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Practice activities and tasks for language and development This unit taught a lot about the activities and tasks that give opportunities to learners to use the language and develop  appropriacy   in any skill. also another characteristic  of practicing these activities to develop speaking and writing skills with students is that the can be controlled which gives students practice in accuracy and form and allow them to make some mistakes , some example of these can be: Copying words, jazz chants , individual,choral, substitution and transformation drills , freer activities on the contrary  to use the language they want, some examples of them are: discussion, problem-solving,sharing, rank ordering , writing emails and compositions and at last we have free tasks (no control) just instructions and here students use the language they know already using role-plays, information-gap activities ,sentence completion , gap-filling an...

Presentation Techniques and Introductory Activities Presentation stages and introductory activities are presented in this unit through two useful approaches which are the PPP (presentation, practice and production) and the TBL (task-based learning).  the aim of the first one is language and here the teacher presents it in a situation and ask the students to say what they see in the picture and remember the language they already learn the previous class, then the teachers models the task to later make the learner repeat the target language in choral drills to avoid mistakes. After that the teacher tells the grammar she is using to later ask students concept questions to check comprehension. On the contrary the second one the aim is task completion, teachers here put a situation too but then they are given tasks to do and then discuss any doubt and do a task by themselves to consolidate the knowledge. As we can notice all the p...

Approaches to Language Teaching This unit is focused on the different methods and approaches we can use in the classroom, there are many of them but the most common used are the PPP (presentation,practice, production) in which the grammatical structures and functions are the most essential aspect and it is taught first seeing new language then practicing through guided activities and then they are given situational presentations to produce the language by themselves, the Lexical Approach in which vocabulary is present  and it is learnt through chunks that are going to be used later in tasks to make the pupils develop alone, the Communicative Approaches in which communication is the focus, consequently function, grammar, vocabulary, discourse and skills are used trough interaction tasks, Grammar Translation , in which everything is made up of grammatical rules and language is learnt by analyzing those and then applying them, Tota...

Learners Needs All learners have different kinds of needs when learning a foreign language and this unit teaches us what are them and teachers can address their needs. we first have to know the types of necessities which are:  personal, learning and professional needs. In order to meet those some school here in Ecuador provide different subject taught in English, also there are some courses for academic and professionals purposes for teenagers and adults who are studying a career that requires learning the language which is relevant for students and parents because they are able to reach their goals. Talking about addressing those needs, teachers can provide various and suitable materials, topics, approaches, activities, skills, interaction patterns and feedback , so learners have all they need to learn.  If teachers don't know how to find out about their pupils needs, making an observation, a questionnaire or simply discussing with th...

Learner Characteristics In this unit, learners are the center of the class that is why teachers have to look for their characteristics  which include a student's motivation. learning strategies, maturity and motivation to know which one of them influences the  pupils attitude towards some aspects like the way they learn, the different approaches they need to do it and how successful they are when picking the language. To be aware of learner's learning styles we can use a survey in order to identify the way they best study and take that as an advantage to help them be successful and also find good techniques and strategies according to the results of that test. In addition to it, teachers also have to know the level of maturity a group of learners have, so they are  conscious about the different way students a act depending on their age. therefore teachers have to take the paste learning experiences into account too, because that influence the w...

Differences between L1 and L2 This TKT chapter taught me the difference between learner that acquire the language as a first language and those who acquire it as a second language which can be difficult according to ages, ways of learning and the context they are learning in. For example in when learning L1 learning starts at early ages and continues until the person has reached the adolescence, also they learn the language at the same time as the cognitive skills that help them to develop understanding, to add a characteristics they are motivated when they talk and interact because they are expose to the language every day and they are hardly ever corrected because that is they mother tongue. In contrast learning the L2 is most complicated because it usually stats at school and continues until adulthood, learners show have their cognitive skills developed when they are adults so it is a long process, also learners a less motivated because they focus on form and It is no...

The role of error In this TKT chapter some useful visible features about errors were explained, one of them is that errors help students to experiment with the language and noticed what is wrong when they speak or write . And this unit focuses on why leaners make mistakes and actually there are two main reasons. To begin with, we have interference of the mother tongue which influences on the second language learning because pupils introduce some pattern from the other language and that make they make mistakes unconsciously . The other reason is when learners make error in organizing and experimenting with the language which is very common in very first learners because they always overgeneralizing everything but after some practice they noticed their mistakes and improve the way they produce the language. To apply all of this in my teaching, I will certainly make my students be aware of their mistakes without making them feel embarrassed but with strategies to help th...

Exposure and focus on form In this TKT chapter I learn some essential things about exposure which to some experts is the main way to learn a foreign language, for example when a child is exposed to the language he or she will automatically pick it up without actually knowing they are learning, this is just like the way any of us got the mother tongue . So in order to help students to pick the language up there are three main ways to do it; the first is acquisition in which the learners should be totally surrounded by the language, they need to hear and read interesting material according to their level, so that way they won’t realize they are learning. The second is interaction , which is relevant they have to express themselves with others and also be able to understand what their classmates want to convey and that will help students to experiment new things and learn vocabulary and grammatical structures just interacting. The third and last is focus on form which help learn...

Background to language learning: MOTIVATION This TKT chapter taught me a lot about motivation and how we can motivate language learners in the learning process which is very useful for teachers, in fact is one of the main aspects that aids a learner to achieve goals when picking a language. Talking about factors that influence students, there are many of them which make them want to progress and actually inspire them to do something those factors can be: reading books in the target language they are learning and be aware of cultural aspects, confidence from the teachers toward pupils, encouragement from classmates, wish to communicate with foreigners or interesting coursebooks and activities. In addition to the mentioned, teacher should be the example of being motivated in the class and create a good atmosphere , also giving clear instructions and positive feedback can build interest on learners as well as making them feel important and that way they will have a high moti...