MY DEFINITION OF CULTURE

The Polish movie director Billy Wilder grew up in a devastated Europe after the First World War and he was fascinated with the jazz music, the Charleston and the actor Douglas Fairbanks. For this passion he has for the American culture he started to work as journalist and then as a movie writer and director.

Taking in account that a type of music, a type of dance and something related with the films are included in the sack of culture, it can be define as the knowledge and the characteristics of a group of people, who can be seen through their habits, their traditions, their cuisine, their religion, the three arts mentioned and anything able to tell us something about this group of people.

Group of people and culture are two terms that cannot be separated; in this world, there are a lot of people, a lot of groups and, therefore, a lot of cultures. Every person received the culture as something established, for example, in Spain there’s a traditional Catholic religion; but, also it’s received a dynamic process that depends on a personal choice, for example I can live in Spain and don’t practice the mentioned religion.

Both sides of the culture co live with other cultures and it makes the world a multicultural place, with multicultural societies which have pluricultural people. So, we live in a big society which has smaller ones. Despite the different cultures, there’s a need that in these societies exists a social cohesion.

A weapon to keep this cohesion can be the language and the education. The nowadays societies need to grow up with tolerance and respect towards other cultures and, the teachers, and more English or any other languages have the power to make that possible.

Wilder was fascinated for the good things that other people from other cultures can do, in his case through art. And this love for a foreigner art made him an expert of explaining things of the American culture and he became one of the most important directors in USA. A good example of the multicultural world we live in and the pluricultural people in it.

                                  

 Billy Wilder between two great actors.

REFELECTION ON MY MOCK IMPLEMENTATION

If I have to speak literally, this is not a mock implementation because I put into practice last Tuesday afternoon with my P4 pupils.
One of the activities was a listening and the other one was a speaking one. The outcomes, in general, were good, but better in the listening task in which a child has to point the picture of the farm animal he listens. The speaking was about saying an expression that we have been working for weeks and it's related to the animals sounds, for example:  "The cow goes muu muu!". I know that this is an English class and it's different to the other classes in which they speak and listen in Catalan or Spanish, but the outcomes of my implementation can make us see that, in general, our pupils are used to listen a lot, but not to speak enough. In the grades of Englishthe basic competences in primary, the oral part it's not as important as the writing, listening or reading and, in my opinion, this is a mistake because the way to speak a language is speaking it, it's the way to make the languages feel alive.
To enhance the language learning process we have ot give the speaking part the place that it deserves, and a lot of school seem that they are open their eyes because the hire a conversation assistant to work harder this skill. In my school, we have started this year with one conversation assistant that come once a week in every group and we work more individually the main expressions or the vocabualry worked in every unit.

The listening and speaking skills are two of a giant list of strategies that we, as the teachers, can put into practice in our groups. The most strategies we know the best for our students, because each child is a world and they have a different learning style  and knowing them we will know what's the better for them.

I think, that during the kindergarten and the first primary years, the work of the teachers it's indispensable to make our students which strategy fits in a better way with them.Giving them resources  gradually, will make them know themselves. As one of the videos says, the final goal of working with strategies is meke our students autonomous. I hope that my students, in the future, will have this autonomy to improve their learning proces.

VIDEO TASK: “Shaping the way we teach English, learning strategies”

At the beginning of this interesting video is said that the good language learners select the strategies according to the task they have to do. They know how to adapt themselves to the learning situation and use the technique they think it will be more helpful. 
Students who have the skill to do this, needed the help of the adult in their early years, but gradually they learnt how to identify their learning strategies. So, the adult in these first years is too valuable.

Although the strategies are important during the language learning process, the protagonist is the student and some of them are good language learners, who, as the video rightly says, are motivated to communicate something, who have no fear to make a mistake and who take risks. They also recognize language and communication patterns, they correct their own speeches and they practice the language every time they can.

After this short theory part, it begins a real case of language learning strategies in a young adult’s class in Africa, where the second language is English. The teacher they have starts explaining that these students have some problems with the fact of thinking in English and so, writing in it. She adds that they lose the meaning of what they are writing and they tend to repeat themselves.

Although this lack in writing, they have some knowledge in the speaking skill. The teacher points that one of the reasons of this lack is due to they have gone to the school in a interrupted way.

It’s not an easy class, but the teacher does a good job because, as she says, she focuses in what they already know; it’s a way to motivate them. Another thing that keeps my attention is that they work some biology in the L2 to support the lessons of this subjects which some of them have problems with.

