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María Galán Sánchez Diseño y Organización de Actividades LEARNING UNIT: HELP! Introduction  Contextualization This learning unit is designed for the religious charter school María Auxiliadora, which is located in the working-class neighborhood of San José, in Zaragoza. This school is attended by more or less 700 students from 3 years old to 20 or more, due to the fact that this school offers primary education, compulsory secondary education and certificate programs. There are a high percentage of immigrant students, above all Romanian and Latin American pupils, because this neighborhood is characterized by the presence of many people from other countries. Moreover, a lot of students with disorganized families attend the school, and this feature affects the marks and behavior of many of them. María Galán Sánchez Diseño y Organización de Actividades  Justification This is the seventh learning unit of the English Subject matter Scheme of Work for the 3rd year of CSE, and it was the one my mentor was about to start when we began our school placement. The central issues and functions covered are knowing vocabulary and talking about world problems, natural disasters and helping charities, talking about obligation and prohibition with the modals Have to and Must and talking about plans for the future by using the structure Be going to. These contents are present in all blocks of the curriculum, since teaching and learning a foreign language implies a continuous, integrated use of both productive and receptive skills. Evidently, to achieve a mastery of comprehension and expression skills is one of the main objectives of the Compulsory Education stage, as well as of the English Language. As this unit is designed for the 3rd year of CSE, it will be carried out in the two different groups which exist in the school of this level. Each group has a number of 18 students and none of them has special needs, as a group of diversification of this level exists, and in case someone has special needs, this class is used instead. There are not students with a higher level either, there is only one Rumanian girl with a slightly higher level, above all in the speaking skill.  Organization of the Learning Unit This learning unit will be carried out in 6 sessions of 50 or 55 minutes each, during the end of March and the beginning of April. It reviews, as well as introduces, a number of basic communicative functions and grammar contents related to linguistic domains which are very close to the students´ lives, which are essential to establish a firm background upon which later communicative functions and grammatical contents will be built. I decided to organize this unit in 6 sessions because I thought it was enough time to work on it, as the contents were not excessive and many of them had been learnt by the students in previous years. The 5 first sessions will deal with different contents and the 6th and last one will be the test review of the lesson. I also decided not to use the book´s exercises and use my own ones, but I will focus on the book´s content because my mentor wanted us to do so. Book´s María Galán Sánchez Diseño y Organización de Actividades exercises will only be used as homework in occasions. What I will try to get is to create different kinds of sessions, cover all the tasks and skills, and have an active role from students. María Galán Sánchez Diseño y Organización de Actividades Learning Unit of Work  Key Competences This unit includes specific work on the following competences:  Competence in Linguistic Communication, in the sense that achieving effective oral and written communicative competence in English is the main focus of this subject. The English language is used for talking about natural disasters, as well as for talking about some neighbor´s problems by using modals. The aim of the unit is to achieve a global comprehension of oral speech, as well as the creation of coherent and cohesive oral speech, showing a clear structure of ideas. This procedural approach is based on both productive skills-speaking and writing- and receptive skills-listening and reading-, which will allow the student to express him/herself with progressive fluency and correctness in diverse communicative situations, by using the more usual registers. Creativity, both in oral and written expression, will be encouraged.  Digital Competence and Information Management, since the unit integrates the use of ICT resources in its everyday schedule, with the task of writing an email. Similarly, it uses and encourages the further use of different formats as well as traditional ones.  Social and Civic Competence, as the unit is based on talking about natural disasters and world problems in order to be aware of the different realities that the world and the people suffer. Students must show interest in learning about others, and they must show a constructive, collaborative attitude towards information presented and towards interaction in the classroom.  