Be yourself

I remember that Steve Jobs was insisting students how important is believe in ourselves.

Listen to the following.

In This World You Need Tranquility and Serenity

In this hurry world you need TRANQUILITY and SERENITY

The Bible in the book of Psalm says:

The LORD is my shepherd; I have everything I need. He lets me rest in fields of green grass and leads me to quiet pools of fresh water. He gives me new strength. He guides me in the right path, as He has promised. Even if I go through the deepest darkness, I will not be afraid, Lord for you are with me. Your shepherd rod and staff protect me. You prepare a banquet for me; You welcome me as an honored guest and fill my cup tho the brim. I know that your goodness and love will be with me all my life; and your house will be my home as long as I live.

We, as teacher, need a lot of serenity and tranquility.

Comunicating Across Multigenerations

As teacher we need to communicate with students, parents, colleagues and the whole society.  Thus, it is very important to understand that we have to get along with different groups of people that belong to different generations as well; so, we must understand those groups.  The next podcast try to explain just a little bit some gaps among generations.


http://www.goear.com/listen/93be821/second-podcast-lv2

You have to type the address above in your Google bar.

Trying my first postcad

http://www.goear.com/listen/dabb73f/my-first-postcad-lv

Funny Things in the Process of Teaching-Learnig English

It happened to my friend Leo.  He was a tailor from Guápiles who was in U.S.A. almost 30 years ago.  He got an scholarship due to the fact that he was a council man (regidor municipal), and twenty counselors were in U.S.A. for an special interchange.  He was learning English in an Academy, as part of the program, and he had to go out by himself trying to understand how streets and avenues in Washington D.C. were planned.


He had a recommendation in his pocket.  So, he had to go to the nearest corner, read the address beside the traffic light in case he got lost and call to the academy.  As a result of his inexperience ( he was 79 years old at that time and he never had been away from Costa Rica ) he called and said:  "Estoy perdido" ( Help me I am lost! ).  Therefore, the lady in the academy who was Costa Rican explained to him that he had to go to the corner, read the address, call back and wait until somebody pick him up.

He did everything and he said "I am in the corner DON'T WALK" ( he was reading the pedestrian traffic light.

The lady was laughing and as soon as she could told the story to Leo's friends.

Bringing One Language to Another: Multilingualism as a Resource in the Language Classroom

Based on the article by Joyce Milambiling.

My reaction.

After reading the article, it is clear what is multilingualism and why is this phenomenon increasing.  However, I had not understood that this phenomenon could improve the cognitive capacity of one student.

The author states that it is possible to improve: Connections in the brain, Cognitive flexibility, Unconciously = grammatical knowledge, Sociocultural knowledge and Sociolinguistic variables and functions  as metalinguistic, that is knowing the function of a word in the speech.  So, the most important thing is to understand that we as a teacher can use student's previous knowledge in his/her previous language in order to learn the target language.

Teachers are able to design their classes based on students' languages.  I.e.

As pre-activity,  teacher can ask students write a story in its own language. 

As main activity students can re-wwrite in English the story.  

As follow activity students might present orally.

As  assessment other students give feedback to the speaker.

There are different options based on the teacher's experience.

The outcomes will be:

Students demonstrate use of words

Students practice the four skills

Students apply how to share information

Students comprehend the value of co-evaluation

Activities might be expanded to go further into grammar, self evaluation and cooperative learning.