ENGLISH I: STARTING BASIC COMMUNICATION.

Purposes and general description about the course.

The English language course for Escuelas Normales is designed to develop students ability to communicate effectively in English in contexts that will be important for them. As future teachers in a society where English is increasingly important for

engaging successfully with professional and social activities, it is essential that all students develop a good level of proficiency in English. English is growing in importance for accessing information, making useful contacts, understanding other cultures and

participating in cultural activities. As UNESCO has said: Linguistic competencies are fundamental for the empowerment of the individual in democratic and plural societies, as they condition school achievement, promote access to other cultures and

encourage openness to cultural exchange (UNESCO 2007:13). English is particularly important for students because of its role in multinational communicative settings

(Hyland 2011).

2. Teach authentic English.

Students need to be prepared for authentic communication in the real world. While it is necessary to control the level of language at each stage of the course, it is important that students should be exposed to authentic examples of English -spoken and written.

Authenticity also includes teaching language that students are likely to use, in the sense of reflecting their interests and circumstances. For this reason, the curriculum is often open-ended with the examples of language (vocabuiary and expression) listed in the document. Teachers should adapt the choice of vocabulary according to their students; areas of interest and what is likely to be an authentic communicative situation for them. For example, when the curriculum provides a list of pastimes for

students to talk about, this can be adapted for each group of students. However, in providing this flexibility, teachers need to be careful not to take the language outside the appropriate level for that semester by adding too many new words or expressions

3. Students learn most effectively through doing.

Learning a language involves a range of cognitive and social processes that cannot be developed simply through explanation and knowledge. The integration of different; ements of language requires frequent practice, particularly to use language with sufficient fluency in real time. Learning through doing is also known to reinforce learning through the emotional impact of real activity and the micro-rehearsals involved in real practice. (Ellis 2000)

Suitable methodology for learning through doing has a number of characteristics:

• The teacher provides students with many opportunities to practice the target language in different ways (e.g. listening, reading, speaking and writing).
• The teacher sets up pair-work and group-work activities to increase the amount of practice.
• The teacher limits their explanations to what is essential for students to understand the target language.

An important aspect of this approach is that the teacher creates an atmosphere where the studerts feel comfortable to make mistakes when they speak and write English. Fear of making mistakes inhibits the students from speaking and writing and reduces

the amournt of practice they do. There are anumber of ways in which the teacher can create this atmosphere:

• Incdlude positive feedback after students speak or write in english.
• limit corrective feedbak to essential target points.
• provide general corrective feefbak after activities, rather than identifying individual students who made the mistake.
• encourage students to evaluate themselves or their peers when they carry out an activity.

4. Students learn best when motivated and engaged.

Motivation and engagement have a powerful impact on learning in a number of ways COrmrod, 2008) including:

• It increases effort and energy
• It increases persistence in learning activities.
• It affects cognitive processes - eg. through directing attention.

5. Differentiate the teaching according to different interests and needs among each group of students

In each class, there is a wide wariety of students. This variety may relate to a number of different dimensions:

• Level of English
•  Their first language (whether it is Spanish or not)
• Previous experience of learning English
• Learning preferences - whether they prefer to learn more by analyzing the anguage or by experiencing it, whether they prefer to read and write, or listen and speak, etc.
• Their interests and objectives.

Teachers need to be aware of the profile of their different students and adapt their teaching accordingly. In practice, teachers should approach this in a number of ways:

• using a variety of activities in any class - to make sure different learning preferences are addressed
• monitor how well different students are mastering the target language -through regular checks, quizzes and tests, and adjusting accordingly
• providing additional support far students who are struggling and additional quot;stretch; activities for students who have mastered the core target language more quickly.