teaching through content-position paper

7/31/2019 Teaching Through Content-Position Paper

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Yenny Fernanda Peralta FajardoLina Vanessa Crdenas Luna

IX semester English DegreeAmazonia University

Teaching Through Content, Project and Task Based Language Learning

How to teach English is a great and important matter we as teachers face

nowadays. So, there are many methodologies and approaches which have been

proposed by many researchers, thorough their studies and researches projects.

We need to know what kind of approaches we have to use according to our

students level, age, context and interest. For that reason, it is necessary to

implement the more adequate strategies and resources in order to improve

teaching learning process. It is very important to use different kind of

methodologies and strategies with our students, engaging and involving them

during the classes, but for that objective, we have to take in mind the significance

of varying the materials and activities each class to catch our students at tention

and in that way they could learn meaningfully and easily.

Maggie McCormick notes that teaching English as second or foreign

language surely is difficult, and more if we do not have the appropriate training to

do it. It is important to know the current level of our students, their needs and likes

helping them to achieve their objectives, which are different for each one. Make our

classes enjoyable to the students using different kind of activities and resources

according to the context where the process takes place, getting the better results

for us and for our students. The success of learning process depends to the skillful

mediation or performance of an excellent professional person. That person is the

teacher and all depend on his/her love toward the profession.

Many teachers use traditional methodologies focusing just in inductive

grammar most of the time in their classes, they use textbooks, workbooks,

worksheets, etc. So, we think it is so essential to have in mind when to use it and

how to use it, according to our lesson aims and objectives and the time we are

going to work with the students. When we are going to use textbooks or


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workbooks, we need to analyze each aspect and characteristic of them, taking into

account relevant aspects to evaluate and decide for getting them. We must

analyze many relevant aspects like who the students are, the content and the

context of our students; and the most important thing to consider is to use them

sometimes as a complementary resource to our teaching learning process

because on the contrary they could be boring if we use them all or most of the

time. We need to know how to teach grammar to them and when to do it.

In the other hand, we as teachers have to consider the importance of

knowing students knowledge and abilities in order to implement the tasks and

activities they are going to develop during the English Learning process. For that, it

is essential to observe learners behavior, level, age, needs, and interest toward the

language. When teachers identify those situations, they could select the correct

materials and strategies to implement according to the approaches they want to

use, taking into account the sequencing and connection between the lessons and

topics. According to Willis (1996) task should be a development of Communicative

Language Teaching through some principles that form part of this. He proposed

activities that involve real communication, tasks which promote meaningful learning

and supports learning process. Students have to be engaged in tasks that involve

them to negotiate meaning and related to naturalistic and real communication.

As Feez (1998) argues that the key statement of task would be related to

the process instance of product; purposeful activities that underlines

communication and meaning; activities that achieve students real life and

situations; exercises must have a specific pedagogical purpose and sequence

according to the difficulties of each student. As examples of tasks activities we

could use diagram and formation, drawings, clock faces, monthly calendar, maps,

school timetables, programs and itineraries, train timetables, age and year of birth,

and money. We can classify the tasks according to the type of interaction; some of

them could be jigsaw tasks, information-gap tasks, problem-solving tasks,

decision-making tasks, and opinion exchange tasks. When teachers implement

tasks based instruction they have the opportunity to use many interesting and


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Another interesting approach to teach a language is Project Based Learning,

in which students can do a classroom project while they are learning a language.

This is a dynamic approach to teach in which learners are exposed in real world

problems and challenges, developing skills while they are working in small

collaborative groups. It inspires students to get a deeper knowledge of the

language they are learning. Research makes sure that students retain the

knowledge through this approach, because they are involved in a situation and

they have to create a result or conclusion to the situations they are working on.

They can gain self confidence and self direction by team and independent work.

During the process, students develop better communication with their classmates,

teacher and staff; and often work within their community while they are seeing the

positive outcome of their work. Evaluation is focused in their projects, rather thanon exams, essays, and written reports, assessment of project based is more

meaningful for them. We can see how academic work can be connected with real

life issues and be inspired to follow a career or engage students in activities related

to the project they are developing.

Using different kind of approaches and methodologies in our classes is the

key strategy. We as teachers have to know what to use, when to use it, how to

develop the activities, who develop with, because it is necessary to select the moreappropriate or adequate strategies according to our teaching setting and content.

Also, we need to have the ability to adapt some authentic materials according to

our students context, age, level, needs, interest and likes. Other important aspect

to consider is to change the kind of exercises each class in order to catch students

attention and make the class enjoyable for them. We can ask students likes and

expectations, identifying their learning styles and change the traditional classes

and methodologies. What can be better than seeing our students create somethingand learn language at the same time?


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teaching through content-position paper

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