With what I learned in the
first class session, mostly about the benefits of bilingualism, the theory of
second language acquisition, the myths and misconceptions about L2 learning,
and the BICS & CALP theory, the following is my reflection. One of the hardest
things for our students to do is to unlearn bad practices they have acquired
through different means or misconceptions and that they use repeatedly. In this
reflection, with what I learned in the first class session, I will give a
practical example of how we can change those bad practices in L2 and replace
them with the correct use; the topic will be irregular verbs.
First, we will connect the
new information they will learn, the correct use of irregular verbs, to their
emotions. We will show them the importance of their right use in real life
situations; for example with a video of a student that travelled to a foreign
country and needs to communicate in the native language, this will help with
the students’ motivation. Another related activity is to show them the
difference of reading a book in its original language and reading the L1 translation,
where they will have to find, in an extract of the book, which irregular verbs
were used in the book in the original language; this activity will lead to a
deeper understanding of a different culture.
The next activity has to do
with observation and the importance or repetition (in different ways) in L2
learning; we can see where our students are struggling and where they have bad practices.
For this activity we acknowledge that all students learn differently. In the
case of irregular verbs we can carry out a creative expression activity where
the students will write in pairs a story, comic, play, or other writing
activity approved by the teacher, where they will use three irregular verbs
from a given list, in different tenses, that they find hard to learn; each
group will have to choose different words.
Then they will act their story (or other) so they can practice those
words in a different way, and they will hear their classmates use other
irregular verbs correctly.
Finally, we will do the
transfer task, where we will help them connect what they have learned to the
real world. For this activity the students will make in pairs an interview to
someone in the school, about hobbies, where they will practice the use of
irregular verbs in different tenses. Throughout all of these activities we are
applying different techniques that use the BICS & CALP theory, where
students will learn different skills and the correct way of using irregular
verbs.
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