Teaching English With Modern Technology

=== Final paper ===

INTRODUCTION

Modern technologies are changing as they have never done before in history. The possibilities provided by these changes and the challenges they face are also new in history, and they have a power capable of modifying many basic foundations of society as we have known them over the last two centuries. Technology offers immense possibilities to improve learning and teaching, as well as access to education, its quality and management, and the provision of educational services. But the promises of that potential still remain the subject of rigorous discussions and tests.

Nowadays the demand for education increases and governments sometimes have less money to satisfy it: there is a tendency to increase efficiency. Traditionally it has been considered that in this endeavor, in the case of the educational system, technology may be the key. In addition, the issue of effectiveness not only arises in the field of education management and administration, but also in the quality of the didactic-pedagogical process.

The media are not only present in society, but also make it up. From my point of view they shape reality, influencing our way of perceiving reality and conceiving our ideals. Therefore, the media are not only a way to entertain or give information, but also form our consciousness and our way of thinking. In this respect, several reasons are established why education through the media and in the media is more than necessary. Firstly, because, due to the high rate of media consumption and the saturation they cause in contemporary society, it is necessary for our students to be critical of the amount of information they "consume". Note that by information I do not refer only to news, but also to images, since we are continually bombarded until we reach the information overdose. For the same reason it is necessary to make of our students, and of ourselves, individuals capable of being critical and selective in the type of information they obtain from the media.

Second, we must be aware of the ability to influence the consciences that the media has. Not only do they influence our way of thinking, but they also modify ideologies and manipulate ways of thinking. To do this we must make our students aware that there is no objective means, since all are oriented -to a greater or lesser extent- towards one ideology or another.

Third, we must reflect on the incessant way of meddling in the media in the democratic and social processes of our societies. The political life of our countries is affected by the continuous presence of the media, which is not without reason called the Fourth Estate. Therefore, information is power. And this, despite the fact that the presence of these media is, on the other hand, essential in democratic life. For all these reasons, it is extremely necessary that we educate our students for the future, since the media are part of it and also of the present. Students who currently study in our schools, will find, when they are adults, a very different social reality, with profound technological changes, new situations caused by migratory movements, and doomed to a multicultural society, which is no longer industrial but it walks towards the society of knowledge. It is an unavoidable task, therefore, of the school, to develop competencies, skills and attitudes that young people will need in the next century.

Thus, today education should not focus or focus only on the transmission of knowledge, but must develop other capabilities. Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) represent a great challenge for modern education, not only in teaching, but also in learning. In this sense, every new challenge requires a change in the factors that make up the system. Teacher training is the key element of the integration of ICT in education, since if teachers do not have the technological knowledge to master the functions of ICT or the pedagogical skills necessary to promote learning, the result will be negative.

In this respect, in general, teachers must be a bridge between technology and students, guiding them in the learning process and giving them an active role. For this, two primary factors must be taken into account:

• Teachers need to be involved in their own training to overcome the barriers of technological knowledge.

• The educational administration should facilitate the training.

More specifically, regarding the area of ​​English, teachers must be clear about the following purposes:

• Recognize English as a means of global communication and as an essential tool for accessing information sources.

• To bring different cultures closer to our students through the authentic materials provided by the use of new technologies.

• Develop and practice all skills through audiovisual and computer media.

In short, to educate today is not just to be a mere vehicle transmitter of knowledge in a passive process. For this reason, we must get involved in the whole process and promote autonomous and individual learning using all the tools that our society has. Our students must be aware that new technologies open a window to the world through which they can relate globally and have unlimited access to all kinds of information and knowledge.

CHAPTER ONE: THEORIES IN TEACHING AND LEARNING ENGLISH

1.1 Teaching English as a second language

Due to the fact that the presented problem focuses mainly on knowing the learning strategies that the students of the Bachelor of Languages ​​carry out for the learning of the oral ability, it becomes evident to develop in this section the theoretical foundations of the categories of analysis involved in the present study. In this respect, the theoretical foundation would be presented in relation to the communicative competence framed by the communicative approach as the basis of the formative processes in the English area, an oral production that constitutes a linguistic skill underlying said competence; also, the learning strategies represent the central axis of the present study.

It is necessary to deepen the conceptualization of communicative competence since its development is the main objective of the teaching of a foreign language and is a fundamental part of the Communicative Approach adopted by the English area of ​​the Degree. The language in the communicative approach is not perceived as a set of rules but as an instrument for the construction of meanings. This approach does not intend to deny the importance of linguistic competence, but focuses on achieving authentic communicative competence. Thus, the objective of this teaching method is to train the learner for a real communication both written and oral. According to Dell Hymes (1972) all people have not only the ability to speak but also the ability to communicate. Likewise, communicative competence refers to the necessary linguistic knowledge that a speaker needs to interact and communicate effectively in a given situation.

These knowledge not only include knowledge about the language, but also of a cultural nature. Thus, a communicatively competent person is one who acquires the knowledge and ability to use the language and interact with other people, understand them and make themselves understood. Therefore, within the communicative approach it is fundamental to teach the learner the forms, contents and functions of the language.

In this respect, Dell Hymes (1996) considers that the performance of a person in a communicative event reflects the interaction of all the participants and the context in which the communicative acts take place. The communicative competence, as a contextual process, develops, not when the grammatical rules of the language are handled (linguistic competence), but when the person can determine when and when not to speak, and also about what to do, with whom, where and in what way … The communicative competence takes into account the attitudes, values ​​and motivations related to the language, with its characteristics and uses; likewise, it seeks the interrelation of the language with other codes of communicative behavior (Dell Hymes 1996 in Tobon 2004). It is clear then that learning a foreign language involves not only knowing the grammatical and lexical contents, but also understanding how to use it in a real context. For this reason, one of the main objectives is to develop in students not only the components of linguistic competence but also those of communicative competence.

1.2 Teaching receptive skills (listening -reading)

According to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, listening comprehension is a linguistic skill that refers to the interpretation of oral discourse. Intervening linguistic processes that include the interpretation of discourse from the decoding and linguistic comprehension of the phonic chain (phonemes, syllables, words, etc.) to the interpretation and personal valuation, so that in addition to its receptive nature requires active participation of the listener. This definition involves then a series of complex processes that go from the simple perception of sounds, acoustic signal to the interpretation of said signal. That is, we listen to different situations and we also listen for different purposes. The listening process is then a social aspect of the language in which the interaction between the sender and receiver of the message is appreciated. "The receiver receives what the sender actually expresses (the receptive orientation), builds and represents the meaning (the constructive orientation); negotiate the meaning with the issuer and respond (the collaborative orientation); and create meaning through participation, imagination and empathy (the transformative orientation). Listening establishes a relationship between what he hears and what is known by him or her. "(Rost cited in Córdoba, 2010: 225)

In this complex process, two ways of organizing the information as it is received by the receiver are identified, these are the bottom-up and top-down processes. The bottom-up process (interpreted into Spanish below and above, can be translated as the most basic comprehension processes towards the levels of greater complexity) is understood as the process of message analysis or listening comprehension that begins at the level lower, that is, from the detail to the highest level, such as words and interpretation. In other words, the input is first performed by decoding into phonemes (which are the minimum segments of meaning) and then used to identify individual words to finally interpret what the speaker means. "This is the bottom-up process, which sees the understanding of language as the process of passing through a number of consecutive stages or levels and the result (output) of each stage becomes the input (input) for each stage higher. It is as if it were a one-way street. "(Buck, 2001: 2) The top-down process in listening comprehension is seen, according to Buck (2001), as an interactive process in which various types of knowledge involved in the understanding of language are not applied in a fixed order and can be used in any order or even simultaneously and can all interact and influence each other. In the teaching of a second language, we can highlight the importance of understanding both processes because the interaction happens between several sources of information that includes acoustic contributions, different linguistic contexts, general or particular knowledge of seeing the world what in conclusion It leaves the recipient free to use the information available to them or to use only the one they consider relevant to interpret what the issuer is saying. "Top-down comprehension strategies involve the knowledge that the listener brings to a context, sometimes called information" inside the head ", as opposed to the information available in the text itself." (Hedge, 2000: 232). This process of auditory comprehension implies inferring from contextual evidences that come from the knowledge of a particular situation and previous knowledge that the listener has inside his / her head.

Reading comprehension is a fundamental and transversal tool in the educational curriculum since to carry it out successfully provides the student the opportunity to acquire knowledge of the contents and achieve the expected learning of the study areas. As Hedge (2000) considers, "the comprehension of the message begins with the perception of language, going through the comprehension of the general meaning of the enunciation until culminating in the understanding of partial aspects; that is to say, the receiver never intends to understand isolated words or phrases, but rather to grasp the global meaning of all communication, its internal meaning. "The definition given by the author refers to the ability of people to perceive their own language. through their experience (knowing what each word means) and placing each partial aspect of these in a global context that gives meaning relevant to what the author intends to communicate, as pointed out by Heimilich and Pittelman (1991) in which they express that the Comprehensive reading is an active process in which students integrate their previous knowledge with text information to build new knowledge. Bransford and Johnson (1982) argue that comprehensive and intentional reading resides both in the person who reads and in the text to be read. It is of utmost importance to value the meanings of the terms in conjunction with those of the others around you. The reading then is more than the direct result of decoding, as planned by Fries (1962), but it can be understood as a cultural transmission tool. Fries (1962) also highlights the author's interaction author pointing out that: "Reading is a process of interaction between the reader and the text, a process through which the first tries to satisfy the objectives that guide its reading, the meaning of the text is constructed by the reader. This does not mean that the text itself has no meaning or meaning. What I try to explain is that the meaning that a writing has for the reader is not a translation or replication of the meaning that the author wanted to print, but a construction that involves the text, the previous knowledge of the reader who addresses it and the objectives with that faces that one" (Fries, 1962: 21). The authors maintain that the comprehension that the reader achieves while reading is due to accumulated experiences and the interaction between the reader and the text is the foundation of understanding.

In this process of understanding, the reader relates the information that the author presents to him with the information stored in his mind; this process of relating new information to old information is, in a word, the process of understanding. The reading is presented by other authors as well as the process in which the reader uses cognitive abilities to predict the meaning of the text by using the keys found in the graphophonic, syntactic and semantic systems and making use of the redundancy of the written language. This group of authors highlights the contribution of Goodman (1967, 1971) for whom reading is "a psycholinguistic game of riddle". In Goodman's theory it can be summarized in this paragraph of his article entitled "Reading: A psycholinguistic guessing game" (1967: 127): "Put simply, reading is a psycholinguistic guessing game, which involves a relationship between thought and language. Effective reading does not derive from an accurate perception or from an identification of all the elements, but from the ability to select the minimum and most productive clues necessary to carry out inquiries that are corroborated in the first attempt. The ability to anticipate what has not yet been seen, of course, is vital in reading, just as the ability to anticipate what has not been heard is vital in the act of listening. "

Goodman (1967: 174) sustains that reading comprehension is an activity that takes place in the brain, it becomes the main phase of the reading process. This understanding is translated as a change that occurs in the previous knowledge through reading in the interaction that takes place between the reader and the text or message. However, the previously seen approaches, sustain that the exhaustive and careful reading with decoding process is unnecessary. The authors then describe the process of reading comprehension of expert readers who know or have previous ideas of text content that is probably already in their native language. The aforementioned theories correspond to theories of reading comprehension in the mother tongue, but understanding texts written in a foreign language implies that the reader considers linguistic codes that are not his own, so the comprehension process is different. According to Koda (1994) there are 3 conditions that differentiate the processes of the reader L1 (mother tongue) with reader L2 (foreign language), a previous reading experience; interlinguistic effects caused by the contact between two codes L1 and L2 and a limited linguistic knowledge of their target language which can logically influence the type of processing. Due to the above and through a study conducted by Carrel (1991), this suggests the need to enhance both the linguistic knowledge of L2 and the reading skills that already have in L1. In the same way, as in L1, the previous thematic knowledge of the text to be read in L2, facilitate the comprehension process, even of those with high reading ability but little thematic knowledge. It follows from the case of a reader's little thematic knowledge about the foreign language text that the foreign language reader is often an apprentice who did not choose to read or read in that foreign language, we can then support the above according to this statement by Souchon "A text in a foreign language means, in the first instance, that the reader of another language is not part of the group of potential readers the author aims for.When the reader confronts a text in another language, he loses his points of habitual reference, as much in the level of the sonorous evocations as in the one of the multiple associations engendered by the work of connotation, intertextuality and interdiscursivity "(Souchon, 1992: 1). The above is summarized in the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages ​​(2001, hereinafter: CEFR) where the reader is conceived as a social actor who must face various situations in their daily, professional or academic life whose resolution depends on the data and concepts provided by texts. This approach takes into account cognitive, affective, volitional resources, previous knowledge and the set of capabilities that this social actor possesses and sets in motion. (Rossana Pasquale, 2010)

According to Goffard, reading is the "social activity that aims at the insertion of the human being in the social fabric" (Goffard, 1995). When we refer to reading in a foreign language, we find two different theoretical approaches: a cognitivist one in which reading is associated with the processing or processing of information. It is considered as a purely intellectual process that confronts the reader with the text independently of the context and in a totally individualized way. This approach considers reading as a "skill set" that the student must develop, regardless of the context in which the reading is made, of the texts that are read and of himself as a reading agent. The reader "discovers" the meaning of the text and understanding depends on "what the author meant" and what the reader "extracted" from the text. The other approach is of an "interactive" type, since it considers reading as a complex process in which the most varied competences of the reader (linguistic, textual, discursive, socio-cultural, etc.) intervene in a relevant way, his previous experiences, his knowledge of the world and texts, etc. The reader is a "constructor of meaning", based on his previous knowledge. This model of reading is based on the postulates of Vygotskian’s social interactionism.

1.3 Teaching productive skills (speaking -writing)

According to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, written expression is a linguistic skill that refers to the production of written language. The ability of written expression also includes verbal language, non-verbal elements such as maps, graphics, mathematical formulas, etc. One of its functions is to record facts that have occurred or events that are going to occur. The development of this linguistic ability in a second language implies, by the way, a complex and sometimes extensive process in which the students must know how to express ideas in a clear and coherent way, to involve linguistic aspects of each language that must be used correctly. to achieve its ultimate goal which is the assertive communication of ideas. Tricia Hedge (2000) refers to writing as the result of the use of strategies to manage the composition process, which corresponds to gradually developing a text through a number of activities such as organizing information, selecting the language appropriately, make drafts, read and review and finally review and edit. Hedge in turn defines it as "a complex process that is neither easy nor spontaneous for many learners of a second language" (Hedge, 2000. P.302) When referring to students of English as a foreign language and the role of teacher in the development of this skill as complex as Hedge explains, Finocchiaro (1964) points out that as a result of the same, the writing focuses on the messages expressed by the student and assisted by the teacher. Writing in second language should be a process guided by the teacher since it allows to monitor and diagnose problems. The reasons for writing are diverse, these range from social, educational, professional or personal purposes and the teaching role is to build this communicative potential in their students. In the process of guiding the development of this skill, there are certain skills to be promoted in each of the writers.

According to Tricia Hedge (1988) these skills are: "… a list of skills that the writer needs: -Get the correct handling of grammar. – Have a range of vocabulary. – Score significantly. – Use correctly the rules put on paper. Eg in letters. – Spell accurately. – Use a range of sentence structures. – Join ideas and information through sentences to develop a theme. – Develop and organize the content in a clear and convincing way "(Hedge, 1988 p.8) In any context of formal teaching of a second language the development of this ability is included through texts such as letters, paragraphs, essays, reports and essays The European Framework of Reference includes written expression between the communicative activities of the language and its evaluation ranging from the most basic and simple as short essays to the most creative, such as texts about imaginary stories – and written expression strategies -p. eg, the planning of a text foreseeing the effect that it will foreseeably produce on the reader. Already at the highest level of understanding a second language according to the European Framework of Reference the student should be able to create "complex texts with clarity and fluency and with an appropriate and effective style and a logical structure that helps the reader to find meaningful ideas ». According to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, oral expression is the linguistic ability related to the production of oral discourse. It is a communicative capacity that not only includes a domain of pronunciation, the lexicon and grammar of the target language, but also sociocultural and pragmatic knowledge. This skill is probably the most difficult to bring to English learners as a second language due to the differences between the pronunciation of different phonemes of the target language and the fears they have of not being understood when communicating and also, as Bygate affirms (1987) is the ability in which students feel more judged.

1.4 Teaching the English Language (vocabulary-grammar)

Inductive vs. Deductive

The grammar and vocabulary can be taught following two different approaches: deductive and inductive approach. In the deductive approach, first grammar rules are presented and then implemented, while the inductive approach examples are proposed and, from them, is that students derive the grammatical rule.

As one can observe, the deductive processing of grammar represents the general explanation of teacher individual practice, while the inductive presentation of grammar, on the other hand is a part of the individual examples of grammatical rules.

The deductive approach is the most traditional and prevailing, as long as by means of the grammar presentation one may perform exercises such as gap-filling or processing, for implement the specific structures studied.

In the inductive practice, however, instead of a blind and mechanical learning, the emphasis moves to the scanning process that leads to a true understanding of knowledge. As stated by Bruner (1961: 25) and Hammerly (1975: 15-18), his practice is based on the General Theory of Learning, according to which all those things we discovered for ourselves, are more firmly rooted in our minds that we are given.

Throughout the history of the methodology of foreign languages, it has been observed a number of methods to facilitate, improve and solve educational and learning problems that arose inseparably in the educational process. Most methods take as a starting point for his reflections ideas, proposals, beliefs, techniques and procedures of previous methods that preceded them, so we can not speak of revolutionary methods, but rather evolutionary.

In each method or methodological approach grammar occupies a central, peripheral role, focused on the process, in the form of communication. In some methods grammar is totally deductive, in other fully inductive, or mixed. The method that best exemplifies the teaching grammar through deductive procedures is the grammar translation method. For this method, language is a set of rules that must be observed, studied and analyzed. The usual procedures focused on deductive analysis of grammar, lexical, morphological and syntactic memorization, translation of literary texts, contrastive analysis, and others that are primarily focused on teaching grammar.

Regarding the treatment of grammar by the natural method, it stresses that it is carried into the background, giving more importance to vocabulary and situations, dialogues and oral interaction. No grammar explanations could be offered, but orally completed by students. The method of teaching is inductive, but with limitations. The grammar shown and presented in the communicative approach is a functional and useful instrument for students. There is no conceptualization of teaching grammar, but the form and use for students to use and communicate in English. The goal of communicative approaches is the teaching language for communication purposes for students in order to achieve communicative competence and grammar is essential for this purpose, as a fundamental part of communicative competence and linguistic subcompetence, which integrates grammar.

Vocabulary and grammar are not contradictory terms, but converging, both part of the process of learning the language and communicative approaches use both deductive and inductive methods for teaching and learning. Grammar in communicative approaches evolves every day. It has advanced grammatical correction to the communicative effectiveness, structural and communicative activities closed exercise, and from the attention on ways to use them. It should be noted that the presentation of grammar rules in English classes, regardless of the procedure adopted, should address profitability, which greatly facilitate the generalization, transfer to other situations and allow self-correction.

Currently, many publishers have chosen to introduce in their books combination of both approaches, and you can see that sometimes there are gaps in grammatical tables for students to fill in the missing categories from the examples provided, or students to discuss the language works, etc. One can not conclude that the inductive approach is better than the deductive in all cases. As we see in practice it does not always appear "pure" form. However, the implementation of a method or other strictly is not appropriate, but it should make a fusion of the aspects of each method more interesting for any given moment, and adjust to the demands of each content and educational context. In a study of Karen Grasel (2013: 8), this dichotomy between deductive and inductive approach and how students can benefit from the combination of both approaches in teaching is presented. This study also assumes that students benefit most from discovering the rules that are being studied that if they are given from the beginning. In short, this means that the presence of inductive principles (Sharwood, 1988: 173-198) in the methodology of teaching English is beneficial for students. One reason for this superiority of inductive teaching could be guided discovery (Crandall, Basturkmen, 2004: 38-49), which is an integral part of many inductive designs. This means that the instruction includes elements and activities during which students are actively involved in the analysis and discovery of language, guided and helped, but not dominated by the teacher. So important it is active participation of students in the discovery of "regularities and relationships of language" has been identified as a decisive factor in the learning process (Tomlinson, 1994: 20-26). As Tomasello and Herron point out, "passivity by the student goes against the findings of cognitive psychologists and researchers emphasize that language students should actively participate in their learning."( Herron, Tomasello, 1992:709).

With regard to the teaching of grammar, Ishihara and Cohen (2010:116) suggest that "Generally it believed that the inductive instruction promotes higher-order thinking and can be more effective than a deductive approach”. Consequently, educational practices that allow a process of inductive discovery look very promising for teaching grammar. According to Martin Sanchez (2010:15), the choice of one procedure or another in many cases depends on the methodological approach, but in reality, teacher should decide one way or another depending on the needs and characteristics of their students as there are students who need more deductive teaching and other work best with an inductive, and experience shows that in most situations requires two procedures to learn and assimilate a certain grammatical content.

PPP

The teaching and learning of languages ​​is currently one of the areas of study and research preferred in the broad field of applied linguistics. In fact, no references have been found to specific studies based on data on the sequencing of activities in teaching materials and their incidence on learning.

As Sánchez (2004a:56) suggests, the sequencing of activities is not an innocuous issue, a fact that converts the absence of empirical studies related to this subject, at least, surprising. Sequencing involves the establishment of a certain relationship between all the activities involved, which, in turn, introduces concrete patterns of work and class organization. Actually, the sequencing of activities is directly related to the following aspects:

A) The method followed by the textbook that applies one or the other sequencing model;

B) The cognitive sequence to which human beings tend to focus on the acquisition of new knowledge;

C) The variety in the didactic processes, that influences decisively on the motivation of the students;

D) The complexity that can enclose the development and application of a certain series of activities against another or other possible series.

The sequencing structure most frequently detected in teaching materials and in the classroom is the Presentation-Practice-Production model (P-P-P). This model follows a cognitive order composed by the processes of assimilation (previous explanation), practice, consolidation and final transfer. Therefore, it seems possible to assume that for P-P-P there is a single cognitive path of learning or linguistic acquisition, which is opposed to the concrete experience in language learning regarding the natural or non-formal aspect. On the other hand, the attractive and varied presentation of materials in modern manuals can easily distract students and teachers from the presence of repetitive action patterns in this model. Secondary aspects such as short interruptions, imperceptible breaks between sections, or activities with slight format variants tend to hide unchanging organizational structures, which imply a consequent absence of variety in the schemes of action. Consequently, it is presumed that this lack has negative repercussions on apprentices. For all these reasons, the PPP has been strongly criticized by some authors, especially from the perspective of the Lexical Approach (Lewis, 1993: 57) (Lewis, 1996: 22) or the TBLT (Skehan, 1996a, 1996b; Willis., 1996a, among others).

It is not my intention to focus especially on the positive or negative aspects that may underlie P-P-P. This pattern of teaching has been present in the traditional school system and has been favored by recent methods such as the Audio-Oral one. The fact that many students have learned languages ​​following this model makes it at least worthy of respect on the part of any researcher. However, it is also necessary to point out the shortcomings of applying the same pattern in order to answer the following question: Is it possible to introduce more variety of organizational models that are likely to have an effect on a more effective and pleasant teaching or, on the contrary, should teachers accept a single path of organization and sequencing in the presentation of materials in the classroom? The first step in answering this question would be to consider the flexibility or recognition of other cognitive learning paths other than the one proposed in the P-P-P.

Allusions to the sequencing of activities as discussed in this paper begin rather late. Brumfit (1979:85) is a pioneer author, since he analyzes the traditional model or PPP and an alternative structure that he calls post-communicative teaching model, which consists of Production-Presentation-Practice. Littlewood (1981) dedicates a section titled "Sequencing of pre-communicative and communicative work" to the sequencing of activities. It emphasizes two types of organization of activities: the one that goes from the "pre-communicative" to the "communicative" character or the one that follows the reverse direction. Byrne (1986: 71) explains some issues related to sequencing referring to the PPP model, while mentioning the sequence model presented by Brumfit (1979: 85), which defines as "the progressive vision of the three stages of learning ".

