TRAINING THE TEACHERS - GUIZHOU UNIVERSITY

TRAINING THE TEACHERS 

THE NEW ENGLISH CORNER  

AT  THE NEW CAMPUS OF GUIZHOU UNIVERSITY  

Today November 14th, 2014, I began a new opportunity to share my LIFE experience in China, with local University Teachers. Wilson Chiluiza, Guizhou University, College of International Studies, Office 112, Cell: +86 18285171655

Hi everyone!

My name is Wilson P. Chiluiza Vásquez

I am a Spanish native speaker but trained as a Foreign Language Teacher. I am an English, French, and Spanish language teacher in my Country Ecuador, South America.

In my country, I work for the Central University of Ecuador since 2001. During this time, I’ve been continuously studying, updating, and sharing my knowledge also training the teachers and the most important training myself with responsibility courage and other values, getting through my students with the same feeling full of “Love and Passion”. I’ve visited and lived in different countries from North, Central, South America, and Europe. Such as; Ecuador, Colombia, Cuba, U.S.A. France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and so on... I came to China in September 2013

I work for Guizhou University as a Foreign Language teacher in Spanish and English as well, sharing my knowledge and life experience with the Asian community. Actually, I am a Chinese beginner student 对不起我的中文不好，但是我没点学习汉语. The next year, I am absolutely sure I will settle down in my country, get married, have my own family, and study my Ph.D.  Every day I’m getting involved in the process of Teaching/Learning, my motto is:

“Doing what I love, loving what I do”

Personal information:

Cell phone: 18285171655

E-mail: onlywilsonfr@hotmail.com

QQ: 2773314622

Office: 112  - College of International Studies – Guizhou University

HANDOUT WITH A COUPLE OF TOPICS FROM MY FIRST ENGLISH BOOK, THOUGHTS, AND EXPERIENCE DURING MY TEACHING/LEARNING TRAINING COURSES

MOOC, Shaping the Way We Teach English, This is a Program of the U.S. Department of State，administered by the University of Oregon. Copyright 2013.The University of Oregon. All rights reserved

COURSE 1 – MOOC: PATHS TO SUCCESS ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING

l  WEEK 1

AUTHENTIC MATERIALS AND RELIA

l  WEEK 2

USING PAIR GROUP AND WORK FOR COLLABORATIVE LEARNING

l  WEEK 3

CRITICAL AND CREATIVE THINKING

l  WEEK 4

LEARNER FEEDBACK AND ASSESSMENT

l  WEEK 5

LANGUAGE IN CONTEXT AND USING CONTENT TO STRUCTURE LANGUAGE LEARNING

COURSE 2 – CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT

l  WEEK 6

INTEGRATING SKILLS

l  WEEK 7

ALTERNATIVE ASSESSMENT

l  WEEK 8

INDIVIDUAL LEARNER DIFFERENCES

l  WEEK 9

CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT

l  WEEK 10

REFLECTIVE TEACHING

DIVERS RESEARCHES

l  E.S.P. - ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES

l  PBL – Project-Based Learning

l  RUBRICS – Assessment

Thanks for reading

Best regards,
Wilson P. Chiluiza Vásquez

HOW CAN WE DEAL WITH SHY STUDENTS?

CHINESE EXPERIENCE

Over the Platform of -Shaping the Way, we Teach English -

I got several questions so, from all of them, I would like to share a few of them because I think it is suitable for any class of languages:

Dear Mr. Chiluiza Vásquez,

I do agree with you. I am also very interested in this week’s article, destroying the teacher. I found that all five main headings in the passage are very useful for our teaching. Many productive techniques we could use in classes. I have applied them in my classes, and it revealed that students produced the language perfectly in their discussion groups. The teacher just monitors, take note, facilitate whenever the students need, provide students more time to talk within the groups. Get them to work independently. Finally, the teacher gives them feedback. Well, this article helps us a lot with the teaching styles, and I gained experiences from weeks 1, 2, and 3.

QUESTION: However, some students could not say anything as they are shy or they think that their English is good enough to share with others in the class. So, their discussions become unproductive. How can I deal with this group of students, destroying the teacher?

