My video experience

First of all I was aware that I had to prepare an everyday class considering the time and my students. Thus, it had to be brief and entertaining in order to succeed.
I decided to start with a brief review of what will come next to make sure transition from one activity to the next one will be smooth.
The warm-up was intended to introduce the topic and use of the new language. I felt very pleased to see that they remembered countables and uncountables.
At this stage students use their schemata and are aware of learnt concepts (Harmer, 1991). Also I always kept in mind giving instructions when needed being these clear and loud.
As my group is a pre-intermediate one I considered not forcing students because if I did, acquisition of the language will be blocked (Brown, 1994). I constantly tried to elicit answers from them. Thus, their participation during the warm-up was free.
After the students have been introduced to the structure, they were given opportunities to interact with their peers in some kind of discourse and focus their attention on the activity asked. Most of the drills were controlled to let them go from accuracy to fluency.
I intended to present grammar in an inductive approach trying to keep natural language as I think it is a better way of acquiring the rules subconsciously and students feel relaxed not being overwhelmed by grammatical explanations (Brown, 1994). In addition, it is a way to motivate students allowing them to discover the rules rather than to give them everything.
I think the lesson was very interesting because it is a real situation that may happen to all of us. We have to be aware of our health. It was presented in both reading and speaking approaches, as well as corrections to students, were done by themselves while they were working in pairs and then by me. This is useful for accuracy work and to let them understand the meaning of the new language they are learning (Harmer, 1991). Judith Quintana Vessi

To Alma

Would it be a useful idea to use resources in order to take advantage of the time?
Of course it would be a useful idea to use resources in order to take advantage of the time. The reason is because the education of today demands to the teacher to be updated in the use of didactic materials or resources to support the exhibition of classes or save time to make more communicative tasks.

However, we should use them when the resources are adequate for the formative context; when they agree with contents and satisfy the needs of the Ss. Also when the time of the class is extremely reduced saving time is essential. Likewise, when we know the characteristics of our students with whom we will use cognitive capacities, styles, interest, previous knowledge, experience and abilities.

Therefore, I strongly believe that all of these resources are important since they help the students to understand better the information given, besides saving time in order to spend it in more communicative tasks. For all these reasons, teachers should use a series of aids that facilitate their task of education so that significant learning is produced in their students.

why do you think the T didn’t have enough time for the grammar section?
I think he didn’t have enough time for the grammar section because he didn’t even remember how his lesson plan had been elaborated. I considered this because it was as if the prepositions came to his mind and he wrote them, instead of preparing them beforehand to have a better structure of his class. I insisted many times that I did not see any preparation on his part which is crucial in the learning teaching process. If the class would have been well prepared, I believe the time for grammar section would have been sufficient.

Vian

SOURCES:
• UR, PENNY (1999): A course in Language Teaching “Practice and Theory” Cambridge University Press
• DOFF, ADRIAN “Teach English” Cambridge University Press
• SCRIVENER, JIM “Learning Teaching”, Ed. Macmillan Published Limited