Other researchers approach sequencing as a material adaptation procedure and call it "content reorganization" (Richards, 2001: 102-110) or "rearrangement" (Islam, Mares, 2003). Some authors, such as Lewis (1996), D. Willis (1996a, 1996b), J. Willis (1993, 1996a, 1996b), for example, also refer to sequencing schemes, but fundamentally attacking the model PPP, which sometimes appears as the source of all ills in language teaching or as a symbol of attachment to outdated patterns. In this negative critique abound very especially those who confide followers of the TBLT and the Approach Lexicon or "content-centric"

The diachronic analysis of sequential models as they appear in textbooks used over the centuries does not provide a clear model for the consistent application of the PPP model (Howatt, 2004) . Phase 3 (P3) does not always appear clearly in textbooks of the past. For example, the materials analyzed by Criado (2005, 2008) do not include activities that aim for fluid and free production, the specific level of these manuals being elemental the justification the author argues for to explain this absence of P3. However, other materials from the Situational Method of lower levels do provide an explicit transfer or free production activity in the end. In this respect, Richard & Rodgers (2001: 249) expressly link the P-P-P to a "standard lesson sequence in Situational Language Teaching". In the face of these methods, a whole tradition of teaching "based on the natural method" coexists, in which the production by the student is stimulated from the beginning, with the conviction that from it the students will construct their linguistic scheme of form "Natural", without it being necessary to go through phases 1 and 2 (P1, P2), at least in the way systematically and explicitly intended by the teacher and the materials used.

The communicative methodology is far from having been monolithic. Howatt (1984: 95-110) speaks of a "weak" and a "strong" version of the communicative method. Sánchez (1993, 1997) proposes an "integrating" method, in which aspects and techniques of diverse methodologies, especially structural, communicative and natural ones, can or should coexist. In the so-called "weak" and "integrating" version, the presence of the P-P-P model has been more frequently encountered, although with more or less significant variations with respect to the canonical scheme.

In any lesson, one can point out three main parts or stages: Presentation (or introduction of the new material), Phase of Controlled Practice and Production (or Free Practice phase).

PRESENTATION

The purpose of the Presentation is to give students clear information about the language they are learning. It is about giving them the opportunity to:

A) understand the usefulness and relevance of the material presented;

 B) concentrate on its meaning;

C) focus on pronunciation, accentuation, intonation, and of course, focus on grammatical form (morphology and syntax).

What can be presented? The presentation phase can be centred on one or several exponents of a function, for example, Can you …? Do you mind…? Or could you …? in order to ask a favour. It can also focus on a number of exponents of various functions, forming a conversation or micro-dialogue; the most typical example would be that of the sequence to invite, refuse and give an excuse, insist, and accept / refuse again. Or you can simply present the morphology and use a particular grammatical form.

CONTROLLED PRACTICE

Depending on the input, the form of controlled practice will vary markedly. It will not be the same to create an exercise to practice the functions that appear in "to buy a quantity of food" that to practice the use of the demonstratives, to put two obvious examples. So what is controlled practice? Well, what differentiates this stage from the lesson, from the last, the free practice stage, is not so much the type of exercises that can be performed as the level of correction required, the role of the teacher or the degree Of freedom available to students to make mistakes or not. Let's look at it with an example. Imagine that we have presented the forms and the use of the Past Indefinite Tense and to practice it we decided to prepare an exercise / activity of information vacuum.

We are, thus, with an exercise / activity totally focused on the grammar, since the students what they have to do is a simple transformation, but that has a form, communicative because we have introduced the component of "information vacuum", since none of the apprentices have complete information. Of course, it is arguable that this activity meets all the requirements that are required in a "really" communicative activity, but that is not the issue at this time. With this he wanted to demonstrate the possibility of using communicative activities for controlled practice. However, at this point in the lesson, exercises or drills are very useful, enabling the learner to use the language immediately after their presentation in a controlled and even repetitive way in order to help them memorize the forms and assimilate their meaning globally. The exercise models that exist are almost innumerable, we can all see them in any method, especially in exercise books where they have sometimes been relegated, these years ago. But a distinction that does seem to me important is that between mechanical exercises and significant exercises. Mechanical exercises, such as those requiring only a transformation, do not require the apprentice to know the meaning of what they are saying.

It is clear that it will not be necessary for the student to know exactly what a post office is in order to perform the exercise. These kinds of exercises have been much criticized, however, few teachers will deny me the evidence that they provide students with an opportunity to practice and assimilate what they have just learned. Meanwhile, meaningful exercises, in addition to achieving the objectives of the mechanics, require the student to manage and choose between different meanings. As an example we have one designed to practice the suggestions with the form why not …?

Excepting of what they are, the exercises at this stage must meet a minimum of conditions:

A) The phrases or exchanges to which they give rise must be real. Avoid taking students to practice sentences they will never have to say in real life;

B) they must be reproduced with the proper intonation, whether of surprise, enthusiasm, impatience, indifference, etc .;

C) they should be attractive to the student, related to topics that are related to their interests and ages;

 D) and finally, they should be brief. Depending on the difficulty of what is practiced, five or six examples will suffice.

PRODUCTION OR FREE PRACTICE

It is time for the student to act independently, and this is one of the objectives of the production phase. But at this stage there are many other objectives to fulfill and I will briefly enumerate:

 A) to achieve fluency and, therefore, confidence in using the target language spontaneously;

B) to integrate what was previously known with what was learned recently;

C) to practice / rehearse real life situations;

D) to provide the teacher and learner with information on the achievement of the learning objectives.

In this phase of the lesson, the most commonly used exercises / activities are communicative games of all kinds, role plays, information void, problem solving, personal exchanges, among many others that can be found in any current textbook. 'PPP' is a method that is frequently used in school, but it is also criticized for some shortcomings. First, we criticize point number two, some tasks that are done to practice are very mechanical, because sentences do not have a global meaning, and would be atomized without forming a coherent textual set. Another part that is criticized is the third point, production. As has been said these tasks serve to create a link between grammar and authentic language, but the situation in which the student will use the forms he has learned is often very controlled and isolated, and therefore the language would be next to What we can call "pseudo-communication".

Engage – Study- Activate

The model engage-study-activate (ESA) stated by Harmer (2009) describes a sequence of stages in the lessons that expose learners to three different moments in the session where each of them aims and in which each one has a purpose. First, in the engage stage, teacher engage students to the last topic by using a game, is necessary to highlight that each class games are different. Secondly, in the study stage students learn how the structures according to the topic. Finally, in the activate stage students activate their knowledge through a game, focusing on the speaking skill and at the same time working with the others.

The student faces knowledge, modifies his schemes and records the information semantically. There is a personal way of dealing with the environment. Generally each subject does it through their personal constructs and starting from representational models of the world with which it is programmed on a personal level to achieve its purposes. Based on his expectations, he builds his knowledge based on the environment and the variables that make up the family environment, degree of maturity and affectivity, socio-cultural environment, level of personal sensitivity, moral values ​​and cognitive level and, Student faces the knowledge and modifies it according to their personal schemes. In order for the student to perform a meaningful learning, it is necessary to reconstruct what the phrases mean, that is, to capture the idea of ​​the message and not to be limited to textual reproduction, since this learning is not significant or at least not Personal phenomenological product, that is, the ideas must be integrated within the individual and singular structure of the student.

The student uses people constructs and captures reality in a personal way. The student arrives at understanding and acting on the environment solving problems and discovering solutions due to the conceptual and procedural schemes that he has integrated from the object of knowledge that is proposed to him, but that the student himself develops through global and personal constructs and not only prior (Ausubel, 1967: 82), on which depends the cognitive process and the result of learning. The student captures the reality of the educational environment in a personal way and, therefore, relates the process to the student as a whole. At least, one should refer to knowledge and emotions and emotional components; this is why the student's interaction with his / her environment is part of the cognitive, affective and moral aspects that he / she uses when trying to achieve an educational objective or solve a problem. If this is true, and it is, we will deduce from it that the teacher transmits not only knowledge, but also values, emotions, etc., and all this conditions a climate that can be positive or negative for the student. If one of these fields is neglected (cognitive and axiological), an inhibition of the student's cognitive process can be caused by the loss of self-confidence, etc., and, consequently, rejection of the school institution. This can happen if the school environment or the teacher produces an aversive experience in the student that generates a rejection response to the school environment. If it is not possible to reinforce the student's confidence and improve his ability to motivate achievement, possibly the construction of knowledge is deficient because it requires the student's collaboration to build knowledge.

The student links his learning to a series of motives and discovers the hierarchical and organized structure of knowledge. For meaningful learning to be a full reality, the student must be linked to the learning motives and this linkage is complex and difficult, since it must combine three very different but complementary and essential fields: the cognitive field, the Affective field and the moral field. If we achieve a balance between the three fields the development of the educational process we consider that it has a correct approach. Focusing only on one of the above fields and neglecting others can be detrimental. The student also makes his approach to learning and if he does so from a positive attitude, learning is good and he develops cognitive relationships, that is, the student thinks and possesses a positive self-concept of himself. When the approach is superficial, the student is limited to studying what the teacher commands, is afraid of failure and memorized even if he does not understand, it is estimated here that the concept that the student has of himself is low. Finally, if the student adopts a strategic approach, it means that it is driven by the need for achievement and seeks to maximize its effort by obtaining good grades and in competition with its peers. In any case, we must conclude by saying that any of the cases cited can be modified by the intervention of the teacher and by the learning environment and this gives us the solution so that a student is integrated into the tasks and is intrinsically motivated.

In order for the student's intellectual activities to discover knowledge, he must have a hierarchical structure organized in his mind; otherwise, there will be no significant assimilation. It is necessary to take into account the organized nature of the knowledge and the contents to be given, because it depends on it that we establish a relationship with the previous organizers that allow to structure the new contents and, on the other hand, allows the assimilation is significant if the contents Are significant and functional. This process known as the intellectual development is the one that originates the cognitive adaptation of the subject and, through it, new assimilations and a more evolved organization of knowledge are produced, thus achieving a structural modification through the mechanisms of accommodation and taking into account Says that the organization is not static but dynamic. All of the above is derived from the studies of Cognitive Psychology carried out after 1970 and that, in short, pretend to know the characteristics of the student's thinking with which he arrives in classrooms and detect their conceptual errors and their preconceptions. For this, it must be taken into account that the mental representation of reality has a hierarchical structure and, in addition, that the process of organization of information makes possible the reconstruction and application of the contents.

The student builds higher cognitive structures and successfully confronts the environment. The intention is to use constructivism as the spearhead of the student in order to build higher cognitive structures, which will result in the student organizing the relationship between what he knows and new knowledge through positive activity with a view to achieving an understanding of reality and to address the medium adequately and fully satisfactorily. Learning by discovery occurs when the student perceives that the theories that he discovers when carrying out the study are better than the previous concepts and he verifies or intuits that these new conceptions are more useful to intervene on the reality and, therefore, the change takes place Which turns out to be a learning by discovery, since it implies breaking with the previous one and positioning itself before a new qualitative change of the cognitive development. It is the consciousness of the student himself, who perceives the incompatibility between the known and the new, which causes modification and discovery.

Jeremy Harmer in How to Teach English (Longman Publishing 1998) proposed an alternative to PPP called ESA: Engage, Study, and Activate. In an article written in The Guardian Weekend, March 15 1997, Bridget Riley complained about the treatment she and her fellow students received at the Royal College of Art. We were abandoned when what we needed and what we hoped for was help toward independence in teaching rather than having independence thrust down our throats. Jeremy Harmer responded to Ms. Riley’s complaint suggesting a consideration of his ESA teaching methodology. He stated that ESA stands for Engage, Study, and Activate. He used the example of a computer and suggested that in teaching trainees to teach that the ESA should be considered as the computer default mode.

During the Engage phase, the teacher tries to arouse the students’ interest and engage their emotions. This might be through a game, the use of a picture, audio recording, video sequence, a dramatic story, or an amusing anecdote. The aim is to arouse the students’ interest, curiosity, and attention. Over the years the PPP model has always assumed that students come to lessons already motivated to listen or engage. The results of many years of PPP teaching do not support this assumption.

The Study phase activities are those which focus on language or information and how it is constructed. The focus of study could vary from the pronunciation of one particular sound to the techniques an author uses to create excitement in a longer reading text. It could vary from an examination of a verb tense to the study of a transcript of an informal conversation. There are many different styles of study, from group examination of a text, to discovery related topic vocabulary, to the teacher giving an explanation of a grammatical pattern. Harmer considers that successful language learning in a classroom depends on a judicious blend of subconscious language acquisition (through listening and reading) and the kind of study activities we have looked at here. (Harmer, 2009: 31)

In the Activate stage the exercises and activities are designed to get students to use the language as communicatively as they can. During the Activate, students do not focus on language construction or practice particular language patterns, but use their full language knowledge in the selected situation or task.

In Harmer’s response to Bridget Riley’s complaint about the short comings of her training program, he once again returns to the computer analogy. The ESA model is a macro default setting, almost (to extend the metaphor) a teaching program. All three elements need to be present when it is in use. But what makes it useful as a macro default is that the order of these elements is not fixed.

Harmer describes the variations which can be used with the ESA model. He names his default level E.S.A the Straight arrow approach. The first variation is the Boomerang approach: E.A.S.A. It is a task based approach. The Boomerang approach after the Engage (E) phase, gets students to perform a task (A) using all and/or any language they know and only then does the teacher go back to the language Study (S). The Study phase is then undertaken based on what the teacher witnessed in the students’ language performance. The teacher in short will fill in the gaps of the students’ knowledge. To check that learning has taken place the students are then re-activated.

Harmer, in conclusion, states that teachers need clear models, just as computer users rely initially on a default setting. I have suggested a macro default ESA as a general proposal, which provides three micro default settings: Straight Arrow sequences, Boomerang sequence, and Patchwork sequences. I believe that these will be of use to a teacher preparing for a life time as a teacher. Sooner or later the teacher will be able to break away from them, emerging as diagnostically creative as anyone might want. (Harmer, 2009: 142)

Teaching Grammar Creatively

The games awaken creativity and give us a resource students "forget" that they are working with the language and participate in a situation of real communication. They are entertaining, interactive and communicative, and are attractive for all learning styles. The universality of play activities during the growth and development of human capacities leads us to think of their primary function in the learning process. Since the nineteenth century, psychology has addressed the study of game activity from opposites, such as Spencer's (1855) "energy surplus theory" in which play would be the channel by which we use the excess of Accumulated energy and, on the other hand, Lazarus' "theory of relaxation" (1883: 28) in which he proposes that the individual seeks to relax in the game of weight caused by his daily labor activities and his stressful responsibilities. Groos (1898, 1901) proposes that play is a way of exercising or practicing the instincts to fully develop them, a preparatory exercise for the development of necessary functions in adult life, having the game as the end of the activity, by the mere fact of performing an activity that gives us pleasure. In the twentieth century, in the framework of his theory of maturation, Hall (1904) comes to associate play with the evolution of human culture: and says that "through play the child returns to a summary experience of the history of mankind ". Freud proposes that the game is the need to satisfy instinctive impulses of erotic or aggressive character. It is his theory that the game helps man to free himself from conflicts and solve them through fiction. More recently, Piaget (1932, 1946, 1962, 1966) draws a parallel between the development of cognitive stages and the development of play activity, proposing that the different forms of play that we can observe throughout child development are a direct consequence of the transformations that suffer in parallel the cognitive structures of the child. The student, through the game, both assimilate and accommodate, since the game is an indispensable activity through which the child interacts with a reality that overflows. Sternberg (1989:96), commenting on Piaget's ideas, points out that an extreme case of assimilation are fantasy games in which the physical characteristics of an object are mutated or simply ignored and the object is treated as if it were something else entirely, Sometimes even a person. The game is fundamental to provide the child with the scaffolding that Bruner (1984) and Rogoff (1993) talk about to facilitate its growth and its passage to the next stage of development.

As we can see, many authors have given the game a preponderant role in human development and have treated it as an effective tool that accompanies it in the process of learning and growth, sometimes in a more "regulated", as In the school environment, and sometimes more "free" during spontaneous games in which children embark when they are with their peers or even when they are alone. But the game is not limited to the age of the child and the period of schooling, on the other hand, is an activity that lasts until adulthood and even in old age. The adult games market is huge and games tend to occupy a social role of interaction and entertainment in everyday life. During the language class, the games allow us to reach our students in a more natural way and give us the possibility to recreate role plays, as they have been doing in their own language during their lives as learners, allow us to contribute a Instance of communication with a clear communicative purpose: win the game and to reach this end, an effective and relevant tool, language.

TYPES OF GAMES

Below are a number of advantages and disadvantages of using games in the language class, these are general for most games, however we could dedicate ourselves to discuss the specific advantages and disadvantages of each game, since there are many types Of games: skill games, personal challenge, competition, collaboration, simulation, association, riddles, inventions, board games, those involving movement and those that do not. From the point of view of language, there are those who focus on the form or meaning of words, those who work on grammatical structures or lexicon. Also, there are games in which certain socio-cultural, historical or geographical information must be handled; Are those that focus on oral or written interaction, those that require skills such as inferring meaning, paraphrasing, finding synonyms or antonyms, deducing rules, building word families, exploring placements, and many, many more.

The most relevant types of games when speaking about the language class are those that give the possibility to deal with themes related to the language, whether its structure, its lexicon, its phonetics or the socio-cultural world. Also, it is important to take into account the skills that will be used to play the game and get to fruition, that is: to win it.

SOME ADVANTAGES OF USING GAMES IN TEACHING

Are funny

Give classes more life, colour, new sensations

Games help to "forget" working with the tongue

The incentive of a prize or recognition to the winner motivates them to play

They serve to review and re-review issues that we have worked until weary

Games are good for working fossilized and fossilizable errors

The play material is different from the printed for the class and the novelty, it is attractive

Games appeal to students with visual, kinetic and auditory memorization strategies

Games appeal to all styles of students. (Active and reflexive, intuitive and sensitive, visual and verbal, sequential and global, inductive and deductive)

Teamwork connects students and puts them in a position to dialogue to agree on team games and this helps to create an atmosphere of familiarity where they are more likely to act with less inhibitions

They are a personal challenge

Encourage the student to be active and take responsibility for their own learning

Generate real situations of need to obtain information and negotiation

Some disadvantages of using games in the class and their solutions

The pressure to win can be too stressful. SOLUTION: Some games can be made without scoring. Changing couples or class equipment in class also helps students not feel too much pressure to win or win their team.

 If students are too competitive, games can separate the group. SOLUTION: In these cases it also helps to constantly change teams and give prizes to everyone from time to time, only bigger or important to the winner.

Some students may see the game as a waste of time. SOLUTION: Teachers know why we play games: to practice vocabulary, to set grammatical rules, to improve fluency, to work some sociocultural content, to eradicate fossilized errors or to avoid fossilizable ones. It is good to make this goal explicit to students to see that play is an integral part of the learning process, not just the time to relax and have fun.

Some students may feel underestimated or are being placed in too childish situations. SOLUTION: Let's talk about the game, the games they play in their languages, that they see that in previous slogans in previous classes they were playing when they guessed a verb, when they included a lie, when they played a role, when they had to join two sentences or two Parts of a word and that so and so, were doing a useful job with the language.

 The teacher has to prepare them too much to be useful, attractive and of good quality. SOLUTION: It is true that there are no good games specifically designed for the ELE class, and that producing them takes a lot of time and effort, but it's worth it, a game can usually be used for more than one objective and for many levels, Time, but then we use them many times.

Also, the good news is that specific games are appearing on the market. For the moment, most publishers have some book with ideas for creating games, but different issues are launching games created and produced specifically for the ELE classroom and surely this is just the beginning.

I will enumerate the advantages that have motivated these considerations:

1. "Games provide an opportunity for real communication, although within artificially defined boundaries, so they constitute a bridge between class and the real world" [Hadfield, 1987, III].

2. They are activities that stimulate the acquisition of a foreign language because they increase the degree of motivation and create an immediate need for a response.

3. They favour a positive climate, relaxed, relaxed, trustworthy and mutual exchange.

4. Encourage participation. During the time the game lasts all are actively involved in the process.

5. They decrease the time of intervention of the teacher.

6. The element of fun they provide motivates that, in a pleasant way, "serious" content can be practiced.

7. The very structure of the game makes students exploit their knowledge of the foreign language with flexibility and are more focused on the content of their preferences than on the structure of the game (the teacher is in charge of controlling them).

8. According to James (1990), "(…) the exercises proposed in game form are especially favourable for the communicative practice of different grammatical points, since the acceptance of its rules allows to reduce the notional field and, thus, to communicative practice, centred on very few linguistic exponents "(James, 1990: 70).

9. They allow us to recreate different contexts and, in turn, to vary linguistic registers.

10. Its use is very versatile. The teacher can use them as: – a preliminary check on certain aspects to be introduced – a check of what has been learned – a revision – a needs assessment.

Once we accept the fact that the activities programmed as games entail in themselves, for what we have just described, enough elements of interest that justify their use within the classroom, we need to clearly define our field of work, because not in In a few cases, aversion to games is no more than a terminological problem.

Types of games.

 There are so many types of games and activities, so there are games of movement, intellectual, imagination, affective, skill, social and a long etcetera, but in general, we can divide them into two great sections: free or imaginative and regulated or systematic, Whose realization constitutes a triumph. The games, according to The Curriculum Plan, enable both controlled practice within a significant framework such as free practice and creative expression, as well as covering both linguistic and sociocultural knowledge, being classified as follows:

• Observation and memory games: it indicates them as well indicated for a controlled practice of lexicon. Example: putting objects on a table, covering them and remembering or describing their names.

• Deduction and logic games: points them as appropriate to practice the past and points as an example to give the end of a story for students to complete by asking questions. In reality, we think that this is more a technique of creativity, to which we could add others as giving the beginning of a story and to complete it, to present a story and to change the ending, to name the characters in another way, that Propose professions for them, that change the history of time …

• Games with words: the Plan proposes them for oral and written activities, and introduces, as we said before, tongue twisters, jokes, riddles.

To these examples we could add the games that Rodari poses in his Grammar of the fantasy, among which we emphasize the fantastic Binomio and the stone in the pond and those we have just mentioned of variation of histories. The game with words can be taken as the basis of a linguistic learning because in it are present the motivation, the goals, the confrontation, the creativity, the traps and tricks and the pleasure of winning.

Songs

Many authors point out the benefits of including songs for teaching English grammar as a foreign language. The use of songs as a tool within the classroom is fundamental to awaken curiosity and interest in the language (Murphey, 1990). Within this same line, songs facilitate motivation (Falioni, 1993, Murphey, 1990, Barrera, 2009), memorization (Mol, 2009: 99-111) in addition to activating both brain hemispheres (Thain, 2010).

On a daily basis, students' lives are full of music as this is a fairly common pastime within society. Currently, there are a variety of English-speaking singers which generates a great resource for teachers in the classroom (Barrera, 2009). Because of this, the importance of working with music in the classroom is relevant since it offers a variety of benefits and contributions. For example, for children, music is mainly a means of expression and motivation (Thain, 2010). As well, a tool for physical, cognitive and socio-emotional development, among other attributes (Mol, 2009).

Lynch (2005:78) notes that there are nine clear reasons why one should teach English through songs, rspectively:

the songs almost always contain authentic language or natural language,

there is a variety of new vocabulary,

songs are usually easy to find,

they can be selected according to the needs and interests of the students,

grammar and cultural aspects can be reviewed,

duration is easily controlled,

students can be exposed to a wide variety of accents,

lyrics can be used in relation to transcendental themes,

students believe that songs are fun.

That is why teachers of English as a foreign language and / or second language should consider the songs in their classes.

On the other hand, Mol (2009:112) points out important contributions of music in the classroom in his article Using Songs in the English Classroom. There are some positive contributions from which we can derive benefits through the use of songs, for example, in the socio-emotional growth of students, as they share the songs they like by talking with friends or by some social network. Music love is not likely to be spontaneous in the classroom, however, songs allow the student to participate within a group and express their feelings.