ANSWER:
Dear Prach,

Thanks a lot for sharing your opinions and agreements, going to the point and giving the answer to your question, how can we deal with shy and unconfident students? 

I’m facing the same problem with my Chinese students; in some other posts, I shared my experience. Let me share you once again with you, maybe could be useful but it has a lot of relation about what are we learning in this training course.

In my class working with Team or Group Work is the best choice to profit time on task-time in the classroom, I rarely use pair work activities, I usually divide them into small groups in order to let them participate, in writing or speaking activities in every group. The teacher’s work is so demanding for every class. So, imperatively we need to have a good plan. I totally agree with Roney’s article too, especially about planning an Interactional group task. Even the time manager should no simply sit and look at the clock.

Most of the students have their own different process of learning with strengths and weaknesses; the teacher needs this kind of wisdom to differ into each student before assigning group roles. I remember the last time in my class I thought it could be a good opportunity to practice this technique with some special groups –shy, confident and egocentrics students. 

I wanted to check their own: self-leadership and patience about doing what they want to do, working with people they don’t want to work, likes – dislikes, etc. It was no so rewarding a lot, at the beginning, the group was no flexible enough, and my students get together with friends because of the likelihood of common experiences and viewing points however I divided a few of them (-strength and weakness-). As a result of this the diversity, discussion, and work were limited even if they have a clear outcome. This kind of apathy and empathy showed me how the real world is. Also, this kind of issue (activity) taught me that my students will always need a teacher NO LIKE THE FOCUS or CENTER OF THE ATTENTION BUT THE FACILITATOR TO GUIDE, SUPPORT, STAND, HELP and DIRECT students on decision making to meet a clear objective. Finally, this activity helped us to understand how to work -all together and break this kind of personality- inside and outside the classroom with love and tolerance for diverse personalities in any circumstance where ESL is required. And don’t forget it is a process if you continue doing this they will be more confident… I have other experience but I’m not so sure where I posted it (sorry), but you can take a look in my posts, probably you will find it faster than me)

However, try to practice SPEAKING WITH CONFIDENCE – LEARNING BY PLAYING. Let me share with you a good link where you can get a better idea.

• http://sixminutes.dlugan.com/improv-speaking-confidence/

I hope I should have replied clearly your answer let me know your comments. If any other colleague has other opinions about this topic please let us to know

Best Regards

Critical and Creative Thinking & Destroying the Teacher

           Critical and Creative Thinking

The interaction in how the developed Critical and Creative Thinking is taken in classroom is something necessary to check, also how the teacher introduces the target topic -Mass Media Activity-. This interaction showed us how the Students with the teacher's help create, perform skits, analyze the information, write the scripts at the end perform the role play. What I like the most is how to warm-up the activity with SS' interaction in classroom with simple questions and answers that let Students use Critical Thinking with a higher order thinking skill, analyzing the accuracy, worth of the ideas or statements using reasoning skills to questions and readings. The teacher makes the introduction to the topic by thinking locally and teaching act globally with integrated skills and a variety of self-management. The music helps to time the activity is a good example for time managing, too. I think is a good way to introduce a classroom far away for the 、traditional teaching class.

Well, in my own experience I have developed some techniques in the classroom, what I like the most is simple questions and answers to warm-up the class, then go through the main point It means the target content Most of my students success because the questions are nice, easy and I try to do it in a funny way. All of these activities are working out first, in peer group then in Group work. Also the questions and answers with a sample paper, letting the students analyze each other, have fun at the end make the role play activity with -Mass Media Activity- target content. As examples, you might wish to use some of the other, similar techniques you have seen in different readings from this blog.

I think as I shared in other posts, It is always necessary to use REALIA MATERIAL in our ESL class, going to class without any material and only with the textbook in a traditional way, is like to wish surf in the internet using an ancient typewriting machine. It’s not real and accurate to actual times where the teacher needs to be more creative than ever. Let the Ss work together with self-management and the teacher Is only the facilitator of knowledge after all of this interaction developed through a good lesson Plan or a simple Project Based Learning, using all the integrated skills is where me need the value of silence like McLean’s article says, each period of learning is followed for a period of reaction.

