Listen to music and you'll learn English!

I have learnt many vocabulary and daily expressions listening to music, so I thought I needed to add something to the blog that related music with English.
This lady gives eleven songs that can make us more fluent in English language because of the rythm of the songs or the pronunciation. She  says that through songs we can learn or improve our pronunciation, listening skills and vocabulary. Also, we can learn verb tenses, phrasal verbs, sentence structure or even daily expressions. So it is a fun way to acquire more English.
Some of the songs she shares are the following:
 -Somebody to love by Queen
-I'm yours by Jason Mraz
-We can work it out by The Beatles

Carolina Araújo

We CAN!!!

Well, the week of exams is about to start and this is a reminder to tell you that we CAN! Nothing worthwhile comes easy, so Come on!!!

Miriam Orón.

A DREAM TO FIGHT FOR

Some days ago, I saw this short film about self-realization and it makes me think that wherever your situation is, you have to continue and try what you want to do it, even if you feel that you cannot do it or you will not achieve it. Most of the times, ourselves are the responsible for our decisions and we have to look ahead in a positive way to have the enough strength to carry on and achieve our dreams and our goals.

Noelia Máñez.

A useful online resource

 I have found a playful game to work with students from 6 to 12 years in our classrooms. This game is a useful resource to practice English in our class and provide them a huge number of vocabulary. It is also a multicultural game so, this is also interesting, and the learner is the main character in this game. I think that you can have a look and decide if you want to use it in a future, to change your routine, perhaps is not a daily activity but why not once a week?

You can find the link here: http://pbskids.org/mayaandmiguel/english/games/index.html

Reflection on education

I would like to upload this video about a reflection of the educational system. I watched it some years ago at my school and I thought that all that he says, is what is happening nowadays. I did not ask myself about the organization of the classroom, I neither ask myself about if we have different brains or not and if we are different from the others, and this is something that is underlined. Why we all try to learn and know the same to reach the high marks?

It is true that nowadays we need a change, and for that reason, are emerging different approachments to learn, I know that is nearly impossible to provide an individual assessment but as a future teacher I will try it because I would have liked to be taught like this, improving that aspects that were better on me. 

I hope that this situation continues improving and going forward to have a better future, an a better education, think about it.

Noelia Máñez.

Community Language Approach

As a future teacher you are going to become, you need some tools and materials in which you will support. Here you can find an approach that Curran made it for the language teahing. The main idea is to achieve students work together to develop what aspects of a langugae they would like to learn.

  The approach take us attention because it emphazises the sense of community in the learning group, encourages interaction as a vehicle for learning, and considers as a priority the student's feelings. The teacher is capable to recognize the struggles in language acquisition, due to, he os she takes care of his/her students learning process. 

   Some things relevant to this is that there is no syllabus or textbook to follow, and it is tehs tudents themsleves who determinate the content of the lesson by means of meaningful conversations in which they discuss real messages. Notably, it incorporates translation, transcription, and recording techniques. It also makes possible to use the students L1 to communicate while they are learning.

Cristina Francisco.

The sooner the better? A study breaks the beliefs about bilingualism

I have found this headline on the digital newspaper El país which claims that lot of parents want their children to be bilingual and learn another language. It says that there had been lot of investigations about the critical period, but a current one has told that the critical period is until the seventeen or eighteen years but it does not expect to reach a proficiency level. 

https://elpais.com/elpais/2018/05/07/mamas_papas/1525687477_992744.html 

It is also said that a child only can achieve that level until the ten years old.  It is also claimed that this biliguism achievement is until the eighteen years because after this age, their interests and context change and all that could affect to their learning.

As we have learnt all children have a critical period to learn and to develope some skills each time, not all children have the same time to develope themselves and also learning takes time. 

To the question that appears at the headline that if is better to start learning before?  I will answer that children have a critical period to develope each skill and they have to expand them depending of they own developement. 

Noelia Máñez