In addition to this, the use of songs is related to the physical development of the students, since they provide opportunities in which students can move around the room, applaud, dance and even play instruments. With those songs that are easy to remember and repetitive, students develop the skill called "automaticity" which allows students to produce language quickly and without pause. To this contribution, Mol (2009) called it, cognitive training. Thanks to the fact that music is increasingly accessible and we can listen to it anytime and anywhere, you can get information, learn about other cultures or know different traditions around the world, called cultural literacy. Finally, the songs help students become more familiar with the intonation, rhythm, stress in words, memorization and typical expressions. In this context, Jolly (1975) and Thain (2010) point out that using songs is beneficial in learning languages ​​since in this process both hemispheres of the brain are activated. For example, pronunciation, comprehension, rhythm and musical performance correspond to the left hemisphere. While the expression melodic, tone, emotions and artistic expression correspond to the right hemisphere. The reference point of this article is the teaching of grammar and the use of songs that facilitates the possibility of observing grammatical points in a real context in the English class among other qualities. As Larraz (2008:85) points out, the songs serve to learn the grammar and vocabulary of the authentic language and its direct relationship with culture. Since in all songs there are verbal tenses, the songs can be used as an exercise to activate previous knowledge in relation to some grammatical point and then continue with the explanations and contents (Barrera, 2009). According to Falioni (1993:24), practically all grammatical points can be found in the lyrics and the texts offer a great variety of vocabulary, which can be used to practice the 4 communication skills, making learning more meaningful. When selecting a song, you must also take into account the type of activity to be developed with the chosen grammatical structure. Some possibilities are that the students have to underline all the verbs in simple past, the teacher writes them on the blackboard and based on the students' previous knowledge can be reviewed or introduced the explanation of the simple past in English. Other ways of working grammar points are to transform sentences, select sentences from the songs, correct errors, continue sentences, complete a table with different grammar points introduced in the song, etc. (Barrera, 2009).

MUSIC AND SONG AS A RESOURCE OF TEACHING / MOTIVATING LEARNING

As one should consider, motivation is a decisive factor in the teaching-learning process, so I have decided to research on songs as a motivational method for teaching foreign languages. I will expose the benefits that music brings us, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of this and the criteria for the selection of these songs. On the other hand, the promotion of motivation entails the implementation of teaching-learning strategies, that is, if the student is motivated, he will develop strategies to learn; If you already have them, use them and if they work your motivation grows even more.

The music has an affective component, since its evocative power can change our mood according to the type of melody that we are listening or according to the letter of each song. It is a trigger and a way of expressing our own feelings. It has also been known that musical knowledge is processed globally in several parts of the brain, but not only in the areas of sound processing and language, but also in other centers, such as those intended for vision. Hence music has an evocative power that stimulates the visual imagination, the linguistic environment, memory, etc. On the other hand, a property that the songs have, is the scarce use of space-time and personal references, which facilitate their appropriation by the listener: "We make them ours and we get them to tell us about our world and, from this Way, connect with our emotional plane, have the ability to act on our emotions. This affective charge and experiential nature of the songs make them a motivating and meaningful material to exploit in the language classroom. " (Gil Toresano, 2001: 41)

To achieve a more lasting learning, the implication of emotions is fundamental, and songs are a way of expressing feelings difficult to express, since music has a great power for the stimulation of emotions, sensitivity and imagination without forgetting The consequences that derive from the ability of the songs to catch and remain in our memory. The work of Gatbonton and Segalowitz (1998) shows that this fact is totally beneficial for the learning of a foreign language. Thanks to the songs you can practice repetition exercises without the students perceiving them as such, but as a necessary practice in the song, therefore in a communicative and natural context. It is a fact that music is present in the most important and happy moments of our lives (such as weddings, communions, etc.) and it is obvious that in all that makes us happy, motivation is the determining factor. Hence this concept is the fundamental element in educational practice and especially when addressing the task of learning a language. In addition, the songs are a reflection of the culture that has permeated our interior, that is, are a form of expression and communication. In order to be aware of the role that music has played in our lives, June 21 has been declared "The Day of Music" 5 worldwide, celebrated in over one hundred countries. On the other hand, according to Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences (1983, 1993, 2004), including linguistic and musical intelligence, it is positive for the education of people to encourage the development of all Intelligences. There are many students who need visual stimuli to learn, but others who need stimuli of another type, whether tactile, kinetic or auditory. The latter type of pupils especially benefit from learning through songs, since people whose learning style is primarily auditory learn better by listening to texts, conversation in class and especially through songs. Abundant in this, Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences distinguishes between various types of intelligences: visual or spatial, verbal or linguistic, logical-mathematical, kinetic, musical, interpersonal, and intrapersonal. Working with songs motivates and stimulates the students with verbal, musical, interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligence, since a song implies both the lyrics (verbal), music (musical), sharing with others learning and even singing ( Interpersonal) and also the reflection and introspection (intrapersonal). Therefore, you can work almost all types of intelligence through songs. Also, for students with kinetic intelligence, you can also include activities with movement, such as choreography. As for the students with a great logical-mathematical intelligence, it is possible to consider problem solving activities such as rhyme prediction, fault detection, etc. Which are motivating for them. Another solid theory underlying the use of songs in the language classroom is the Krashen Affective Filter Hypothesis, S. (1983). According to this author, the process of acquiring learning is achieved in a climate of safety and trust for the student, and it is the teachers who have to provide our students with a pleasant and positive atmosphere in which they feel comfortable and motivated. In this ideal context of learning, the songs have a very important role for teachers and students, since, as Varela (2003) points out, the songs develop all the linguistic skills and put into operation the two cerebral hemispheres. This author points out that songs can be used to:

teach vocabulary

practice pronunciation

remedy frequent errors

stimulate debate in class

teach culture and civilization

study the linguistic varieties of the language being taught

encourage creativity

develop oral and reading comprehension

develop oral and written expression

review morphosyntactic aspects

motivate students to learn the foreign language

develop rhythmic and musical sense

1.5 Ways of improving teaching and learning English by using modern technology

Films, Cartoons, Videos

There are various ways of defining the word “video”. Macmillan Dictionary has applied the significance of this term as “the recording and broadcasting of moving images and sound” , “a recording of moving images and sound made digitally or, in the past, a film recorded on to video tape” (http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/video). Both videos and movies belong to the visual aids. They contain pictures and sound. Video can be described as a useful means of communication, an efficient aid used by teachers in the process of learning and teaching and also an important source of information.

Movie is a film shown in a cinema or on television. During the English classes, the teacher has the possibility to choose between movies without subtitle and movies with subtitle. Videos, cartoons, movies can be used to teach at every level. They can be used both as material for skills practice and as major part of an intensive course. Thus, the learners are given the opportunity to watch the moving pictures and to hear at the same time. It is more captivating and entertaining for pupils and these teaching aids capture their interest and attention. They offer something different from the abstract concepts to the learners. The use of videos creates an interactive environment and a meaningful context for teaching English. The advantage of introducing them in the process of learning and teaching vocabulary is undeniable.

The main reason would be motivation. They raise the interest of the young learners and generate their motivation. If teachers talk all the time during the lessons and they do not have anything to stimulate their learners, they will easily get bored. By introducing movies and cartoons, the pupils’ participation will be encouraged and they will be guided into successful language learning while the teachers will not have to speak so much. The learners watch and hear instead of listening to one single voice. Videos bring learners into the life and adventures of the others and can experience real life situations, too. This way of teaching vocabulary is an alternative way that differs from the traditional textbooks. Cartoons and films are a combination of sounds and vivid, brightly coloured pictures and present the lexical items comprehensively, realistically. Moreover, the pupils have the possibility to be acquainted with the voice of native speakers, their accent and pronunciation. Hence, they can be integrated into the real world and assimilate the new structures without being aware of this. While watching cartoons or videos, pupils learn unaware and do not feel the stress or pressure as in traditional classes.

Because they use both sound and images, films represent one of the perfect methods for our learners. Videos and films generate excitement and help us achieve our goal: to get pupils involved in learning a foreign language. Nowadays, there are many films or cartoons that are specially created for learning English. Young learners can study with pleasure and interest by watching a video in an adequate language environment. When watching, they can better understand the situations specific words are used in. Moreover, teachers can stop, start or rewind a video until everything is clear.

Researchers have demonstrated that several minutes of a short episode taken from a film is equivalent to fifty minutes teaching with traditional textbooks. Presenting the language in context, the learners will be able to use it correctly, have in mind how the new words are used in a particular situation but they also know how to pronounce the words.

Another important advantage of making use of films and videos would be that their source has no limits; almost any cartoon or video can be used to teach English vocabulary.

Other important aspects are that while watching videos, learners can make a comparison between cultures, observe aspects of non-verbal communication and study the body language in order to understand properly the act of communication.

Jeremy Harmer presents a variety of viewing techniques for teachers when using videos, cartoons, films and videos in listening activities (Harmer, 2007):

Learners can watch silently (playing the film without the sound);

Teachers can freeze the picture and ask the learners what they think it will happen next;

Learners can see partially (the teacher covers most of the screen with a piece of paper);

Learners can watch subtitled films;

Learners listen to the audio part before watching the video.

Cartoons, videos and films can be used to help the young learners improve their vocabulary, but the teachers should be attentive when they choose the teaching aids and the follow-up activities because it is expected they are facilitators of the learning process. The activities are meant to help beginners, elementary, pre-intermediate and intermediate level pupils understand what they are learning. For example, cartoons are very amusing and fascinating and can easily be used for teaching young learners. All these audio-visual aids are different ways of teaching and helping pupils enrich their English vocabulary. Their use relies on the time and materials a teacher allocates to it. All of them offer effective assistance in the process of learning and teaching.

Songs

Music is a suitable and powerful instrument for teaching English vocabulary because it plays an important role in our lives. It begins with our birth when we hear our mothers singing lullabies. Nowadays, music is everywhere: on radio or TV, in restaurants or shopping malls and other public areas. All recent technological inventions (MP4 player, smartphones, and iPod) permit us to listen to our favourite songs any time we want. Music has always played a big part of most young people. They like to talk about favourite singers and this means communication.

In Thornbury’s opinion, the mental lexicon is made up of the words organised in the human mind. He also thinks that "knowing a word involves knowing its form and its meaning”, as well as "knowing the words commonly associated with it (its collocations), including its register and its cultural accretions“ (Thornbury, 2002). Thornbury and Harmer underline the difference between productive and receptive knowledge. According to Thornbury, "receptive knowledge exceeds productive knowledge and generally – but not always – precedes it“ (Thornbury, 2002). Harmer believes that it is not very easy to decide which words that pupils know are active and which are passive. It is believed that the words they hear in songs remain in the active level as long as they listen to a specific song. That is why the teachers should use pupils’ favourite songs. Using songs helps both teachers and pupils because the new words are in context the pronunciation of the words is easily learnt and remembered by listening to that song and along with the melody. Listening to English songs improves their listening skill. They also have the opportunity of hearing native speakers. Farrug points out that "music lends a natural rhythm to words and phrases, helping language learners to use good pronunciation. Melodies and rhymes guide learners to speak in a native cadence."

The use of songs motivates pupils to listen first and helps them communicate fluently at the end. Many pupils are reluctant to express themselves in English. The lyrics cover interesting topics and themes that can be used for further discussions.Young learners can memorize easier something connected to real life situations, their hobbies or experience.

By learning vocabulary through songs, they are more relaxed, attentive and receptive to the process of learning. Using their favourite music to teach vocabulary can make the process of learning more successful because motivation is a vital aspect that influences the pupils’ performance. As Harmer states, “it can make a satisfactory connection between the world of leisure and the world of learning.” (Harmer,2001)

There are various activities that can be used for teaching English vocabulary: practising intonation or pronunciation, using a song for correction, gap-fill, writing dialogues using the words of a song, karaoke, writing stories, drawing pictures illustrating the lyrics, dancing(moving head, hands, feet, and body to the music in creative ways), re-writing the song in an original manner or by substituting all the adjectives or nouns, or other parts of speech so as to make a new song lyric.

When teaching English vocabulary through songs, all seven multiple intelligences are emphasized:

visual (video, dramatizations, illustrations);

logical/mathematical (music is maths);

social (dance, choral);

musical (playing, singing, listening) ;

kinaesthetic (body movement, clapping, dance);

individual (individual projects);

linguistic (interpreting lyrics while listening or through exercises).

Another advantage of using their favourite songs is that it brings the opportunity for revision and revision is vital for storing the information in long term memory, which is the main target of this work: to help pupils remember it as long as possible. Songs provide joy and diversification, a pleasant change in the class, too.

One possible answer to the question how much the pupils are influenced by the music when they learn English is to be found insuggestopaedia. Suggestopaedia is a teaching method developed by Dr. Lozanov in Bulgaria. According to Murphey, Lozanov uses background music in order to relax his pupils during the classes and to open up their minds to the language. (Murphey, 1992) During these classes, music has an important role in creating a pleasant atmosphere and removing anti-suggestive psychological barriers.

Songs can be taught to any number of children and have an important quality: flexibility. They can be used for a number of purposes and help young learners improve their listening and speaking skills.

Songs can provide the perfect setting for vocabulary practice. They are generally based on a theme or topic that can provide the context for vocabulary learning. The song ‘I Can Sing a Rainbow’, for instance, can be used to review colour names while the song ‘Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes’ is useful for reviewing body parts. Most of the songs for young pupils contain monosyllabic words, many of which are frequently repeated. This repetition provides greater exposure to these words and can help improve vocabulary acquisition.

On the other hand, teachers do not have to neglect an important aspect: the song selection. They should choose songs carefully according to the level of language proficiency of the learners and their age and adapt them to suit their teaching goals. If they know how to do it, they will increase pupils’ interest and motivate them to learn English.

Pictures/Flashcards

A standard lesson is often not a favourable environment for teaching English vocabulary. This can be a good reason for teachers to find diverse stimuli and aids to avoid these circumstances. Among these precious aids there are the pictures that can guide the young learners into the real world. They bring entertainment, reality in the class and can really change the lesson by creating a relaxed, motivating setting.

The definition that The Free Dictionary gives for the word picture is:

“- avisualrepresentationorimagepainted,drawn,photographed,orotherwiserenderedonaflatsurface;

– a visible image, especially one on a flat surface or screen;

– a situation;

– a person or object bearing a marked resemblance to another;

– a person, object, or scene that typifies or embodies an emotion, state of mind, or mood.”

Andrew Wright points out that the pictures are not only part of a method, but they have a significant role due to its representation of persons, things and places. The most common ones are photograph prints, cut outs, maps and graphs, cartoons, charts or drawings.

Despite all these, pictures have their limitations, too. When teaching vocabulary, pictures are not always enough to teach new words, especially when we want to teach abstract words such as talent or imagination. For that reason, teachers need to use supplementary aids.

There are many advantages for using pictures during the process teaching-learning:

– the pictures motivate young learners and draw their attention very quickly;

– the pictures introduce the context in which the words are used;

-the pictures can act as a stimulus and offer information, further conversation, or story telling;

-the pictures permit relevant material for practising vocabulary items.

Hill underlines a few advantages of pictures:

they are everywhere: on the internet, in newspapers or magazines;

they are not expensive;

the teacher has the opportunity to choose them;

they can be used for different types of activities (comparing, drilling);

they are “always fresh and different”, which means there is a variety of formats and styles and the young pupils often wonders what comes next. Young learners are frequently curious and attentive regarding teacher’s intention with the pictures (Hill, 1990).

According to Andrew Wright there are more types of pictures:

pictures of a single object;

pictures of maps and symbols;

pictures of places;

pictures from history;

pictures of fantasies;

picture of persons: picture of a famous person, pictures of several people andpictures of people in action;

pictures of the news;

pictures with a lot of information.

In Ruth Gairns and Stuart Redman’s opinion, pictures can be: wall charts, commercially- produced flashcards, hand drawn pictures or illustration from course books and supplementary books.

Betty Morgan Bowen classifies the pictures after their shapes:

wall pictures (a large illustration of scenes or events and used with the whole class);

wall charts;

flashcards;

sequence picture (series of pictures of a single subject for telling a story or a sequence of events);

picture flashcards (useful for the representation of a single concept, such asan object or in action);

word flashcards (card with printed words on it);

work cards (Betty Morgan Bowen, 1973).

David Hill has another classification related to their size:

– large (20×30 cm): useful for whole-class work (presenting new language, controlled practice or as prompts for speaking activities);

– medium (10×15 cm): useful for group-work;

– small (5×5 cm): useful for games and other group-work activities(Hill, 1990).

Using pictures can have disadvantages, too:

The pictures can be small or not attractive enough in order to catch the pupils’interest;

The young learners can be attracted more by the picture than the learned material;

The teachers could need much time and money to supply attractive images.

That is why, it would be better for teachers to use attractive and simple pictures. The pictures have to be clear and big enough to avoid misunderstandings about the pictures. All the pupils’ activities should be supervised by teachers to be sure that young learners do not pay more attention to the images than to the activity.

Big Picture Flashcards

Big picture flashcards are used because they are seen as extremely useful in presenting and drilling forms of new vocabulary words, since they have a strong impact on young learners and the force to change a boring activity into an enjoyable one. The teachers should take all these into consideration if they want to make themselves understood and to motivate their pupils to learn English. Flashcards help young learners connect the meaning of the new words with real-world images. When teachers use flashcards in different presentations, the pupils are actively implicated and the controlled practice goes hand in hand with presentation. Flashcards help the learning of the new vocabulary items in diverse manners: in narrating a story or in introducing words related to a specific topic (for example, flashcards showing items of clothing).

Wright and Haleem (1996) presented a number of possibilities how to exemplify the meaning of a new word through images. Even if, one image could be enough, sometimes it might be necessary to use more than one image to be sure young pupils understand what the teacher has in mind ( for example, if the teacher wants to present the phrase to be cold, she/he could show two or three pictures of persons who are cold in different situations.

Another possibility would be for teachers to contrast meanings (the teacher works with two antonymous pictures, or similarly, contrasts two images with things very alike in their meaning, such as ‘ship’ and ‘boat’), to introduce the word as a part of a larger thing (the word ‘leaf’ can be put into context as a part of ‘a tree’) or to employ the sense of a collective idea or to present the word as a part of a larger thing (the verb ‘to work’ can be accompanied by pictures of different people working in different jobs)( Wright and Haleem, 1996).

During practice, revision or testing, big flashcards can also be used but it is vital that they are shown in an attractive manner. Wright and Haleem suggest a number of activities that can be adjusted for this purpose such as‘Flashing picture’, where the teacher just flashes the cards quickly and students guess or describe what they saw.

Another activity could be ‘The slow picture’s reveal’ (Wright and Haleem, 1996).This time, the image is used in a more meaningful and ‘real-lifecommunicative’way than being just shown to the young learners to say what they can actually see. This could have a greater impact on the retention of a piece of vocabulary again and also subsequently on the ability to use it in communication.

Word Flashcards

Even though, word flashcards are not actually images, they are similar to the picture flashcards and are many times used together especially in teaching writing and reading. They are also valuable aids in teaching English vocabulary, providing support in teaching the spelling of newly learnt words.

Small Picture Flashcards

These flashcards can be used in various communicative activities and are suitable for both pair work and small groups of pupils when the teachers want to practise or to review specific words. There can be different flashcards: one-side-only cards, both-sided ones and sets of pairs (synonyms or antonyms, an image and the corresponding word or phrase) or sets of cards connected e.g. by their meaning. Because of their small size, they are easy to be applied during the classes. They can be used in different types of activities: Match the word/Show me…, /what is missing/Domino/Order the pictures/Look at the picture and guess the word written on the other side/Create the story. During these activities, there are productive communicative exchanges: teacher-pupils and pupils-pupils. Young learners are attracted by these activities that stimulate their imagination and keep them focused.

Puppets

Puppets are fascinating. Although, puppets are inanimate things, young learners relate to puppets and easily establish a sincere interactive connection with them. They look at the puppets as at the real human beings around them that can empathize with. Puppets are a useful tool not only for teaching English vocabulary, but also for teaching social skills. They help break the ice between children and initiate natural conversation. They can become the teacher’s assistants and complete what a teacher says. They are an alternative technique in teaching English vocabulary.

Lewis establishes several types of puppets:

Hand puppets. They consist of a head figure and loose garment or dressed fitted over the teacher’s hand.

Glove and finger puppets. There are small figures attached to the gloves. The teacher uses the index and middle fingers as puppet legs.

Rod puppet.They are moved with wooden sticks attached to parts of the body in order to manipulate them and give life to them.

Marionettes. Marionettes are flexible, jointed puppets operated by strings or wire attached to a crossbar and maneuverer from directly above the stage.

Shadow puppets.They are formed from a piece of thin card board or wood, to which handles are attached to permit manipulation behind a rear lighted while cloth or milk plastic screen. (Lewis, 1973)

Puppets represent an important aspect of teaching vocabulary to primary school learners. They catch the pupils’ interest from the very beginning and improve the dialogue teacher-pupils based on the material previously discussed. On the one hand, puppets help pupils to understand the meaning words or structures. Puppets encourage the young learners to express their feelings, their thoughts, to interact. Even the shyest pupil is encouraged to take part and is more confident being helped by a puppet. Pupils speak through the puppet, and the attention of the others is shifted away from them onto the puppet. In these cases, puppets bring a psychological comfort for that child.

When teaching English vocabulary, puppets can stir imagination and develop creativity, can provide the perfect setting for oral communication, motivating the learners to share their ideas. These are solid reasons for teachers to use them during their classes mostly for young learners in the primary school.

Puppets help teachers create a genuine information gap which is difficult to have with elementary pupils because of their limited lexical items grammar. All they know about each other is obtained through dialogues in Romanian. Therefore, puppets are the perfect choice to be used by pupils for asking and giving information, for exchanging opinions.

These teaching aids are usually tactile, brightly coloured and capture the young pupil. They emphasise Gardener’s theory of multiple intelligences: spatial, interpersonal and intrapersonal, emotional because at this age children acquire a foreign language being aurally, kinaesthetically, visually involved. Young learners are heard talking with their toys; they imitate the dialogues conducted by their parents or people around them

Pre-intermediate or intermediate pupils can use puppets in a profound manner. Many teenagers feel uncomfortable with personal topics and puppets can act like masks, they can hide behind the puppets and talk, communicate with the others. There can be organized debates where teenagers discuss various issues such as violence, drugs, cultural differences, generation gap. Using the puppets as masks, they are able to share their fears, their hopes, what they feel.

Realia

Nunan describes Realia as “objects and teaching props from the world outside the classroom that are used for teaching and learning” (Nunan, 1999). They can be referred to as real objects used to help in practising vocabulary or as a technique in presenting meaningful exemplifications from the real world. The word refers to real items found in everyday life as an aid to teaching English as a foreign language and to bring the class to life. They are brought in front of the pupils as concrete examples to be written or discussed about: items of clothing or food, kitchen utensils.

There are experts who relate realia to audio-visual aids (real things, photos, images). On the other hand, Cancela and Ouvino compare Realia with “ a tailor’s box which constitutes the means of easy use, minimal cost that does not need any kind previous preparation”, because of various resourceful aids included: articles of clothing, films, newspapers and magazines, letters and journals, toys, photos, etc. (Cancela and Ouvino, 2003)

For Berwarld, Realia means “real objects, specimen or artefacts -not copies, models or representations-from a particular culture. Indeed, authentic materials are designed for use in real situations, not to be used as instructional tools. Realia and other authentic materials provide a wide range of printed and spoken messages that can be used as primary or secondary material in a foreign language classroom” (Berwarld, 1987)

Another definition belongs to Hubbard et. al. who presented authentic materials “as samples of language, which are not designed for language teaching purposes” while Gower et al. described them as “texts which are taken from newspapers, magazines etc. and recordings of natural speech taken from radio and television programmes”. An interpretation of these opinions would be that Realia indicates “a large number of materials, of any kind, which are brought to the classroom with the aim of doing a wide range of activities, while authentic materials work with the socio-cultural aspects of that foreign language to help pupils learn the language through samples of real life situations in places, where the language is spoken” (Cancelasand Ouivina, 2003)

Natural Approach and Realia are interconnected. Using these types of materials can generate a natural atmosphere, where the pupils learn English, the same way little children learn their mother tongue in early stages.

Nowadays, it might be difficult to teach English as a second language: the pupils are less motivated, large classes; some teachers do not adapt their material and techniques to the student’s needs, to their learning style or type of intelligence, the cost of the materials.

