UNIT II: ORAL EXPRESSION

1. A GOOD SPEAKING CLASS (JUNE 14TH)

Some may think that planning is just about preparing materials, steps, and determining times, but it is much more than that. What I learned from this activity is that there are a large number of factors that will determine how good and effective a class will be. To make this possible there are some crucial aspects among which are the student, the teacher, the environment, and some others.

That said, not everything will depend on the teacher but it is all about a combination of several elements that when put together can guide us towards what we know as "a good class". It should be mentioned that it will not always work as we expect, but it is very likely that if each of the aspects is taken into account, our intervention will be much more effective and both the teacher and the student will have learned something new at the end of the class.

3. FROM BONFIRE TO THE CLASSROOM (JUNE 21TH) In the class, we were asked to choose some story and record it and later upload it to the Soundcloud platform. This activity was one of my favorites, in my case, I chose a story from my primary school Spanish book. I translated it and then recorded myself telling it in the best possible way.

I think storytelling is an art that few master, but I think a language teacher should really work on being able to convey as many feelings as possible towards his students. I would really like to be able to tell stories so that all my students remain attentive and interested in the content and the story. In addition, it allows one to put into practice the skills of the students in a very interesting way and not so overloaded with grammatical content.

This may be useful for us as teachers in training to reflect on how effective storytelling can be in the classroom and give this approach a try and later see if we can manage that our students acquire as much vocabulary as possible.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THE STORY

3.PRINCIPLES AND SOME COMMON ACTIVITIES (JULY 5TH)

This was the last activity of the course and, just like the rest, I think it is quite important to include it here. The most important thing I take away from this activity is that there are endless activities and quite innovative strategies for classes that don't need too many materials to be effective. It is common for teachers to think too much about the materials that will be used afterward, but in this class, I was able to realize that Unplugged Teaching is a very effective way to encourage students to produce orally in a constant and fun way.

Something that I will definitely do in due course, is to create proposals that may not be so similar to those of Unplugged Teaching, but innovative for students so that we move away from the simple automatic repetition of grammatical content.