Repositorio Institucional de Documentos

Trabajo Fin de Máster Modalidad A A CRITICAL REFLECTION ON THE TEACHING-LEARNING PROCESS Autor/a: Marta Alegría Bernal Tutor/a: María Antonia Soláns García Especialidad: Lenguas Extranjeras (Inglés) Máster en Profesorado de Educación Secundaria Obligatoria, Bachillerato, Formación Profesional y Enseñanzas de Idiomas, Artísticas y Deportivas. Curso 2013-2014 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Introduction .............................................................................................................. 1 2. Justification ............................................................................................................... 5 3. Analysis .................................................................................................................... 7 3.1. Didactic Course Plan .......................................................................................... 7 3.1.1. Preliminary period before designing the Didactic Course Plan......9 3.1.2.Critical analysis and reflection on the Didactic Course Plan..........10 3.1.3. Contribution of the Didactic Course Plan to my learning..............14 3.2. Learning Unit ................................................................................................... 15 3.2.1. Preliminary period before designing the Learning Unit............... 16 3.2.2.Critical analysis and reflection on the Learning Unit....................17 3.2.3. Contribution of the Learning Unit to my learning.........................23 4. Conclusions and Proposal for the future .................................................................. 25 5. Works cited ............................................................................................................. 29 6. Appendix ................................................................................................................ 33 1 1. INTRODUCTION In this final project, my principal objective is to elaborate a critical and personal reflection on my own learning during the Master Degree in Education, on my experiences in the three Teaching Practice periods in a high school and on a global vision of the Master (and the expected effects it has had on me). All of which have helped me in the acquisition of new knowledge and different tools to work with as an English teacher in a real educative context. My final reflection follows a concrete structure. In the first part, I will reflect on the teaching profession as an introductory part according to the educational theoretical framework, taking into account the Aragonese Curriculum, ELP, EFR, CEFR etc. and using my own experiences during the Teaching Practice periods at the high school called “Pilar Lorengar” where I was able to see and understand better the real goals of a teacher, their work conditions and their relationship with the students, among other aspects. In the second part, I will elaborate a critical justification on the two works, "Course Plan" and "Learning Unit", that I have chosen in order to demonstrate how useful they have been during my own learning process in the Master, and also how helpful they are going to be in my future labor as an English teacher. It is very important to analyze them in a deeper way with critical reflection, trying to create as many possible connections between both of them, and with my Teaching Practice periods, where I was able to implement the second one. At the same time, I will take into account my teachers´ feedback and my own opinion about the most important aspects that I have learnt before, during and after their implementation. I will relate both to the most important literature seen in the Master. It is essential to consider in my reflections the different concepts and authors that I have seen in all the subjects of the Master to elaborate as critical a work as possible. Also, I want to explain some relevant decisions that have influenced the selection of my final project, when I was writing them, justifying why I chose them and not others as a self-assessment of my own work related to the competences and objectives that I have learnt in the Master´s lessons and activities. As I have learnt during the Master, this last aspect is an important and useful tool for a teacher because it allows him to evaluate objectively how he teaches and helps him to improve his teaching and be implicated in the learning process. Reflective teaching is a new concept which foments a process of introspection and retrospection, focusing on the teachers´ actions in different moments, before, during and after the lessons. There are many definitions of it, but there is one with a broader stance which introduces the concept of reflection, taking into account the social and political contexts of programs, schools, and communities given by Zeichner and Liston (1996, p.33). For them, reflective teaching is “a recognition, examination, and rumination over the implications of one´s beliefs, experiences, attitudes, knowledge, and values as well as the opportunities and constraints provided by the social conditions in which the teacher works”. In the last part of my final reflection, I will expose some specific conclusions about the whole learning process that I have acquired throughout this school year. These final conclusions will help me to show how all these general and specific aspects have influenced me as a future English teacher. 2 Before starting with my final reflections, I want to give my personal reasons about why I decided to study this Master Degree in Education. Since I was a young student, I have felt an unusual connection with languages, and especially with English and Anglo-Saxon culture. But, there was a mentor who emphasized the necessity of being an English teacher. In general, a teacher shows and explains different contents, but there are others who teach incredible things and transmit to their students amazing feelings which influence their future decisions. Hence, I decided to study this Master Degree in Education because one day I want to be that teacher who gives rewarding experiences to his students, that they will never forget. Last year, I finished my University studies in Primary Education, and I felt that my knowledge was not enough in order to be a good teacher. I thought that I knew different methodologies and teaching resources, but that they was not practical enough. During this Master Degree in Education, I have really learnt what teaching new languages means thanks to many interesting theories and concepts that I have seen participating in the different subjects that compose the master. Kumaravadivelu (2012, p.5)´s definition of language teaching establishes that “Language teaching is much more than teaching language. It is not merely about transmitting phonological, syntactic, and pragmatic knowledge of language usage, but it is also about transforming cultural forms and interesting knowledge so as to give meaning to the lived experiences of teachers and learners. ” Here, we can see the importance of integrating in the same way contents and culture in the teaching of a second language in order to create a new way of learning which will help learners to understand in a meaningful way the importance of learning a foreign language with a real purpose. Throughout my last four years at the university, I have worked as a private teacher in several houses helping students with their studies in different subjects. It was an incredible experience, where I have learnt a lot about the importance of meeting my students before choosing my conduct and the way in which I taught the lessons, in order to create a good environment in the teaching-learning process. Before starting the Master Degree in Education, I had some ideas of how the current way of teaching and learning a language has evolved throughout history thanks to the Primary Education degree that I had studied before. But, thanks to this Master, I can complete them, and also my education as a teacher which is an essential, interesting and useful tool in our society. In general, the Master