It has been proved that pupils learn more when a teacher presents his information in various ways, so that they could not get bored. For example, children learn better if they do and say in the same time. Because vocabulary acquisition is vital, the teachers should apply different techniques to involve their pupils as much as possible. Young learners are interested in activities connected with their world, their personal experiences, so that they could learn the new words in a stimulating context.

Howard Gardner’s opinion is that the learning styles of the pupils are distinctive and each pupil has his own way of acquiring information. He states that “the broad spectrum of students would be better served if disciplines could be presented in a number of ways and learning could be assessed through a variety of means.”

According to their learning styles there are:

pupils who are intuitive and sense;

pupils who learn by saying and doing;

pupils who learn deductively/inductively;

pupils who are reflective/active;

pupils who are global/sequential.

Realia represents palpable, real things efficacious for teachers to bring their learners to life and can be used both with a single pupil, but also with larger groups. Teachers might use Realia to present the new structures realistically for a better understanding and to introduce the class in what they teach.

Every pupil uses all the five senses (touch, sight, smelland hearing, taste) to gather information about the society he lives in. According to this, there was established the sensing learner (Jung, 1971). For this type of learner, sensing is important, because it involves observing in order to get information through senses. Another category includes smelling, touching and tasting and has an important role in teaching a foreign language, especially when the pupil is taught in his mother tongue with less use of foreign language.

Realia has been included in the category of teaching strategies associated with visual techniques to introduce vocabulary. Gower’s opinion is that through realia the meaning of a word is more directly illustrated than through verbal explication and pupils are helped both to see the word in context and also to convey its meaning (Gower,1995)The pupils hear the word and get visual support at the same time.

Only imagination restricts the use of realia, since almost each object could be used to teach new vocabulary. It stirs their creativity by implicating the senses and stimulates their brains. With realia, a teacher saves precious time and long explanations, as the object is immediately recognized. Elicitation is easier and the teacher obtains the result when his pupils identify the word.

Young pupils are very receptive to realia and consider this way of teaching funny and refreshing. Their age is perfect for it and since they are visual learners, teachers need to appeal to their creativity. For example, the teacher wants to introduce the words ‘a piece of cake’. The chance of remembering them is higher after experiencing the smell, touch and taste of the cake. Teacher can use almost everything: they can bring new objects or use the objects that are in the classroom. It is easy to teach children this way because they love playing games or enjoy role-play. If the teacher says: ‘Your doll is going to a party. What clothes does it need to wear?’it will be a real pleasure for the little girls to choose something for their dolls. Another option for teachers is to make up stories using puppets, animals, toys. So, young learners will be attracted and motivated to learn English.

Teenagers may be reluctant to speak and Realia can be used as an icebreaker at the beginning of the lesson or as a tool for further dialogues. It takes some of the pressure off the speaker and makes the lesson not to be repetitive or dull. Visual aids and Realia lead to a productive atmosphere for learning and special interest in the lesson.

However a teacher cannot use Realia all the time. For instance, he wants to introduce the adjectives ‘tall’ or ‘short’. He should not use pupils to show the meaning of these words in order not to make them feel uncomfortable and hurt their feelings. The best approach would be the use two pictures.

Still, there are more advantages than disadvantages:

It helps the kinaesthetic pupils, because they have hands-on experience;

Pupils are given the opportunity to practice real life situations like using different maps and giving/asking for directions in English, but with the support of someone who speaks fluently. Once they are outside, they will surely feel more confident in speaking the language with the citizens.

The interaction with Realia keeps them concentrated and excited;

Bringing Realia in the classroom is an enjoyable break from the classic activities like reading a text or writing an exercise.

Realia that can be used in situational language practice is hence an essential part of the teacher's equipment. Davies, et al. gave detailed information about how the teaching procedures should be used with situational language teaching(Davies, et al. 1975).The sequence activities they propose include:

a) Substitution drilling in which the teacher uses cue words (words, pictures, numbers, names) to get individual student to mix the example of the new patterns;

b) Question-answer drilling in which the teacher gets one student to ask a question and another to answer until most pupils in the class have practised asking and answering the new question form;

c) Individual imitation in which the teacher asks several individual pupils to repeat the model she or he has given in order to check their pronunciation;

d) Choral imitation in which pupils all together or in large groups repeat what the teacher has said. This works best if the teacher gives a clear instruction like ‘Repeat’, or ‘Everybody’ and hand signals to mark time and stress.

e) Listening practice in which the teacher obtains his or her pupil's attention and repeats the example of the patterns or word in isolation clearly, several times, probably saying it slowly at least once(Where. . . is. . .the. . .pen?), separating the words.

f) Correction in which the teacher indicates by shaking his head, repeating the error, etc., that there is a mistake and invites the pupils to correct it. Where possible, the teacher does not simply correct them. He gets pupils to correct themselves so they will be encouraged to listen to each other carefully.

In conclusion, Realia transforms the process of teaching into something memorable for pupils. It is an easy visual aid to be used in the class, because it requires no special preparation. Realia helps the teacher show the meaning of the words since the learners can smell, see or touch them at the same time as hearing them.

Computer and the World Wide Web

The pedagogical evolution has been accompanied by the computer- and web-based educational approaches lately. There has been a concentration on the pedagogically driven development.Therefore, the role of the computers in the educational process has increased considerably. Since they provide data and guidance to the young learners, the computers are true partners in the process of learning a foreign language. The computer is a tool and does not replace the teacher, it just reorganizes the interaction between learners and teachers. Although computers offers new opportunities in teaching and learning, the teacher represents an important part in the process of learning. This situation requires new skills, both on the part of the teachers and pupils.

Using computers, the pupils acquire new information often without being aware of the fact that they are learning and use various types of knowledge and develop various skills while using their computers. Besides, computer software never criticizes students, but generally gives positive feedback. The pupil’s attention is usually more directly focused on the material because the computer asks for more frequent responses than typical classroom activities do and evaluates students.

Computers are connected to internet. The World Wide Web is the component of the internet where data can be accessed. It represents that vivid and entertaining element of the internet made up of unlimited and ever-expending number of pages that we navigate by using web browsers such as Mozilla, Google’s Chrome, Safari, or Internet Explorer. E-mail is not part of the World Wide Web, even if is on the Internet. It does not represent a way of accessing information rather than a means of communication.

There are many advantages of using the World Wide Web when teaching vocabulary. It offers authentic content in the target language. Pupils can listen to a song or watch a movie trailer, read a magazine, find out what time a train leaves or the museum opens. The course book can be accompanied by the internet by bringing language learning to life. The pupils can actively manipulate the language for a precise and rational purpose.

Internet is very resourceful for the teachers, too. Here, they find test generators, lesson plans or tips, materials designed for English language lessons for a greater impact on learners. They can subscribe to mailing lists related to teaching English as a second language (TESL) or teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL). They have the opportunity to talk with other colleagues about different methodological issues, to exchange ideas. The internet is the location where English teachers can find news concerning the teaching materials and latest inventions. There are newsletters, electronic journals to be read.

The internet provides meaningful language. The experts have shown that pupils are able to acquire new words better when they are exposed to meaning. Working with the internet is permanently evolving unlike the course books that communicate the information in a predictable order.

The use of computers as educational tools particularizes the learning-teaching process. It seems that the young pupils are those who establish the progress and frequently the materials being taught and done since they acquirethe new vocabulary at a pace appropriate to the level of their language skills. Young learners are very attracted by the activities connected with computers because these have the capacity to reconsider the scope of the language curriculum. Computers facilitate and encourage new learning adventures. They can be considered perfect teaching aids for teaching English vocabulary, especially for young learners whose interest is immediately caught and become more active. While working with computers, their attention is hardly distracted. An important part of integrating computers is the possibility of setting the assignments according to the language abilities of the children. This is the reason why computer-assisted instruction is considered to be learner-directed. The feedback pupils receive is instant and this permits them to evaluate their answers while the questions are still fresh.

On the other hand, when pupils work on the computers they pay less attention to the teacher. Thus, the teachers need flexibility in directing the lesson and more time for working with individuals. It is the teacher who should lead the pupils and organize their work. Computers cannot help the learners when they have misunderstandings. Computers only complete the teachers’ work.

The internet reduces the focus on the teacher and shifts the communication from pupil-teacher to pupil-pupil. It also provides authentic reading and listening materials that help the teacher model the language he wants. If they are used properly, computers make language teaching very effective.Windeatt et al. described internet as a very efficient teaching aid and underlined the factthat its practical productiveness is highly connected by the manner teachers exploit it. (Windeatt et al, 2000)

During the language lessons, a teacher confronts new challenges while handling a computer. It is clear that learning how to use a computer effectively takes time and energy and there are teachers who are reluctant and unconfident in operating computers. In order to avoid confusion, lessons must be prepared well ahead. The teachers should give precise instructions, at least until pupils get used to the program.

Multimedia CDs have become widespread in education and provided outstanding materials which will be perfectly incorporated into typical lessons. Above all, they offer access to the pupils to electronic dictionaries, encyclopaedias and thesauruses. They are more up-to-date and easier to be used than those in books.

Different types of media have a crucial role in the integration of the aspects of natural learning into the class. CD-ROM provides extra help with pronunciation, interactive exercises, animations that are regarded as very fascinating and stimulating by the young learners. A CD-ROM can be used as part of a self-study task or as part of the learner training.

Before starting the activity, teachers need to follow the following steps to be sure that pupils know exactly what they have to do:

The teacher describes the context to catch their attention. For example, if the topic is weather, he brainstorms weather vocabulary and askspupils about climates around the world;

The teacher explains the task. Once the students are interested in the topic, it’s time for them to discuss the overall task and its outcomes. This is very important. The teacher should be very clear with his or her overall goals. A web quest should be more than a series of questions with answers available on the web. Using the weather idea again, the task may be to research weather in two countries and create a presentation comparing conditions in each;

The teacher explains the steps. After the learners have been introduced to the goals of the web quest, they will go over the specific steps to reach their goal. Most successful web quests are a logical sequence of targeted questions through which they gather information to solve the overall task. Again, the teacher may choose to assign specific websites for the students to explore or leave this decision to them;

The teacher explains the product and assessment. He defines the final outcome of the web quest (an oral presentation, a PowerPoint presentation, an essay, a wiki, or a blog).Since the web quest consists of process and product in equal proportions, they will need to take both into consideration when assigning a grade. A rubric is generally the best way to do this. The rubric criteria will depend onthe process and product of the web quest and the overall language aims he seeks to achieve through the activity. There are many rubric generators available free on the web, which can make the process of developing a rubric fast and easy.

The role of the World Wide Web in teaching English as a foreign or secondary language is examined by Jarvis who establishes two types of web sites available to teachers: those created for other purposes, for real-world users, and those designed specifically for English language teaching (ELT) lecturers or pupils. English speaking sites provide excellent possibilities to meet authentic texts. On the other hand, Jarvis points out that the Web is not the only medium in which students can be exposed to an authentic learning experience, although as a pedagogical tool it is extremely motivating. However, the activities found on EFL dedicated Web sites cannot be termed authentic tasks because they are designed to develop language skills and are not likely to occur outside or beyond the language classroom. Jarvis is not denying the value of EFL dedicated Web sites, nor is he underestimating the importance of non-authentic tasks. On the contrary, his opinion is that both are essential for meaningful language development, and there is room for a combination of authentic and non-authentic tasks within a lesson (Jarvis, 1997)

Teachers should find web sites with supplementary material concerning the subjects discussed in the classroom lessons if they want to use computers in their lessons. They contain links listed according to topics and provide users with rapid and not difficult access to a great number of educational resources on various commercial, university, non-profit sites. An example is BBC World Service where various activities for each level are provided.

The internet provides a diversity of language games. Samples of them will be given that are thought to be most relevant to represent word games on the World Wide Web. All of them are known, so the exercises do not need much explanation. They are very remarkable not only because they are visually enjoyable, but exploit the possibilities of modern technology also.

It is important for teachers to choose those learning games that are mostly suitable for teaching children and adolescents. There are many sites that provide various interactive online games for learning and teaching English vocabulary. The activities are for teaching and practising both English vocabulary and also pronunciation skills. Every time they play these enjoyable games, young pupils learn English vocabulary, pronunciation and phonics. On this site a variety of online games can be played : Hangman Games, Car Racing Games, Memory Games, Spelling Games, Crocodile Games, Sentence Games, Interactive Board Games, ESL Classroom Games, Jeopardy, Wheel  Games, Concentration Games, Matching Games, Pirate Games, Word Recognition Games.

The teachers have many options to enliven their English lessons with these interactive ESL team games for a productive classroom practice. Children have fun playing these classroom activities. The vocabulary games help students develop good word recognition, reading, listening, and spelling skills. 

Digital Story Telling

Digital story-telling combines multimedia (images, audio and text) with personal narrative. Nowadays, pupils are born in a world of technology and become skilful and enthusiastic users of technology. That is why, schools and teachers should provide something new to help children learn and improve develop new twenty-first century skills which include creativity, critical thinking, collaboration and contextual learning, communication skills. All these are possible if multimedia is used during the English classes. But this requires trained teachers in new teaching approaches and strategies.

Teaching and learning English vocabulary through digital story-telling is contextual and organized around authentic tasks. The teacher guides the process of learning and using digital storytelling because young pupils need a certain control and assistance. Learning vocabulary and media connection is stimulating and involves feelings. Digital story-telling has a strong effect on the pupils’ development of language skills and contributes to their social and emotional development. Using digital story-telling in teaching vocabulary is significant since it is a communicative and collaborative activity that implies sharing opinions and using their English vocabulary. Most of the new language in stories is in context and is usually repeated more than once so that the pupil has many opportunities to understand the meaning of the new words. Especially in the stories for young learners, the vocabulary is repeated and if they do not understand one word, teachers should find the proper way to improve their understanding and comprehension of the context. This is the reason why the stories for young pupils are accompanied by colourful pictures. Their role is to support the text of that story.

There are many and different kinds of digital stories:

Photo stories. They are combinations of texts and still images. The pupils’ task is to take photos and make a PowerPoint presentation in which the photos will be put together with the text. It is not difficult and pupils can easily apply their vocabulary with multimedia project;

Video words. These are combinations of words or phrases and pictures in order to make a film or a short and simple presentation. They are useful aids for young learners because of their limited vocabulary. Thus, they have the opportunity to practise their English language guided by their teacher;

Presentations. They are combinations of texts and pictures in order to introduce a specific topic. Pupils sum up the main ideas and present them in a certain order. They need to know more information than it is in the written project and to present it without reading;

Staging. It is a description and the pupils are focused on performing their actions, feelings, events, actions. There are presented things that are familiar to them. (Hotmann et al., 2010);

Video clips. When creating a video clip, pupils put words, images, recorded conversations or narrations and music together to make a meaningful complex which covers all kinds of digital stories mentioned above. A video clip is about a specific theme which is familiar to the story-makers and which shows his or her personal point of view. The maker is personally involved in the story-making process and the story mirrors his or her feelings and emotions.

Using digital storytelling for teaching and learning English vocabulary is one of the new ways that attracts pupils. On the other hand, the usage of digital storytelling requires certain teachers´ knowledge about digital storytelling, technical background, enough time and space in English language classrooms and the assessment of the goals which they want to achieve.

One benefit of this approach is that the activities are extremely attractive for pupils as they can experiment with the online video-making tool and get to create their own version of their written story. The teacher gives a single task which opposes textbook based approaches that limit the pupil in his or her creativity. Moreover, the combination of the visual and the verbal channel pose a good frame for language learning involving practising vocabulary as well as sentence structure. Finally, the exercise could be split up into an in-class and a homework part. The story would be written in class giving the pupils the chance to ask when problems occur, and the actual video creation would be completed at home.

The activities lay focus on the improvement of the writing skills and spoken language. Both of the skills are trained in the preparation of the story and in the final step, its presentation to the class respectively. The teachers are offered a great possibility to increase motivation, oral participation and thus competence in handling vocabulary.

Blogs

The term Web 2.0 refers to the new era of the internet aids. They distinguish from their predecessors regarding the way they promote connectivity. If in the past, the online tools were focused on communication (texts, chat, and email), the new generation of tools (blogs, wikis, social networks) integrate all these functions and above all link data. Web 2.0 has democratized content creation, making it possible for anybody to create and quickly share content. Not all Web 2.0 content is new, of course. The digital videos we can view on a website like YouTube have been available on the internet for years. The difference is the accessibility of Web 2.0 sites which allows users to take this content and mix and remix it to create something new. For the teaching and learning English vocabulary, Web 2.0 tools offer great benefits to teachers and students alike, namely:

They are vast repositories of authentic material in multiple formats (text, photos, pictures, audio, and video);

They facilitate communication between people around the world with shared interests in a way that email and chat cannot;

They allow students to create their own content quickly and professionally and thereby shift the classroom emphasis from static course books to dynamic tasks;

To practise English vocabulary in context and guess the meaning of the unknown words in the context.

From all the new web technologies, blogs and wikis are probably the most common and accepted. They are practical, easy to use, and both of them require only basic technology skills to create and manage. A blog is an electronic journal where pupils have the opportunity to practise their acquired vocabulary posting their thoughts and ideas on a regular basis. It is usually arranged in backward chronological succession, and those who read usually focus on the latest post and read down until they find the place they left the last time they logged on. Blogs can be written by individuals or groups. Blogs can also be used to host discussions or projects. In a blog, the author shares opinions, insights, and links to related sites of interest that may contain videos, images, audio files (podcasts), or other types of digital media. The key feature of a blog is the comment function. Only the author of a blog can edit a post, but anyone, who has permission to access the blog, can comment on what the blogger has written, or comment on the comments of other readers. This makes a blog dynamic and ever-changing, unlike a website, which tends to remain in one constant state for an extended period of time.

In the educational process, there are four key types of blog to be identified:

A teacher blog. It can be used to offer links to resources or to communicate with pupils. For example, the teacher can post homework assignments. The teacher can also use a blog to manage resources and share with colleagues both local and around the world.

Student blogs. These can be used for different writing assignments. They can be managed as the focus of projects by individual learners (for example, in the form of an e-portfolio) or by a small group. They can also be a communication tool to share pupil’s reflection with the teacher and their classmates.

Class blogs. These are student blogs for the whole class group. They are particularly useful in twinning projects. A class blog can link to both individual pupil blogs and teacher blogs.

Project or topic blogs. The subject of a blog is important. Pupils can create a blog for a specific topic or a project. The blog can be ongoing, or it can simply be deleted when the project is over or they move onto a different topic. Blogs are not designed to be permanent and learners can delete and create as many blogs as you like.

Blogs are a perfect tool to introduce and practise English vocabulary. They engage learners with questions, ideas and links asking them to think and respond. Thus, young learners become a part of the learning process. Blogs archive the learning that teachers and students do, facilitating all sorts of reflection and analysis that was previously learnt.

David Shareski is a famous teacher and blogger. His blog ‘Ideas and thoughts’ is very famous and is among the widely read education blogs. English teachers can find here links to other interesting educational sites in the internet, reflections from his daily work, tips for lessons, responses to the thoughts or opinions of the other bloggers. Teachers have the chance to talk about their personal experiences or to ask questions for clarification.

Adopters of Weblogs in the class have already created a variety of blogs to use them and proved that blogs can enhance and deepen learning vocabulary. Blogs can be used as collaborative space, class portals, knowledge management and school web sites. Pupils not only practise vocabulary, but they also learn to read critically and write more clearly. The class portal weblog facilitates communication with other pupils who may be learning the same thing. It also provides feedback and practice. It is simple for pupils to look back over their work and see what they have accomplished.

Using a pupil blog, pupils can write about their favourite sports stars and provide links to related sites of interest. They can post updates and comments on recent games and invite the others to voice their opinions. There are many possible vocabulary activities using blogs. The pre-intermediate pupils can post:

class-related information such as events, calendars, homework assignments;

journal entries;

their reactions to different issues;

their ideas and opinions about topics discussed.

Learning vocabulary can be fun especially for children. There are many blogs that provide attractive vocabulary activities. The site ‘Vocabulary Games’ is among them. Here, young learners can play various stimulating games: online word searches or crossword puzzles and hangman online (their version is called ‘Hang Mouse’). Teachers can choose from the vocabulary list a specific word game which will be used in the game. These vocabulary games can be played on smart boards as well.

vocabulary skills. There are long vocabulary lists. The site helps young pupils build reading, phonics, or English language skills and acts as a stimulus for children who learn phonics, spelling and vocabulary by making use of fun applications. Pupils can build their vocabulary skills by making connections between words and ideas, between words and pictures, too. The right connections between vocabulary words make the process of building vocabulary skills faster and more efficient. This grouping of knowledge by topic and level is another important aspect of this website since not only teachers but also pupils have the possibility to choose the topic and the level they are interested in.

Wikis, Digital portfolios, The European Language Portfolio

A wiki is a tool which allows learners to work together on a common webpage. Wikis are built up by a group and are about collaborative work. Wikipedia is an enormous collection of information, editable by anyone who registers at the site. It is very popular and is available in several languages.

A wiki allows all its users to collaborate on a text, saving different versions as the text is developed. For this reason, it can be a useful tool to support the writing skill and reinforcement of vocabulary. The process of writing breaks down a writing task into manageable steps which provide structure for student writing tasks. Traditionally, the steps in the writing process have been identified as:

Brainstorm. Teacher offers a topic and all contribute with their ideas. It is for idea-sharing. With wikis, pupils can create a group brainstorming page for a project. They can log on and add, edit, or delete ideas without the risk of losing what their peers have created. The teacher can also add comments to the page.

Draft. Pupils start organizing their ideas from the brainstorming phase into a coherent text. This may be just an outline or a full first draft. The wiki’s facility for saving multiple versions encourages students to take more risks at this stage in their writing, since they know they can easily modify their text later.

Revise. The revision phase is for feedback on the piece of writing being created. This feedback comes from a teacher or another student who has been assigned the role of editor. On a wiki, the editor can either use the comment function or add edits into the text itself.

Edit. Here the focus is on editing for accuracy – getting spelling correct, making sure appropriate punctuation is being used, etc. The teacher can edit a page of work and simply highlight errors for correction.

Publish. When the text is ready to be ‘published’, there is no need to upload it to a school website or other location, as the wiki itself is the website, so it is already published.

Wikis are a very practical tool for collecting information on a particular subject. The fact that any registered user can edit pages means that wikis make great online collaborative projects. Pupils have the chance to improve not only their writing skills but also to practise their vocabulary and grammar knowledge.

According to Robert Marzano, wikis are the perfect tools to promote vocabulary among intermediate learners. In groups, they can develop a class wiki to practise vocabulary items. The teacher divides the class into groups and assigns them a group of words to research. After they have finished, they will create a page for each word or group of words in the class wiki. Thus, pupils have their own wiki with class vocabulary that can grow throughout the year.

There are many advantages of using wikis when teaching English vocabulary:

Pupils reformulate the explanation of the new terms in their own words in a way that their colleagues can understand;

Pupils create a non-linguistic representation of the term because they have to attach a picture illustrating that word;

Students periodically do different activities that help them add to their knowledge and vocabulary terms. Teachers should include classifying, analogies, comparing similarities and differences;

Pupils discuss the terms with one another. They can edit each other's definitions;

Pupils are involved with games that allow them to play with the terms. When they have finished creating the wiki, the teacher and the pupils have a permanent and accessible online resource for practising vocabulary. Before having a test, pupils have the opportunity to review, remediate or enrich what they know.

Teachers can use wikis to teach and develop English vocabulary in different meaningful ways:

They can use wikis as a portal for lessons;

Pupils can be asked to post comments on wiki pages so that teachers could have a feedback;

Pupils could make a class project to write a reference to a book or a film that others can use;

Teachers can share docs, media, and PDF files on the classroom wiki;

Pupils create  summary pages on every unit they learn;

Pupils are assigned portfolio pages and allowed to display and discuss their work;

Pupils can make drafts on the wiki and ask others to comment on them.

