Think about it...

If we want our learners use the language to express their opinions and ideas and, in short to communicate them with people, teachers should develop activities according to this objective. 

We have to take into account what our aim is when we are designing our activities.

What do you think about that? 

Are you agree with the boy in the picture?

Storytelling!

Storytelling can be an interesting tool very useful in the classroom.

It is helpful to begin the class with the teacher playing the role of storyteller or maybe by inviting a proffesional storyteller into the classroom, due to the fact that it will be very motivating to the students. 

Students usually love stories, and teachers should take advantage of this fact to teach the new language. Teachers should  use some strategies to facilitate the understanding and oof the students (games, gestures, redundancy, pictures...)

When learners are listening the stories, they are developing listening skills and vocabulary, increasing concentration, developing imagination and, also, they are more motivated to read. If the learners are telling the stories, we are improving the oral language skills, the expression, the motivation to create new stories, etc.

We suggest some stories of the website; http://www.starfall.com

The little red hen

Chicken Little

Mr. Bunny's carrot soup

The little rooster

Lemonade girl

Integrate storytelling into other subjects 

While language arts and the creative arts are obvious areas, stories can help us to understand other cultures and other times. They can easily be integrated into history or geography. If we chose the stories carefully, they can be integrated even with maths or science. We have to take into account that this activity develops the social competence in our students and, if we chose an interesting topic and develop the activity in an appropriate way, we will be able to develop a lot of competences.

But, it is when the learners become the storytellers that storytelling makes a great contribution to the classroom.

Improve your Reading!

In this activity, we can see the most common questions in a reading comprehension but; are they useful to develop the reading skill?

If you reflect on the kind of activities that teachers used to develop with their students, we can notice that we are developing the lower order thinking skills (remember, understand and apply)

What about “analyse , evaluate and create”? We need that our students reflect on their learning and also, they need to be competent to create in reference to their own ideas and opinions, to make decisions and evaluate each situation and to analyse whatever that they are interested in.

In this way, maybe it is necessary to review the Bloom’s taxonomy.

We suggest some questions/activities:

-          Create a new ball for the dog. Decide the colour and what the dog will do with it.

-          Do you think cats and dogs play in the same way? Why (not)?

-          Suggest other toy to my dog and try to persuade him that this one it is better than the ball.

What do you think? Can you suggest us any question/activity according to the High stages?

What do you think?

We have found some pictures on the internet.

What do you think about them? Are you agree or disagree?

It is probable, we need to be aware of the importance of change traditional methods of teaching English. Students can learn the rules, grammar, vocabulary, etc. through the use of the language and through interesting activities. It is not necessary doing boring tasks which do not motivate our students.

What do you think? We want to know your opinion!

Note: Click on the pictures to make them bigger!

IN THE NEWS!

Regularly reading daily newspapers in English can improve your language skills overtime.

Here you have different links to read some of the most interesting news reports and articles.

Keep reading in English, it is going to be useful for you to improve your English!

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Improve your English!

How can I improve or practice my English ???

Here you have some interesting links that have been useful in improving our English.

http://www.5minuteenglish.com/    

http://www.mylanguageexchange.com/

http://www.sharedtalk.com

http://www.aulafacil.com/