3 y 4 Octubre

We started the class talking about what we did last class, about the videos we described. Then we saw a new video about a man who is angry with life, maybe. Apparently all bad things are happening to him, but someone make him open his eyes, and he notice that everyone have their own issues, and he needs to chill out and maybe care about people. We talked about the videos, we shared our opinions.

My thoughts about the video: We life our life without caring about other people, what we don’t know is maybe the're doing not to well, because they have their own issues, and I think that talk to them could help them to feel fine.

Topic: Approaches to speaking: problems.

The first activity about the oil pollution

1 How did you feel as a student?

We think that if the topic was interesting for us we could share all thoughts about oil pollution, but is something that we don’t see every day in our life, so we bored.

2 Why might you not have felt like taking part in the discussion?

Maybe we don’t have an ecological mind, at this point in our life so we don’t feel attracted about those topics.

3 What advice would you give to your teacher when planning future lessons of this type?

The teacher need to teach us at first, maybe, about all the bad things that could happen if we don’t do anything about this type of topics, He could talk about the importance, causes and consequences. He can use all kind of material.

How can we help the teacher organize their speaking lessons better?

1 First ask to the students about the previous knowledge of the topic in discussion, a brainstorm could be a good strategy.

2 Introduction of the topic using technological resources for example a video.

3 Ask about the students thoughts about the video.

4 Then share if their fists ideas about the topic were the same with the video, and make their own conclusions.

5 Then the teacher can ask about some activities in order to assess if the student understood and can talk about the topic. The activities can be a drawing, questionnaire or summary.

Topic and cues

·         Bring to class a topic (eg. Banning smoking)

·         Bring a cue (short newspaper articles, provocative questions)

·         Little or no explicit “teaching” of grammatical or vocabulary points.

·         Prepare further cues to move in case it starts to drag.

Structuring talk

·         Make sure all learners get a chance to participate.

·         Prevent it getting boring.

·         The more you talk, the less apace there is for learners to say something. (Let them do the talking, we need to find a balance)

Avoid the talk-talk loop

·         Repeatedly adding new comments or new questions can have the opposite effect to that intended.

Open questions

·         Where, what, who, why, how, when, rather than closed questions.

Is noise pollution a bad thing?

What do you think about noise pollution?

·         Focusing on specific issues is even more likely to encourage reactions

When they make that noise with the drill outside, how do you feel?

Debate

·         Deliberately take an opposing or contrasting viewpoint in order to spur on conversation.