LISTENING STRATEGIES

Listening strategies are techniques or activities that contribute directly to the comprehension and recall of listening input. Listening strategies can be classified by how the listener processes the input.

Top-down strategies are listener based; the listener taps into background knowledge of the topic, the situation or context, the type of text, and the language. This background knowledge activates a set of expectations that help the listener to interpret what is heard and anticipate what will come next. Top-down strategies include

• listening for the main idea
• predicting
• drawing inferences
• summarizing

Bottom-up strategies are text based; the listener relies on the language in the message, that is, the combination of sounds, words, and grammar that creates meaning. Bottom-up strategies include

• listening for specific details
• recognizing cognates
• recognizing word-order patterns

TEACHING GRAMMAR

Teaching grammar plays a central role in every  EFL teacher's classroom. The important question that needs to be answered is: how do I teach grammar? In other words, how do I help students learn the grammar they need. This question is deceptively easy. At first look, you might think that teaching grammar is just a matter of explaining grammar rules to students. However, teaching grammar effectively is a much more complicated matter. There are a number of questions that first need to be addressed for each class:

·         What are the objectives of this class?  

·         What type of learning background do the learners have?

·         What learning materials and resources are available?

·         What kind of learning style does each student have?

Once you have answered these questions you can more expertly approach the question of how you are going to provide the class with the grammar they need. In other words, each class is going to have different grammar needs and goals and it is up to the teacher to determine these goals and provide the means with which to meet them.

Inductive and Deductive

First a quick definition:

Inductive is known as a 'bottom up' approach. In other words, students discover grammar rules while working through exercises.

Deductive is known as a 'top down' approach. This is the standard teaching approach that has a teacher explaining rules to the students.

What do we need to know as teachers?

1. ‘Teacher thinking’ refers not just to the way we think as teachers, but also to what effect the way we think has on our teaching.
2. Our beliefs as teachers affect our classroom management more than any other element in the classroom.
3. Examining our pro-, inter- and post-active decisions as teachers is the best way to investigate our thinking as teachers.
4. As teachers we are doomed to repeat teaching behaviour that we ‘learnt’ through our ‘apprenticeship of observation’.
5. There is always a mismatch between a teachers ‘espoused’ theories and his/her real classroom behaviour.
6. Teachers’ beliefs, which are formed early in life, are very difficult to change.
7. A teacher will usually have a deeply-rooted (possibly unconcious) view about who his/her learners are, and this view is related to how the teacher believes languages are learned.
8. Taking into account the affective climate in a classroom is likely to affect a teacher’s classroom management decisions.

The Teaching Module

Teaching involves many things: techniques, strategies, methods, etc, so we as English teachers have to be up-dated in order to develop good classes. We surely know not only how to teach but we also need to know  how we are as "human beings". It means that we have to be aware of:
*beliefs and values we hold and which are connected to teaching. 
*what effective teaching means to us
*how much time we can give to our students' problems
*how students view teachers
Being a teacher is not easy, but it can be VERY rewarding when we see our students' progress and realize that we have helped to make it happen.
In this module I will mention what is necessary for effective teaching and how we can help each other to provoke success.

Who teachers are in class
Students get an idea of who we are as a result of how we dress and the way we behave to what is going on in class.
What do you think of this?