Practical Work

These pictures are from an activity of my ex-classmates in a school called El tranque in Lliu Lliu

I have not made my practicum yet, but I do have my own experience with English teaching in the schools I used to assist.

-Type of school: State school

-Number of students per classroom: 40

-Number of hours a week: 3

-Textbook: Go for Chile (I used it when I was in 1st year of high school)

-Approach: Active learning

-Design: Constructivism

-Students motivation: High, in some cases but there were other students that didn't want to learn anything.

-Students role: they work with the teacher, collaborated work

-Teacher motivation: High

-Teacher Role: guide

-Assessment (tests, instruments): Workshops, presentations, tests, etc. -Use of technology: at that time the English lab does not exist, but we used to work with audio tapes, videos, movies, songs, etc.

What design would you propose to improve the English subject in that school?

The teacher I used to have was very creative, he did everything that he could in order to teach well, but sometimes a group of students didn't want to learn, when that happened he tried to focus on what he should do in order to gain all the students' attention, and he did it well.

I remember that he used meaningful ways to teach, but when he had some health troubles other teacher came to do his classes, when that happened all the methods changed, the classes became boring and grammar based and she (the new teacher) lost the students' motivation.

She made lots of mistakes, because her methods were too different from the ones that we were used to, and she didn't do anything in order to retain or create a new way to encourage children to get motivated.

I don't think that it was necessary to impose her new methods, maybe she could see how children worked in classes and then modify the way that she did her classes.

I consider the design in my old school need to be improved. The substitute teacher that we had at that time didn’t encourage the students to speak in L2, the objects of the classes weren't very clear, she focuses on teaching tenses and nothing else. The teacher’s and students' motivation became very low. The student’s role in learning must be like a performer. The teacher should encourage the students to speak L2 and also include context activities in order to students' achieve the knew knowledge and language.