Degree in Education consists of several subjects which focus on the process of teaching and learning, including its main components. Consequently, I have learnt the most important aspects for a teacher and the factors to be considered about how to plan and implement a lesson, a Didactic Unit and a Course Plan. Nowadays, I completely agree with the importance of students´ needs, the essential role played by psychology at these ages, which could determine the motivation of the students, their learning process, and also, the fundamental role of the relationship between teachers and students, which influences learners´ self-confidence in the learning of a foreign language process as the affective filter hypothesis by Krashen (1982) determined. The Master Degree in Education´s subjects are divided into two different terms. In the first part, there are three subjects: “Contexto de la Actividad Docente”, 3 “Interacción y Convivencia en el Aula” and “Procesos de Enseñanza - Aprendizaje” which are common to all specialties as core classes. . Thanks to the first subject, I have learnt the most important aspects about the internal organization of Spanish High Schools, such as: the official documents created in the schools which are the most important and regulate the teaching process, the legal and institutional framework of Education, how the society can influence the teaching and learning process, etc. In the second aforementioned subject mentioned, I have made my skills and techniques more meaningful in order to promote my social psychology and to stimulate teacher and student coexistence in the classroom to help my students in their own development and enrichment. With the last subject, called “Procesos de Enseñanza - Aprendizaje” I have studied and developed my studies about the most important teaching theories in the students´ learning process. And, at the same time, I have reviewed the different techniques about how to evaluate the students and teachers´ formative learning process using objectives, critical and informative tools in a reflective way. Moreover, I had two specific subjects according to my specialty which were “Diseño Curricular de Lenguas Extranjeras” and “Fundamentos de Diseño Intruccional y Metodologías del Aprendizaje”. In the first, I have learnt one of the most important aspects of a teacher´s work, which is how to plan, design and develop a Course Plan for a specific level for the English subject. With the second subject, I have learnt the most important principles and differences between the learning approaches used from the 60´s and those used currently including the language teaching process as a review of the evolution in teaching methods. With the final project in small groups, I was able to explore a specific topic in detail related to the benefits and uses of the ICT´s according to the most important and actual teaching approaches giving my own opinion in a critical way and evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of each approach. Thanks to these subjects and the teaching methods analyzed, I developed my critical view because they taught me what I have to do and not as a future English teacher. Consequently, I have a strong belief in the importance of promoting the communicative approach in the English lessons because I agree with the five communicative principles established by Nunan (1991). And also, analyzing the Communicative Language Teaching, I agree with Harmer (2007, p.32)´s principles. He states that the CLT has “two guiding principles: the first is that language is not just patterns of grammar with vocabulary items slotted in, but also involves language functions [...] and the second principle is that if students get enough exposure to language, and opportunities for language - and if they are motivated - then language learning will take care of itself. ” Whereas during the first part I only took two specialty subjects according to the English language, in the second period I had three interesting subjects directly related to this future labor: “Comunicación oral en Lengua Inglesa”, “Diseño, Organización y Desarrollo de Actividades para el Aprendizaje del Inglés” and “Evaluación e Innovación Docente e Investigación Educativa en Inglés”. All of them helped me to acquire the competences and the knowledge more relevantly required for an English 4 teacher. As I will explain after in a specific and in-depth analysis, in the second subject mentioned, I have learnt different tools that are very useful and meaningful for a teacher in the terms of how to exploit, adapt or make the most out of materials and the tasks, how to evaluate our process and our students learning. In addition, I will explain two important work tools, which are how to elaborate and design my own learning unit according to the communicative principles and a methodology based on tasks considering our students´ preferences and levels, the contents and the objectives which appeared in the Aragonese Curriculum as something specific and compulsory but in a flexible and open way. All the aforementioned subjects have helped me in my personal development, but the most interesting, important and professional aspect of this Master was the three different Teaching Practice periods which included three subjects, one from the first term and two from the second. During the first Teaching Practice period, I was able to apply and check all my learning about the most important and official documents which established the Aragonese Curriculum and, at the same time, those documents which are competences from the High School. Both made me able to analyze and understand in a practical way the internal structure, the educative regulations, the most important laws, etc. of an educational center of Secondary Education as is the High School, “Pilar Lorengar”. But the most enriching experience for me has been the second Teaching Practice period because I was able to work in a real context and felt integrated into the teaching profession thanks to my colleagues at the High School. During the first week, I went with my tutor to all her classes to learn about her techniques, methodologies, relationship with her students, how to organize the lesson according to the students´ timetable, etc. Then, in the following weeks I was able to put into practice my own Learning Unit called “The Incredible World” in a specific level and use all the relevant knowledge acquired during the Master. In the last Teaching Practice period, I investigated the use of ICT´s, and focused on the use of blogs in the improvement of reading skills in the High School´s students. In this research project, I evaluated an investigation about this topic in order to elaborate a critical essay about the integrations of blogs in the English classroom innovating it in the lessons. Thanks to all this new knowledge acquired, I now know the importance of the teachers´ role in the acquisition of a foreign language as well as some essential characteristics necessary in a teacher to develop successful learning. One of the most important aspects in our society to try to promote in each lesson a real connection between the contents and the objectives of each subject with real daily situations, as Kumaravadivelu (2012, p.4) proposes in an interview: “we must uncompromisingly forge a connection between the word and the world, and also unrelentingly help our learners see and benefit from that connection.” Finally, I want to say that my decision to study this Master Degree in Education has been an important decision in my professional development because it helped me to 5 improve my theoretical and practical knowledge. In short, this year taught me the importance of using the language to develop competence in communication in real contexts, and not only being aware of it as is described by Canale and Swain (1980). Foreign language teachers have a big responsibility because they are responsible of teaching a second language, and at the same time, they have to integrate new cultures in their learners´ minds, creating new thoughts and points of view. 2. JUSTIFICATION