These readings and reflections make me take a long period of reaction to my teaching skills.

DESTROYING THE TEACHER

                                           

This article by Alan Mc LEAN shows us how to focus our attention on the conditions under where student learn most effectively, relates the internal process involved in apprehending and storing information, into the most favorable conditions for this process going through theoretical basis and aspects about classroom and teacher’s behavior that seldom is the case is the most important factor in the classroom. He also focuses on five main headings:

REDUCTION OF COERCION

Avoid the typical teaching style -authoritarian- Like the Illich’s phrase the “custodian of the secret”. Here the teacher must show that is no the superhuman, that everything knows, he can make mistakes, and that are many things that can be ignorant. I extremely agree in the part.. -Self-correcting mechanism can operate only when the teacher gives up playing God.- Most of the time teachers have the last word and the students is a mere object, no exist cohesion in the learning process.

EXPERIENCE BEFORE INTERPRETATION

The learner needs time to “mess around” with the target material. The deal of Handling of printed material, or playing with, changing the words of the text, before reading starts is important in class. This period of experiencing the material seems to be a necessary precondition for interpreting. I think it always is necessary to use REALIA MATERIAL in our ESL class, going to class without any material, and only open the textbook in a traditional way, is like to surf in the internet using an ancient typewriting machine. It’s not real and accurate, in actual times where the teacher needs to be more creative than ever.

AVOIDANCE OF OVERSIMPLIFICATION

The teacher can only provide good conditions within which learning may take place, what I want to take here is what McLean says, “If things are made to easy for the learner, he will not be inclined to use his own resources, I like the idea about step by step approach is the only way to learn. If we taught children to speak they will never learn. What it means ere is that is necessary to let the students take their own difficulties to let them to have their own mistakes no oversimplifying everything and only to help them to resolve a little no resolving all the problem or difficulty. Providing them the ability to pick up context cues within a text is vital to the successful decoding of it. Reading is a selective process. It involves partial use of available language cues…

THE VALUE OF SILENCE

As I wrote before, Far from my students and my teaching class, as a facilitator, as a human being in my humble opinion these readings and sharing my thoughts in my posts make me take a short and deep -period of reaction- about my teaching-learning skills.

                                     

I really love this article from Mc LEAN - Destroying the teacher: The need for learner-Centered Teaching. I share this quotation also to apply in my own experience living in China and consciousness or unconsciousness living day by day as part of a culture. “If the culture of the teacher is to become part of the consciousness of the children, then the culture of the children must first be in the consciousness of the teacher” Basil Bernstein. Being part of a culture an interacting with my students let me enjoy my class.

Best Regards 

Wilson P. Chiluiza Vásquez

Maximizing the Benefits of Project Work in Foreign Language Classrooms

THE IMPLEMENTATION OF PROJECT WORK DIFFERS GREATLY FROM ONE INSTRUCTIONAL 

PROJECT-BASED LEARNING

Ecuador 2012

Ecuador - 2010

Working with Project-Based Learning let me figure out how the teacher works can be divided in different parts even with teacher guidance or only with the students creativity and always goes longer than expected. Once the instructor guides them step by step students go through an extended process of inquiry in response to a complex question problem or challenge. It is so demanding in effort, and time but the results in knowledge and confidence are really incredible and rewarding. While allowing for some degree of student “voice and choice”, rigorous projects are carefully planned, managed, and assessed to help students learn key academic content, practice all the skills together called 21st Century Skills (collaboration, communication & critical thinking), and create high-quality, authentic products & presentations also the Emotional Effect in confidence is collected in specifics PBL

SUMMARY CONCLUSION 

We have showcased the details of one project designed for an EFL setting. Although the tramcar theme itself may not be transferable to other settings, because of its very local relevance, basic features of the project could easily be transferred to other EFL classrooms. These transferable features, in the form of recommendations for EFL teachers and materials writers who attempt to integrate project-based learning into their own curricula, appear below.

Ecuador - 2013

• Devise projects with students’ immediate and future language needs and content interests in mind, while at the same time remaining vigilant of institutional expectations and available resources.