Competence on Learning to Learn and Competence on Autonomy and Entrepreneurship, since the use of strategies, resources and techniques of intellectual work are encouraged and required so that María Galán Sánchez Diseño y Organización de Actividades students are aware of their own abilities and knowledge. Study techniques, observation and note-taking strategies, as well as peer- and self-correction. Cooperative working. And organization and planning strategies will be encouraged and fostered in the subject, in order to promote responsibility, perseverance, self-esteem, creativity, and the acceptance of errors as a source of learning, together with the encouragement of a positive attitude to taking risks.  Objectives At the end of the unit, students will be able to:  Talk about orders, prohibitions and lack of necessity using the modals Have to and Must.  Acquire different roles according to some neighbor’s problems.  Talk about plans for the future using the structure Be Going To.  Discuss world problems and ways to help charities and know different natural disasters.  Know real and different ways of helping charities to collect money.  Write an informal e-mail using linking words as so or because and some typical English Expressions. María Galán Sánchez Diseño y Organización de Actividades  Contents Vocabulary  World problems  Helping charities  Natural disasters  Typical expressions in e-mails Structures and Language Functions  Talking about prohibition and no obligation with Mustn´t and Don´t have to and talking about obligation with Have to and Must  Talking about future plans with Be Going To  Role-playing with modals and neighbor´s problems  Methodology The methodology used will be the following:  The central goal of the lessons will be the students’ active role and centered class. Students must be aware of what they learn and they must be autonomous and be able to self-assess and assess their partners with valid criteria.  Pair work and work on groups of 3 will also be used in several activities, in order to promote cooperative work. María Galán Sánchez Diseño y Organización de Actividades  Peer-assessment will also be used to achieve that the students have criteria to assess their partners.  A mixture of English and Spanish will be spoken by the teacher in order to maintain the students´attention and observe if they understand that changing from one language to the other.  Evaluation Criteria The evaluation criteria for this unit are:  To understand general and specific information from oral and texts and conversations in which natural disasters as well as world problems and ways of helping charities appear.  To engage in interaction in conversation and brief situations with their classmates, producing different situations using modals such as Must, Have to, etc.  To understand the general information and all relevant data from a written text, showing comprehension.  To write in a controlled way an informal e-mail to a friend using typical English expressions and connectors such as So and Because.  To use the knowledge acquired on the difference between Must and Have to and to use the structure Be Going To for future plans. María Galán Sánchez Diseño y Organización de Actividades  Assessment Tools In order to carry out the assessment of the learning unit, the teacher will take into account:  Direct observation of the students´class work and participation in the process of teaching-learning, in order to make a formative and summative assess.  Classroom notebook and homework, which will be reviewed frequently.  Oral and written test.  Written composition (e-mail).  Group work and active participation.  Marking Criteria In the text of the learning unit the score corresponding to each activity will be shown. The minimum score is at least 1 point, and the maximum may reach as much as 100 points. It will be a written text, but will include an oral part related to the contents of the unit. Both progress tests will account for 40% of the overall score (20% for the written part and 20% for the oral part), whereas the term test will account for 40%. The remaining 20% will be allotted according to the student´s participation, daily work and attitude. The time established for each test will be assigned by the teacher, but in no case will exceed the length of a class session. In this unit, unit 7, the texts that will be done are:  A written text, consisting of a short reading to assess global an specific written comprehension, some grammar and vocabulary exercises related to the unit contents and a listening exercises to be done individually. María Galán Sánchez Diseño y Organización de Actividades  An oral text, in pairs, where the communicative functions of the unit must be used. María Galán Sánchez Diseño y Organización de Actividades  María Galán Sánchez Diseño y Organización de Actividades NATURAL DISASTERS 1. Scientists say natural disasters are becoming more common. Some people believe these are signs that the end of the world is near. What do you think about this? 2. How much do you know about natural disasters? Match