)

1.1 Difference in the syllabus depending on a Grammatical or a Communicative Approach / Situational Syllabus

1.2 Difference in concept between Communicative Competence and Performance (p.3). Definitions by Chomsky (1965) and Campbell and Wales (1970)

2. Some theories of Communicative Competence (p.8)

2.1 Basic Communication Skills Theory (“emphasizes the minimum level of communication skills needed to get along in language situations”) / Disadvantages and drawbacks of this theory (p.10) / Specifications or Principles of this theory  / Conclusion: grammatical competence is not a good predictor of communicative competence.

2.2 Sociolinguistic perspectives on communicative competence (p.15)

      Relation between language and social context

Theories of Hymes (1972), (p.15) and Halliday (1973), (p.17)

2.3 Integrative Theories (p.19)

      Munby´s Model: sociocultural orientation, sociosemantic view of linguistic knowledge and rules     of discourse (p.20)

     Drawbacks of Integrative Theories (p.22)

2.4 Comments of the proposed theories (p.25)

3. Toward an adequate theory of Communicative Competence (p.27)

3.1 Principles that guide a Communicative Competence Approach: it must address the learner´s needs, learner must be involved in producing interaction, provide learner with learning situations, etc.

3.2 Competences required to reach a communicative competence: grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence and strategic competence. (p.28) / Definition of Communication (p.29)

3.3 Teaching with a Communicative Competence Approach (p.31): focus on Syllabus design, focus on teaching Methodology (p.33), Role of the teacher

3.4 Assessment in Communicative Competence and Communicative Performance (p.34)

4. Further Investigation

Teaching by Principles- Brown

5) Classes operate more successfully by encouraging intrinsic motivation.
I think teenagers (which is the age I teach) feel that knowing English is going to be useful for their future. They are learning because they know that knowing a second language is an important tool. I think that when they are intrinsically motivated they have a better attitude towards learning the language. As a teacher we should motivate our students to feel interested on the knew knowledge they will acquire.

6) With new language learners, teachers need to be gentle and empathetic.
I consider the teacher´s personality a key factor when being in contact with students. In my experience, last year I had an awful experience becuase I didn´t know how to set a limit between them and me. Being gentle and empathetic doesn´t mean that you don´t have to be demanding or strict. Teenagers know that there ´re certain teachers that are more relaxed or less demanding, and they know they can do whatever they want with them. A good teacher, in my opinion, is the one that is gentle, nice, patient, but also that teaches respect and makes students give their best.

8) The language classroom should have plenty of meaningful learning.
Meaningful learning is the one that is going to last for life. If they give a meaning to language, or what students learn makes sense, that information will stay forever with them, and they will know how to apply it in daily experiences.

13) A communicative class should give special attention to fluency / accuracy.
I think this is the neverending debate. My classes are more focused on fluency. I don´t overcorrect studetns when they are talking as that can be tedious and even humiliating for them. But when they are answering a grammar test, of course I focus on accuracy as that what is being evaluated. Sometimes students don´t focus on grammar skills, so their message is affected.

Summary of Different Approaches

The Audiolingual Method (1940s) consisted in repeating drills in the target language, with almost none grammatical explanation. The idea was that the language was not explained, only taught. Teachers had to communicate in the target language making special emphasis in pronunciation.

In the 70s other methods appeared. For example, the Community Language Learning (CLL) said that the class should be treated as a group; therefore, students and teacher interact with one another in order to facilitate the learning process. The teacher´s presence is essential as he/she is the one in charge of building a relationship amongst the students, their needs, etc. The students will say an utterance in his/her native language, and the teacher must translate it into the target language. The group will always be supported by the counselor (teacher) who will help them to cope with frustration or anxiety.

In the late 70s, Suggestopedia appeared. It postulated that if you are in a relaxed and open position, the brain will receive much information. For this, relaxation is essential; therefore, music plays a central role. The teacher has all the authority as he is the one that provides all the input by reading different passages, and students merely repeat and try to memorize.

The Silent way is another method used to teach a second language. Students were shown different rods in order for them to learn colors, numbers, sizes, etc. The teacher is silent and only shows the students the rods.