Portfolios are concrete examples of pupils work, documenting their learning development over time. Portfolio assessment is one of the most popular forms of alternative assessment in the language classroom. Teachers and students often complain about the physical size of portfolios and the awkwardness of handling and storing them. As a result, portfolios have been implemented with varying degrees of depth, intensity, and success. A far less complicated and more easily managed alternative is represented by the electronic portfolios. Learner portfolios have become electronic files hosted on websites or stored locally on computer hard drives. Thus, the pupils have the possibility to re-read their pieces of work and review vocabulary or grammar structures. This amazing new technological era is able to change the ways pupils think and learn, creating digital arenas for sharing work and building on knowledge. E-portfolios help teachers develop a picture of the learning that is taking place and show them areas that need more attention. Regular feedback is also provided to the learners.

One of the most widely accepted and well known portfolio assessment tool in the language teaching world is European Language Portfolio (ELP). This portfolio, approved by the Council of Europe, is broken down into three key sections:

A Language Passport (listing official transcripts, exams);

A Language Biography (which includes learning goals, can-do statements, and self-assessment);

A Dossier (which contains a body of work reflecting student learning and achievement).

Wikis are useful tools for creating a digital portfolio. The editing function is easier to be manipulated and changed and permits the pupils to be creative in designing their portfolio site.

Podcasts

Listening comprehension is very important in order to develop a natural feeling for using that language. Competent English teachers should provide solid teaching exemplifications that enable the young learners to enhance their listening comprehension and reinforce the vocabulary.

The World Wide Web offers a great number of varied online learning tools for EFL pupils to improve their vocabulary and listening comprehension skills. It is of great value to use some of those tools in school. One of the most important advantages that it is to be found is that learners are able to listen to spoken passages by people whose mother tongue is English. This proves they can listen to authentic British English. Only this way, the pupils will be able to develop an understanding of real spoken English. Even if the teacher’s grammar and use of English is completely correct, it is very common that most of them are not native English speakers and, therefore, will always speak with an accent. For this reason, it might be valuable for students to be able to listen to different varieties of the English language.

Podcasts provide pupils with excellent opportunities to access and create authentic digital audio and video material. A podcast is a digital recording delivered in a format that can be played on computer devices such as a desktop computer, a laptop, or a portable media player. The name is derived from the term iPod, the portable media player made by Apple computers, and the word ‘broadcast’. Podcasts are different from other types of recordings in that they can be downloaded to these mobile players, making them portable for both learners and teachers. Using an iPod or other small portable device, pupils can store literally hundreds of hours of video and audio content which can be used by connecting to any computer capable of playing audio or video files.

The first place to look is in one of the larger podcast search sites. In the following screenshot there is a search result using the fairly wide criterion ‘EFL’ on Apple’s iTunes site. The search yielded only 11 results, a manageable number to look through to start.

Figure 9 – Screenshot https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/better-at-english-listen-learn

ESL Cyber Listening Lab

There are a lot of web sites for learners who have problems understanding native English speakers. One interesting example is ‘Randall’s ESL Cyber Listening Lab’, a multimedia listening website. It is useful for those who want to improve their listening comprehension and practice vocabulary. Both teachers and pupils have the possibility to find herea variety of hand-outs. The audio samples refer to everyday conversations about different topics and are divided into different levels: from easy to difficult. There are worksheets and quizzes for each audio sample and are grouped into pre-listening, listening, vocabulary and post-listening exercises.

Figure 10 – Screenshot http://www.esl-lab.com

The major aim of this web site is the improvement of the listening comprehension skills and English vocabulary. Students should feel prepared for conversations in their daily life. Therefore, most topics are related to everyday life. Nevertheless, many topics are included in the curriculum. Younger learners find these everyday situations and topics much more interesting. This has a positive influence on their willingness to acquire and practice vocabulary.

Podcasts in English

This website offers free English podcasts for learners. They can learn progressively because they can select the level: level 1-beginners, level 2- intermediate and upper level 3- intermediate. There are worksheets for each of them. Teachers can find many articles and appropriate topics on this website and they are allowed to download resources such as worksheets, videos to create memorable lessons.

Figure 11- Screenshot http://www.podcastsinenglish.com/index.shtml

Taking into consideration the age of the pupils, the teacher can adapt the level of the listening exercise and to play the spoken passage more often when teaching younger pupils. Young learners are offered varied and attractive activities to develop their vocabulary.

Email, Chats

A modern way to improve vocabulary is using email, chats, and text messaging. Email presents interesting writing and vocabulary challenges. It lies somewhere between written and oral language. Although they are less formal than letters, emails are surely more structured than a chat contribution or a text message. The teachers should tell the pupils to keep emails short. If they want to send a long message, they can include it as an attachment, where it is less likely to get corrupted. The pupils do not have to be online at the same time to communicate. This has certain distinct advantages over chat, since communication takes place in real time, like spoken communication. Chat requires a higher degree of fluency to be effective, and can be a huge challenge to lower-level language learners.

In addition, it is easier for teachers to organize email communication. Since email projects can be flexibly scheduled and even conducted from one computer if necessary because there is no need to arrange a specific time to be online to communicate with other pupils.

Emails have become a popular form of communication used to establish contacts, often known as twinning, with partner schools or learners around the world. Emails can be addressed both to individuals and groups and attachments can be added in order to be share with the others.

Chatting is a synchronous activity: at least two people must be online simultaneously in order to chat. They take place in chat rooms, where online users gather to interact. Traditionally, chats were text-based: essentially, pupils read messages by other users in the same room and respond. Chat rooms are organized according to various criteria: common interest (sports, language learning or technology), age, or geographical location. Most web browsers (Yahoo!, MSN Google) come with their own built-in chat programmes. Many websites have built-in chat functionality as well. While the great majority of chats are still text-based, there is also a fast growing number that also offer voice and/or video communication – Skype (www.skype.com) and Yahoo! Messenger (www.yahoo.com) being the most best known examples. These multimedia chats allow students to use all the options at once. They do not have to toggle between text, sound, and video. They can listen via headphones, speak into a microphone, watch the webcam, and read the text chat all at the same time.

On the other hand, synchronous communication can be difficult for language learners. It makes little sense to have them spend lots of time online simply thinking before typing a response to a post. However, voice and video chats relieve pupils of the burden of writing and allow for real spoken communication across countries and continents. While chatting can be challenging for lower-level pupils, it has great potential for those at the pre-intermediate level. The fact that they can use voice, video, and text makes it possible to integrate skills in one place at one time quite naturally. They can listen to an opinion, read a text comment, write a reply, and speak to a colleague all in real time. It is a great opportunity to improve their vocabulary, too.

Text chat brainstorm

The teacher can use the text chat to moderate a brainstorming session when introducing a topic. For example for ‘Food around the world/Pollution’, the teacher might use text chat to brainstorm possible causes of water pollution. The advantage of using text chat is that the teacher has the possibility to capture the transcript and save the thinking process.

Project work

Chats can be useful to promote group work when group members are not at the same location. The teacher can email a file to all group members and asks them to write or talk about it in real time.

Online question time with twinned school

Chat is an excellent opportunity for pupils in twinned schools to conduct a 'live interview' with their counterpart. Each pupil needs an internet connection, headphones, and a microphone for this activity. Firstly, they establish topics such as My daily routine or Holidays in my country and twin up each of his/her pupils with one of theirs, so that it is clear who is calling who. It is important for pupils to prepare ten-twelve core questions for their interviewee on the chosen topic and prepare to answer questions from their counterparts on the same theme. Their task is to find as many differences between their twin's daily routine and their own or cultural differences.

Social Networks

The main idea behind social networks is to create a common space where everybody can exchange experiences, opinions or information. Some social networks have been made based on content areas such as tennis fans, cooking lovers, learners of English, or people from a particular city, but the large communities (My Space, Facebook, or YouTube) have created a space for self-expression which is not bound by specific topics or interests. Within the larger community, smaller ‘interest groups’ emerge as members make ‘friends” who in turn have ‘friends’, each one with their own set of interests and sub-conversations going on.

British Council conducted a market research into how the Internet has affected the preferred learning styles of young people who want to learn English around the world.The result is that teachers should use 'learning technologies' if they want to help students acquire the new language. The research showed that the most efficient method for learning for almost 69% of learners around the world was informal communication. (http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/teaching-learning-through-social-networks)

Nowadays, every child has got a mobile phone. This means sometimes they can get more new information from the technology they use outside of school than they do from their teachers during the lessons in the classroom. Sometimes, young people learn more from using the Internet at home or in a café than they do at school. Using learning technologies in the classroom, the learning experiences become more relevant to the young learners and their lives. When young learners are on the Internet, they feel 'connected' to people and world knowledge. On the other hand, they can feel 'disconnected' and 'isolated' in the classroom feeling that school is not particularly relevant to their existence.

Social networks can be used efficiently in various ways in teaching and learning English vocabulary. However, pupils risk when sharing and collaborating online not only because of the viruses, worms, and identity theft. When teachers and pupils use a social website, a part of their identity necessarily goes online.

Social networks provide rich opportunities to use English in a targeted, purposeful way. Each step in the process of using the network creates multiple opportunities for authentic communication and developing vocabulary. Firstly, the pupils have to create a profile because all social network services ask the user to create a profile. Secondly, they need to look for ‘friends’ who share similar interests. Once the learners find a group that meets their interests, they can join and participate in discussions or engage with individual members and invite them to be their friends. They can also create their own new groups.

A teacher has the possibility to create a Facebook group for the lesson and invite learners to write and post information or even articles regarding various topics. This encourages an open dialogue via a medium that pupils often use it daily.

Those who have questions about a project can chat with their teacher. Furthermore, the shy pupils may open up on the Web. Similarly, pupils may feel freer to be involved in a discussion if they have time to collect their thoughts and put them in writing beforehand. A Facebook group allows them to post information in a public setting and get feedback in a nonthreatening way.

Although Twitter might not be as popular with pupils as Facebook and Myspace, it can be useful in the classroom. Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that enables users to send and read short messages (a maximum of 140 characters) known as tweets. These text-based posts are displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to the author’s followers. Twitter permits users to update their status and simultaneously send the information to everyone who is following them via a text message. Followers can retrieve the information without having to check e-mail. Such a service could be useful for teachers or pupils who want to send a text message to the whole class. The teachers can encourage students to follow current events on Twitter. News outlets such as National Public Radio usually provide at least 30 updates throughout the day, ranging from music to politics. Each tweet contains a link to the full story. Students could send the tweets they post. This allows students to discuss critically how different media outlets cover news and issues.

Social networks have influenced not only the process of teaching/learning English vocabulary, but also have been a catalyst for emerging words. This is reflected in new entries in dictionaries. Last year, Oxford University Press announced the latest quarterly update to Oxford Dictionaries Online (ODO), its free online dictionary of current English. (http://www.oxforddictionaries.com) For example:

– buzzworthy, adj. (informal): likely to arouse the interest and attention of the public, either by media coverage or word of mouth.

– selfie, n. (informal): a photograph that one has taken of oneself, with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website.

– unlike, v.: withdraw one’s liking or approval of (a web page or posting on a social media website that one has previously liked).

– viral, adj.:(of an image, video, piece of information, etc.) circulated rapidly and widely from one Internet user to another;

– tweet, n: a posting made on the social media website Twitter.

1.6 Modern techniques and tools

When you hear ”MySpace” or “World of Warcraft,” what do they bring to mind for you? What emotions do you associate with them? Have you heard of them before? Your students have, and they almost certainly have strong opinions about them. You don’t need to be a teenager to use or understand these technologies, or to use them in your classroom. Market research data indicates that many a normal, middle-aged adult uses these technologies with frequency. The fact is, you can be 17, 35, or 60, and when you begin to engage with them and observe what’s really going on, you can begin to see that these technologies are more than just entertainment. These technologies are already demonstrating how they impact the way we think, learn, and interact—and they are also demonstrating the tremendous potential they have in these areas as well. The emergence of social networking technologies and the evolution of digital games have helped shape the new ways in which people are communicating, collaborating, operating, and forming social constructs. In fact, recent research is showing us that these technologies are shaping the way we think, work, and live. This is especially true of our youngest generations— those arriving at classrooms doors, soon to be leaving them and entering the workforce and society-at-large.

Many students in this group are using new media and technologies to create new things in new ways, learn new things in new ways, and communicate in new ways with new people— behaviours that have become hardwired in their ways of thinking and operating in the world.

Not surprisingly, this “transformation” has serious implications for us in the space of education. Nearly all institutions – business, industry, medicine, science and government – have harnessed aspects of these technologies for decades. Games and simulations have been a key component of training doctors and military personnel, but even businesses like PricewaterhouseCoopers used a game about a mining company in outer space to teach its employees about derivatives.

Although these examples are mainly centred on training purposes, there are deeper educational benefits to digital simulations and games. Yet educational institutions have been reluctant to embrace these technologies. Likewise, where schools have often shied away from giving students an online identity in a digital networking platforms to increase opportunities for learning, professional organizations are leveraging networking technologies to increase collaboration, knowledge-sharing, and production amongst their employees. Traditionally, education has been impeded by the security and other potential dangers of employing social networking technologies. These concerns should not be ignored; however neither should these tools due to these concerns. Advances in these technologies continue to afford us new ways to manage the potential dangers.

Simulations, digital gaming, and social networking technologies have all definitely suffered the same public relations problems that all new technologies do. However, there are countless examples of these technologies demonstrating their educational value to other industries, confirming the powerful learning opportunities and advantages they afford. It is our position that these technologies are safe, valuable tools schools must take seriously.

Technology can have a reciprocal relationship with teaching. The emergence of new technologies pushes educators to understanding and leveraging these technologies for classroom use; at the same time, the on-the-ground implementation of these technologies in the classroom can (and does) directly impact how these technologies continue to take shape.

While many new technologies have emerged throughout history, so has the cry for educators to find meaningful ways to incorporate these technologies into the classroom – be it the typewriter, the television, the calculator, or the computer. And while some professional educators may have become numb to this unwavering ‘call’ – and for good reason – it is crucial to consider that the excitement over games and social networking isn’t just business and industry “crying wolf.” Indeed, those previous technologies have a powerful place in instruction and the classroom; but without them, strong lessons and learning objectives can still be achieved. With these more recent technologies, we think educators should take the call, even if only on a trial basis.

Undoubtedly, without these recent technologies (i.e. digital games, Web 2.0, etc.) in the classroom, strong lessons can still be achieved, but there’s a sharp disconnect between the way students are taught in school and the way the outside world approaches socialization, meaning-making, and accomplishment. It is critical that education not only seek to mitigate this disconnect in order to make these two “worlds” more seamless, but of course also to leverage the power of these emerging technologies for instructional gain.

Attacking educators’ current practices combined with the lack of acknowledgment of current best practices only hinders the growth of the education sector. There are countless educators who are masters at their craft, currently employing an array of exceptional instructional strategies. Lauding and building upon these strategies is critical to effective growth in the education sector in order to bridge the aforementioned divide. We advocate for an evolution in educational practices and approaches to instruction, which not only align with the processes and operations of the world outside of school, but also leverage the emerging power and potential of these new processes and technologies. Attending to this end of the technology-teaching relationship has the additional benefit of helping to shape emerging technologies that is most effective for cognition and instruction.

Language learning is a hard task which can sometimes be frustrating. Constant effort is required to understand, produce and manipulate the target language. Well-chosen games are invaluable as they give students a break and at the same time allow students to practise language skills. Games are highly motivating since they are amusing and at the same time challenging. Furthermore, they employ meaningful and useful language in real contexts. They also encourage and increase cooperation. Games are highly motivating because they are amusing and interesting. They can be used to give practice in all language skills and be used to practice many types of communication.

 There is a common perception that all learning should be serious and solemn in nature, and that if one is having fun and there is hilarity and laughter, then it is not really learning. This is a misconception. It is possible to learn a language as well as enjoy oneself at the same time. One of the best ways of doing this is through games.

There are many advantages of using games in the classroom:

1. Games are a welcome break from the usual routine of the language class. 

2. They are motivating and challenging.

3. Learning a language requires a great deal of effort. Games help students to make and sustain the effort of learning.

4. Games provide language practice in the various skills- speaking, writing, listening and reading. 

5. They encourage students to interact and communicate.

6. They create a meaningful context for language use.

Games are often used as short warm-up activities or when there is some time left at the end of a lesson.  A game should not be regarded as a marginal activity filling in odd moments when the teacher and class have nothing better to do. ames ought to be at the heart of teaching foreign languages. Games also lend themselves well to revision exercises helping learners recall material in a pleasant, entertaining way.

Games have been shown to have advantages and effectiveness in learning vocabulary in various ways. First, games bring in relaxation and fun for students, thus help them learn and retain new words more easily. Second, games usually involve friendly competition and they keep learners interested. These create the motivation for learners of English to get involved and participate actively in the learning activities. Third, vocabulary games bring real world context into the classroom, and enhance students' use of English in a flexible, communicative way.

Therefore, the role of games in teaching and learning vocabulary cannot be denied. However, in order to achieve the most from vocabulary games, it is essential that suitable games are chosen. Whenever a game is to be conducted, the number of students, proficiency level, cultural context, timing, learning topic, and the classroom settings are factors that should be taken into account.

Teaching with photographs follows the same three basic steps used in teaching with objects: description, classification, and interpretation. There are some important differences in how these steps are carried out, though, based on the special value that photographic images can convey, and the immediate sense of identity that comes of looking at photographs of other people.

With photographs, we have two sources for evidence: the physical photo (photographic print) and the image. Elements of description include:

Material:

Photo. This category is especially relevant for original photos (rather than photos found in books or other reproduced forms), as it can be a clue to the age of the photograph. Most photographs now are printed on standard photo paper, but past forms include cards and postcards, and 19th century photographs were sometimes made on metal sheets and other materials.

Image. Material is not usually very relevant to the image, except when it affects the printing (such as highly textured paper).

Subject:

Image. The subject is of course the most compelling aspect of a photograph. What is shown in the image? People, objects, buildings, landscapes, all can be described in words, though the effort required to do so can be surprising. Describing photo images can be an excellent exercise in developing both observation and word skills, and for demonstrating understanding of spatial relations.

Films and videos

Not surprisingly, research has found that the value of video is highly correlated to its integration within the curriculum — in other words, how closely the content fits into the overall instructional sequence. Wetzel (1994) cites the work of Chu and Schram (1967, 1975) who conclude that instructional uses of television were most effective when “interwoven into an integrated teaching/learning system in the context of other learning activities.”

Fisch (in press, 2004) notes, too, that in these days of accountability requirements and standardized curricula, the video connection must be obvious to the teacher: “By the same token, given the constraints of the classroom, materials are far more likely to be used if teachers can see easily how they connect to their existing classroom curriculum. If the materials (no matter how educationally rich they may be) do not map onto the curriculum that a teacher is obligated to meet, then the materials are likely to be treated as a nice “extra” to be used only if time permits.”

Teacher surveys show that television is most commonly used for instruction in science, the language arts (reading and English), and social studies, with health/nutrition and math uses also widely reported.

It’s worth noting that some of the benefits of classroom television are difficult to quantify from a research perspective as they introduce educational experiences that would otherwise be impossible to reproduce in another medium. Thus, it can be difficult to create valid comparisons as “these media can take viewers to places in the world that they could not otherwise experience, bring distinguished experts into the classroom, and allow demonstrations not generally possible or too dangerous to perform within a classroom” (Wetzel, 1994).

Flood (1995) has found that video can enhance the learning of foreign languages because its portrayal of “dramatized cultural context” and authentic materials can illustrate the intertwining of language and culture deemed essential to the mastery of another language. Minkel (2003) observes that the DVD format can accommodate up to seven different language tracks, and can be a valuable learning tool in schools with a variety of speakers of other languages.

Methods:

pausing the video so students could copy down visual information;

eliminating the sound track so students could practice their oral and written English skills by supplying the missing dialogue;

using closed captioned programs to reinforce vocabulary and reading skills;

providing copies of video tapes to parents so that they, too, can improve their English, and become “active partners” with their children in the learning of English.

Today’s children are growing up surrounded by television and video. Visual media is already an essential component of classroom instruction, with almost all teachers employing video in some form in their teaching. As the presence of broadband, digital media, and streaming video increases, the likelihood is that video will become an even more essential classroom resource. Classroom resources these days must be backed by research.

One of television’s most obvious characteristics is its visual aspect. Humans intuitively grasp the power of images to convey meaning, as can be seen in the old adage that values a picture at a thousand times the value of a word. Television, of course, offers information in multiple forms: not just images, but motion, sounds, and, at times, text. Research has shown that multiple tracks of audio and visual information convey powerful learning benefits, as each source complements the other.

Viewing is an active process, perhaps best thought of as an interactive experience between viewer and medium. In addition to responding to what they observe from the screen, viewers bring their own experiences and expectations to their viewing. Hence, studies show that what students think about television affects their ability to learn from it. b#%l!^+a?In the context of casual effortless viewing, learning tends to be shallow and short-lived, but when viewing is more purposeful, then deeper and more sophisticated learning can occur.

In examining a large body of research, several myths about television and learning are explored and debunked. This research provides clear evidence that the type of content children view may be a truer determinant of their future academic success than the amount of time they spend watching television. Thus children’s viewing of educational television has been shown to support significant and lasting learning gains, while too much viewing of other types of programming may be associated with a lack of academic achievement. Furthermore, a positive relationship has been found between childhood viewing of educational television and cognitive performance at both preschooler and college levels.

Teachers have been highly creative in their use of television in the classroom, and perceive it to have contributed to significant learning gains in their students. According to educator surveys and research, educational television:

Reinforces reading and lecture material

Aids in the development of a common base of knowledge among students

Enhances student comprehension and discussion

Provides greater accommodation of diverse learning styles

Increases student motivation and enthusiasm

Promotes teacher effectiveness

Teachers can make the most of classroom viewing by

• Planning ahead to consider instructional goals

• Preparing by previewing the program

• Determining the setting and length of the video

• Setting clear expectations for students

• Encouraging student participation through

• setting the context before viewing

• pausing during the program to ask key questions and flag priority topics

• promoting reflection through post-viewing discussion and assignments

• Connecting post-viewing activities to handson or real-world experiences

The idea behind video and sound effects lessons can be used to teach a variety of con – tent such as grammar, vocabulary, and creative writing to a wide range of ESL/EFL students.

The same video can be used to teach differ – ent grammar points, such as present and past simple, present and past progressive, future simple, and “going to + infinitive” without to, all by using the technique of freeze fram – ing. In order to teach grammar, you need to play the video, freeze framing the picture after each scene, and then ask questions. For instance, freeze frame the picture and ask your students questions like, “What is s/he doing?” “What did s/he do?” “What was s/he doing?” “What is s/he going to do next?” or “What will happen next?” In this way students will be prompted to use the teaching point. Once you elicit their answers, write them on the board and highlight the structure (e.g., “to be + ing” form of the verb for present progres – sive, or “will + infinitive” without to for future simple). Since the video consists of a sequence of action, adverbs like first, second, finally, before, and later can also be introduced to and practiced with students.

The same video can be used to teach vocabulary items on home and kitchen appliances by recording sounds and having students guess the origin. Being careful to respect people’s privacy, you can also take the camera around the school, or even outside the school, and record a variety of interesting sounds. For instance, you can record the sound of students playing at recess, the period between classes, or sounds in the lunchroom and then play the video for your students and have them guess the source of the sound. Or you can record the sounds in a busy coffee shop, a nearby underground station, or a noisy shopping center and play a guessing game with students. You can even teach vocabulary about different jobs by taking your camera with you to record the butcher who is cutting or grinding meat or the cashier who opens the register and returns your change.

Another interesting variation is to enlist your students to record videos. For example, you can ask them to record sounds during a picnic or some other activity they do on the weekend. These videos can become part of your repertoire to teach grammar and vocabu – lary. If you think your students might not have access to a camera, you can give them the option of recording sounds with their MP3 and MP4 players.

Finding appropriate teaching materials is not that hard, as our everyday life serves as a perfect resource for creating effective lessons and activities. An effective lesson does not nec – essarily require expensive and high-tech materi – als; oftentimes, breaking the routines will excite students, engage them in the lesson, and teach them the real use of language in context. Thus, one of the easiest and least expensive ways for teachers to prepare the most effective teaching materials is to look around and never underes – timate their sense of creativity.