I have chosen two different projects which are related to each other. They are the Course Plan from the subject of the first term called “Diseño Curricular de Lenguas Extranjeras” and the Learning Unit from the subject of the second term called “Diseño, Organización y Desarrollo de Actividades para el Aprendizaje de Inglés” which I implemented during my Teaching Practice periods at the High School “Pilar Lorengar” located in Zaragoza in the neighborhood of “La Jota”. I have chosen these two final projects because they are the most important and useful that I have done during this Master Degree in Education. With the Course Plan and the Learning Unit, I learnt important tools before starting my Teaching Practice periods. With both final projects, I exploited and understood better the use and the importance of the Aragonese Curriculum, which is open and flexible because it only establishes in a global way the objectives for the entire Secondary Education Stage. This educative order introduces the Key competences too. This, along with the CERF, is one of the new elements that have appeared in the educational framework as a result of the convergence of the national and local framework with the European framework (House 2011). The Aragonese Curriculum also classifies the contents in a specific way, into four different modules called: Listening, Speaking and Conversation; Reading and Writing; Language awareness and reflections on learning and social cultural aspects and intercultural awareness. These four modules are based on three main principles, which are the following: Developing language skills, understanding the constitutive elements of the target language and engaging with the social and cultural dimensions of the language. As House (2011, 68) said “The curriculum is not an instruction manual for producing perfect results, but a framework which provides teachers with a structure they then give character and content to.” As I have indicated before, one of the main reasons why I have chosen these two final projects is the close relationship that exists between them. Both are based on several documents from the High School as “Documento de Organización de Cetro”, “Proyecto Educativo de Centro” and “Programación General Anual” which is the most relevant document focused directly on the organization of the aims, content, skills, evaluations criteria, etc. of each subject according to a specific course in general terms. Also, all the elements mentioned before are classified into a concrete and detailed way 6 taking into account the sequence of didactic units established by each department of the High School. On one hand, when as part of my first term tasks, I designed a whole Course Plan, it was written in a cooperative way as it was a team activity. It was developed in a global way without designing each lesson plan. On the other hand, in the second term I had the opportunity to create, design and implement a whole learning unit in the High School “Pilar Lorengar”. This opportunity was a very enriching and complete experience for me and I consider it really important for my future labor as an English teacher. I want to justify the main reasons which have guided me to chose the Course Plan, they are the following: I elaborated and designed this project at the beginning of the Master Degree in Education, so it was very useful and challenging to me because I was able to improve on my previous knowledge about these items and use all the new contents learned during the subject. It was an incredible experience to appreciate the importance of the assessment criteria, general objectives, contents, key competences and teaching methods designed and selected for a specific level of Secondary Education. All of them are basic aspects, but at the same time, very important for each learning unit drafted. All of them are established by an official document, Ley Orgánica de Educación 2/2006, de 3 de mayo, in a general way, and in a more specific way for our community, in the Aragonese Curriculum. Taking into account all the new knowledge acquired, lately I have had a more global and coherent perspective of those contents appearing on the different official documents mentioned before. So, I can elaborate a critical analysis of my work focusing on the most important errors that I would not make as teacher. As I said in the introduction, as teachers, we must reflect on and during our personal work in order to improve the teaching and learning process. Finally, there is something I would like to comment on regarding the Course Plan. It was a difficult task, as many of the students of the Master had little knowledge in the field of Education, and we were required to design such an important project in groups. In our case, two of the members of the group had prior knowledge in the field of Education because we had studied a Primary Education Degree. The reasons why I have chosen the Learning Unit are diverse. First, I consider it is one of the most important projects of the Master as it is essential for teachers to know what they will teach to their students and how to organize, relate, etc. that information in a way that is consistent and effective in the teaching and learning process. Also, I implemented the whole learning unit during my Teaching Practice period at the high school “Pilar Lorengar”. So I checked that most of the activities designed worked perfectly. Although I perceived that there were some aspects that I could improve, such as to give clearer instructions or classroom management when carrying out debates or 7 role-plays, and so on. In general terms, I am very satisfied with the final result because the lessons were fun, the students acquired all the objectives, the timing was well adjusted, the tasks were all connected, etc. Finally, it must be said that the Course Plan (designed in the first term) was aimed for second year students of Compulsory Secondary Education, as well as the learning unit (designed in the second term). Therefore, as in the Master, I have worked with activities, materials, etc. aimed for students with this level, it was a great opportunity to implement my learning and also, it was a challenge for me where I could to demonstrate my improvement as a teacher. 3. ANALYSIS In this next part of my final project, I will analyze and reflect on the knowledge and the different skills that I have learnt firstly by preparing, then by designing and finally by doing in a cooperative way a Course Plan for the second grade of Compulsory Secondary Education for the subject called “Diseño Curricular de Lenguas Extranjeras” from the first part of the Master, and also, with the Learning Unit called "The Incredible World" elaborated during the second part of the Master for the subject called “Diseño, Organización y Desarrollo de Actividades para el Aprendizaje de Inglés”. This second project was developed in pairs also for the second grade of Compulsory Secondary Education. I had the opportunity to implement it during my second Teaching Practice period in the High School “Pilar Lorengar”. 3.1. Didactic Course Plan Even though the Course Plan has several things which could have been done better such as the elaboration of the objectives in order to connect them with all the contents of the Aragonese Curriculum or the relationship between some aspects of the methodology and the suitable literature. The learning unit is well designed and elaborated, maybe because I designed all the activities, and it allows me to devise correctly the objectives and relate the activities with the evaluation criteria, competences and contents in a correct way. By analyzing and reflecting on the different skills and knowledge acquired designing these two final projects, they can be considered good reflections of what I have learnt during this academic year in the Master. - Definition As I have said before, I studied to become a Primary Education teacher at the University, so I had some ideas and knowledge of the field of Education and the teaching profession when I began at this Master. But to design a Didactic Course Plan during the first term was one of the most difficult activities I carried out in this Master. 