these sentences and find out. a. Earthquakes are … g) Blizzards… b. A tornado is … h) The covering with water c. Hurricanes happen in the… of normally dry land… d. Cyclones.. i) A long period with very little or no rain… e. Tsunamis… f. The difference between tsunamis and ... are similar, but… j) Avalanches and landslides ( ) are strong tropical storms. ( ) a windstorm occurring over land. ( ) Atlantic Ocean, whereas typhoons happen in the Pacific. ( ) is called a volcanic eruption. ( ) are very large ocean waves caused by an undersea earthquake or meteor strike. ( ) violent shakings of the Earth´s crust that may cause destruction to buildings. ( ) tidal waves is that the latter are caused by the Moon. ( ) is called a drought. ( ) are severe winter storms. ( ) landslides refer only to solid rock or soil while avalanches include snow and ice as well. ( ) is called a flood. 4. What would you do if you were caught in the following disasters? Fill in the table below and discuss your answers with a classmate. Disaster Dangers What to do Hurricane Earthquake María Galán Sánchez Diseño y Organización de Actividades Flood Landslide  the blackboard to write the questions 1st activity Description of the activity Students will correct homework from the previous day consisting on vocabulary of natural disasters and world problems Time expected 10 minutes How it will be carried out In group and with the aid of the teacher María Galán Sánchez Diseño y Organización de Actividades Teacher actions Teacher will ask students the answers of the homework and if any word is unknown for them she will give an explanation in English. 2nd activity NATURAL DISASTERS 1. Scientists say natural disasters are becoming more common. Some people believe these are signs that the end of the world is near. What do you think about this? 2. How much do you know about natural disasters? Match these sentences and find out. a. Earthquakes are … g) Blizzards… b. A tornado is … h) The covering with water c. Hurricanes happen in the… of normally dry land… d. Cyclones.. i) A long period with very little or no rain… e. Tsunamis… f. The difference between tsunamis and ... are similar, but… j) Avalanches and landslides ( ) are strong tropical storms. ( ) a windstorm occurring over land. ( ) Atlantic Ocean, whereas typhoons happen in the Pacific. ( ) is called a volcanic eruption. ( ) are very large ocean waves caused by an undersea earthquake or meteor strike. ( ) violent shakings of the Earth´s crust that may cause destruction to buildings. ( ) tidal waves is that the latter are caused by the Moon. ( ) is called a drought. ( ) are severe winter storms. María Galán Sánchez Diseño y Organización de Actividades ( ) landslides refer only to solid rock or soil while avalanches include snow and ice as well. ( ) is called a flood. 4. What would you do if you were caught in the following disasters? Fill in the table below and discuss your answers with a classmate. Disaster Dangers What to do Hurricane Earthquake Flood Landslide Description of the activity Students will have to do this photocopy in which some exercises related to natural disasters appear. These exercises are of the sort of matching definitions and talking about imaginary situations related to natural disasters. Time expected 20 minutes How it will be carried out Individually and in group Teacher actions Firstly, the teacher will explain some vocabulary related to natural disasters in order to extend the students´ knowledge. Then, the students will debate the first question, later on they will María Galán Sánchez Diseño y Organización de Actividades do the matching exercises and the teacher will correct it with them. Finally, the teacher will give 5 minutes to the students in order to think about the imaginary situations, and then, they will have to say what they would do. 3rd activity María Galán Sánchez Diseño y Organización de Actividades Description of the activity Students will have to complete the worksheet on modals after a brief explanation of the teacher. This sheet contains exercises of the sort of choosing the correct modal, labeling modals according to their use, etc. Time expected 20 minutes How it will be carried out Individually Teacher actions Teacher will firstly give an explanation about the difference between Must and Have to, and their negative forms. Then, after María Galán Sánchez Diseño y Organización de Actividades letting students some minutes to complete de first exercise, she will correct it with them, and she will do the same with the rest of exercises.  Homework: if any exercise is not finished in class, they will do it as homework. María Galán Sánchez Diseño y Organización de Actividades  Third session  Modals in a different way  U2´s song sometimes you can´t make it on your own and neighbor´s problems Objectives of the session  To review what we saw last day  To learn how to use must/have to  To listen to a song and try to understand some words which should be familiar to them  To listen a native accent to become familiarized to it.  