T.V. and radio programmes (interviews, debates, chat shows, documentaries, breaking news etc)

Busy teachers today can use all the help they can get. Broadcasters can facilitate teaching with television by making their program options more flexible, more aligned with core curricula, and more supported by other learning materials and resources. To achieve the greatest impact on student learning, broadcasters might consider providing high quality professional development for teachers in their region, through such programs such as Thirteen/WNET’s National Teacher Training Institute, which provides comprehensive guidance for teachers on effective classroom integration of multimedia.

Classrooms, of course, are becoming ever more technology enriched, as computers, the Internet, DVD players and a host of other digital technologies penetrate our nation’s schools.

Evidence indicates that video, far from being supplanted, is becoming an increasingly essential part of classroom learning. As the long history of research clearly shows, the educational value of visual media is positive and significant. While the format, delivery channels, and storage options may change, video is now and will continue to be an effective, engaging, and essential tool in our nation’s classrooms.

English lessons can be taught with The Simpsons, a famous American animated TV series with more than 400 episodes. Radio programs are also an excellent source for teaching ideas because “it is well accepted that language is better acquired or learned where the focus is on interesting content, and radio can certainly provide interesting content. Radio can bring authentic content to the classroom, especially in the EFL environment, where it may not be easy to meet and talk with native speakers of English. Students typically do not read their teachers’ materials, and therefore are not directly exposed to the models of conduct presented for them in those materials. However, students do habitually take in hours of movies, TV, Internet, and advertising—media that also project distinct models of conduct and personal demeanours. Even if students do not watch TV, commercials and movies or use the Internet themselves, they indirectly participate in these genres. By talking with peers who do watch these mass mediated cultural forms, they vicariously participate in mass mediated forms of conduct—perhaps viewing peers’ imitations of TV characters, or copying their peers’ distinct mass mediated ways of speaking brought from the TV set or YouTube video to the classroom. These various forms of enacted mass mediated communicative repertoires inevitably are reproduced and altered through small-scale mechanisms of classroom discourse. In the following section, I examine the details different mass mediated marketing traditions offer as models of conduct.

There are at least two critical mechanisms for the proliferation of these contemporary forms of sociability: metadiscourse, and the participation frameworks they afford.

Metadiscourse is commentary about language-in-use. Metaphonetic discourse is talk about how something sounds; metasemantic is about what something means; metapragmatic is about what something is doing. Metacultural discourse is commentary on a cultural object such as a movie or a poem. Much of what one does in English class (e.g., discussing a poem) is metacultural discourse. Any movie review is metacultural discourse. Websites like metacafe.com where commercials like “A Big Ad” are displayed and commented on, are metacultural discourse sites. So, metadiscourse is commentary about language, and it varies in the specificity of its linguistic target, from a phoneme, to an entire stretch of text. Metadiscourse can also vary in the degree to which it is implicit or explicit.

In schools, discourse invokes countless brand communities, some ephemeral, some seemingly intractable, with specific identities attached to them. There are fans of Pokemon and Yugiyo (Japanese animation characters), Runescape and FlyFF (online games); the New England Patriots or the Philadelphia Eagles (football team brands); Green Day (the band) or Soulja Boy (the rapper). These brand communities can be invoked through certain communicative repertoires such as wearing certain kinds of clothing and, of course, talking a certain kind of talk or using a signature phrase. When these communicative repertoires show up in the classroom they can instantly refigure participation along the lines of their brand communities, perhaps even excluding the teacher who may have no idea what their students are discussing.

Songs

Songs can be a useful tool when teaching ESL because they give students the opportunity to listen to someone other than you, their teacher. English teachers can use songs to open or close their lessons, to illustrate themes and topics, to add variety or a change of pace, present new vocabulary or recycle known language. Often students become familiar with how one person sounds and may have difficulties understanding others. Songs can be a challenge for students because they are often faster than an instructor’s speech however they can also be enjoyable and serve to reinforce certain aspects of English. Often, songs can be used to practice particular grammar points. Some textbooks spend enormous amounts of time on particular topics and creating new activities may become challenging so songs are something you can turn to.

Using songs in ESL classes has become quite common. For instance, when teaching the present perfect tense (here’s a great article on teaching it!), songs such as “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” by U2 and “We Are the Champions” by Queen may be appropriate. Students are unlikely to grasp the entire meaning of the song but giving a brief summary or including the translation would be beneficial. When using songs, it is common to have a worksheet where students must fill in certain words. For this present perfect lesson, you can remove the present perfect verbs altogether and have students try to fill in the blanks with the appropriate words. If this is too challenging, including the present tense of each verb will assist students immensely.

Certain songs can be used to lead into discussions. This type of activity would be appropriate for more advanced learners. You can use a song such as “Another Day in Paradise” by Phil Collins for this purpose. Initially, have students listen to the song and complete a fill in the blank exercise. Listening to the song several times would be appropriate but once the answers have been checked, have students read the lyrics trying to understand the meaning of the song. You can ask general questions to test comprehension. If you are not exactly sure what kinds of questions will be appropriate, you can start off with very simple ones such as “Is this a happy song?” and when students say “No” ask them why not? This can lead into a discussion about people’s indifference, homeless people, or something similar.

There are many types of songs which can be used in the classroom, ranging from nursery rhymes to contemporary pop music. There is also a lot of music written specifically for English language teaching. A criticism of the latter is that they often lack originality and musical appeal but there are good examples to be found of stimulating, modern, ‘cool’ music, appealing to the real tastes of language learners. ‘Real’ music that the children hear and play every day can be extremely motivating in the classroom, too. However, the lyrics may not always be suitable: they may, for instance, contain slang or offensive words, there may be grammatical mistakes and they may only marginally teach the language points you want to focus on.

Research has found that pop songs have characteristics that help learning a second language: they often contain common, short words; they are written at about 5th grade level (US); the language is conversational, time and place are usually imprecise; the lyrics are often sung at a slower rate than spoken words and there is repetition of words and grammar (Murhpy, 1992).

Now that most music is accessible to almost anyone anywhere, either through radio, CDs, DVDs and downloads from the Internet, learners can enjoy songs from all corners of the globe. Songs used in English classes can, in that way, shed light on interesting musical traditions in countries, but can also teach teens, young adults and adults to appreciate other cultures. For adult learners they can be a rich mine of information about human relations, ethics, customs, history, humor, and regional and cultural differences.

In a world where non-native speakers of English are likely to produce the majority of songs in English, learners have the opportunity to listen to pronunciation in a wide range of varieties of the language. Songs will help learners become familiar with word stress and intonation, and the rhythm with which words are spoken or sung also helps memorization. Again, this will enable learners to remember chunks of language which they can then use in conversations or in writing. As language teachers, we can use songs to practice listening, speaking, reading and writing.

Practical tips and tasks for using songs

Focus it

Start with a focusing activity: anything that will get students thinking about the subject of the song. Have them think about the title of the song, in groups of pairs. Find a picture that relates to the subject of the song and have students make guesses about it.

Highlight it

Put a selection of important words from the song on your board. Have students ask each other what the words mean. Then, have students in groups write or tell a quick story that uses the words. You can also get students to circle, underline or highlight specific words or word categories.

Stop it

Again, write a selection of words on the board. Students must shout STOP any time they hear one of the new words. You could also stop the song before a word you want them to guess.

Lip sync it

Have students lip sync the song before a team of judges in a Class Idol show. This allows them to become familiar with the words, rhythm, stress and intonation before actually singing the words out loud.

Strip it

Cut the song into strips. Give each student one strip to memorize. Students put the strips in their pockets. They get up and tell each other their part of the song, without looking at their part or showing their part to anyone else. Students then organize themselves in the right order, speak the song and then listen and check. You can also have students put the strips on a table in order.

Question it

Have students ask each other questions about the song (about the words, about the topics or about characters in the song). For more advanced students you could choose two songs of a similar theme, and split the class into two teams. Have each group listen to their song and draw up a list of (open or True/False) questions. Pair each student with a member of the opposite team and have them take turns asking their questions.

Gap it

You can prepare a gapped version of the lyrics and let students complete them before listening and then check afterwards.

Write it

Have students write a letter to the main character or the singer, send an answer to a person referred to in the song, rewrite the song as a story, write a story which began before the story in the song and led to it, or write a story which will continue after the song.

Change it

Change words (adjectives, adverbs, nouns -names, places or feelings), and invent new lyrics for the melody. If you have karaoke versions of the songs you can then let students sing their own versions.

E-mail

Social networking could be seen as a technology with fewer evangelists for its use as an instructional tool, but it shouldn’t be, given the number of subscribers to this technology. Beating out Google in terms of traffic, the social networking site MySpace logged almost 46 million users in June 2016 (Albanese, 2016). Just to emphasize, that was just the site MySpace alone. These sites allow the user to do it all: post a profile, photos, videos, chat, blog, and connect with their peers through individual bulletin boards, private groups and forums.

Traditionally, traits of these tools include creating a login on the site, which provides you with a profile page where you often can add pictures and other content. You can then connect with other people you know, or may have met through this site, by becoming their “friend”—a designation to the site that you two are connected in some way. This affords you the ability to receive updates on your “friends’ ” pages, communicate with them via in-site email/comments/chat, and create specific groups on the site around themes or content.

Culturally popular sites like MySpace, Facebook, and Bebo however, have received intense backlash from schools which are fearful for the online safety of students using these sites, as well as the concern that students will misuse them during what is supposed to be instructional time. As a result, numerous alternative sites have emerged to provide teachers with more suitable platforms to host classroom online communities.

Since a key characteristic of social networking sites is for each user to have their own profile, they have the ability to create their online identity and connect with anyone from around the globe also profiled on the site. In the age of globalization, this is a tremendous opportunity to connect students with other students who have similar interests as well as different experiences.

Because participation frameworks are so vital to the spread of media messages, contemporary forms of mass media, such as e-mail and the Internet have spawned “viral” marketing practices that use existing peer networks to spread this new metadiscourse far and wide.

The YouTube phenomenon is a prime example of this sort of metacultural proliferation through peer-centered participation frameworks. Some advertisers, for example, use YouTube rather than paid television space as their primary distributor.

CHAPTER II. RESEARCH AND METHODOLOGY

2.1. Lesson plans

LESSON PLAN No.1

TEACHER:

SCHOOL:

FORM: V B

TOPIC: School life

TYPE OF LESSON: Speaking and writing practice

SKILLS: speaking, writing, reading

DURATION: 50 min.

METHOD OF TEACHING: communicative approach,

TEACHING TECHNIQUES: group work, dialogue, brainstorming

MATERIALS: hand-outs, textbook

AIMS: formative: to develop pupils’ communicative competence

educational: to reinforce pupils’ confidence in their capacities of using English

COMPETENCES:

COGNITIVE COMPETENCES:

– to plan and create a short narrative piece of writing;

– to begin to gain understanding of audience;

– to ask and answer questions about photos;

– to develop the speaking/writing skills;

– to explore how events from everyday life can become stories;

– to explore connections between images and words.

AFFECTIVE COMPETENCES:

– to create a warm atmosphere for learning;

– to make students confident in themselves when speaking a foreign language.

STAGES OF LESSON

‘A Picture’s Worth a Thousand Words’

Worksheet

Each group sends one representative to choose a picture of a person in the school.

Brainstorm together:

Who is this person?

What is her/his name?

Where is she/he from?

What does she/he do?

Each group sends one representative to choose a picture of a place.

Brainstorm together:

Where is the place?

What is the climate like?

What does the place sound like?

How does the place smell?

Are there many people in this?

Each group sends one representative to choose a picture of a thing,

Brainstorm together:

What is it?

Describe it.

Where might you see it?

What can it be used for?

Who might have such a thing?

Work together to write a brief story using these three pictures as inspiration.

Think about:

Who is it?

What are they doing?

When is taking place?

Where are they?

Why?

How?

Choose one person to share the story with the group

LESSON PLAN No.2

TEACHER:

SCHOOL:

FORM:

TOPIC: ‘Sport for all’

VOCABULARY: sport, street dancing, football, PE

TYPE OF LESSON: vocabulary lesson

SKILLS: listening, speaking, reading, writing

DURATION: 50 min.

METHOD OF TEACHING: communicative approach,

TEACHING TECHNIQUES: pair work, dialogue

MATERIALS: worksheets, CD player, textbook

AIMS:

– formative: to develop pupils’ communicative competence by using their properlexis

– educational: to reinforce pupils’ confidence in their capacities of using English

COMPETENCES:

COGNITIVE COMPETENCES:

-to raise interest in the topic;

-to develop reading/speaking skills;

-scan to locate specifically required information;

-to share their own opinions.

AFFECTIVE COMPETENCES:

– to create a warm atmosphere for learning;

– to make students confident in themselves when speaking a foreign language;

-to stimulate their imagination.

STAGES OF LESSON

LESSON PLAN No.3

TEACHER:

SCHOOL:

FORM:

TOPIC: ‘House and home’

VOCABULARY: furniture, room, Victorian era

GRAMMAR: simple past tense/present tense: statements

TYPE OF LESSON: Grammar lesson (revision)

SKILLS: listening, speaking, reading, writing

DURATION: 50 min.

METHOD OF TEACHING: communicative approach,

TEACHING TECHNIQUES: group work, pair work, dialogue, brainstorming

MATERIALS: CD player, handouts, textbook, activity book.

AIMS: formative: to develop pupils’ communicative competence

educational: to reinforce pupils’ confidence in their capacities of using English

COMPETENCES:

COGNITIVE COMPETENCES:

to use the new acquired vocabulary appropriately and correctly

to develop reading comprehension skills, speaking skills

to identify key elements in a text

to know the meaning of a number of irregular verbs

to enable the Ss. to make statements about the past/present

AFFECTIVE COMPETENCES :

– to create a warm atmosphere for learning

– to make students confident in themselves when speaking a foreign language

STAGES OF LESSON

LESSON PLAN No.4

TEACHER:

SCHOOL:

FORM: V B

TOPIC: ‘Gadgets’

VOCABULARY: toothbrushes, Modern, gadget, portable radio.

TYPE OF LESSON: Vocabulary lesson

SKILLS: listening, speaking, reading, writing

DURATION: 50 min.

METHOD OF TEACHING: communicative approach,

TEACHING TECHNIQUES: group work, pair work, dialogue

MATERIALS: computer, video, hand outs, flipchart, textbook, activity book

AIMS: formative: to develop pupils’ communicative competence

educational: to reinforce pupils’ confidence in their capacities of using English

COMPETENCES:

COGNITIVE COMPETENCES:

to raise interest in the topic

to use the new acquired vocabulary appropriately and correctly

to improve students' listening/ speaking skills

to identify key elements in a text

AFFECTIVE COMPETENCES :

– to create a warm atmosphere for learning

– to make students confident when speaking a foreign language

– to create interest in the topic

STAGES OF LESSON

LESSON PLAN No.5

TEACHER:

SCHOOL:

FORM: V A

TOPIC: ‘Clothes and 9a accessories’

VOCABULARY: – coat, jacket, scarf, hat, shoes, boots

TYPE OF LESSON: vocabulary lesson

SKILLS: listening, speaking, listening, reading, writing

DURATION: 45 min.

METHOD OF TEACHING: communicative approach

TEACHING TECHNIQUES: pair work; dialogue

MATERIALS: cassette, flashcards, poster, textbook, activity book

AIMS: formative: to develop listening comprehension skills through a dialogue

Educational: to reinforce pupils’ confidence in their capacities of using English

OBJECTIVES:

COGNITIVE OBJECTIVES:

– to identify items of clothing,

– to check and improve their vocabulary,

– to give students more practice on pronunciation, vocabulary and structures previously taught.

AFFECTIVE OBJECTIVES:

– to create a warm atmosphere for learning

– to make students confident in themselves when speaking a foreign language

– to make students enjoy using the English language,

– to have fun.

STAGES OF LESSON

2.2. Delimitation of the study

The aims of the research

The present research aims to:

highlight the efficiency of the skill development and abilities of receiving the information and use of pupils' skills as the main measure to be taken in order to achieve effective communication behaviour in the context of modern versus traditional methods used in the English class.

identify the effects of modern versus traditional methods used in the English class based on the basic idea that one of the objectives of studying English language and its grammar particularities in school is to create oral and written communication skills.

General objectives

Explore new teaching techniques in the context of positioning theory in the English class giving priority to the student as the centre of the learning process.

To exercise in the student the development of the basic skills of communication in the English language, through the interpretation of codes and ways of expressing information of daily life and the correlation with the fundamental areas, in order to unify criteria and globalize the educational processes.

To promote the need of a good positioning of theory in the English class for students’ personal and professional development of the student.

Specific objectives

To stimulate an efficient positioning of theory in the English class through dynamic approaches.

To allow a greater interest in the language in the context of positioning theory in the English class.

To promote almost real situations of dialogue that allow the student to handle various contexts of communication.

Use everyday expressions in a foreign language.

To seek a better use of theory positioning in the English class by using themes extracted from the Curriculum.

To develop skills in the context of an efficient positioning theory in the English class in order to analyze, synthesize and integrate information and ideas in a foreign language.

Objectives’ summary of the present research

• Prevention of the consequences caused by the inadequacy of the educational objectives in the English language educational curriculum and the way of their implementation through the main auxiliary didactic available to all pupils, the English language textbook, with the help of a planning adapted to the materials and means of the school;

• to identify the main problems faced by pupils in receiving and using grammatical information in the context of positioning theory in the English class;

• to identify the main problems faced by pupils in receiving literary information in the context of positioning theory in the English class;

• to identify ways to positively influence the quality of reception and use of grammatical English language through the interdisciplinary approach at the Vth grade.

Period of time: 2 months

2.3. My students -subject of my study

Population

The examined group consisted of a total of 13 pupils, boys and girls, all studying at the ………. School in ………… county, in Vth grade. The other part of the examined group is represented by 10 teachers in our school.

Sample

100% boys and girls, students at the ………. School in …………… county served as sample for the study. Subjects have normal intellectual development and different academic results. Questionnaire for students was attended by 13 students.

According to the students’ age, whereas in terms of psychosocial development, “the growing independence leads first thoughts on identity” (Cosmovici 1999: 46), and in terms of cognitive development view, at this age "increases children’s mental ability to analyze and to test deductive assumptions”. (Cosmovici, 1999: 46).

Besides these purely psychological reasons, there was taken into account the fact that students’ classes in discussion are studying English since the IInd grade, having, at the moment, a total of four hours a week.

2.5. Research instruments

The basis of this work was the pedagogical research. Thus, pedagogical research starts from the specifics of education and reaches to research in order to highlight the formative valences that certain elements (instruments, situations) have on children. In this respect, the concept of education implies a responsible and centred manner in which a moral and independent adult establishes an inter-human relationship with a child in need of support, who follows his way to maturity, leads and has an uplifting influence on his life. As a universal and characteristic of human life, this phenomenon of reality (Education) should not be seen only as a preparation for a normative life somewhere in the future, but it must be seen as life itself.

Thus, the present pedagogical research has the role of highlighting the phenomenon of adequate education and it is essential to understand that education is the practice where the actions of the teacher are driven by experience or knowledge (a certain type of intuitive knowledge) and education; it is also the theoretical subject of examination, reflection and description.

The present pedagogical research seeks to discover and reveal the core essentials of the educational phenomenon, and also to describe, among other things, what education really means, but it is also an observation and investigation action on the basis of which we know, improve or innovate the educational phenomenon in the context of positioning theory in the English class.

Educational practice constitutes, during the process of positioning theory in the English class, for the researcher, a source of knowledge, a means of experimentation, hypothesis verification and generalization of positive experience. At the same time, pedagogical research, through its conclusions, contributes to the innovation and improvement of the education and educational process.

The role of pedagogical research consists in: explaining, interpreting, generalizing and innovating the educational phenomenon through structural changes, or by introducing more efficient methodologies highlighting the value of positioning theory in the English class.

The research project is a synthesis of the organization of the phased research and may have the following structure:

• topic(s) to be investigated: importance and timeliness;

• motivation of choice of theme: purpose and mode of assessment;

• the history of problem research: the current state;

• general hypothesis, partial assumptions and research objectives;

• research methodology: research duration, place, research team, stages, dependent and independent variables, sample, methods, techniques and means of education, research tools (tests, didactic projects);

• verifying the research hypothesis by final tests or other means;

• finalizing the research and capitalizing on it (elaboration of a scientific paper, implementation of the conclusions, etc.).

Pedagogical research methods can be categorized according to the pursued fundamental objectives. From this point of view, one can talk about:

a) methods of data collection (observation, experiment, interview, questionnaire, case method, test and so on);

b) data processing methods (statistical method, mathematical method, graphical representation);

c) methods of interpreting the conclusions (historical method, hermeneutical method, psychoanalytic method and so on).

The most important methods used in pedagogical research are :

The method of observation. It is one of the most used methods of pedagogy and consists of intentionally pursuing, according to a plan, the specific phenomena of education under the conditions of their natural, natural development. Even if in the initial stages the observation is unintentional, diffused, fragmented, over time it specializes in becoming systematic, organized, continuous. The effectiveness of systematic observation is given by the observance of certain conditions: the studied subjects do not have to learn that their observation is exercised (their behaviour changes), the observed facts will be recorded immediately and completely – in order not to interfere with other facts or with the observations of the observers .

The quality observation is made after a certain plan. Teachers who want to learn more about their students using this method need to go through the following steps:

• highlighting a fact that is worthy of observation or establishing a field of interest;

• theoretical information on the specificity of the field observed;

• the actual observation of the facts and the recording of the results;

• interpretation of results and their integration into the field of educational practice.

This method has the advantage that it does not require special research conditions (sophisticated equipment, laboratories and so on) and the allocation of special time for research. It can be done at any time of the teacher's activity with students.

The method in question also has some limitations: the observer is dependent on the phenomena observed, the results of the observation are more qualitative approaches that do not support high-level processing, the consequences are observed, not the causes that generate certain phenomena.

The observation method should be correlated and supplemented with other research methods.

Method of pedagogical experiment. The pedagogical experiment is a "provocative observation" and consists in the intentional production or modification of the phenomena in order to pursue them under favourable conditions. This method has the following characteristics: the phenomenon to be researched is produced "synthetically" under determined conditions; the phenomenon is repeated under certain conditions; production conditions undergo systematic controls that can be controlled. The pedagogical experiment can be classified as follows:

1. After the researched object: individually and collectively.

2. Following the intended purpose: constructive, constructive, verification.

3. After the conditions of the course: laboratory, natural.

4. After the research issue: educational, didactic, organizational.

5. By the number of independent variables: univariate, multivariate.

6. After the investigation level: transversal, longitudinal.

Method of the products of the activity research. The products of the activity are the materializations of the knowledge, the abilities of the values incorporated by the pupils and they can take into account the quality and the depth of the instructive-educational activity. In the range of products made by students, thematic or quarterly papers, theses, quarterly or half-yearly papers, papers, portfolios, compositions, other personal works (drawings, albums) can be entered. These works faithfully reflect the quality of instruction, inclinations, natural dispositions, interests and aspirations of students. It can be seen on this occasion the level of training of students in relation to the requirements of the school policies, as well as the attention given by the teachers to some important aspects of the students' training.

Case method. It consists in studying representative situations to arrive at some theoretical or practical conclusions. The implementation of this method involves the following steps:

• selecting the subjects to be studied;

• gathering data about subjects by applying several methods;

• synthesizing of data gathered as diagnostic;

• performing the adopted measures in time.

In case of failure, the case study resumes while another diagnosis is identified and another treatment is prescribed.

Test method. This instrument is a standardized sample, usually a written one, that is administered to subjects and aims for measuring as objectively as possible a psychic, behavioural, aptitude, and acquisition phenomenon. Involvement of the tests in pedagogical research involves several stages: the proper elaboration of the test, the application of the test, the interpretation of the data. The most commonly used test is the knowledge test (or docimological). The results obtained from the use of the test are not always conclusive, which necessitates the need to use complementary tools of knowledge of the educational reality.

The research problem has origins of an empirical nature because it occurs in an Educational Institution, in a specific degree of schooling and in a specific socio-cultural context that requires a theoretical treatment on authors who have worked on this research topic. In the same way, it requires precise characterization of the actors involved. According to the nature of the problem it is not only analytical empirical, it is necessary an integral and explanatory management of the problem through a qualitative treatment of the data. All of the above, state that the use of qualitative methods were used in the course of research and are within educational ethnography.

