Noticing

About the concept of “Noticing”, I never had heard it before but it is a complex process where involves the intakes of meaning and form. When I was in school I think that teacher used to focus more in form that in meaning, for example the structures of grammar the verb tenses but they left apart the meaning so what did happened is that at the end most of the us forgot easily what we learnt.

Do adults and children learn 2 in the same way?
I think they don’t, because the level of anxiety is different, the same as the motivation, the needs ext… For example when a child learns L2 most of the time it is imposed by the school but at the same time they are willing to try, to make mistakes. On the other hand when adults learn L2 is because they want, some of the structures they will known them well but the anxiety it is a issue.

Can we teach a language or can we learn language?
I think that both of them are needed. We need someone to teach us the language, to guide us but at the same time we must be willing to learn the language if not the work is useless.

How is your language to be learned sequenced in your current teaching context or place of work.
It is followed step by step and it depends on the age of the learner and also their needs.

What if anything can we learn from looking at past methodologies.
I think that we have to analyze the strength and weakness of each of the methodologies already seen and take the best of each one of them.

Medyes´ Communicative Teacher

Medgyes in his article talks about the communicative approach and the role of the teacher not only what they are but also what they should do in a classroom. First he expresses the idea that CA is too demanding for the teacher but he doesn’t criticized the method he only points out the difficulties it presents to the language teachers to apply this method. Secondly he refers of some characteristic that teachers should have to be, for example that they should be extremely erudite and versatile people, be an instrument not the authority, learner centered, multidimensional, technically skilled, all what makes a super person. Also he refers of what teacher have to do, they have to produce real interaction, see that learning takes place, pay attention to form and meaning, create favorable conditions, keep control but let students exercise initiative and a lot more.

Queries from a Communicative Teacher (Peter Medgyes)

I found the article very interesting and I agree with the author. The theory of the Communicative Approach sounds great; it talks of how a communicative teacher should be, about the importance of considering the needs of the group but also the learner itself. Also how teachers should pay attention to meaning and form simultaneously, how should be their role in relation to their students and the use of text book. But there is a big difference between the theory and the practice because the reality on a classroom is completely different. Even the author makes allusion of that when he is describing a communicative teacher as “Wizard of Oz like superperson”.
I think that teachers should aspire to be a Communicative Teacher and maybe they can take out some ideas but that’s it!

Creativity in Education

I found the video very interesting and at the same time so true. It is so important to develop on children creativeness, innovation but for that there must be a change in the way how people think, there has to be spaces where students can create. For instance, and how the author said, in school the subjects that are more important are those where there isn’t much imagination like Math, Language, Science but what happen to the other ones like art, dance or music, what happen to those students that are good at those ones and that will like to make a living for that, well most of the times they can’t.
Another thing that I found amazing is when he said that kids aren’t frightened to be wrong but when they get older they lose their capacity they are afraid because people that are incorrect are stigmatized. So as teachers we have to try to make students not to be afraid of being wrong and also we need to give students a space to use their imagination, to be innovators.