To remember modals and its functions  To be able to maintain a guided conversation in English  To use modals in conversation  To read and understand roles  To relate headings with conversations Expected learning outcomes Students will be able to:  use modals naturally in conversations  understand a native accent and discriminate some words  relate headings with conversations Materials and resources used  the photocopies with the song and the neighbors´cards María Galán Sánchez Diseño y Organización de Actividades SOMETIMES YOU MAKE IT ON YOUR OWN U2 Tough, you think you've got the stuff You're telling me and anyone You're hard enough You ________ put up a fight You ________ always be right Let me take some of the punches For you tonight Listen to me now I ________ let you know You ________ go it alone And it's you when I look in the mirror And it's you when I don't pick up the phone Sometimes you ________ make it on your own We fight all the time You and I...that's alright We're the same soul I _________ ...I _________ hear you say That if we weren't so alike You'd like me a whole lot more Listen to me now I _________ let you know You _________ go it alone And it's you when I look in the mirror And it's you when I don't pick up the phone Sometimes you ________ make it on your own María Galán Sánchez Diseño y Organización de Actividades Tell your neighbor to mind his/her own business and back off. Neighbor G You live in Miami, FL, and your neighbor keeps two anacondas and an alligator as a pet in their garden. Sometimes, the snake gets in your house and chases your Chihuahua and Poodles, talk to your neighbor about putting the snakes in a cage before they eat any of your dogs. Threaten to call the sheriff’s office. Neighbor H The old man/ lady next door wants you to put your anacondas in a cage. He/she insists they could eat her dogs. Explain to your neighbor that this is impossible since your snakes are vegetarian. Offer to buy her a new dog if the snakes eat any of her dogs, and don’t accept any threats from her. Description of the activity Students will have to work in pairs. Each member will have a role interrelated to the other member´s role. They will have to read them and think about a dialogue to later be represented in front of the class. The rest of the students who are sitting will have to guess what each problem is about according to some headings which the teacher will write on the blackboard. Time expected 25 minutes How it will be carried out In pairs and then with all the group Teacher actions First, she will explain them how it is about and she will make the pairs. Then, she will give them the different role-cards and she will let them some time to read them and to prepare the dialogue and meanwhile, she will try to help them. Finally, while they are representing their roles in front of the class, the teacher will not say a thing unless it is to correct any errors. María Galán Sánchez Diseño y Organización de Actividades  Homework: sheet of modals to remember the brainstorming made after the song. María Galán Sánchez Diseño y Organización de Actividades  Fourth session  reading, understanding and showing  Médecins sans Frontières reading Objectives of the session  To think of what the reading is about  To discuss possibilities with partners  To read and show understanding of a text Expected learning outcomes Students will be able to:  Know different ways of helping charities  Respect turns of speech and give opinions  Understand the message from a text Materials and resources used  the photocopies with the reading  the blackboard María Galán Sánchez Diseño y Organización de Actividades 1st activity Description of the activity PRE-READING ACTIVITY: first, in pairs, students will have to look at the photo in the reading and think of what the text is about, and answer a first question before reading. Then, they will tell the rest of the class what they think it is about. Time expected 10 minutes How it will be carried out In pairs and then the whole class Teacher actions Teacher will tell the students what they have to do and then, she will ask each pair what they think the text is about. 2nd activity Description of the activity Students will have to read the text and later on answer the questions related to that reading in order to show comprehension. These questions are of the sort of true/false questions, complete questions, synonyms, etc. Time expected 20 minutes María Galán Sánchez Diseño y Organización de Actividades How it will be carried out Individually Teacher actions First, she will explain the students that they must read the text and after reading it, they have to answer the questions below. When they finish, she will tell students that they will correct the exercises, and some students will write the answers on the blackboard. 