VoyForums
[ Show ]
Support VoyForums
[ Shrink ]
VoyForums Announcement: Programming and providing support for this service has been a labor of love since 1997. We are one of the few services online who values our users' privacy, and have never sold your information. We have even fought hard to defend your privacy in legal cases; however, we've done it with almost no financial support -- paying out of pocket to continue providing the service. Due to the issues imposed on us by advertisers, we also stopped hosting most ads on the forums many years ago. We hope you appreciate our efforts.

Show your support by donating any amount. (Note: We are still technically a for-profit company, so your contribution is not tax-deductible.) PayPal Acct: Feedback:

Donate to VoyForums (PayPal):

[ Login ] [ Contact Forum Admin ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, 2, 3, [4] ]

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Date Posted: 09:27:34 06/25/03 Wed
Author: Myla Fonseca
Subject: task 8 (revised)
In reply to: Myla (Mylene Fonseca) 's message, "task 8" on 13:13:59 06/23/03 Mon

>Communicative Approach On line Class
>Learner: Mylene Fonseca Garcia
>Task Eight
>
>My language learning record
>
>
>I have been studying English as a second language as
>far as my fifth grade as part of a standard high
>school curriculum until my entrance exam and as a
>ICBEU’s private student for two years and a half. But
>this ended a couple of years ago, just after I got my
>proficiency certificate from Michigan in 2001/2002.
>Since then, I’ve studied both English and Portuguese
>literature and language in college. Well, I guess that my English
>language learning covers around ten years of practice.
>During the time which I was not studying English, I
>really noticed that my cinema sessions and also some
>popular shows on television helped me a lot to keep
>tracking of linguistic features and even of native
>speakers’ slang.
>When I was younger I was able to dedicate myself more
>to English learning than I do today. It is probably
>because I had fewer obligations and more free time.
>But I remember myself keeping a glossary of unknown
>words, which I always looked them up in the dictionary. I
>was used to rewrite it until I had memorized every
>word and its meaning. I still believe that this is an
>effective practice because it reinforces the meaning
>of a unknown word in two ways. First, it happens during our
>“trip” to the hard cover English/English dictionary (I
>prefer this king of consulting dictionary. It was not
>like that when I was a beginner but now I feel
>comfortable using it), and second, because you rewrite it
>until you know it by heart. Undoubtedly, it is most
>probable that, in some time in the future, you will
>forget what you have learned if it you have not
>practiced it, but I also use another hint: I do create
>sentences with the unknown word and its possible
>meanings. By contextualizating this new vocabulary
>inputs, I find it more effective than just memorizing
>isolated words. Well, this activity could be
>considered as an applied communicative application of
>a CLT course.
>Another very related action to this is my practice of
>reading authentic English language material. Again, I
>was accustomed to read magazines such as Time Magazine
>and Newsweek, but now I only read articles from the
>similar publications on internet. Yet, it is authentic
>contextualized material from which I usually gain more
>knowledge of the English language. This is an
>important component of communicative approach as it
>deals with authenticity, correctness and appropriacy
>of English language.
>I also remember that as a language student I had to
>fill the blanks which I abhorred. Opposing to this, I
>really liked when any composition were asked from us
>although I sometimes got a little haste in it. At
>ICBEU, we usually have the brainstorming activity and
>the following stage where the students interact with
>each others and the teacher. I recall a specific class
>where we were the participants of a minor crimes
>trial. This was very interesting because we learned
>some specific related words to the subject (convicted,
>guilty, not guilty, overruled, sustained, barrister
>(UK)/attorney (US), etc) and we had to make a
>performance to the class using them. This example is
>also related to the idea of a CLT class where the
>learners are faced with real life situations.
>Finally, within my learner experience, I have
>practiced some structural approach as audio-lingual
>classes and, more recently, some of the principles of
>communicative approach. I do feel that each person as
>a language learner should be responsible for his/her
>own language acquisition and s/he should use any
>method with which s/he does feel comfortable,
>reasonably if it is really an effective one.

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Replies:

  • Re: task 8 -- Marcos Manso, 14:18:09 06/25/03 Wed
    [ Contact Forum Admin ]

    Forum timezone: GMT-8
    VF Version: 3.00b, ConfDB:
    Before posting please read our privacy policy.
    VoyForums(tm) is a Free Service from Voyager Info-Systems.
    Copyright © 1998-2019 Voyager Info-Systems. All Rights Reserved.