14 due to our inexperience we elaborated several learning objectives for each learning unit, but we did not take into account if they covered the forty contents established by the Aragonese Curriculum for the Second grade of Compulsory Secondary Education. At the end of this Course Plan we only included close to twenty five contents. Finally, I want to comment something about the resources selected. We searched on different web sites in order to select the best exercises and we also used materials from two different texts books. According to this aspect, we can find different points of view, in favor of and against, about the use of the textbook in the English lessons. On the one hand, Allweight (1981) affirms that textbooks are the most inflexible didactic resources, so they do not foment the competence “learn to learn”, our students do not learn by themselves. The textbooks need to change their methodology and propose more attractive activities which develop the learning of the second language with real materials and in real contexts. On the other hand, O´Neill (1990), who is in favor of the textbooks´ uses, because they help students to review and study each lesson although they are not elaborated for a concrete context. Besides, the textbooks permit the teacher to readapt and improvise each activity to his principal purpose or aim, without lost time. When we were designing the Course Plan and selecting the materials and the resources, my previous conceptions about the use of the textbooks in the English lesson changed. Probably, I was influenced by my previous learning as student, so, at the beginning of the Master Degree in Education I believed that the textbooks were indispensable in the acquisition of a second language. But now, I see them as another material used by the teacher in order to motivate and develop in the students different abilities and competences. Hence, in the Course Plan, we purposed the use of two different textbooks, several WebPages, different books, etc. because we understood the importance of selecting the materials and resources with good criteria according to the students´ level, needs, previous knowledge, etc. and not only to follow a specific textbook which can develop a lack of motivation in the learners. 3.1.3. Contribution of the Didactic Course Plan to my learning As a final conclusion for this first work, I will reflect on the experiences, the skills and the educational knowledge acquired when I was working on the Course Plan. This final work was the most difficult of the Master because I did not have well-structured knowledge about it. But at the same time, it was the most helpful because it made me reflect on what I have learnt during the lessons and their elaboration. Also, I discovered new documents, such as ELP (English Language Portfolio) and the EPOSTL (European Portfolio for Student Teachers of Languages) and analyzed others, like the Educative Law (Ley Órgánica de Educación 2/2006) and the Aragonese Curriculum, which are the most important documents to take into account during our continuous formation as teachers. As it is said by EPOSTL (2007, p.20) “Methodology may focus on how teachers can deal with the four main skills of speaking, writing, listening and reading”, so the design of this Didactic Course Plan helped me to select the best materials according to 15 four main skills. And as it is said by the Aragonese Curriculum according to the needs, interests, ages and learning level of the students. During the Teaching Practice periods in a real educative context and also in the different lesson of the Master, I discovered the importance of establishing a criteria which is something that all the teachers agreed on, in order to select the best materials according to the main purpose. Finally, I have learnt how to design correctly a Course Plan taking into account the educative principles established by the Educative National Law and the Aragonese Curriculum for the Secondary Education (Order May 9, 2007), changing them according to the different educative contexts and learners. Also, I improved my knowledge about the Royal Decree 1631/2006, of December 29, where the minimum educational contents and objectives that the students should learn by in order to promote to the next grade are found. And I also learnt about the most important European documents such as ELP and CEFR, and the principles and skills which are explained in them to acquire a target language in a cooperative and collaborative way, promoting the communicative skills of the students. Hence, I discovered the importance of combining both documents, National and Autonomous, with the European certificates. Moreover, I learnt how important is to recognize the characteristics, the previous knowledge and the needs of the students before determining the aims, the competences and the contents that the teacher wants to achieve with the Course Plan, in order to develop competent teaching. 3.2. Learning Unit In this second analysis, I am going to reflect on the design of my learning unit entitled “The Incredible World” and the influence that it had on my teaching experience. I had the wonderful opportunity of implementing it during my second Teaching Practice period at the High School “Pilar Lorengar”. This final project is from a subject taken in the second term of the academic year called “Diseño, Organización y Desarrollo de Actividades para el Aprendizaje de Inglés”. While I was designing and elaborating it, I was conscious of my evolution with regards to my previous knowledge and all the new concepts that I had consolidated and integrated, which allowed me to understand the purpose of this project well. From this experience, some concepts, principles and knowledge that were previously completely unknown to me, changed and became clearer and more evident. - Definition Before starting with the analysis of my Learning Unit, I consider it very important to understand the meaning of this concept. Regarding the theoretical background, we can find different meanings of it. According to Rivers (1981) and Ur (1996) a learning unit is the process of deciding, in advance, what and how to teach according to the aims of a specific unit. Taking into account syllabus and learner characteristics, good lesson planning promotes a clear progression of interrelated activities. Learning units range from detailed notes, with specified aims and descriptions of each stage, to a short 16 outline of activities. A plan is a teaching guide, not a blueprint to be followed slavishly; plans are often adapted according to what happens in class. A Spanish pedagogical writer, A. Escamilla (1993, p.39) proposed a complete and detailed definition of this concept, “The Learning Unit is the way of planning the teaching-learning process according to a content or aim which come to be the integrated axle of the process giving it consistency and meaning. This way of arranging the knowledge and the previous experiences has to consider the diversity of the elements that contextualize the process (students´ level of development, the socio-cultural and familiar context, the Proyecto Curricular, the accessible resources, etc.) in order to regulate the practice of the contents, select the basic aims that students have to achieve, the methodological steps with which the teacher will work in the lesson, the previous teaching-learning experiences and the control mechanisms of the teaching-learning method required to improve this process”. It is very important to take into account both definitions before starting with the scheme of a Learning Unit because they guide the teachers in the process of language teaching. I decided to focus my learning unit on the methodology suggested and described by the Communicative Approach and the Task Based Model. The CLT was established during the 70s and in is mainly associated with British applied linguistics. In terms of syllabus, CLT is associated with the Council of Europe´s work and with the attempts to list language concepts and uses. In terms of methodology, it focuses on message-focus: the ability to understand and convey messages (Brumfit and Johnson 1979). This methodological approach promotes the important of using the foreign language with the employment of authentic materials and resources. In the same way, the Task Based Model is a syllabus that develops a specification of activities designed to engage learners in language-using work, usually without regard to the precise linguistic features such activities are likely to involve. 