LAST BLOG SESSION:English Language Challenges
> What comments can you make about your experience learning English at university? What about the use of blogs?> What aspects of your English need to be improved and how do you plan to do this?> Outside the English class, how much are you using English these days? What for? - Wordcount: 260- Make comments on 3 of your partners' posts and also on your teachers'.
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Learning languages seriously and taking responsibility for the process is always something intense and at times, it can get to be a little discouraging or even, one may feel one's not making big progress.
All those are fears, I believe, because just by having the great conviction that one's going to learn and working on it eagerly, will prove that with a little bit of patience a human person can learn anything she or he wants to. The essential foundational idea is that it is never a fast and short process, all the contrary; it requires lots of time and inner motivation.
The learning barrier I most often perceive among my students is anxiety and shyness, many of them can understand quite a lot but when it comes to expressing themselves, they just cannot put their ideas forward, either for being shy or for feeling they are going to make a mistake, particularly, they think they are not able to properly pronounce. If we look at these situations, the solution is very simple.
I think that to learn more, my students need to lose their fear to speaking and interacting in English, and the way I see it, it will improve when everybody realizes that having a good accent, pronunciation or even, having a perfect grammar are not the most important aspects of language needed for communication, and that if they just spoke and put their language knowledge into practice (however extensive or minimal), they would certainly open up a door which leads to nowhere else than to communication. Now I wonder, Is there, at all, a better language learning environment than meaningful real life practice?. And furthermore, where can we get such practice in our monolingual context?
LAST BLOG SESSION:English Language Challenges
> What comments can you make about your experience learning English at university? What about the use of blogs?> What aspects of your English need to be improved and how do you plan to do this?> Outside the English class, how much are you using English these days? What for? - Wordcount: 260- Make comments on 3 of your partners' posts and also on your teachers'.
____________________________________________________________
Learning languages seriously and taking responsibility for the process is always something intense and at times, it can get to be a little discouraging or even, one may feel one's not making big progress.
All those are fears, I believe, because just by having the great conviction that one's going to learn and working on it eagerly, will prove that with a little bit of patience a human person can learn anything she or he wants to. The essential foundational idea is that it is never a fast and short process, all the contrary; it requires lots of time and inner motivation.
The learning barrier I most often perceive among my students is anxiety and shyness, many of them can understand quite a lot but when it comes to expressing themselves, they just cannot put their ideas forward, either for being shy or for feeling they are going to make a mistake, particularly, they think they are not able to properly pronounce. If we look at these situations, the solution is very simple.
I think that to learn more, my students need to lose their fear to speaking and interacting in English, and the way I see it, it will improve when everybody realizes that having a good accent, pronunciation or even, having a perfect grammar are not the most important aspects of language needed for communication, and that if they just spoke and put their language knowledge into practice (however extensive or minimal), they would certainly open up a door which leads to nowhere else than to communication. Now I wonder, Is there, at all, a better language learning environment than meaningful real life practice?. And furthermore, where can we get such practice in our monolingual context?
I like the photo that you choose to put in your post, it's very from 2007 or something similar, hahha. Well, and about the post, I can say that anxiety and shyness are very disabling, but with a few of confidence on ourselves it's better :)
ReplyDeleteI suffer from anxiety and I'm shy so I definitely get that part, and in this class was even worse because when I first came I didn't knew anyone, and wednesdays are probably my worst day during the week (including mondays) so I'm sorry if I didn't response how I was supposed to, but I promise I'm better than what I show off.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you, I recognize that I am very shy, and it is hard for me to speak in English, but I must try.
ReplyDeleteI think that in our country it is a little difficult to practice the use of English or other languages other than Spanish in everyday life, although there are many ways to put it into practice, all methods consist of being alone in a room, listening to music in another language or watching series, but contact with other people is complex.
ReplyDeleteI think that making your students like you and gain their trust can make things better for them to enjoy the class , achieve what they want and conquer their fears.
ReplyDeleteI believe that maybe using more audiovisual material like movies could improve our level of learning
ReplyDeleteI think that all english teachers struggle with the same situation. I agree with all what you say about shy students, but sometimes people don't participate in classes because they are not interested. Well have so many things to do in the other courses that sometimes we forget about the english class :(
ReplyDeleteI definitely see myself on the description of your students haha, but yes you are right when you say we just have to jump onto communication! No matter how good or bad we are at that!
ReplyDeleteWe're all a little bit afraid of what we're going to sound like, that's why a lot of students don't participate :(
ReplyDelete