To motivate them, they use what the students know, but also, she put into practice some strategies as the language skills strategy (reading, writing, speaking, etc) the cognitive and metacognitive (among others, the transfer of knowledge and the refection) and the affective ones (motivation, trusting and confidence atmosphere).

I work as English teacher in the pre-primary years and I can apply some of the strategies the teacher uses with her pupils.

With the boys and girls I work with I apply some specific skills like the listening when we listen each unit story (with the visual support of big flashcards), or we play a game in which they have to point the word they listen. This year I could work more the speaking part because we have, once a week, the help of a conversation assistant and in little groups we practice some simple expressions.

Another strategy I apply is the cognitive one, because the students learn a lot of vocabulary, there’s a transfer of knowledge. The motivation and the confidence are present in my sessions because they have a good time in each one and they know that I trust in their capacities to learn English.

My students are small, so they don’t know which strategies are better for them, but working in the classrooms with different ones and with my help, they will discover it.

Some of the first words listened in the video is that the goal to teach strategies is to make our students autonomous, and there’s no better way to do it than knowing and helping them. That’s what this terrific teacher does and what I try to do every day at my work.

REFLECTION ON CASE STUDIES

Watching all the videos presented with all these teachers, pupils, students and places you can think that there are all the strategies that a teacher could need.

There are shown classes from the kindergarten, passing for primary and until secondary school with teachers who ask more than others, in different centers placed in different zones. Taking in account all these factors, the teachers have to choose the strategies that fill better with their students: strategies by purpose, by skill area, by proficiency levels of the language, by culture, by age, etc.

During the viewing of the videos I have seen teachers that use visual support, that use the repetition, that speak English in a perfect tune and pronunciation for the students, that use the different skills, that use the translation, the co-languaging, the translanguaging, that use the ICT but some of them work with cooperative and collaborative strategies that make the students learn together and with the others’ help.

The video who takes more my attention was the one called “Building community in a Multilanguage classroom” in which is shown a classroom with a lack of proficiency in English in a neighborhood in Los Angeles. The teacher works it making them participate a lot, making that all that they learn has a connection with the students, giving them responsibilities. In conclusion, making them a community of learners, helping each other.

Seeing in action this teacher and the others, you can see that they are experts recognizing the needs of their students and presenting them the strategies they think that help them in a better way. You can see that they try to make their students work together, because they only way to learn a language is speaking it and in each video you can see that they use the language and they make it live. Like the teacher that works in L.A says “Chomsky said that we develop language playing games because we interact with each other”.

REFELECTION ON STRATEGIES (DIAGRAM)

We use the language to communicate something to someone and when we are learning a language, the final goal is to be able to keep a conversation in this L2 or L3.

During that language learning we use strategies that help us to make it easier; they can be divided in two groups: the INPUT in which there are included the learning styles and the learning strategies, and the OUTPUT, where the communication strategies are.

When we are language learners and we want to communicate something, the communication strategies take place. There are the social and psychological strategies, and both help us to express ourselves in the L2 or L3 for example, paraphrasing (air ball instead of balloon) or avoiding a word that we don’t know.

We, the English teachers, always are English learners, and we know how to make use of the communication strategies. In our classrooms, we have students and each one is different and to help them to communicate in a foreign language and use the communication strategies, first, we have to know these differences. Every one of them has a learning style: some will learn better by visual support, by activities with the class mates and some with individual ones.

Knowing the diversity in the classroom and that every student will learn in a different way, the more learning strategies we know the better. It’s a compulsory need to us know them to enhance our help towards them and let the pupils know them too .There are a lot of strategies. They (and we) can learn by function strategies, by purpose, by culture, by language, by skill area etc. Focusing in this last one, we can learn and teach by listening, speaking, reading, writing, learning vocabulary or by translation strategies. It’s important to differentiate the translation from other terms like translanguaging, code-switching, co-languaging and diglossia.

With the translation, there is a language separation, scaffolding and the L1 is mainly used; in the code-switching, the students and the teacher use the two languages and with the co-languaging, the content is worked by different language groups. At last but not least, there are two opposite terms: diglossia with which there is a hierarchy and separation between languages and the translanguaging, where the languages co-exist at the same time and the hierarchy is out.

In conclusion, we, the teachers (and learners) have to know learning strategies, adapting them to each student, who has a different learning style, and we have to help them to discover which strategy they are best in. With this help, they will learn better and the will want to communicate things in their L2 or L3, and here is when the communication strategies appear to enhance their expression. Doing it well, there will be more multilingual classrooms in which the diglossia will disappear and the translanguaging will be welcome.