• Specify language, content, task, skill, and strategy learning objectives in line with students’ needs and institutional expectations to maximize the benefits of the project.

• Strive to engage students in all stages of the project. Begin by giving students the chance to structure parts of the project, even if those contributions are small, with the aim of building a sense of student ownership and pride in project engagement.

Ecuador 2013

• Design and sequence tasks with great care. Make sure that (1) skills are integrated to achieve real communicative purposes, (2) students are obliged to use various strategies for meaningful aims, (3) critical thinking is required for successful task completion, and (4) students are held accountable for content learning.

Ecuador 2012

• Integrate tasks that require both independent and collaborative work. Help students reach an agreement about different team member responsibilities. Students should view each other as single links in a chain that unites, through exchanges of information and negotiation of meaning, to produce a successful project outcome.

• Be sure to plan an opening activity that promotes students’ interests, taps background knowledge, introduces important vocabulary, and builds up expectations for the final activity.

• Take advantage of Steps 4 (Instructor prepares students for information gathering), 6 (Instructor prepares Ss for compiling and analyzing data), and 8 (Instructor prepares Ss for the final activity ) to provide explicit instruction so that students not only improve their language abilities but also excel in the information gathering, processing, and reporting stages of the project.

• Allow time for feedback at the conclusion of the project and at other critical junctures as well. We close by directing readers to Appendix 3 for a list of questions for teachers to consider as they assess the viability of projects for their Classrooms and develop actual projects for and with their students.

Resource T 10

Bülent Alan and Fredricka L . Stoller

T U R K E Y A N D U N I T E D S T A T E S

IDEAS AND GOOD EXAMPLES TO USE IN ENGLISH CLASS

China - 2013

Nowadays, in my Spanish and English class, I use to work with my Chinese students in Speaking with confidence. So at this point, I could realize that the problem in speaking is not only for a foreign language it is in the same mother language. Therefore, it’s a normal problem in every human being. They’re so shy and struggle in public speaking. In that way, I need to work with them in confidence. In my English class, I have two classes per week, every Monday which means I must take an advantage from this short period of time.. So I really love to plan PBL activities, role plays, country or hometown presentations, real problems for real solutions or simply to have fun into an interesting topic being discussed with my students.

Actually, I’m working in Drama Activities; short role-plays do the trick! I provide my students with a framework for them to put in a creative content and role play in a true-to-life situation or even spontaneously about tell a story together. Recently you know perfectly the catastrophe about the Boeing-777 got lost/kidnapped or something else.. in Malaysia and Asian Sea. So it’s always in the news and such a great opportunity to research and collect all information about and show in classroom in a process of 3 weeks. In the end they could show A REAL NEWS AND TV SHOW.

TYPE: Drama
TITLE: WHAT HAPPENED WITH THE BOEING 777
AIM: To practice inquire information questions & answers, type interviews in an imaginative way.
TIME: 20 to 30 minutes
STAGES:

(5 mins.) Ask an imaginative student to sit comfortably on a chair with eyes closed. Tell him/her that he/she is a Representative from MAYSIA Airlines and proceed to 'interview the Representative in a gentle voice:
"What happened to this flight?"
"Where was the specific position from the airplane?"
"What happened with the pilots, aircrew, and passengers?”
"Tell us about the last news."





China 2013



“…….” (students continue with the questions getting involved with family’s aircrew and passengers) I establish with the other students that you may only ask questions which are equally appropriate for this REAL SITUATION. Then monitor while the other students proceed with the interview. 
(15 - 25 mins.) After this initial interview is over, my students will be eager to get involved in such emotional representation, then I put them in groups of 3 or 5 and let the interviews continue allowing about 5 minutes per interview.

No matter the mistake or bad pronunciation are made the most important is only to speak with confidence. The feedback is at the end. 

My next step in this PBL is to establish groups and allow them to create their own TV SHOW in other specific topic, they should film it. With my Spanish students and other English majors’ students, we’ll make a booklet in 4 different languages (Spanish (my mother tongue), English (students & me), French (me) and Chinese (students). This will contain common questions related to learn a language with useful information and with a communicative learning approach. Speak it easy!

