LEARN HISTORY WHILE HAVING FUN!!!

THIS IS A FANTASTIC SITE TO LEARN HISTORY IN A VERY DIFFERENT WAY!!! YOU CAN FIND LOTS OF VIDEOS WITH ACCURATE INFORMATION (IT´S FROM THE BBC), AND YOU WILL LEARN A LOT WHILE HAVING FUN!!!

YOU JUST HAVE TO LOOK FOR "HORRIBLE HISTORIES" IN YOUTUBE AND YOU´LL FIND LOTS OF VIDEOS...

WHICH IS YOUR PREFERED LEARNING STYLE? IF YOU´D LIKE TO KNOW IT, CLICK ON THE FOLLOWING LINK TO FIND A "VAK LEARNING STYLES SELF-ASSESSMENT QUESTIONNAIRE" YOU CAN ALSO FIND AN EXPLANATION BELOW THAT QUESTIONNAIRE. 

QUESTIONNAIRE 

Hi everyone! Here I´m leaving the link to our presentation on "Teaching pronunciation". I uploaded it to Google Drive, please tell me if the link works. I´m also leaving below the link to the powerpoint templates to prepare games. Hope you find them useful!

PP on Teaching Pronunciation

Powerpoint templates

Which will be my baby´s first words? If this is one of the thoughts that cross your mind and you do not have a clue of which the answer could be, you should probably talk to a mother whose child already speaks, and from there you will infer what your child´s first utterances will be. This is due to the fact that all children acquire language in much the same way, following more or less the same order. Otherwise, how is it possible that a child from Argentina and a child from China produce the same sounds at around the same age?

The nativist position states that any human child learns any human language whatever the situation; they learn it effortlessly, regardless of culture, intelligence or personality. This is why I strongly support this theory of language acquisition. I believe we come to the world with a predisposition to acquire language; otherwise it would be too hard to explain how it is that all children in the world learn to use their language in much the same way and in such a short period of time.

It is a common belief that children acquire language through imitation. I myself used to have that idea before being exposed to these theories of language acquisition. But, do children really acquire language via mere imitation? If this was the case, they could only imitate what they hear and they would never be able to discover what not to say or to create things which they have never heard before.

What is more, there is not only the poverty of the data available to the learner; there is also the complexity of language. So, if the child´s mind could not create language knowledge from the data in the surrounding environment, given plausible conditions on the type of language evidence available, the source must be within the mind itself. Therefore, the data in the stimulus are too thin to justify the knowledge that is built out of them.

 Did you ever try correcting your child when he/she made a mistake? Did it work? Most probably not, and the reason for this is that some children are corrected by their parents and some are not, yet all acquire language, so acquisition cannot crucially depend upon correction. Therefore, as Chomsky concludes, a model of language acquisition cannot rely on a particular feature of the environment unless it is available to all children.

Acquisition of language is, to Chomsky, learning in a peculiar sense, it is not acquisition of information from outside the organism, it is internal development in response to vital, but comparatively trivial, experience from outside. So, knowledge of language needs experience to mature, without it nothing would happen; but the entire potential is there from the start. The physical basis of UG means that it is part of the human genetic inheritance, a part of biology rather than of psychology. UG theory aims to explain grammatical rather than pragmatic competence: principles of UG are incapable of being learnt by social interaction.

The lingüist recognizes three possible types of evidence for acquisition. First comes positive evidence, which can set a parameter to a particular value. Then comes the direct negative evidence (corrections by the speech community) and finally there is the indirect negative evidence (the fact that certain forms do not occur in the sentences the children hear may suffice to set a parameter). Positive evidence alone is insufficient to acquire the principles of UG. The alternatives to innateness are insufficient because they rely on positive evidence, or they occur too rarely or too inconsistently.

