Nice Websites

Here are some websites that could be useful for ESL teachers.
Check them out!!!

www.education.com
www.superteacher.com
www.starfall.com

Presentation CAR

Car[1]

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Podcast FLES Programs

Senses Song

Senses Song

By: Gloriela Jiménez Víquez

With my eyes I see

all the pretty things.

with my ears I hear

what you're saying to me.

With my nose I smell

the cake I baked.

With my mouth I taste

a delicious cheesecake.

With my hands I touch

everything I want.

With my senses I know

the big world I live in!!

Levels of Linguistic Analysis

Language Learning and Culture

"Learning to speak another's language means taking one's place in the human community.  It means reaching out to others across cultural and linguistic boundaries.  Language is far more than a system to be explained.  It is our most important link to the world around us.  Language is culture in motion. It is people interacting with people".

When teaching a second language many teachers often focus on teaching language patterns and grammatical rules. However, it is important to include cultural aspects of L2 so the students can identify themselves with the foreign culture and develop a sense of empathy towards the members of that society.  This way, the students will not only get more interested in learning the language, but also will help them understand how language is used in real context.

Universal Adaptability and Language Acquisition

By: Professor Gloriela Jiménez Víquez

How a person develops language is a task that linguists have tried to explain in many different ways.   According to Noam Chomsky, the human brain is equipped with what he calls a Language Acquisition Device or LAD, which is an innate ability that is responsible for helping the child to organize language structures in order to transform the auditory stimulus into understandable spoken patterns that he will later use to communicate with others.

Thus, LAD has been used to explain that children can learn any language intuitively before a certain age.  This is known as Universal Adaptability and states that infants, under one year of age, have the capacity to distinguish sounds and are able to reproduce them, no matter the language.  However, this ability is lost after the child starts to learn the patterns included in his native language.  This happens because the child specializes only on those phonemes the L1 (Native Language) includes, while hinder the opportunity to be exposed to the ones that L1 does not incorporate.

Universal Adaptability then, deals with the capacity that babies have to be able to reproduce native like accents in any language that they are exposed to at early life stages.  Losing this gift, however; does not mean that children, who are exposed to multilingual setting after age one, won’t be able to become fully bilingual.  It will only depend on the kind of exposure, the kind of input, and the importance given to using L2 in meaningful situations, where appropriate feedback is provided when needed.

CAR: A Means for Motivating Students to Read

By: Gloriela Jiménez Víquez 

Nowadays, the use of English in the internet has forced L2 learners to try to sharpen their reading skills as a way to get informed of what is going on in the world.  Thus, teaching this skill has become a great challenge for ESL teachers whose main goal is to help students face this process in an easy way so they can become successful readers.  However, L2 learners usually become overwhelmed with the amount of information that needs to be processed in order to understand language use.  That is why an important issue to consider is that motivation takes a very important role in helping students to acquire this important language skill.

The article presents different types of motivation to be applied in different classroom settings which include a variety of motivation-supporting instructional techniques to create a positive environment where reading “comes alive”.

Researchers have identified different types of motivation and how they influence learning.  Ryan and Deci 2000, cited by Komiyama, proposed the Self-Determination Theory, SDT as a way to show how motivation can enhance and maintain interest in learning. According to the SDT Theory, two forms of motivation “extrinsic ad intrinsic” can influence how a person learns.  Extrinsic deals with external factors such as good grades, rewards, etc. while Intrinsic motivation deals with internal aspects such as curiosity, and a desire to learn  where reading becomes more enjoyable and interesting.   Thus, SDT suggests that teachers support students’ psychological needs for Competence (C), Autonomy (A), and Relatedness  (R). 

The CAR principles develop more self-determined forms of student motivation.  Competence relates to the students’ feeling of being capable of completing L2 reading activities.  Autonomy refers to ability to be in control of our own behaviors, and Relatedness suggest that developing empathy with peers and instructors will help students feel part of the group. They will create a good environment for learning to take place.

When applying CAR principles in the classroom, teachers should take into consideration not only different learner variables (age, grade level, proficiency level), but also instructional variables (type of class, textbooks, objectives), because it’s important to consider that learners are individuals that have different interests and needs. Once this is taken into account, students will be able to develop emotional orientations with desired teaching behaviors that will help them read more, understand text, and use different strategies to convey meaning.

I agree that to help students improve their English reading skills teachers should nurture their motivational orientations and promote a learning environment that includes CAR principles and techniques to guide students to move from extrinsic to intrinsic motivation where they can take control over their own learning, based on their interests and needs.

Based on the article written by REIKO KOMIYAMA