3rd activity Description of the activity Students will have to think other possible ways of helping people, and of other organizations which help people for no money. Then, they will comment their ideas to the class. Time expected 15 minutes How it will be carried out Individually and the whole group. Teacher actions Teacher will tell students what they must do, and if someone needs some help because he or she does not know other institutions, she will help them with some ideas. María Galán Sánchez Diseño y Organización de Actividades 4th activity Description of the activity Correct homework from the last day Time expected 10 minutes How it will be carried out With the whole group Teacher´s actions She will ask the answers to the students. María Galán Sánchez Diseño y Organización de Actividades  Fifth session  Writing an e-mail  Writing an e-mail to a friend Objectives of the session  To review the use of the structure Be Going To  To classify tenses  To write an informal e-mail  To assess their partners Expected learning outcomes Students will be able to:  Differentiate tenses  Write e-mails in English  Know how to assess their partners Materials and resources used  Their books and their notebooks  The blackboard to write explanations María Galán Sánchez Diseño y Organización de Actividades 1st activity Description of the activity Students will be given a little explanation of the use of the structure Be Going To. Time expected 10 minutes How it will be carried out Teacher-centered but with questions to students Teacher actions Teacher will explain the use of the tense and will ask examples to students. 2nd activity Description of the activity PRE-WRITING ACTIVITY: students will do an exercise on their books in which they have to classify what a boy did last week an what is going to do next week. Then, they will have to do the same with the information they will use to write their e-mails. On this way, they will have a structure to follow when writing the email. María Galán Sánchez Diseño y Organización de Actividades Time expected 10 minutes How it will be carried out Individually Teacher actions First, she will tell the students that they must do the exercises on their books, and that later they will have to do a similar tsk but with the information they are going to give in the e-mails that they are doing later. 3rd activity Description of the activity Students will have to write an informal e-mail following the example they have on their books and using the information about “useful language” that they have written there. Time expected 15 minutes How it will be carried out Individually Teacher actions The teacher gives students instructions to write the e-mail and while they are writing them she revises the task in order to give them some feedback if it is necessary. María Galán Sánchez Diseño y Organización de Actividades 4th activity Description of the activity Students will have to exchange their e-mails with their partners and they will have to correct the mistakes they think their partners did and give some feedback to them. Time expected 10 minutes How it will be carried out In pairs (peer-assessment) Teacher´s actions She will give instructions to students about what they must do and then, she will pass over the pairs to observe how they assess their partners.  Homework: revise the contents for the test. María Galán Sánchez Diseño y Organización de Actividades Attention to diversity Attention to diversity will be carried out by means of the reinforcement and consolidation activities above mentioned, addressed at those students whose abilities and interests require a step further into the contents of the unit. In addition, students showing a nonsignificant handicap, or related to specific aspects of the learning unit, the teacher will propose non-significant curricular adaptations, without changing significantly, as long as possible, the fundamental aspects of the course curriculum. Conclusions After having put into practice part of this learning unit (the three first sessions) during my school placement, I could realize of several details. The two groups I was in charge of were really different. One group was really openminded, talkative and participative, while the other one was extremely shy and calmed. This factor helped me to observe how the same activities worked very differently in each class. In the active class, the oral activities were the favorite ones. Students felt comfortable with them and had a really good time. They even did more than I asked them for, and were really motivated with these exercises. On the other hand, the shy class enjoyed more traditional exercises in which they had to complete grammatical and vocabulary tasks. They did not talk while doing this sort of activities and did it quite fast. However, when I announced them that we were going to do a role-play activity their faces changed to the worst. Besides, when I asked something in order to create a debate, nobody answered unless I asked them. What I learnt from it is that not all the kind of exercises works in the same way depending on the students you have, but I consider that all the skills must be practiced María Galán Sánchez Diseño y Organización de Actividades by all the students without regarding if they like them or not. English is a language subject and it is