Then I’ll plan other activities or probably another "crazy idea" - PBL comes to my mind

Thanks for your comments.

Best regards

Wilson P. Chiluiza Vásquez

REALIA - AUTHENTIC MATERIAL

REALIA - AUTHENTIC MATERIAL

France - 2005

China 2014

Authentic materials are all the things or objects that we can show in the classroom used like unique materials. I really like to use them in class. In the first part, the teacher with the children uses the dolls which wear uniforms, as a help to teach vocabulary and the clothing is the REALIA as the unique method, students enjoy the dolls, she inquires using questions and answers about the different boys and girls. Even if she makes in different ways after many repetitions, students' speech slowly emerged. I use this in my class with adult learners, too. In the next example, students can bring their own REALIA to class, using different objects students can describe their material in a short time with basic words. It is also a good way to let them speak about their likes or dislikes. It’s good for student’s confidence; teachers can also gradually collect different REALIA Material to use in class.

                                                  

Ecuador -2008

As a second part, we can analyze how to work with a Project-Based Learning provided and created with Authentic Materials like text, brochure, album, picture, newspaper or books similar to the Tourism Students. I think it is the only way to motivate them to use REALIA MATERIAL with their own reality and creativity. I usually use and adapt to this kind of material and activity in my class because many students get involved and helped each other in making it. Finally, the results are really amazing the way they show their creativity, the projects stay in their own school, library collection or help to other students showing this material in the wall like vocabulary posters or calendars or putting them in a corner from different subjects like support for teacher and students.

Viewing points or Images are also Authentic Realia Material however there are different kinds of images, for example, photographs, maps, charts, drawings, posters, bulletin boards, comics, etc. The Best idea in order to plan a journey and make a world map cut pictures out of magazines make a plan where to go and what to do. Also biographies, or bulletin work, school holiday, Put all these and other ideas in the wall with their own creativity sounds pretty nice.

China April 01st-2014

Multimedia Material in the way how we choose, use and construct authentic material in any activity let us to develop integrated skills; high-interest content, range of learning modalities and the use of technologies, whether they are low-tech or high-tech, can offer more interactivity than texts, give students the chance to use a variety of different skills, and enrich the curriculum with interesting content. All of this sounds good to me, however, for a simple reason in a simple homework, I don’t like the way they use PPT’s (PowerPoint Presentations) because I think it is much better if they can use their own creativity without any kind of technology most of the time, in the end, the result is much rewarding for them.

Expo Frances - UCE 2013

Nevertheless, there are some guidelines to consider for choosing Authentic Multimedia Material for example the Interest to age, point of the lesson, usable language style, available locally, good quality picture and sound. The results they’re always the best to guide the teaching purpose. All of these examples show how to use REALIA MATERIAL accurately in the target language and culture in the teaching/learning process. 

So do we have the creativity to do use it day by in-class outside from the text book?

LET ME KNOW YOUR OPINIONS



Best Regards,

Wilson P. Chiluiza Vásquez

My name is Wilson Chiluiza, I'm from Ecuador, I work as a language teacher in Spanish, English and French language as well.

Years ago in 2010 when I was working in Ecuador I had the opportunity to get a tuition scholarship from the U.S. Department of State as part of the E-Teacher Scholarship Program with Oregon University. It was about - Methods II: Developing EFL Literacy Through Project-Based Learning.

At that time, It really helped me a lot in order to develop a better knowledge and obviously to increase my teaching-learning process inside and outside of the classroom. Nowadays, I'm working in China and in the same way, I'm fully interested in updating my knowledge, sharing different criteria, experience and figuring out new techniques of work in the daily teaching-learning process. All of these items and so on shared with experienced teachers from around the world during this training will be a huge support and help for every one of us.

So it's a pleasure for me to share this course and all the knowledge about it.

Thanks a lot for checking my blog and sharing all the information provide about Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) aimed at English as a Foreign Language (EFL) educators, both those who are intending to pursue this field as a career and those already working in the field who would like to revise and refresh their methods and approaches.  The free materials and approaches presented complement college courses such as Introduction to Methods for Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) or Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL)

Best Regards

Wilson P. Chiluiza Vásquez