During these two weeks, I have been helping the teacher to record the expositions of 6th grade: "All about me presentations". We were regarding at three general aspects: Pronunciation, Fluency and Presentation. When we finished, we decided to show some examples at class and to discuss about the exposition. Almost all the students agreed that a properly practise at home was needed to achieve a great result, and they always commented about the importance of the fluency in order to keep listeners' attention. It was very nice to see how students were able to be critical with themselves, commenting their own work and saying some strategies to improve it.
But with this blog entry I want to explain a nice experience that we had with this 6th grade students after regarding their own videos and commenting them.
The teacher asked them if they had any suggestion or they wanted to say their opinions about the project "All about me". The students said that they have enjoyed both parts of the project (poster and oral presentation). All of them agreed that they loved doing hands-on projects. Some of them told that they felt shy when presenting their posters, as well as they didn't want to do mistakes so they got nervous. The teacher answered that doing mistakes while speaking in a foreign language was completely normal, and she added that she was not giving importance to this mistakes.
But, in the middle of this conversation, one of the students suddenly commented: "A mi m'agradaria saber i practicar més l'anglès. M'he adonat que és molt important". This sentence surprised me, and suddenly I realised that this was going to be a very useful situation in order to know what they think about English. We ended up talking about the importance of English, how to practise English at home and why they didn't speak English at class. An interesting conversation emerged.
Firstly, the students talked about why learning English was important. These are two examples:
- "Jo vull viatjar per Europa quan sigui gran, i si aprengués anglès em seria més fàcil"
- "Quan sento música en anglès, no entenc què diuen. Quina ràbia!"
Then, some students explained how they practised English at home. These are two examples:
- "Quan he vist una pel·lícula moltes vegades, la poso en anglès perquè ja sé que diuen. Així aprenc"
- "M'agrada molt escoltar música al Youtube, i quan les cançons són en Anglès poso els subtítols en Anglès per poder cantar-la millor"
- "Quan jugo a la play surten coses en Anglès i ja me les sé de memòria!"
Finally, they said why they didn't try to speak English at class:
- "Tinc por d'equivocar-me i que riguin de mi"
- "Si ningú parla, no ho faré jo"
After that, the teacher talked seriously with them, saying that it is normal to do mistakes, but they have to try to speak in English if they want to improve. And nobody must laugh when others are speaking English; instead of that everyone must consider the effort that this person is doing.
But the most interesting moment was when the teacher and me asked them to think about what they think they can do to work harder with English and to learn it better. All of the students were listening carefully to the others and saying their own strategies. I realised that they really wanted to improve their English level. These are some strategies that they suggested. I took notes and I commented all of them with the teacher after the class. We agreed that some of them were completely practicable.
- To do a theatre play in English- To use a web page
- To publish things in English in their class-blog
- To watch films in English
- To sing in English during the music lessons
- To have a poster at class with some useful sentences
When this lesson finished, I went out of the class thinking about everything, and realising how important is to ask the students about how they feel. It's essential to kow what they think, and you can become very surprised about what they answer to you. And suddenly, I felt the necessity to come back to the class and congratulate the students, not only because of their job, but also because their attitude towards English and their desire to learn. I recommended them not to lose it!
Finally, I would like to end this post recommending to visit an English blog of a school in Granada. This is only an example of how students can work at home and the teacher can be connected with them, offering new and engaging possibilities to make them learn English.
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