Week 4: Reading will teach you anything you want to know and take you anywhere you want to go!

Dear friends,

Having finished the current week's tasks I think that they required time but they deserved the efforts.

We have focused on two communicative skills: reading and writing. I appreciated the proposed articles because I learned from them how to diversify the writing genres and how to approach them interactively and I found helpful the way the reading practice was presented with clear stages and assessment.

The multi-skill websites were a valuable acquisition for our teaching toolboxes (delicious.com): I liked each of them especially those that contained quizzes and games. They proposed resources for all levels and I easily could decide how they coud be used in my lessons. That's why I like taking part in this course: it facilitates the exchange of experience.Another good part that I find well-thought is that each new task is practiced within further activities. For example, this week we designed technology enhanced lesson plans for which we needed correctly formulated ABCD objectives and ICT linked to syllabus topics.

 

„If a doctor, lawyer, or dentist had 40 people in his office at one time, all of whom had different needs, and some of whom didn't want to be there and were causing trouble, and the doctor, lawyer, or dentist, without assistance, had to treat them all with professional excellence for nine months, then he might have some conception of the classroom teacher's job.”

                                                                                                                         (Donald D. Quinn)

The third step in our project work consisted in something very important: determining students' needs.Each student is different and if the teachers have a better knowledge of learners' backgrounds, interests and anxieties they will be able to adjust their activities to make lessons more efficient. According to the comments made by my colleagues in their posts motivation and inappropriate resources are problems affecting students from many countries. Well, it is good that we have outlined the sensible issues for the beginning, next we are going to include technology enhanced elements to address these needs because "when a man doesn't know which harbour he is sailing to, no wind is the right wind."  

Best wishes,

Ion