3.2.1. Preliminary period before designing the Learning Unit In the second semester, thanks to the subject “Diseño, Organización y Desarrollo de Actividades para el Aprendizaje de Inglés”, I improved upon my previous knowledge and acquired new knowledge. This was very useful and indispensable in elaborating a correct design of a Learning Unit, such as: how to elaborate and design different resources, materials and activities taking into account the students’ level and characteristics; how to integrate all the communicative and language skills according to the different kinds of activities; the importance of establishing a clear and complete evaluation and assessment system including all the educative components and the learning-teaching process (teachers, students, activities, methodology...), etc. In addition, each student had the opportunity to research and reflect on an interesting topic related to the language teaching with the objective of writing a final essay about it. In my case, it was an interesting activity because I got to investigate the correct use of the students´ mother tongue in the English lesson. These were some of my major fears: not knowing how to use it in several situations and forgetting the principal purpose of learning a foreign language. According to Atkinson (1987, p.241) “the mind of the learner as he or she enters the classroom is not a ‘tabula rasa’, highlighting the importance of using the mother tongue only for concrete intentions and at specific moments in the English lessons. So, this previous exercise helped me and allowed me to 17 investigate in depth one of the most important aspects in the process of language teaching for me. 3.2.2. Critical analysis and reflection on the Learning Unit As I said before, regarding my Learning Unit, I am going to reflect on the design, the implementation and the final reflection on the improvement of my learning-teaching process. My Learning Unit entitled “The Incredible World” was designed for a group of twenty students from the Second grade of Compulsory Secondary Education, at the High School “Pilar Lorengar”, located in a small neighborhood, in Zaragoza. In most of the subjects, we have learnt different aspects about the Aragonese Curriculum (Orden de 9 de mayo de 2007) in the Secondary Education, so it was so easy for me to draft and complete the whole Learning Unit always taking into account the Aragonese Curriculum and establishing the connections between the most important principles established in it with the specific topic, contents, aims, competences, methodology, etc. of my Learning Unit. And also, adapting all of them to the specific educative context where I implemented and taught the unit. During my Teaching Practice period, I taught English in a small class of only twenty students where all of them were very interested in learning English. It was very surprising for me to listen to four girls say that they wanted to be English teachers in the future. Hence, I had a great opportunity to implement my Learning Unit in a motivated group where learners loved showing their enthusiasm and participating actively in the all the communication activities. Before choosing the topic and the design of the Learning Unit, I talked with my High School tutor in order to create a unit integrated into the Course Plan of the center including the grammatical points established by the textbook but changing the vocabulary and all the materials and activities. Finally, I created a Learning Unit according to the Course Plan, including new contents and also reviewing others that the learners had learnt during this academic year. The title of the Learning Unit is “The incredible World”. Before choosing it, I took into account the students characteristics and likes in order to create an interesting unit to work on. Also, this topic helped me to review previous contents learnt by the students, such as: descriptions, physical characteristics, likes and dislikes, etc. For these reasons, I elaborated a dossier for each student where all the materials that they would needed while I was teaching them appeared. This project was the most interesting and useful one elaborated in the Master Degree in Education because it gave us the opportunity to develop and elaborate all the materials and activities required for our Learning Unit. In my opinion it was the best way to improve and confirm our knowledge, make a judgment about the best activities according to the principal purpose of each lesson, and also to reflect on the importance of building a connection between all the lessons and the Learning Unit. For this reason, I would like to explain the most interesting and effective materials employed. 18 During the first Teaching Practice period I was able to assist in several English classrooms so I had an idea about the digital resources that I could use when I taught my Learning Unit. “Pilar Lorengar” High School foments the use of the ICTs in all the levels, so in all the classrooms there is a computer with internet access, a Digital Board, a projector, and also in few classrooms they have tablets. According to Dede (1998), all of these resources allow for the improvement of the learning of the students and permit the teachers to elaborate more motivating and efficient lessons. For that reason, the use of ICTs is a motivational tool in the educative contexts which enriches the teachinglearning process, increases the memory of the students and improves the understanding and the acquisition of the new knowledge. As future English teachers we need to make our teaching correspond to the new educative programs and methodologies. In the last years, internet has become the most interesting and powerful tool in social and academic contexts. So, the learners are constantly using new technologies to access social websites, films, blogs, websites, wikis, news, pictures, songs, etc. Due to this phenomenon, teachers need to include the new technologies in their lesson, taking into account the advantages and the disadvantages that their use can have in the students´ learning process. To incorporate the ICTs in the English lessons, opens to the students a wide range of possibilities because they can develop and improve their own learning, share with other students from all the parts of the world, use real materials, etc. One of the most significant aspects of my Learning Unit is the use of authentic materials. The majority of the students have a lack of motivation in the English subject because they feel that the textbook does not bring them opportunities to learn the new language and to develop their communicative skills for real life situations. In general, all the English units have the same composition which is structured according to the topic of the unit and the grammatical point. As it is known, we learn our mother tongue by listening to daily life situations, and the same circumstances happen if we want to learn a new language in a meaningful way. If the teacher does not use authentic materials in his daily English lessons, and he only follows the textbook, the learners lose their motivation and interest in acquiring a second language because they do not see progress their learning process and they do not sense a real use of it. Some authors and specialists as Oura (2001) have investigated the benefits and the improvements in the learning process, of using authentic materials in the English lessons. Brinton (1991) affirmed that the use of authentic materials creates a special connection between the educative context and the real world. This