The methods of this research offer the teacher multiple possibilities for the exercise of reflective teaching; Among them, observing classroom behaviours, exploring the subjects 'beliefs, teaching context and interpreting the discourse by placing themselves in the participants' position (the emic principle) and relating the observed to the overall set of that culture (holistic principle ) (Van Lier, 1988).

To measure these variables, information was collected on the following instruments:

Questionnaire addressed to English teachers, the observation sheet in the classroom and a questionnaire addressed to students.

These instruments made it possible to measure whether English teachers are truly able to help students to develop communicative skills, specifically the skills that are investigated in this work, namely Grammar expression, Oral Expression and Listening Comprehension.

The present research is designed to investigate the effective use of positioning theory in the English class as a teaching resource, at Vth grade level.

The textbook as a material that is used in teaching influences a lot in it, therefore, some of the most important decisions of the teacher have to be done with the didactic material. In the last decades, there has been a change in the way the teaching material is viewed, and in choosing the material, the teacher is no longer so controlled by curricula (Juhlin Svensson, 2000). In other words, the freedom of the teacher has increased, something that implies more opportunities, but also being demanded of the teacher. According to the curriculum (Skolverket, 2006a), the teacher has a lot of freedom in selecting the material, but how does the teacher know what are the most important aspects to take into account when choosing materials? What are the determining factors for students to have an interest in teaching English?

Varanoglulari et al. (2008) argue that a good position of theory in the English class should make students have a positive attitude towards teaching, while Skolverket (2006b: 93) argues that most teachers believe that it is important for materials to generate student interest. Yet teachers often use materials that do not seem good enough. Another problem posed by Skolverket (2011: 9) is that there are currently a large number of students who do not complete their studies of English or another modern language, so it is important to look for solutions so that more students continue with their language studies. Skolverket (2006a: 4) expresses that the teacher has to increase the learning interest of the student, and according to the course programs (Skolverket, 2000a, 2000b) students will work with topics related to their interests. For all of the above, it seems fundamental to find out about factors that influence the interest of students in teaching in the context of positioning theory in the English class. The teacher's knowledge of students' attitudes and thoughts toward teaching materials should be positive for learning, so I want to include students in this study.

The research problem has origins of an empirical nature because it occurs in an Educational Institution, in a specific degree of schooling and in a specific socio-cultural context that requires a theoretical treatment on authors who have worked on this research topic. In the same way, it requires precise characterization of the actors involved. According to the nature of the problem it is not only analytical empirical, it is necessary an integral and explanatory management of the problem through a qualitative treatment of the data. All of the above, state that the use of qualitative methods were used in the course of research and are within educational ethnography.

The methods of this research offer the teacher multiple possibilities for the exercise of reflective teaching while positioning theory in the English class. Among them, observing classroom behaviours, exploring the subjects' beliefs, teaching context and interpreting the discourse by placing themselves in the participants' position (the emic principle) and relating the observed to the overall set of that culture (holistic principle ) (Van Lier, 1988).

The contribution of the present work is to provide more information on how pedagogues can choose and use different types of positioning theory in the English class to increase and maintain interest in learning English of their students. As a teacher, one believes it is important to obtain information about what he/ she can do to facilitate the learning of the students.

Observation sheet in the classroom

It was used as a guide for the visit to the classroom in order to observe the teachers teaching the English lessons, specifically developing the skills of oral expression and listening comprehension of the students. It was divided into four sections, one for each variable being worked, which is called observation units and these, in turn, in categories and subcategories; A fourth column was to note other observations that were made.

Observation sheet in the classroom: It was made in order to guide observation in the classroom and was divided into four sections, corresponding to each of the variables to be investigated: Didactic activities, Didactic resources, Assessment techniques and Teacher training.

The heading allowed to write down the name of the Institution, a number to identify the teacher being observed, the level of the group and the date on which the observation was made. Each variable or unit of observation was treated with the categories corresponding to the indicators or specifications that were to be observed, both for the development of oral expression and for listening comprehension; one worked on a third column that was precisely where the subcategories were noted, which allowed the observer to quantify the observed data for each aspect indicated, as well as when questions or conversation were made with any of the subjects involved in the process. It was the axis during the 4 hours that was made observation in the classroom to each group of the sample, as well as when the researcher sat down to converse with them and them in the hour of the recess or at the end of the lesson. For this short period of observation, it can be said that it was a brief observation and with a general or holistic approach because, as already mentioned, all variables were considered. Basically this observation was intended to verify the answers given in the questionnaires by both teachers and students.

Procedure for the collection of information

The information was collected by applying the instruments to the populations under study; once this was collected, coding and typing were done to design the databases for both teachers and students. The data obtained by the questionnaire for the Advisers were worked on separately since they were only two people and the data obtained through the observation guide in the classroom were quantified by variable to add them to the analysis that was done of the data obtained from the questionnaires.

Steps for analyzing and interpreting the data

In order to analyze and interpret the data obtained, a review was first made by the teacher of the group surveyed in order to verify that the questions had been answered. In relation to the questionnaire applied to teachers, it was the researcher who checked that everything was answered. When something was left blank or the answers were not accurate, the doubts were noted and were taken up at the time of observation or when talking to them and them. The data were then coded and processed using the statistical package SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences), with the purpose of designing statistical tables and graphs for each study population. For the analysis of the data the descriptive statistic was used with sum of frequencies, percentages, average and standard deviation.

2.6. Data collection and interpretation

Data Collection Techniques

The collection technique applied was the self-administered survey, in which:

initial test to be applied to the different information subjects, including both traditional and modern methods of teaching;

final test to be applied to the different information subjects, including both traditional and modern methods of teaching.

On the other hand, the observation technique defined as „Systematic, valid and reliable record of behaviours that manifest during the English class”, was accomplished by the researcher to the English teachers as well as the students of the Vth grade. Here the researcher was classified as an open participant observer.

Module I. Initial test

”Write an email to a penfriend who has never visited Romania and invite him to come to your country. Give him/her some information about the country. (100-120 words)”
The initial stage helps to establish the level at which pupils are at the moment of initiation of the psycho-pedagogical experiment, both in the experimental sample and in the control sample.

Table 1

The results obtained at the initial test by the sample using traditional methods

The results are distributed as following:

Average at the class level is of the form: (1×0+2×0+3×0+4×2+5×1+6×0+7×8+8×2+9×0+10×0):13= 6.54

Module (the most frequent mark) is represented by mark 7

Analyzing the results obtained by the 13 students of the grade V, respectively the sample using traditional methods, at the initial test, we can say that the module at the group level is 7, 10 grades being scored over the mark 9. In the same context, one may observe a grouping of marks on a fairly large segment.

Observing the graph above, there is a lack of 1,2,3 and 6 marks which suggests that the tendencies of promotion are increasing, but there is a high inconsistency of 10 marks that suggests the weak involvement of pupils in the teaching-learning process. Also, since not all the students have fully achieved the objectives proposed by the didactic approach, it is easy to understand that success can only be achieved in the future by longer training and by giving more attention and importance to the discipline.

Table 2

Results obtained at the initial test by the sample using modern methods

The results are distributed as follows:

Average at the class level has the following form: (1×0+2×0+3×0+4×0+5×2+6×0+7×1+8×0+9×7+10×3):13= 8.46

Module (the most frequent note) is represented by the mark: 9

According to the graph and table above, the representative sample of the control group ranges around marks 7,8,9 and 10. In this context, in the Vth grade, while using modern methods of teaching, all the marks were over 4, also observing here a grouping of marks on an extended segment. Also, the fact that marks 1 and 2 are missing suggests an upward trend in the promise of the initial test, but on the other hand, the poor presence of the mark 10 can be attributed to the lack of student concentration. Under the same aspect, no student has fully achieved the objectives proposed by the didactic approach.

According to the results obtained by the students of the experimental and control groups, the following measures for optimizing the didactic approach can be considered:

• Returning with additional information in the field where a deficit is found

• To propose new exercises and text that pupils should analyze from this perspective

• Insisting on resolving exercises of the type corresponding to the initial test

Observing the structural diagram of the averages obtained at the level of the class using both modern and traditional methods in the context of the initial test, it is noted that the group using modern methods is relatively higher compared to the other one. One may observe in this context an initial phase of the finding, also known as the initial test, the context in which the starting dates were collected, the level existing at the time of initiation of the experience with which the English language teacher works. Interpreting the results and the information obtained from the pedagogical knowledge test, the analysis of the pupils' products, their systematic observation and the learning outcomes, one may found that there are no very large differences regarding the two samples, as the above diagram emphasizes.

In the context of administering the initial test at the level of the two samples, the following general and specific competencies are noted:

General, social and civic competencies

1. Receiving the written message, from literary and non-literary texts, for various purposes;

2. The correct and appropriate use of the English grammar in the production of written messages, in different contexts of realization, with different purposes.

Specific targeted competencies

1.1 reading a variety of literary or non-literary texts, demonstrating the understanding of their meaning;

1.2. Recognizing the specific modalities of organizing the different types of texts and;

1.3. Knowing the correctness and expressive value of the learned grammar and lexical categories in a text;

2.1. Expressing in writing their own opinions and attitudes;

2.2. The correct and nuanced use of learned semantic categories;

2.3. Use varied modalities for expressing the text.

Module 2. Final Tests

The final experimental stage of this research was the administration of a final evaluation test, the subjects being the same for both classes, experimental and control ones. Subsequently, the results recorded in this context were compared with those obtained from the initial assessment.

As far as the evaluation of the results is concerned, it was possible with the help of the notes, to set the total score for each item. The next step was to compare the results obtained by each class in terms of comparison charts and those that reveal the structure.

In the context of the final stage, the following general and specific competencies were considered:

General, social and civic competencies

1. Receiving the written message, from literary and non-literary texts, for various purposes;

2. The correct and appropriate use of the English grammar in the production of written messages, in different contexts of realization, with different purposes.

Specific targeted competencies

1.1 reading a variety of literary or non-literary texts, demonstrating the understanding of their meaning;

1.2. Recognizing the specific modalities of organizing the epic text and the expressive procedures in the lyrical text;

1.3. Knowing the correctness and expressive value of the learned grammar and lexical categories in a text;

2.1. Expressing in writing their own opinions and attitudes;

2.2. The correct and nuanced use of learned semantic categories;

2.3. Use varied modalities for expressing the text.

Table 3

The results obtained at the final test by the sample using traditional methods

The results are distributed as following:

Average at the class level has the following form: (1×0+2×0+3×0+4×0+5×0+6×2+7×1+8×2+9×3+10×5):13= 8.61

Module (the most frequent note) is represented by the mark 10

Based on the graph and table representative for the results obtained by the experimental sample at the final test, it can be stated that the module was around the 10th mark, and in terms of the degree of advancement, this is an excellent one, 8 marks being recorded over the 8th mark. As well as in the case of the final test, a grouping of marks on a quite stretched beach is noted. In the same context, none of the marks 1, 2, 3 and 5 were recorded, and all pupils with mark 10 achieved the objectives that were initially proposed in the context of the didactic approach.

Table 4

Results obtained at the final test by the sample using modern methods

The results are distributed as following:

Average at the class level has the following form: (1×0+2×0+3×0+4×0+5×0+6×0+7×0+8×2+9×2+10×9):13= 9.54

Module (the most frequent note) is represented by the mark 10

Analyzing the results obtained at the final test by the sample using modern methods, there is a presence of 9 marks over the 9th one. In this context, the module is represented by mark 10, observing a grouping of marks on a large beach.

Also in the case of the control group, marks such as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 are missing, which means that the majority of the pupils have fully achieved the objectives proposed during the didactic approach.

In this context, the main measures for optimizing the didactic approach at both levels are:

• Return with additional information

• To identify gaps in the context of the teaching-learning process in which pupils should be involved at maximum capacity

• Insist on solving the exercises similar to the ones received by the students at the final test

Observing the structural diagrams of the averages obtained at the level of the samples in the context of the final test, it is noted that with respect to the group using modern methods the average is higher compared to the other one.

OPTIMIZATION RECOMMENDATIONS:

Difficulties encountered in resolving the test require some remedial measures:

solving several exercises with the correct writing of the orthograms;

performing several morpho-syntactic analysis exercises;

making several sentences with verbs: predictive, copulative and auxiliary;

constant checking of the homeworks;

I have tried the items to be as varied as possible to cover as much knowledge as possible. Also, I realized as many items as possible. Thus, objective items, semi-objective items, short-response items and subjective ones of problem-solving appear in this final test. The first topics were accessible, while the last one is more complex.

Through this test, operational concepts were verified, such as: verbal, verbal types, adverb types, noun, adjective, conditional sentences. Students 'grammatical knowledge was also verified.

Thus, according the results of certain dissatisfaction, the teacher will take the following measures:

• she will develop tables with verbal time

• she will develop texts in order to improve students’ vocabulary

• she will develop exercises on different themes

• she will increase the hours when students can practice writing

• she will develop elaborate appropriate tests

The analysis and interpretation of the data and implicitly, of the obtained results suggests the presence of a positive trend aimed at improving the school results of the intermediate level students in favour of both experimental and control samples. Moreover, this trend can not be exclusively attributed to the psychic and physical development of pupils, which is why we can assert that the initial hypothesis is confirmed. Using the interactive methods and techniques, both individually, by group and frontal, is the following:

• children have the ability to learn new knowledge with ease;

• the students' confidence in their ability to decode and comprehend the content, both individually and at group level, is observed;

• students show an increasing desire to be involved in the learning process and show no signs of fatigue as they engage willingly, freely, consciously, learning logically and actively;

• children have acquired a tinted language and enriched by various teaching methods;

The data suggests that there is a positive trend in improving student outcomes in favour of the experimental sample, in terms of transforming the teacher-student relationship into a democratic one, aligned with modern standards. Thus, intermediate level students enjoy effective communication based on cooperation, mutual help, initiative and freedom, thanks to the factual methods used by the English teacher.

In this context, it can be said that the present study was a real challenge for me, in terms of an opportunity to study both the literature and the psycho-pedagogical type, to enrich and deepen my knowledge regarding interactive methods and phenomena characterized by complexity, but topical and vital for the future. In the case of the two samples studied in this research it was found that in the first experimental phase, the differences between the average are statistically relative, the balance inclining towards the control sample, but as the experimental intervention is unfolding, one may observe remarkable differences between environments, on this occasion favouring the experimental group. This is due to the fact that the dynamics of the school performance, which the experimental group follows, contributes to the decrease of the difference between the media to the inflection point, after which the difference between the averages in favour of the experimental sample follows an ascending trend.

The qualitative and quantitative comparative approaches between the two groups (experimental and control) reinforce the assertion that the ascending evolution of the school performance of the experimental sample is strongly influenced by the final experimental intervention.

What is observed in the classroom seems to be in direct contrast to what has been found in literature. When contrasting with the characteristics of effective teaching, good teaching and what it means to be an effective teacher, the authors mentioned in the corresponding sections affirm that learning can be achieved when the recommended actions are taken. However, it should be noted that of the six teachers that were observed, two obtained high grades in their performance as effective teachers, one was in the middle and three more qualified as teachers away from the practices considered "effective" or "good". " Then, in view of the fact that both for an effective teacher and for another one qualified as traditional, the results of their students do not differ in a significant way -, the failure rates of the students of one teacher and another are not very different-, the study shows that in our context the "good teachers" obtain the same results as the traditional ones.

The present research deals with a current issue, framed in the new orientations of contemporary pedagogy, aiming in particular at replacing the grading methodologies and differentiating ones that support the individualization and the personalization of the educational process, offering equal opportunities to all students regardless of their level, thus promoting various methods with a high training potential that can lead to the optimization of the action taken by the students in the context of their own learning.

The experimental investigation supports the intention to verify the extent to which the use of interactive teaching methods and of the modern educational means in the teaching of English grammar has a particular influence on the achievement of the students' superior performances in terms of the positive impact these methods especially in the field of effective and conscious learning, but also as regards the intention to identify the limits of the use of these methods.

The approach taken in the present research presents clarifying and argumentative aspects, supporting the idea that the interactive methods promoted systematically and with pedagogical relevance in didactic activity have positive effects on school performance.

Appreciating the results obtained from the investigative approach, it can be confirmed that the teaching of English grammar to intermediate level students using modern educational means and interactive methods has significant positive effects, both in the formative segment and in the information plan.

The design and development of the pedagogical experiment was carried out from the perspective of optimizing the teaching and learning process of the English grammar at the intermediate level, the exigency of the systematic use of interactive methods regarding the formation and the development of the fundamental competences, in the dynamics of school performance segment. The pedagogical intervention was performed in the context of the English didactic activities at the level of the A and B grades. The two samples (experimental and control) were selected according to the methodology of pedagogical research while respecting the compatibility with the various requirements imposed by the objectives and the hypothesis of the formative experiment.

With regard to the content sample, its delimitation was possible by the potential of capitalizing on the formative valences that modern and interactive didactic methods have, appreciating also the extent to which the content contributes to the learning and development of the understanding, using the concepts and specific terms of the discipline of study, exploration and investigation capacity of reality. Thus, the content sample covers a significant part of the English contents.

The formative experiment was the fundamental stage of this pedagogical research, at which level the didactic activities did take place at the intermediate level, according to the intervention project. The processing and interpretation of experimental data, referring to specific hypotheses, makes it easier to outline future conclusions.

Using interactive methods makes it possible to create a logical and natural chain between old and new knowledge; didactic units are not separate sequences, but they are inter-conditioned in a training situation, contributing to an optimal understanding of them, as they capitalize and activate the previous knowledge of students.

As expected, conducting this experimental research has given me the opportunity to see new perspectives, address other possible themes or subtopics, set new objectives and, implicitly, distinct working hypotheses, use innovative assessment tools and advanced data analysis techniques. In the same context, the process of collecting and analyzing data has given me the opportunity to know the various limits of research.

To conclude, given that teaching styles do not influence the results of exams applied to students, it is necessary to investigate the other actor in the teaching-learning process: the student. In general, in the observed groups it can be seen that the students do not have study habits; this is evident in that, if they are not required, they do not work and in the poor delivery of assigned tasks, in addition to the students reacting according to the demands of the teacher and with the time they dedicate to them; for example, in the revision of tasks, when questioning them in class or inviting them to participate.

CHAPTER 3: ANALYSIS ON PROBLEMS ARISING IN TEACHING ENGLISH WITH NEW TECHNOLOGY

3.1 Suggestions and strategies to the existing problems

As the teacher is certain that the students have correctly understood the use of different aspects in certain situation, he/she can apply modern strategies as writing essays, in order to stimulate their creativity based on the knowledge already acquired. For instance, the teacher can ask the students to write an essay comparing Beijing or other city they know, including the city they live in, with another city, as visited or a city they wish to visit. The students can use the adjectives already mentioned in the table below or adjectives of their choice. The aim of the teacher is to test the correct use of the comparison degrees, in personal contexts, similar to real communication situation. The teacher can transform the essay writing activity into a competition, awarding the best papers, in order to stimulate the students. A possibility could be to publish the students' papers in the school's newspaper or to offer symbolic gifts for the best works. The essay is also included in the students' book, but it is reduced to city already analyzed in the reading exercise. We consider that the essay should be more permissive, in order to stimulate the students, to effectively use a source language in their personal contexts.

The synopsis of the class associated with the comparison degrees continues with a listening exercise, based on a real communication situation, a guide presenting London. In order to encourage students use the new information, we consider that this type of modern teaching activity should include a situation based on the comparison degrees already presented, so that the students can analyze how native speakers use them, in order to correct their potential errors or to be encouraged to use the knowledge acquired in multiple contexts, not only in the class.

After the listening exercise, the students' book includes a speaking exercise, encouraging students to start a conversation based on a map of their town. The students are asked to create a tour guide. In order to check the correct understanding of the students in the case of the comparison degrees, the teacher can ask them to include as many adjectives as possible, in order to describe the major touristic attractions of their city. The aim of the exercise is to test the correct use of the comparison degrees in real communication situations. The teacher can note the errors he/she notices and at the end of the exercise, present them to the students, in order to correct them.

The students' book includes an exercise promoting self-discovery, asking the students to research on the internet for information related to the most visited cities in UK and to present the data selected to their classmates. The exercise can be performed in the class, if the students can use personal computers or can be transformed into homework, the teacher asking them to present during the next class the results of their work. Similarly to the other teaching activities, the teacher will analyze the correct use of the comparison degrees and correct the students, if there is the case.

The last phase of the class proposed by the synopsis in the students' book includes a project, which we consider a valuable modern teaching activity. The project activity requires the students to write a short text about a city in their country, focusing on its name, population or historic background. Based on the purpose of the class, to teach the comparison degrees, the teacher can alter the exercise proposed in the students' books, asking the students to work in groups or to work individually, to focus on a particular city or to compare cities, using as many adjectives as possible. The purpose of the project, which can be rendered as a written text or as a multimedia presentation, is to check the correct understanding of the students in the case of the new information acquired.

Structurally, the synopsis proposed in the students' book, as well as our personal perspective, is focused on the use of the modern teaching strategies, as suggested in the table below.

The results expected by the teacher, as implementing modern teaching strategies, is to stimulate the students to efficiently assimilate the new information and use them into the most various real communication situations, as in listening, writing or reading exercises already mentioned.

Globally, the exercises presented so far are dedicated to the teaching of comparative degrees in the case of the students of the 5th grade, using as teaching document the students' book Blockbuster 1. As follows, the teaching the comparative degrees for 6th grade students will be presented.

As a major difference, in the case of the 6th grade students, the teacher can limit his/her presentation, as the students are already familiar with basic concepts as gradability, the construction of comparative and superlative degrees in the case of short or long adjectives, and the use of irregular forms of comparative degrees. As a consequence, the unit in the students' book Blockbuster 2 associated with the teaching of the comparative degrees debuts with exercises stimulating guided discovery, as the students are considered already prepared to acquire verify the information they already acquired and to obtain new knowledge. The unit is named "Our World", focusing on exercises of checking knowledge, based on the previous information acquired by students in both authentic or restricted contexts.

For instance, the teacher can omit the presentation as the debut of his/her class and ask students to focus on the first exercise included in the students' book, based on guided discovery. The teacher can use the map included in the students' book or include a different map as an authentic document, able to stimulate the guided discovery, whose aim is to encourage students to create personal phrases using comparative degrees.

Vocabulary is one of the most important elements in teaching English as a foreign language. It is supposed to be a very effective communicative device as it carries thehighest level of importance within peoples’ verbal interaction. Vocabulary teaching has evolved and new techniques have been developed in order to emphasise the dynamism and the use of senses in the learning process. The students must learn new words and structures all the time but. Therefore, the teacher needs to include media in teaching vocabulary to the young learners.

Based on what I have written, I can conclude that the use of media can:

– help the pupils understand the difficult words easily;

– make the vocabulary learning more enjoyable and interesting because they can memorize the meaning of the difficult words by singing the song with the pictures as key words and without asking another person or looking them up in the dictionary;

– make the class more active and alive;

– can stir pupils’ curiosity in learning new vocabulary.

The outcomes of the first questionnaire shows that teachers pay special attention to teaching vocabulary in the classroom and they use different techniques and methods when presenting and practising vocabulary. The most used techniques when presenting vocabulary are visuals and translation, whereas the least used methods are verbal techniques (e.g. synonyms and opposites), blackboard drawings, showing realia and presenting words in idioms and collocations. When practising vocabulary, teachers place the greatest importance on various exercises from teacher´s books or other books, visuals and games (e.g. bingo, dominoes etc.). Furthermore, new words are presented mostly in phrases or in a context. When teaching a new lexical item, its translation, spelling and pronunciation is introduced most often. Moreover, according to the teachers, the most effective methods for learners when presenting new vocabulary seem to be using visuals, words in a context and giving examples of common phrases. Most teachers also believe that using visual aids, various exercises and games are the best techniques for practising vocabulary in the classroom, especially for young learners.

From the outcomes of the second questionnaire, it is obvious that most pupils learn or practise new vocabulary only when a test is announced. It is obvious that they prefer learning new words with their translation or reading them from their word lists or vocabulary notebooks. On the other hand, giving Romanian or English equivalents to words seem to be the most effective method used by pupils when practising new vocabulary. Similarly, the research shows that the best way learners remember new words is when translating them into Romanian. Moreover, it was proved that when the learner does not understand some words, he or she asks either teachers or classmates for help most often. Younger learners find English vocabulary easy, whereas for older learners it is quite difficult to learn English lexis.