I believe one of the weaknesses this theory might have is that Chomsky concentrates too much on the grammar aspect of language and does not go deep into the social interaction or the functions of language. However, he does not deny the importance of social context, he was only not interested in studying it As Cook and Newson state “UG theory has a unique central place in first language acquisition studies. But it is only part of the broad picture. UG theory is concerned with the acorn rather than with the tree in all its complexity; vital as the acorn may be as the source of growth and development, for many purposes the leaves, the wood, or the blossom are more important. The danger is that UG may be seen as a threat to other ideas of language development, rather than as a complementary theory that accounts for a specific area of vital concern to those interested in the unique properties of the human mind”.(P.124)[1]

All things considered, I believe the innateness hypothesis of language acquisition is very strong and reliable, since it is able to answer the main questions that any theory of language acquisition should be able to answer, namely: why is it that children follow more or less the same order when acquiring a language?; how is it that they acquire the language is such a short period of time and how the two systems (the system of sounds and the system of meanings) are acquired? So, even though Chomsky´s theory may still lack some explanations, I strongly believe that all the afore mentioned explanations of the process of language acquisition give enough credibility to this theory.

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[1] In Cook, V.J. and Newson, M. (1996) Chomsky´s Universal Grammar. An introduction -2^nd edition. Blackwell (Chapter 3)

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Here I´m leaving a link to an interesting video on this topic!!!

Imitation theory vs innateness theory of language acquisition

Interesting website for teachers and learners of English as a Foreign Language!!!

http://americanenglish.state.gov/resources/american-rhythms#child-1628

LEARNING STYLES

Style is a term that refers to consistent and rather enduring tendencies or preferences within an individual. Styles are those general characteristics of intellectual functioning that pertain to you as an individual, and that differenciate you from someone else. 

I think it`s both funny and illustrative of one of the facts about First Language Acquisition:

 that all children follow more or less the same order when acquiring their mother tongues.  

Music music!!!

Children love music! We should expose them to catchy songs to help them acquire vocabulary and structures in a funny and memorable way!!! That´s why I leave here a link to an interesting website in which you can find many songs for young children. Hope you enjoy it!

http://www.pattyshuklakidsmusic.com/

I found this interesting site to look for resources and watch vídeos giving advice and examples of different things, one of them has to do with how to approach the teaching of a foreing language. Hope you find it useful!!

You just have to click here

Murally

Hi people here I´m leaving you a tutorial on an interesting tool to create presentations. If you click here you can go to the page and start using this interesting tool! You have to sign up first! Hope you find it useful!!!

A Presentation by David Nunan

I found a very interesting presentation by David Nunan on educating young learners for the 21st century. In this presentation, he talks about the ART of teaching English to learners of another language. This acronym ART stands for awareness, repetition and transformation: making our learners aware of specific vocabulary or language structures; repeting those language items and using the structures and the vocabulary that they´d been acquiring to do other things with the language, to achieve things other than manipulating the language. This is the key concept of TBLT, using language not to manipulate the language itself but to get things done with the language. 

He also states that language is a tool for communicating and a tool for learning. We cannot learn without language. 

I believe it is a very interesting talk all in all! It´s worth watching!!!

Can we change the world from our classroom?

“I´ve come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It´s my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child´s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or de-humanized.” There is a lot of truth in Dr. Haim  Ginott´s words. Most of the times we can make a situation better just by changing our attitude, by changing the way in which we see a problem, by showing our students the right path.

We need to teach our students not to focus on the “don´ts”, on what they do not have or on what they do not know, because if they do that, their lives will be filled with endless dissatisfaction. Instead, if they could learn to try to find the good in different situations and to overcome their obstacles not only inside the classroom but in life in general, we will be leaving an unforgettable footprint in their lives.

We are not only teachers, we are also architects of our students ‘futures. Therefore, we need to build good and strong bases to help our learners become autonomous and to give them the necessary strategies to become better students, better citizens, better persons.  

So, yes! I strongly believe that we can change the world from our classrooms! I believe that we can be that decisive element which can make a child´s life much more positive. Let´s get the world infected with this contagious attitudes towards our students!

Start your days with a smile and be happy :)

Welcome to my blog!
The aim of it is to share knowledge, experiences, information, ideas, and whatever might be useful for all those who are interested in the English language. 
I believe that we will benefit a lot from this sharing since we are all on the same page, trying to get the most of these wonderful experiences of teaching and learning.