association should be one of the principal aspects taken into account by the teachers in order to promote it in the lessons, which sometimes is forgotten. While I was designing and implementing my Learning Unit, I always thought about the principal purpose that I wanted to achieve with each activity. With each task that I designed I tried to establish a connection between the educational context and the real contents using several authentic materials and showing my students their application in a real communicative situation. To conclude with the use of authentic materials I want to mention that the use of these kind of resources creates the prefect connection among the task, the principles and the objectives established in the different curricular orders. With authentic materials learners see a future use of the task in their lives, so they pay more attention, enjoy the activities and develop meaningful learning. In order to promote the use of the real materials that we had used in the lessons, as a final project of my Learning Unit, students had to create an imaginary character and present it to the rest of the students. It was an innovative and motivating activity because they could feel that they were able to use the target language by 19 themselves in communicative situations and explain to the rest of the partners their own incredible character. In order to create a Learning Unit which could be integrated in the Course Plan of the High School, I followed the principles, the general objectives for the course and took into account the specific needs of the students when I was designing all the activities, and more concretely, with the communicative activities. Regarding the principal aims established for this academic year, one of them was to improve students´ writing and speaking skills in the foreign language, so in each lesson I tried to improve them through speeches about their favorite heroes, the use of the new vocabulary and the grammatical structure learnt in order to write compositions about incredible characters or fantastic stories and present or relate them to the rest of the class, debates about Nessie´s existence in which each student had to express their opinion with arguments in favor of or against, etc. Before starting with the design and development of the Learning Unit, following the advice of my teacher I elaborated a draft about the eight lessons, where I decided the subtopic of each lesson, which were always related to the general topic, the tasks and the skills developed in each one. This activity helped me a lot when I had to write up the learning objectives; decide the methodology for each activity; the interaction patterns (work in pairs/ small groups); and one of the most important things, the timing necessary for each part of the lesson, between other things. Once my teacher gave me the feedback I started to work on my learning unit assuredly. In each lesson of my Learning Unit we can find at least one activity designed using authentic materials, for example, short stories about superheroes, songs, fragments of news programs, documentaries, etc. One of the most important aspects that I wanted to reflect in my Learning Unit was the importance of using "authentic materials" due to the their relevance and the advantages that they have in the learning process. Hence, an interesting authentic material is one that we can use in the English classroom with the students without making any changes to it. Although, I also elaborated other activities using adapted materials, for example, a reading activity in which I gave to the students a piece of paper with some lines from the story that they would read after, in order to develop their imagination and the use of the second language. The learners had to imagine how the story continued according to the short fragment that they had read and then explain to the rest of the class how the story that we were going to read would be. For the last lesson, I prepared two different kinds of cards, some with the names of different heroes and others with the names of their sidekicks, in order to create different couples in the classroom and prepare a global speech to review the vocabulary and the grammar learnt during the Learning Unit with a possible real communicative situation. Furthermore, to introduce the unit in a different way, I prepared a PowerPoint Presentation with some incredible characters in order to have an enjoyable first contact using their previous knowledge and developing their communicative and oral skills. When I was selecting all the resources and materials, I had a clear idea in my mind they should be varied, interesting, motivating and develop the communicative interactions among the students. So, I selected and exploited all the materials carefully taking into account their level of knowledge and likes in order to achieve meaningful learning. 20 As I have learnt since the first semester, it is very important to forget the traditional methodology of teaching grammar and introduce it in an implicitly and inductive way, as is said in the Aragonese Curriculum. According to it, I prepared different activities, for example: watching a short fragment from a news program and then elaborating sentences about it, in order to use the new grammatical point with the final purpose being to compare two different pictures of London. My role in the classroom was as a guide of the learning-process, solving some doubts about the grammatical structures, lexical doubts about the texts, doubts about the activity because perhaps one explanation was not enough, etc. When I was teaching my Learning Unit I tried to use the foreign language all the time but it was very difficult to maintain this idea in my mind when the doubts appeared because I felt the necessity to clarify and exemplify them perfectly in order for all the students to understand the concept, the grammar, the meaning or the purpose of the activity perfectly. Firstly, if they had a lexical doubt I gave them a synonym or I used gestures to explain to them, but the majority of the time they did not produce the desired result, and I could not avoid the quickest method, the translation. In short, to conclude with the analysis of the activities and materials that compose the Learning Unit, I consider it very important to explain why I decided to propose several activities where the students had to work in pairs and in small groups to achieve the aim of the exercise. According to Vygotsky (1978) and Coleman (1990), who are two of the most important researchers about the cooperative work, to work in pairs or in small groups improves the interaction among the students in the foreign language, so the knowledge is built and acquired during the interactions with others, they can learn together, using and expanding their knowledge about the new language and improving their communicative skills and abilities. Cooperative learning also develops three of the most important competences according to the Aragonese Curriculum, which are: learning to learn, personal initiative and autonomy and intercultural and civic competence. In addition, Vygotsky (1978) stated that the language is the most important instrument to enrich knowledge, expand the ability to reason and reinforce educative and constructive activities such as reading and writing. Thus, I created several activities where the interaction among the students was indispensable, such as: group conversation in which students had to explain their opinion about some superheroes; group conversation in which all together, teacher and students, talked about the influence of the superheroes in real life; or work in pairs where both members had to give their opinion and work collaboratively to create and present their own superhero. But, as teachers, it is necessary to focus on the most important aspects of it, which are the quality of the language input and the interaction. Before starting to promote the interaction among learners it is crucial to create a relaxed environment in the class, in which students are not worried about mistakes, and