really important that students work all its dimensions. Apart from this, I could apply many of the theoretical concepts that I had studied in the subject of Diseño y Organización de Actividades para Inglés as cooperative working, peer-assessment and warm-up activities, and I could prove that they work and students really appreciate them. To finish with my conclusions, I would like to say that I felt extremely happy when I could realize that my students followed my explanations and showed their contents’ acquirements, and that now, I know that I want to be a teacher, more than ever. María Galán Sánchez Diseño y Organización de Actividades References  Macmillan Secondary Course, David Spencer (textbook)  Oxford English Alive, Ben Wetz  www.busyteacher.com  www.teachingenglish.uk  www.youtube.com María Galán Sánchez Diseño y Organización de Actividades Appendixes Research Report How is Pronunciation Taught in Different Educational Schools? Evaluación, Innovación e Investigación Docente Máster en Profesorado de Enseñanza Secundaria y Bachillerato 2011-2012 EVA BRINQUIS SERRANO MARÍA CUELLO SÁNCHEZ MARÍA GALÁN SÁNCHEZ Research Report. Evaluación e Innovación Docente Eva Brinquis Serrano, María Cuello Sánchez, María Galán Sánchez INDEX 1. Introduction 1.1 Literature view 1.2 Purpose 2. Methods 2.1 Participants 2.2 Materials 2.3 Procedures 3. Results 3.1 Charter School María Auxiliadora 3.2 IES Pilar Lorengar 3.3 Official School of Languages Fernando Lázaro Carreter 4. Discussions 5. Conclusions 6. References 7. Appendixes 8. Graphs Research Report. Evaluación e Innovación Docente Eva Brinquis Serrano, María Cuello Sánchez, María Galán Sánchez How is Pronunciation Taught in different Educational Schools? Introduction A great variety of changes have been carried out in the teaching of English as a foreign language over the years. Following Celce-Murcia et al. (1996: 2) “grammar and vocabulary have been much better understood by most language teachers than pronunciation, which began to be studied systematically shortly before the beginning of the twentieth century”. If we have a look at the different teaching language methods and concretely concerning the grammar-translation and the reading based approaches, we can state that teachers give more prominence to grammar and lexis than to the spoken language in general and of pronunciation in particular. In these methods pronunciation was almost fully disregarded. However, not all the traditional methods have been based on grammar but others have taken oral aspects into account. For instance the Direct Method was not only focused on grammar but also used the target language in the classroom based on everyday vocabulary and communication. According to Brown (2001), “pronunciation was very important and it was taught through imitation and repetition.” In the 1940s and 1950s the Audiolingualism method was the main method to follow in which pronunciation is considered essential and it is taught from the beginning. Learning is based on creating the right response to a stimulus avoiding bad habits and making the students conscious of the importance of an accurate pronunciation. Later on, the Cognitive Approach focused again on grammar and vocabulary. This was because it was thought that getting a native-like pronunciation was unrealistic and could not be achieved being time better spent on teaching more learnable items, for instance grammar structures and words. New methods were created in the 1970s, for example the Silent Way in which the teacher spoke as little as possible using gestures to indicate the students what they should do. Nowadays, the Communicative Approach which emerged in the 1980s is the predominant approach to teach English as a foreign language. It holds that communication is the main goal of language and this should be central in the English teaching process. With the arrival of the Communicative Approach, a debate about the Research Report. Evaluación e Innovación Docente Eva Brinquis Serrano, María Cuello Sánchez, María Galán Sánchez methodology of how pronunciation should be taught was born. People started to think that supra-segmental features were even more important than segmental ones. Moreover, in our days, the debate continues and pronunciation is considered to be taken into account to be worked in an integrated way during the lessons, but we all are conscious of the various difficulties that Spanish learners present dealing with pronunciation. Being pronunciation the most difficult skill for Spanish students, we would like to focus on how pronunciation is worked in every educational school, analyzing and reflecting on the main reasons that can cause this difficulty. Thus, we have taken advantage of our school placement in different Educational Schools in Zaragoza, such as the charter School María Auxiliadora, the public Secondary School IES Pilar Lorengar and the Official School of Languages Fernando Lázaro Carreter. Because of the diversity of the three Educational Schools, we have concluded that the results could vary and we would be