Article # 4 (Slide 1)

As teacher we should care about competence because language knowledge is essential for pedagogically instruction. Even though it seems that the view of competences has change many times the truth is that it has improved over the years and the added knowledge and research on this topic. We as teachers need to know what all the types of competence are and how they relate to each other. It is important to know that there are five types of competence as mentioned in the article. All five competences have to do with words, structures, sentences, and utterances, but the difference between them is in their technique towards the language itself. It can be somewhat difficult to understand the differences at first but applying each in different aspects help understand them more.

Movie Report

Wandallys Ramos                                               Educ 555                                               September 19, 2011

Movie Report

Title of movie: My Fair Lady

Part I. Setting

1. The plaza or street-         shows that Eliza is from the streets and how she works and lives

2. Higgins house-                                where all the teaching and learning took place

3. Horse race-                      Where Eliza tested her improved skill of language speaking for the first time in high society.

4. Queen’s palace-              Where Eliza demonstrated that her differences in speech made her fit in with high society even though she was a simple low class flower girl.

5. Bar-                                    Where her father laughed and drank to Eliza’s money.

Part II. Characters

1. Henry Higgins:                A professor of phonetics. He sees Eliza as just a challenge, a way        

 to win a bet. Then he learns to see her as a person.

2. Eliza Doolittle:                  An individual with a heavy accent that takes the opportunity to be

 Taught how to speak correctly by a phonics professor.

3. Colonel Pickering:          An individual who doubted the ability of teaching a person how to speak correctly after

                                                years of speaking incorrectly. Pickering is the individual who betted against the professor.

4. Alfred Doolittle:                                The father of Eliza who sells her for money and doesn’t think

                                                that she could be made into a person within the high society. He

 himself is of low class and has a very heavy accent.

5. Freddy:                              A young man who fell in love with Eliza. Who with her transformation in the way she spoke amazed him. Eliza won him over with her words.

Part III. Problems

1.  Eliza needed to learn to speak properly to fit into high society.

2. Eliza’s father wanted to get paid for giving her to Higgins.

3. The turning point bet between Colonel and Higgins to make Eliza speak properly.

4. Eliza being afraid to go back after acquiring the knowledge of a proper language.

5.  Eliza going missing for the sake of finding her individuality as a newborn human being and seeking the affection of

her professor as an individual and not a bet.

Part IV. Plot

In My Fair Lady the main character Eliza Doolittle, a flower girl is turned into a high society individual. This movie seeks to examine class distinctions, society’s prejudice, the gender dividend, identity and transformation. What is most astonishing and the key element to this movie is that all of these issues have to do with language and how it is spoken. Eliza had to learn how to manipulate her form of speaking with the help of her Prof. Higgins, to learn all over again how to speak correctly after years of speaking incorrectly or fouled according to high society. Prof. Higgins believed that the accent and tone of one's voice determined a person's prospects in society. He betted that he could teach any woman to speak so "properly" that he could pass her off as a duchess at an embassy ball.

                Prof. Higgins after punishments, repetition of vowels, mouthfuls, strictness, drilling, teaching, talking, and dressing Eliza was amazed by the total transformation in how Eliza was speaking the language and how society was reacting to her. Therefore confirming that the way an individual speaks depends on that individual’s prospect in society.

Cooperative Learning

Cooperative learning is an approach to organizing classroom activities into academic and social learning experiences. Students must work in groups to complete tasks collectively. Unlike individual learning, students learning cooperatively capitalize on one another’s resources and skills (asking one another for information, evaluating one another’s ideas, monitoring one another’s work, etc.). Furthermore, the teacher's role changes from giving information to facilitating students' learning.

Cooperative Learning Advantages
-academic achievement
-active participation
-high-level thinking
-group skills for life
-positive interdependence
-teaching of cooperative social skills


One of the three mayor problems in Education right now is cooperative learning and by using this approach we better those group skills for life.

Article #2 Summary

        Article #2, The Whats, Whys, Hows and Whos of Content-Based Instruction in Second/Foreign Language Education by María Dueñas has to do with Content Based Instruction in second language teaching. It is interesting to me that this based instruction is derived from Communicative Language Teaching.  According to María Dueñas using the language to communicate was seen as the best way to learn it. When both the target language and some meaningful content are integrated in the classroom is when learning a second language becomes easier and affective. In this summary I will briefly overview the questions about what, why, how and who are important to Content Based Instruction.

      The “what’s” important in Content Based Instruction or CBI is that there are four characteristics specified to this instruction. The four characteristic are: subject matter, use of authentic texts, learning of new information and the appropriateness to the specific needs of students.

       The” why” of CBI is that learners receive comprehensible input. By comprehensible input the author means that the student will not be forced to memorize vocabulary or manipulate language by means of grammar exercises. Also it means that the students have the opportunity of using the new language productively, both orally and in writing. An important instruction to the why of CBI is Cooperative Learning. Cooperative learning requires that small groups of students work together to learn information and perform different tasks, as a result promoting peer group support and peer instruction, which I think is very important considering that cooperative learning is one of the three mayor problems in the Department of Education today.