Any form of teaching has been and will continue to be realated to a form of assessment in all types of academic contexts. However, if in the past the evaluation of the learners used to use mainly summative testing tools which caused a lot of anxiety, today’s assessors use more humanistic, student-centered approaches to identify the students’ abilities, level and achievement in a more formative way. As a result, by using the latest methods and strategies, the assessing authorities and institutions can benefit the advantages of a more objective, relevant and extensive evaluation :

”Assessment tools and procedures, in addition to being essential for evaluating students’ progress and achievement , also help in evaluating the suitability and effectiveness of the curriculum, the teaching methodology, and the instructional materials.”

Alternative assessment in English classroom should be based mainly on tasks and not tests. They should measure students’performance or progress in terms of both ”the process” and the ”final product”. Clear assessment objectives should be followed to prevent inconsistencies and subjectivity.

I chose project work activities, the portfolio and self-assessment to evaluate my students.

Projects are an extended piece of work involving inquiry based activities. Project work in the language classroom is the opportunity for learners to develop their language skills. It encourages learners to use the foreign language and motivates them. The project also develops the learners’ social skills, the ability to cooperate together. Students work in groups on their projects and they have responsibility for their work. This type of activity is less teacher- controlled and involves a lot student management of the learning process:

“Project work goes hand- in- hand with another suggested approach , student-centered learning” as “when students work together on substantive projects, they gain experience in developing their own learning goals.”

This means that the teacher continues to assume an active role but, only to shape the instruction in accordance with the student’s needs and interests, up-dating the curriculum to match the latest social and educational requirements. Preparing a literature project by the students is an intellectually demanding but stimulating educational experience which involves exploration of resources, selection and organization of information, negotiation, decision-making and also illustration and presentation skills.

Nevertheless, with students who are less familiar with this learning and assessment method, the task may be designed and clearly presented by the teacher who will also monitor the activities . It is useful for the students to be shown the steps they have to follow when their lack of experience may affect their interest and motivation.

Students can do a project on different topics such as: a special day, presenting the news, advertisements, writing poems, songs or stories, etc.

Fried-Booth differentiates between full-scale projects and bringing and motivating activities. She says that ”they are, of course, closely linked, since the motivating activites are a form of preparation for full-scale projects. The main difference between the two it that motivating activities are restricted to the classroom, while project work in extended beyond the classroom.“

According to Legutke and Thomas, a concluding evaluation stage involve an overall evaluation of:

topic understanding;

group and teacher interaction;

procedural organization;

input materials;

language gains and deficits;

examples of learner work;

possible by-products, e.g. changes in learner´s intercultural awareness, but they also saythat teachers can use various forms of evaluation, such as the pupils can write their own diaries with their notes about what they have learnt during working on the project, they can write down their experiences in their own reports, they can determine the criteria for success and failure and discuss about their individual work in the project. The rules of project work –learning by doing, responsibility of pupils for their work, letting the pupils look for information, sorting it out and solving problems but the situation in a real life in preparation of the projects use to be different.

Project work assessment can also be student and/or teacher driven. Progress will be measured in accordance with the project goals and the achievement of these goals will be assessed in the final product. What is more, projects involve many cross-curricular activities and also real world capabilities such as the use of technology, investigative work, collaborative learning and management skills which make them very effective and functional tools in today’s society.

Portfolios are personal collections of student work recording evidence of his/her growth and development in a certain area of the curriculum. However, “to analizyze the contents of the portfolio, performance objectives must be delineated .” This means that, even if the students apply their own subjective criteria for content selection, the teachers will assume objective criteria for assessing portfolios.

In an article entitled “Assessment of Young Learners” Kassim Shaaban defines the portfolio as “a systematic collection of a student’s work” meant “to trace a student’s progress over a time”. The same author considers that “if implemented clearly and systematically”, portfolios have at least three advantages which the traditional forms of assessment don’t: ”they provide the teacher with a detailed picture of a student’s language performance in a variety of different tasks”, “they can enhance student’s self-image as they participate in the decisions about content and can help them identify their strengths and weaknesses in the target language” and “they integrate teaching and assessment in a continuous process.”

Portfolios may contain a variety of materials: writing samples (such as book reports, stories summaries, character descriptions, grammar exercises, school timetable, grammar exercises, their songs and poems) and oral work (recorded news and events), as well as tests.

In “Evaluating Children’s Writings”, Suzanne Bratcher enumerates a number of advantages when deciding to use portfolios in the evaluation process. According to the author, portfolios can dramatically decrease the pressure of grades on students, thus providing an environment conducive to risk-taking and real learning, they can allow students to participate in the grading process by choosing which pieces they wish to have graded, they can decrease the pressure of grades on the teacher as well because grading occurs much less frequently and they can make an excellent focus for both student and parent conferences.

Self-assessment is a process of formative assessment during which students reflect on and evaluate the quality of their work and their learning. They reflect explicitly stated goals or criteria, identify strenghts and weaknesses in their work and revise.

It is a valuable tool as it implies that an individual is aware of his/her strengths (which means that he/she will manage to make the best use of his/her knowledge, values and skills) and also of his/her weaknesses (which makes these weaknesses easier to deal with and to improve).

Not only the teachers, but also the students can and make judgements about their own work, their peers’ and also about the grades they receive. The students discover themselves and address their own needs.

Self-assessment types of assignments help the students measure their understanding of a certain topic, the improvements in the learning process providing, in one word, feedback about the level of performance.Typical self-assessment activities may include quizzes, questionnaires, fill-in-the-blank, true/false and/or multiple choice questions etc.

Assessing knowledge creatively

This part of the chapter will focus on the relevance of assessing knowledge in a creative way within important sections of foreign language acquisition, which include vocabulary, grammar and skills, especially speaking and writing. Assessing should be considered in a wide sense, since it involves the entire process the teacher makes use of in order to promote and enhance learning. Assessment is, therefore, relevant not only to grade students' acquisition of the new knowledge, but also the way they can use their knowledge creatively and realistically (qualitative acquisition of knowledge and performance of it). Educators are urged to use assessment practices according to student-centred instructional practices, for instance:

to build up assessment tasks that support students in making judgments about their own learning and performance and tasks that incorporate different learning styles;

to individualize assessment tasks as appropriate to adapt to students’ particular learning needs;

to negotiate and make explicit the criteria by which performance is to be evaluated;

to provide feedback on student learning and performance.

Creative assessment activities, tasks, and strategies embrace oral assessment, written assessment, as well as reading comprehension area and could include: anecdotal records, audiotapes, interviews (structured and informal), media products, peer assessments, checklists, performance tasks, rating-scales, portfolios, project works, self-assessments, written assignments.

Creative assessing requires teachers to promote in students a sense of autonomy, which is to make students aware that their chances of success in learning a foreign language will be much greater if they continue studying and revising on their own in an active kind of learning. Creative assessing also requires teachers to make up imaginative, engaging and enjoyable activities, as well as to encourage students to write their own test items, using the language they have been working on or exercises they have seen so far. The new resulted tests could be handed to other students to appreciate their correctness and their degree of difficulty.

Assessing knowledge creatively within the English Foreign Language classroom can undertake peer-assessment or self-assessment forms depending on the specific context of knowledge acquisition.

Peer-assessment engages students to provide each other with appreciations in order to achieve tasks. This type of assessing can prove to be very effective in terms of self-confidence and collaborative learning, and teachers should constantly encourage students to appreciate each other’s work and results, thus promoting a more relaxed and engaging atmosphere in the classroom.

Self-assessment invites students themselves, as well as the class as a whole, take charge with their own evaluation. Within the student- centered theory, self-assessment is of crucial importance in the student’s evolution as an autonomous learner, responsible for his own learning achievements. Although there could be certain risks of a higher level of subjectivity in this type of assessment, teachers ought to pay extensive attention to the training of their students to become self-conscious and rigorous judges of their own work and outcomes. Self-assessing could make use of questionnaires, rating scales or checklists.

Assessing vocabulary creatively (from denotation to connotation)

Many teachers usually make use of a variety of methods to assess vocabulary knowledge of their students. These methods might be applied for all age groups and levels starting from third grade up to college. Since students learn in different ways, they will be able to show their knowledge through a test that should meet their needs.

Assessing vocabulary activities may contain a great variety of tasks:

Multiple choice;

Dual choice;

True or false;

Match the words/ lines / paragraphs with the images;

Fill-in the gaps;

Cloze;

Match words with their description/definition, the title/ heading with the fragment;

Join sentences;

Use pictures to make up sentences/descriptions/short stories;

Draw word- webs;

Make a mind map;

Identify synonyms/ antonyms in the text;

Continue the story/ article/ paragraph;

Arranging elements;

C-testing;

Identify prefixes, suffixes, and root words;

Write a story from the idea in a picture;

Use key words to develop a story;

Find the beginning/the middle/the end of a paragraph etc.

Alternative assessing vocabulary implies a more complex type of activities such as:

Project works: posters/ PPT/ Prezi Presentations/ Web pages etc;

Mini-dictionaries with pictures, denotations and connotations as part of a portfolio.

So that to achieve such tasks, the teacher can make use of a large range interesting and attractive activities meant to engage students to use their knowledge and imagination in a creative way.

From denotation to connotation:

By using matching and multiple choice tasks, the teacher will show the students pictures with human beings on one side, and names of animals on the other side. Under each animal name there could be connotative characteristics and the children should choose the correct one.

Use key words and picture to make up a short story- within a limited time, this type of activity involves peer-assessment and engages groups of students to use their imagination in order to complete blank spaces with their own ideas in order to make up the best work and to become winners in the class.

Mark goes on a trip

Key word is another engaging activity that involves students to compete against each other in order to create stories made up of ten sentences. The teacher will divide students into four groups, will give them the Title: A Stupid Accident, for example, and will provide different sets of key words for each group. The aim of this activity is to have different stories with the same title.

A Stupid Accident

Group 1: friends, teachers, holiday, camping, forest, berries, mother bear and cubs, snake.

Group 2: family members, seaside, summer, play, ball, broken leg, hospital, weather, holiday.

Group 3: birthday, friends, family, restaurant, run out of electrical power, disaster.

Group 4: trip, friends, teachers, Zoo, wild animals, fruits, bite, harm, finger, weather.

As an alternative for this activity:

The teacher will decide upon only one set of key words and no title. The goal of the activity is to get interesting stories and to make students think of the most appropriate title for their work.

The teacher will divide students into groups of three, will provide a set of key words and also some helping sentences that they should stick to and the three groups of students will have to write the beginning, the middle and the end of the story, by exchanging the sheet of paper.

To match sentence halves. After dividing children into five groups, teacher will give each group two half sentences jumbled. Each group will have to put the sentences in the correct order. The ten resulted sentences will be written on the flipchart at random. A whole- class discussion will take place in order to put sentences in a logical order so that to result a story. The teacher will ask students to provide a title for their story and the five groups will rejoin so that they come up with the best appropriate title for their story. Appreciation and assessing will be offered by peers. The teacher will appreciate individual contribution in the whole class step of the activity.

C-testing which is achieved by deleting half of every second word in a text, could provide a competitive way of assessing students creatively, since it involves students themselves in creating the text to be solved (also the key of the text) in a period of twenty minutes. The two teams will present their variant to the opposite team. The two groups will have to find out the full words and team to finish the first will be the winner.

ʺ Once up_ a ti_ there wa_ a ki_ who lov_ gold mo_ any_ else. He lik_ to wat_ his pie_ of go_ in th_ ligh o_ the mo_ . He alw_ thought h_ had le_ than h_ wanted. One da_ a stran_ came in_ his ro_ and ask_ him i_ he wa_ happy. Th_ king repl_ , 'no, I'_ not. I wo_ be hap_ until every___ I to__ becomes go___'ʺ.

Alternative: for beginner or pre-intermediate levels, teachers could elicit students only words to be clipped down. Thus, as a whole- class activity, students will come up with parts of words and their peers will have to decode the full word. This could be also a variant where suffixes or prefixes evaluation could be made. Example: __im__ant, __ suffi__, act___, writ___, doc__ , __honesty, friend__ , leader___ etc.

Cloze procedure could as well be viewed as a creative alternative item for assessing vocabulary if we invited students to involve themselves in creating sentences or short descriptions in order to be filled up by their colleagues, instead of providing them a model. The blanks could be changed by pictures about physical or moral characteristics in a description of a human being (persons or animals).

Arranging elements task can turn into a type of creative vocabulary assessing if, instead of simple putting words in the right order, the teacher will provide students with photographs accompanied by jumbled words to be arranged in a correct sequence so as to result a short story.

In a True or false task the teacher should involve students to create paragraphs which must include some true and untrue sentences and to give them further to their colleagues in order to accomplish the task.

Fill in tasks could be used by teachers in order to assess their students' vocabulary knowledge and their attention for being able to recognize either known words or unknown ones that should be guessed in context while supplying short listening activities.

Alternative assessing vocabulary implies a more complex type of authentic activities that proceed the development of creativity, the need to collaborate in problem-solving when encouraging students to realize different project works such as: posters/ PPT/ Prezi Presentations/ Web pages design by using real-life situations they may usually encounter. Suggesting students to realize class mini-dictionaries with pictures, denotations and connotations as part of a portfolio could also offer many opportunities to assess work quality, understanding, commitment and active participation from the moment students begin working until their final part which includes a powerful, convincing presentation of their own work.

Assessing grammar creatively

Assessing grammar knowledge has got two important goals: to develop learning and to give teachers a clear feedback on the effectiveness of their work. Although traditional grammar teaching is considered as one of the basic forms in acquiring a foreign language and in having control over it, assessors comprehended and sensed the need for innovation and, soon vision changes in assessing grammar followed the ones in teaching, leaving behind translation from and into the target language.

Creative teachers tend to include assessing of grammar as an intrinsic part of the learning process. Within a student-centered approach of assessing grammar creatively teachers must aim at promoting an ongoing grammar learning, instead of a fearful process that students usually seem to reject as they do not understand. Assessing grammar creatively requires the same role of the teacher to build up engaging and funny activities that are meant to encourage students feel the desire to learn grammar as a meaningful necessity in order to make themselves clear to their interlocutors. Besides the implication of these meaningful activities, teachers should also give students necessary advice and enough credit as to involve them in creating their own grammar tests.

Assessing grammar creatively also involves self-assessment, peer-assessment and group-assessment, helping students to become autonomous, confident, responsible and self-conscious learners of grammar. Teachers need to extend the creative approach of assessing so that simple exercises promote a productive competitive attitude towards grammar knowledge. Positive competitions are more attractive and challenging for children as they can also include different types of contests or on-line grammar assessment, inside or outside the classroom.

As vocabulary assessing, creative grammar assessing activities may also include a large variety of tasks:

Multiple choice- all types of grammatical categories;

Dual choice referring to different grammatical categories;

Match the words/ lines / paragraphs with the images;

Fill-in the gaps-all types of grammatical categories ;

Cloze- in order to assess acquisition of different grammatical categories: irregular plural, prepositions, comparison of adjectives, the correct use of tenses ;

Match words with their description/definition, the title/ heading with the fragment;

Join sentences using transformation/conversion;

Use pictures to make up sentences/descriptions/short stories;

Draw word- webs on tenses or singular/plural form of nouns;

Make a mind map on synonyms and antonyms;

Continue the story/ article/ paragraph using different tenses according to the context;

Discover grammar traps in different sentences;

True or false, Same or different- referring to decide upon sentences or upon the meaning;

Arranging elements using blank completion or blank and clue according to context or jumbled sentences/paragraphs.

Alternative grammar assessing may as well imply other complex type of activities such as: project works, posters, Power Point Presentations or Prezi Presentations. For a project work assessing grammar, teacher could include the modal MUST. Students, divided into three groups will have to highlight different uses of this model verb by means of relevant pictures: one group will discuss about obligation, other group will present interdiction and the last group will develop rules (in an airport, in a hospital, in school, at the library, at the Zoo etc.).

Exercise: Listen to the song and complete the empty spaces with missing words:

Assessing Skills creatively: Speaking and Writing

Communicative activities involve active communicative tasks within the productive skills of speaking and writing that should assess learners' knowledge of the language as a whole, not only isolated aspects of it. This way, language knowledge should be assessed in communicative real-life interactions or experience so that the interlocutors can identify with them (birthday parties, paying visits, going shopping for a present etc.)

An interactive assessing must offer learners' a real purpose for speaking and writing, motivation in order to determine original and effective production in oral or written forms and there should also be an information gap meant to encourage learners to use their knowledge and to perform it.

Communicative tasks rely on communicative assessing of the two skills and include creative procedures:

Authentic cloze aims at supplying assessing with a sense of real-life authenticity or fun: fire in the kitchen, running out of water while having a shower, spilled water in a restaurant. Students must use imagination and filling the missing elements in order to decode the message.

Information transfer, based on an information gap that should exist between participants in order to produce active communication. Students will have to use wh-questions according and Past Tense Simple. For instance:

Student A Student B

21st June, 19…., Jane White 21st June, 1980, Jane White

Was born in …., Great Britain. Was born in London, …

1987: She started school. 19… : She started school.

2005: She married Jim Black. 2005: She married …

Using relevant pictures and key words in order to describe orally or in written form those pictures.

To complete dialogues in creative imaginative ways.

Picture cards in order to exploit communicative group work. The teacher should mix up the picture cards and should ask the students to sort them out. The teacher may leave out the key picture card and will ask the students to supply the missing element.

Engaging students in writing their own creative exercise for example: students could describe or draw objects that other students could make a story about; write the first few lines of a story that other students can continue in oral or written form; write the last paragraph of a story that other students can begin.

Problem solving, role playing, creating advertisements, co-operative writing, project works(where students can make use of PPT, video camera, tape recorder, Prezi Presentation) in order to achieve communicative goals.

All these procedures are skill-based and exploit simultaneously learners' productive skills and the teachers could assess how students can use the various language resources to get their message through and to achieve communicative effectiveness.

In conclusion, all these methods create an intersection between instruction and assessment, encouraging student reflection, creativity and autonomy and making the English classroom a friendlier environment. Assessment is a real bridge between teaching and learning. Teachers need to be aware of the different methods that are available for presenting and practising vocabulary. When presenting new lexis, teachers should demonstrate new words in phrases, sentences or in contexts rather than in single units. What is more, learners need to know not only the translation of a new vocabulary item, but also its spelling, pronunciation, common collocations, context and grammar should be mentioned as well. Teachers should be more creative in their teaching and they should include word games and word game-like activities in the classroom, too.

3.2 Conclusions

Nowadays foreign language learning is a broadly discussed subject in academic settings due to the national policies that aim to have a bilingual Romanian soon. This discussion is given in the frame of economic internationalization and tries to respond to the demands of the era of globalization and the increasing development of the industries of communication that circulate knowledge in the foreign language.

From my point of view, an English teacher in the Romanian context has the ultimate objective of generating the conditions for all students to think, value, and act with responsibility in the exercise of their citizenship, understood as the awareness of the obligations and rights that citizens have in the public sphere1. Students and teachers need to be able to have clear positions about the heterogeneous situation described before and manifested in issues of public interest such as displacement, pollution, discrimination, and elections.

In order to exercise citizenship with responsibility, teachers need to popularize a discourse for criticism in which, thanks to meta-cognition and argumentation, students and teachers transcend tacit knowledge and common sense and achieve systematic knowledge and procedures used by experts in different disciplines. In my view, the source and objective of analysis by means of which this discourse can be contextualized in language teaching is the language of mass media and all the sociocultural and signifying practices that it invokes. Through the analysis of mass media it is possible to help students think critically i.e. provide them with the basic knowledge and skills necessary to interact in the world they have to live in and enable them to interpret the intention of the messages sent by the industries of communication.

Language learning is a complex process which requires the language teacher to use modern technology and this implies the application of scientific knowledge to practical tasks. Technology cannot be separated from society. Audiovisual materials stimulates and facilitates the teaching- learning process. I am finishing this paper with the conviction that these aids have positive contributions to language learning being a rich and valuable resource.

Students like them because audiovisual aids presentations are interesting, challenging and stimulating to watch and listen. Audiovisual aids show them how people behave in the culture whose language they are learning. A wide range of communicative situations is brought into the classroom. They also help to promote comprehension. Pronunciation becomes easier, the meaning is clearer and grammar becomes interactive.

Learners are motivated, the real world is brought into the classroom, the language is contextualised, authentic language is experienced in a controlled environment and awareness of other cultures is increased.

Audiovisual aids reinforce the spoken and written words with concrete images. They also provide perceptual images which are considered the base to language learning. Teaching aids make learning permanent, stimulate self-activity, help in overcoming language barriers, develop greater understanding, foster continuity of thought and teaching learning process is interesting.

Present education system prefers modern teaching methods because it reduces the time. There are a lot of modern aids used in the classroom. They play an important role in language learning process and provide greater understanding, save time and energy.

The classroom interactions are encouraged. Audiovisual aids are helpful in creating positive environment in the mind of students and we enable the students to sustain language proficiency for a longer time.

These aids can be used at any stage of the lesson and helps in presenting new language or introducing a topic. Classroom in developed in an interactive way. Our verbal presentation is strengthened by these audiovisual methods and the specific message is captured by students.

The activities done by my students show that English can be learnt outside of the classroom through individual and social activities. These two ways improve listening, reading, writing and speaking. They can improve English outside the classroom using the Internet and talking to other people from all over the world. Learning English is not limited inside the classroom. It is also possible without the teacher and outside the classroom.

A great advantage of video is that it provides authentic language input. Media provides authentic language input. We play a key role in using these modern aids because we create a successful language learning environment. We are controllers, assessors, prompters and participants.

When we know how to grab students’ attention, they can provide a friendly and interesting atmosphere for the students to learn. This encourages the students to read and they improve their understanding towards the lesson. We create enjoyable classroom activities and conduct an effective teaching and learning process.

Students are encouraged to use English as medium of communication not only in class. We give them creative homework and they use these modern aids outside the classroom, too. We encourage them to listen and read to authentic materials and we also use them to create realistic situation for teaching English.

Curriculum should be reviewed after some specific time. It should be student- centred and activity based which could promote English as language not as subject and it should be based on modern teaching methodologies.

In conclusion, we see that language acquisition is essential to fluency in a second language and that this acquisition can be aided by a helpful and motivational learningenvironment. Studies have demonstrated that various forms of media can be helpful for the ESL students´ language development. Several researchers have discovered how media can function as a source and motivational tool for informal L2 acquisition learning. Television, music, chatting and seeking information on the internet all contribute to exposing adolescents to the English language since a vast amount is communicated in English.

In the end, I think the computer and the other media are very helpful when using modern methods in the process of teaching. Unfortunately, in Romania, teaching English has not gotten to that level, as there are still teachers who use traditional methods which do not offer as many advantages as the modern ones do. Also, before the revolution in the 1989, the communist regime did not allow any contact with the Occident and modern methods had no way of being known by the teachers. After the revolution, unfortunately, some people were so indoctrinated they did not want or did not know to adjust to the new system, which allowed the usage of these alternative methods. The benefits of the latter could be visible and they opened new possibilities for students. Both their personal and professional lives had to gain from this kind of teaching. They became more interested in the subject matter, their curiosity developed and so, they succeeded to grow. Richard Andrews states: “Because word processing is second nature to us now in our personal and professional lives (whereas, ironically, pupils in schools are still writing in exercise books), it is easy to take for granted what digital composing has done for us.”

To conclude, I will only say the digital era has brought a sum of benefits in education for the teachers and for the students as well. As Andrews acknowledges, it is easy to take for granted what technology has done for us. Few of the examples are the fact that it has enabled concentration on the major structuring of writing, it has determined the arguments, the reports and information writing to be better mediums for their expression than pen and paper, it has encouraged collaboration and talk about writing at the screen, it has liberated and validated drafting and editing and it has improved presentation. Also, the effects of modern teaching can be seen in the case study. More than fifty percent of the students who have been taught a subject matter using modern methods, know themselves and so, they have better results than those who do not.

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