the most important thing is to participate actively in order to construct an interesting conversation using the language in a real context. The topic of the unit is very motivating for the students, so it helps the teacher to prepare communicative situations about others subtopics such as: Incredible Singers, fantastic stories, cultural myths, etc. As I mentioned before, my role during the implementation of the Learning Unit was as a guide of the learning process, but in order to promote the communicative situations as the CEFR (2001, p.144) established “Teachers should 21 realize that their actions, reflecting their attitudes and abilities, are a most important part of the environment for language learning/acquisition. They present role-models which students may follow in their future use of the language, and their practice as future teachers.” So, in the talkative activities depending on the conditions, the students´ needs, and the objective of the exercise, I worked as a supervisor of the activity, as an arbitrator of the debate/conversation or as an assistant when it was necessary. According to the students´ roles, as Nunan said, it is very important to know the characteristics of the students and to give them roles according to it, “it requires them to be adaptable, creative, inventive and most of all, independent” (Nunan, 1989, p.81). This method helps to control the interactions in the big group and motivate the participation of all the members of the class. This kind of activity caused improvements in all the students, because while some of them started to use the language in a creative and spontaneous way, other learners found out new ways to use the English language in order to improve their previous knowledge. From the first lesson, they were very enthusiastic toward the new work form, and it worked perfectly. All of them participate actively, they enjoyed the learning process. I was able to observe it, in the final work in pairs, in which they had to describe and present an imaginary incredible character that they had elaborated at home; and also evaluate all the presentations in an objective way. All of them listened carefully, asked questions and took notes before deciding the final mark that they gave out each pair. Finally, I want to comment on three relevant academic aspects, learning objectives, methodology, assessment and evaluation, because they are very important in the Learning Units and I had some problems with their elaboration. Regarding the learning objectives, there are some of them which are very long and can be divided into three or four different aims, for example: -To use and classify phonological aspects correctly and properly (such as/d/, /t/and /id/) related to some regular verbs in the Past Simple , which appear in the song, according to their pronunciation in real communicative contexts, allowing them to express themselves comfortably and pleasantly for any potential speaker. -To acquire, through the use of the foreign language, a global vision about the cultural and linguistic environment, taking into account their own learning and personal development, eliminating discrimination, linguistic and cultural stereotypes. In order to design a complete and useful Learning Unit, the learning objectives should be clear, specific and connected to the activities. This is another problem that I had, because I did not establish a direct relationship between the learning objectives and the activities of the lesson. For example in the following case: - To take notes about the most important and relevant information about Nessie´s video. I focused extremely on the aim of the activity, forgetting the global idea that I wanted to teach to my students, which was to select the relevant information from some 22 videos. So, it is very important to propose less objectives for each lesson and write them in a specific way never focusing only on a concrete reading or a video. According to the methodology employed in the Learning Unit, one of the most meaningful aspects is that it was designed in flexible way in order to take into account all the students´ necessities and the educative context. Although in the Learning Unit I tried to express all the principles established in the Aragonese Curriculum, for example: -Learner responsibility for his own learning process is promoted. Cooperative and collaborative work as a tool for developing learner personality. -Learner responsibility for his own learning process is promoted. Cooperative and collaborative work as a tool for developing learner personality. -Methodology integrates formative evaluation, including reflection on individual and collective processes (adequacy of objectives, tasks, procedures, resources; difficulties, causes and strategies to tackle them; role of learners and of external factors) to contribute to improvement of the teaching and learning process). With the methodology I tried to focus on cooperative learning (Kagan 1988) designing the majority of the activities in pairs or in groups. During the implementation of the Learning Unit I had the opportunity of employing and checking it, and I could almost not see any disadvantages. All the students worked perfectly, although if I created the groups, in some situations they were not satisfied, because they preferred to create the groups. If in the class there are different levels of knowledge, the teachers have to group the class according to the students´ levels of knowledge, in order to promote a "learning together" among the strongest students when mixed with the weakest. Especially at the end of the day, the use of this methodology created management problems, because students were tired and were not familiar with this kind of group. Closely related to the principles of the group in the work and the methodological aspect established in the Aragonese Curriculum, it is found that the Communicative Approach which was one of the most important approaches studied since the first months in the Master Degree in the subject “Diseño Curricular de Lenguas Extranjeras”. As I have explained previously the Communicative Approach tries to develop the students´ Communicative Competence, which is the knowledge that enables someone to use a language effectively and their ability to actually use this knowledge for communication (Hymes 1972). This approach promotes the use of authentic materials, the creation of real communicative situations in an educative context, the meaningful and rich foreign language input, maintaining the real and cultural characteristics of the foreign language. I have tried to express all of them in my Learning Unit and throughout this final reflection. According to this approach Hymes (1966), established five sub-competences which are Grammatical Competence, Sociolinguistic Competence, Strategic Competence, Socio-Cultural Competence and Discourse Competence. But, some years later Canale and Swain (1980) introduced a new version about the relationship of the notion to other socially oriented theories; a balanced discussion of the implications of the notion for language teaching and testing. Having discounted any psycholinguistic component they presented a three-part 23 competence consisting of Grammatical Competence, Sociolinguist Competence and Strategic Competence further broken down into Socio-Cultural Competence and Discourse Competence. With this active methodology, and taking into account his competences, in the English lessons where the teacher uses it in a correct way, the interactions among the students and the collaborative and cooperative work will be employed in a meaningful way giving them fluency and accuracy in the acquisition of the English language. But, to get this objective it is indispensable to create a comfortable and peaceful educative context in which the teacher and the students can enrich and expand their autonomous learning strategies in order to improve their knowledge of the target language and the autonomous learning ability. When I taught the Learning Unit, from the first moment I tried to create a relaxing environment in the