The Natural Approach, presentations and others

Hi there!!

How are you? I hope you are fine and enjoying your weekend!!!

On Friday we met again after the Winter Break.... we dealt with the Natural Approach, discussing Krashen's five hypotheses to explain SLA. That discussion led to a reflection of situations we have all experienced as students in which our rights as learners are not respected. More specifically, we reflected on how exam situations do not take the Affective Filter into account... My conclusion is: think of the positive experiences you have as students and try to replicate them when you are the teacher. And think of all the negative experiences and try to do things differently when you are the teacher. What do you think?

Also, and very importantly, we organized the presentations for this second part of the year. Those of you who were absent must join one of the groups....

Group	Topic	Likely date
Paula, Celeste, Flor K., Luciana and Fernanda	Classroom Management	September 22nd
Ayelén, Ivanna, Flor L., Araceli	Focus on Language	September 29th
Natalia, Daniel Lo, Rocío, Carla and Sabrina	Tools, techniques and activities	October 6th
Yanina, Ana, Milton, Sandra and Angélica	Testing	October 13th
Daniel Le, Camila, Luciano, Agustina	Educational Technology	October 27th

Bear in mind that it says "likely date", which means that there might be changes. According to our plan, on October 20th we will have the Second Term Test.

Some ideas to bear in mind as regards the presentations:

• the presentation should be one hour long
• make sure to have plan A, plan B and plan C (you know that unexpected things always happen in teaching)
• check the contents so all the groups members have equal parts. (Remember that there will be an individual score and a group score)
• Use visual aids
• Do not include a lot of text in the slides. And DO NOT READ from the slides.
• Prepare at least one activity for your classmates
• Make it dynamic... remember we have classes on Friday evenings!!

Well, that's all for today...