      The “how” we would go about CBI would be first of all by using immersion education, which is to emerge all subjects in the use of the second language. Second of all by using sheltered courses this means taking out native speakers and allowing the second language to be primary. Third of all, is to have adjunct classes, which are not implemented on their own but aim at assisting an existing regular subject-matter class. Last but not least, theme-based models being the most popular are focused on the central idea that organizes major curricular units selected for their appropriateness to student needs and interests, institutional expectations, program resources, and teachers’ abilities and interests (Dueñas 2004).

      To conclude, Content-Based language learning has many benefits because it allows the teacher to manipulate her classroom in the best interest of her second language learner. By allowing this the student will need to use the language at all times to be able to proceed in other subject areas within the language.

Article #1

Article #1 Analysis

Topic: COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE AND COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING

Author: Atsuko Ohno

In this article Atsuko Ohno discusses several theoretical communicative concepts and their applications to language and methods of teaching language. First he defines communicative competence as shared knowledge and performance as applying knowledge to the actual language use, according to Chomsky. He claims that Hymes finds Chomsky’s definition of competence and performance too narrow to describe what language behavior as a whole really is. Hymes states that the rules of everyday language use are dominant over the rules of grammar. The movie that we just viewed in class, My Fair Lady, is a great example of this. Also, because what we say if we were to write it down it might not make any sense because communicative language also refers to gestures and tones that we only use when speaking. Secondly, he defines performance as actual use of language in a real life situation, not in an idealized or practiced speaker-listener situation as Chomsky stated.

Widdowson states that knowing a language is more than how to understand, speak, read, and write sentences, but instead how sentences are used to communicate in actuality. He mentions that the ability to communicate has to be developed at the same time as linguistics skills.

On the other hand Canale and Swain say that there are rules of language use that would be useless without rules of grammar. I believe that his point of view is closest to what I think is best for a language learner. Both rules to me are necessary for a second language learner to obtain the maximum grasp in learning a language. Also Canale and Swain state that communicative competence includes: grammatical, sociolinguistic, and strategic competence. In my view Canale and Swain are seeing language learning as a whole in all aspects where language is needed and this is why they mention three other competences inside the communicative competence.

Stern focuses on communicative competence in the classroom, he states that the aspect of language should be study and practice and that language teaching should be objective and analytical. In other words to live the language is the best way to learn it.

Rivers commented on what I think is the most practical definition of communicative competence, she said that in skill-getting and skill-using the student must learn to articulate acceptably and construct comprehensible language.

In conclusion, the author states that all of these theories are important in trying to design successful models for second language teaching. In my opinion language and all grammatical skills with all the competences, all have to be hand in hand to completely teach the language. Speaking a language is determined by the use the speaker gives it. Communication is the key to successfully speaking a language.

POEMS you can use in your CLL classroom!!!!!

Good Morning!

Good morning it's time to rise,
Stand up and wipe your sleepy eyes.
Reach and stretch for the sky,
Hold your hands way up high.
Bend your body and touch the ground,
Stand up straight, now turn around.
Point to your eyes, point to your nose,
Jump up and down and touch your toes.
Clap your hands, stomp your feet,
Let's start the day, now find your seat.

Good Morning Boogie

Hello Neighbor, what do you say?

It's going to be a happy day.

So greet your neighbor,

And boogie on down.

Give 'em a bump,

and turn around.

My School Promise

Each day I'll do my best

And I won't do any less.

My work will always please me,

And I won't accept a mess.

I'll color very carefully,

My writing will be neat.

And I will not be happy,

Till my papers are complete.

I'll always do my homework,

And try my best on every test.

I won't forget my promise,

To do my very best!

~*~Shape Poems~*~

I am Cindy Circle
Watch me turn
Round and round
And you will learn
I'm not straight and
I don't bend
My outside edges
Never end!
Sammy Square is my name
My four sides are just the same
Turn me around, I don't care
I'm always the same, I'm a square!
I am Danny Diamond
I am like a kite
But I'm really just a square
Whose corners are pulled tight
Ricky rectangle is my name
My four sides are not the same
Two are short and two are long
Count my sides, come along
1-2-3-4
Tommy Triangle is the name for me
Count my sides - there's 1-2-3
I am Ollie Oval
A football shape is mine
Some people think that I"m an egg
But I think I look fine!
OR
Opal Oval is my name.
The circle and I are not the same.
The circle is round, as round can be.
I am shaped like an egg as you can see

Harry Heart is my name
The shape I make is my fame
With a point on the bottom and two humps on top
When it comes to love I just can't stop!

Journal Entry #1

Journal #1

                When I looked up the word use the definition given was that to employ for a given purpose or put into action. In contrast the word usage is the way, the language is actually used. The words accuracy and fluency I decided to define in terms of teaching techniques in where accuracy is mostly used in teaching a new item so that students achieve accurate perception. Versus fluency which is used when something has already been taught and they already know about the topic in which students practice to develop fluency or ease in that area. Finally, functional syllabus is a variability of context sensitiveness within a language function. The functional syllabus stresses on the effects of the verbal action. Different to the structural syllabus which focuses on the verbal action of the participants because it is a variability of a language function within a language form.