classroom, because I considered it essential to promote students´ confidence and security to increase their participation and interactions in the lessons. In my opinion, this is one of the most important things to take into account before starting to give a lesson. And, as the teacher of “Diseño Curricular de Lenguas Extranjeras” wrote on the blackboard the first day “Before teaching something, we need to meet our students.” This is one of the most important aspects that I learnt in the Master and which I hope to improve upon with experience and I did not know how to reflect this neither in the Course Plan nor in the Learning Unit. In relation to the assessment and evaluation of the Learning Unit, I designed a formative evaluation (Scriven 1967), selecting five evaluation criteria according to those established in the Aragonese Curriculum, but I did not adapt them to the Learning Unit purpose and the educative context. That is one of the most important aspects that I did not reflect in this point. I designed this kind of methodology in order to check if the students acquired the contents, the objectives and the skills of the learning unit. To do it, I used some main evaluation instruments in order to evaluate students´ progress such as: Teacher’s daily notes (observing specific details of all the students), Teacher’s observation rubric for spoken interaction in the oral exposition and a rubric for writing activities, teachers’ feedback. and the final Exam. According this definition, rubrics were the most useful instruments used, due to the fact that they showed students what they had to do in each activity and also helped me in order to mark in an objective way. 3.2.3. Contribution of the Learning Unit to my learning In this last section of the Learning Unit´s analysis, I am going to reflect on the knowledge that I acquired thanks to its elaboration and implementation during the second Teaching Practice period in a High School. Regarding the methodological characteristics used in the learning-teaching process, all the different aspects and principles which form a Learning Unit: the stage goals and the learning objectives, the contents, the skills, the evaluation criteria, etc. should be taken into account and modified according to the educational context and the individual students´ needs, in order to select the most appropriate methodology. Taking 30 COUNCIL OF EUROPE (2012): Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching and Assessment. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Available at: http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/source/framework_en.pdf DEDE, C. (1998) ‘Learning about teaching and vice versa’. Paper presented at Conference of Society for Information Technology in Education. Washington D.C., USA. ELLIS, R. (1992). ‘The classroom context: An acquisition-rich or an acquisition-poor environment?’. In C. Kramsch & S. McConnell-Ginet (Eds.), Text and context: Cross-disciplinary perspectives on language study (pp.17 7-186). Toronto, Canada: D. C. Heath. ESCAMILLA, A. (1993). ‘Unidades Didácticas: una propuesta de trabajo en el aula.’ (Ed.) Zaragoza: Luis Vives. ESPAÑA. Ley Orgánica 2/2006, de 3 de mayo, de Educación; BOE nº 106. Boletín Oficial del Estado, 4th May, 2006. ESPAÑA. Real Decreto 1631/2006, de 29 de diciembre, por el que se establecen las enseñanzas mínimas correspondientes a la Educación Secundaria Obligatoria. Boletín Oficial del Estado, 30th July, 2011. FINNEY, D. (2002). “The ELT Curriculum: A Flexible Model for a Changing World”. In Richards, J.C. & Renandya W.A. (eds.) Methodology in Language Teaching. Cambridge: CUP. GATTEGNO, C. (1972) (2nd Edition) Teaching Foreign Languages in Schools; The Silent Way; New York: Educational Solutions. HARMER, J. (2007). How to teach English. Essex: Pearson Longman HOUSE, S. (cord.) 2011. Inglés. Complementos de formación disciplinar. Theory and Practice in English Language Teaching. Vol. I. Barcelona: Graó. HYMES, D. (1972). ‘On communicative competence’. In Pride, J.B. and Holmes, J. (eds.) Sociolinguistics. London: Penguin Books. 31 KAGAN, S. (1988): ‘Cooperative Learning. Resources for Teachers’. San Juan Capistrano: California. KRASHEN, S. D. (1982) ‘Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition’. Los Angeles: University of Southern California. KUMARAVADIVELU, B. (1994) ‘The Post-method Condition, (E)merging Strategies for Second/Foreign Language Teaching’. TESOL QUARTERLY, 28:1: 2748. Available at: http://bkumaravadivelu.com/articles%20in%20pdfs/1994%20Kumaravadivelu% 20Postmethod%20Condition.pdf KUMARAVADIVELU, B. (2012). ‘The Word and the World. Interview to B. Kumaravadivelu’ Marco ELE Revista de Didáctica, 14: 1-10. Available at: http://www.bkumaravadivelu.com/interview%20pdfs/kumaravadiveluinterview.pdf LIGHTBOWN, P. & SPADA, N. (2006). ‘How Languages are Learned’. Oxford: Oxford University Press NOONAN, F.J. (2004). ‘Teaching ESL Students to ‘Notice’ Grammar’. The Internet TESL Journal, Easton Area School District (Easton, PA, USA); Available at: http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Noonan-Noticing.html NUNAN, D. (1989). ‘Designing Tasks for the Communicative Classroom’. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. NUNAN, D. (1991). ‘Communicative Tasks and the Language Curriculum’. Oxford. TESOL Quarterly, 25 (2), 279-295. NUNAN, D. (2006). ‘Task-Based Language Teaching in the Asian Context: Defining ‘Task’’. Asian EFL Journal 8 (3). Checked: 26th June 2014, on: http://www.asian-efl-journal.com/September_2006_EBook_editions.pdf O’NEILL, R. (1990). ‘Why use textbooks?’ in R. Rossner and R. Bolitho (Eds.) Currents in Language Teaching, Oxford: Oxford University Press. OURA, G. (2001). ‘Authentic task-based materials: Bringing the real world into the classroom’. Sophia Junior College Faculty Bulletin, 21. 32 RICHARDS, J. C. & RODGERS, T. C. (1986) ‘Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching’. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. RICHARDS, J.C. & LOCKHART, C. (1994). ‘Reflective Teaching in Second Language Classrooms’. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. RICHARDS, J. C. (2013). ‘Curriculum Approaches in Language Teaching: Forward, Central and Backward Design’. RELC Journal 44 (I): 5-33. RIVERS, W.M. (1981). ‘Teaching Foreign-Language Skills’. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 483-8. SCRIVEN, M. (1967). ‘The methodology of evaluation’. In R. W. Tyler, R. M. Gagne, & M. Scriven (Eds.), Perspectives of curriculum evaluation, 39-83. Chicago, IL: Rand McNally. SOMOGYI-TOTH, K. (2012): ‘Observation Tasks. A workbook for student teachers’. The Teacher Trainer Journal Vol. 26 Nº3. STUFFLEBEAM, L.D. & SHRINKFIELD, J. (1985) ‘Systematic evaluation: A self– instructional guide to theory and practice’. New York: Kluwer Nijhoff Publishing. UR, P. (1996). ‘A Course in Language Teaching’. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 213-26. VYGOTSKY, L.S. (1978) ‘The Development of Higher Psychological Processes’. Mind in Society Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press WHITE, R. V. (1988). ‘The ELT Curriculum: Design, Innovation and Management’. Oxford: Blackwell. WIDDOWSON, H. (1984). ‘Educational and pedagogic factors in syllabus design’. In General English Syllabus Design. ELT Documents 118. Oxford: Pergamon Press and the British Council. WILKINS, D.A. (1976) ‘Notional Syllabuses’. Applied Linguistics, Oxford: Oxford University Press ZEICHER, K. M,. & LISTON, D. P. (1996). ‘Reflective teaching: An introduction’. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 33 6. APPENDIX 6.1. Course Plan Course Plan 2th Year of Secondary Education; Subject: 68515 "Diseño Curricular de Lenguas Extranjeras" (2013/2014); Teacher: Violeta Delgado Crespo. [pp. 1 - 30]. 6.2. Learning Unit Learning Unit: ‘The Incredible World’; 2th Year of Secondary Education, High School "Pilar Lorengar", Zaragoza; Subject: 68564 "Diseño, Organización y Desarrollo de Actividades para el Aprendizaje de Inglés" (2013/2014); Teachers: María José Luzón Marco and Enrique Lafuente Millán. [pp. 1 - 36].