Total Physical Response (TPR) was developed in 1977. The premise for this method is that children spend two years without pronouncing a word, and then they start speaking. At the same time, on their first years, children only respond to stimuli in a physical way. So, the idea is that the teacher mentions a command, and students have to act it. The problem with this method is that it seems to be effective only in a beginner’s level.

The Natural Approach was postulated by Stephen Krashen in the mid 80s. The essential element of this approach is the “comprehensible input” provided by the teacher. The goal is that students are able to communicate in everyday situations.

These methods use different methodologies in order to reach the desired goal that is the command of a second Language. As the author of the text says “your responsibility as a teacher is to choose the best of what others have experimented with and adapt those insights to your own situation” (p.66)

Psychological Approach: Audiolingualism and Cognitive Code

The Psychological Approaches are called this way because they start from psychological learning theories. In this post I will focus on two methods: Audiolingualism and Cognitive Code Method.

Audiolingualism appeared in 1940 -1950 as a response to more traditional teaching methods. It has been associated with Behaviorism (Skinner) in the sense that in both the consequences of the stimuli are more important than the stimuli itself. Now, in the classroom Audiolingualism was carried out by focusing on certain principles, amongst others:
1) Writing is not as important as Speech.
2) Language is composed by habits and routines.
3) The emphasis is given on the language itself, not in the knowledge about the language.

These priniciples follow the idea of L1 language acquisition. For this, we want to teach L2, we have to follow the same steps that the acquisition of L1 follow. This means, that repetition of the target language is essential in the classroom, and that the input should always be delivered in the target language.

Audiolingualism was critisized because some aspects of the language are not  the result of mere repetition.

The Cognitive-Code Learning was proposed by Chomsky, and it views the "the learning process as two-way process between the organism and its environment." (Nunan, 2009). The learner is not passive; on the contrary, he is able to interact with the environment. An exmaple of this is that he is given a limited set of rules, and the learner can use his creativity to create an infinite number of sentences. The learner is motivated to discover the rule underlying a structure and to reflect on the knowledge about the language.
It is important to point out that prior knowledge is essential when learning something new as the former must be linked with the latter.

Learning a language is like doing sports: the more you practise, the better you are in that sport. When dealing with a second language, the only way of learning it (or in case you have acquired it, to keep it) is by practising it. 
For the same reason, I consider that my strongest skill is listening. I think I can listen quite well to the news or a movie. It takes some time to get used to the language, context, etc, but after a couple of minutes, I can understand what others are saying. Now, I don´t have a native-like listening skill. I mean, I still have to concentrate to get what people are saying. 
On the other hand,  I speak in English with my students everyday. The problem is that as I don´t have contact with native speakers, I don´t have the chance to improve my vocabulary or pronunciation. I could improve my speaking a lot more, and unfortunately I think that our speaking ability is the first skill that people focus on to get how well you know a language.


I would say that my weakest skill is writing. It is the one I practise the least, and I think it is also the one you have less strategies that can compensate your lack of production. Besides, I don´t  get to write that much. The only kind of writing I do are instructions to tasks or tests. 


As I mentioned before, I think the only way of improving this weak skill is by practising, by writing more, by using compensatory strategies that can help me overcome it. 

My learning experience

I was lucky because my mother is also an English teacher. Also, when I was a child I went to an English school till 3rd grade. When I got into 4rd grade in another school, the English was not that good. It's not that the teachers were bad, but that the focus of the classes was uninteresting. What I remember is that classes were only grammar. At the same time, I think that the oral aspect of the language waz always lacking because we were not obliged to talk in English or to communicate in this language. At the same time, we were evaluated in skills we were never taught if. The reading skill was also poor. The novels we read were always the abridged version; therefore, we could not
enrich ourselves with literature.
I think my strength as a language learner is the motivation and the "listening ability". I consider that I have certain skill to get pronunciation. My weakness as a learner is my bad memory whicj is reflected in the difficult time I have whwb learning new vocabulary words. At the same time, I think I'm not the 'risk-taking' type of person. I prefer
using structures and words that I know are well used than using elements I'm not sure of.