able to obtain a wide range of samples. The charter school María Auxiliadora is located in the neighbourhood of San José. This is an area inhabited by working-class families from which a noticeable amount are disorganized. Therefore, this fact has consequences in the students´results. Concerning the public Secondary School IES Pilar Lorengar, it is located in La Jota neighbourhood. In this area the inhabitants, both a mixture of working-class and middle-class families, that have been living in the suburb for not many years. Generally speaking, students obtain good results except for some specific cases. In the case of the Official School of Languages Fernando Lázaro Carreter, it is located in the suburb of Actur. In this school there is a great variety of students, according to their age and occupation. Generally speaking, students attend voluntarily to the lessons so the class development is really different from the other two schools described previously. As it is visible in the differences that exist between the three Educational Schools and their different methods in English teaching, we think that we can obtain a reliable answer to the following questions:  How is pronunciation taught?  Are the existing methods enough and effective?  Why is pronunciation a failure in most of the cases?  Which devices would we propose in order to solve this problematic situation?  Which would be the appropriate suggestions to achieve an improvement in pronunciation and to make students aware of the importance of it? Research Report. Evaluación e Innovación Docente Eva Brinquis Serrano, María Cuello Sánchez, María Galán Sánchez Methods Participants In order to elaborate this Research we selected various groups from each educational school in which we took our school placement. To start with, from the charter school María Auxiliadora we chose a group of 2nd CSE compound by 24 students from which 11 were girls and 13 were boys, including a Native American student. A high level of immigrant students attends this class, above all Latino-American boys and girls who, in general, have some problems with behavior. We decided to select this group because it was a numerous class with several students with not very good behavior and not a high level of English. Besides, the fact of having a native student in the group made us believe that it would help in our teaching placement and consequently, to our research project. We also selected the group of 4th CSE diversification compound by only 13 students, in which the vast majority was girls and there were just 3 boys. We chose this group because we thought that they could have special educational needs regarding the pronunciation of the English language. Moreover, we wanted to include a group of this age in our research project so as to get more mature samples from students in order to show variation among groups. On the other hand, we analyzed one class-group from the public secondary school Pilar Lorengar. It was a group of 3rd CSE compound by 18 students in which boys are predominant. We wanted to work with this group because we already had a sample of 2nd CSE and 4th CSE, thus we wanted to include different levels to enrich the content of our research. To finish with the participants, from the Official Language School Fernando Lázaro Carreter, the students chosen belonged to two different groups of upper intermediate levels. One of them was compound by 25 students while the other one had 23. Their ages ranged from 17 to 50 years old. The two groups had similar characteristics. They were very motivated to learn English, specially the language pronunciation since they had to pass an oral exam at the end of the academic year. Research Report. Evaluación e Innovación Docente Eva Brinquis Serrano, María Cuello Sánchez, María Galán Sánchez Materials In order to carry out our Research, we designed a serious of questionnaires to both the students and the teachers and handed them in to be completed. The questionnaires elaborated for the students had a total of nine questions focused on the importance of pronunciation in the subject of English, the role of teachers and their own role to improve it, their motivation to learn the language and its pronunciation, the reasons why they are afraid of speaking in English and finally their self-assessment concerning the English pronunciation and the measures to improve it. On the other hand, the questionnaires addressed to teachers were compound by eight questions dealing with the methods used to teach pronunciation, the use of RP and other varieties of English during the lessons, the effectiveness of the materials used and the exercises included on them, the possibility of using additional materials to teach pronunciation, devices and strategies that the teachers use to improve the pronunciation of students, alternatives to solve problems with pronunciation, visible difficulties during the lessons to teach pronunciation and new ideas that they would add in order to obtain a more effective learning. Both models were elaborated in Spanish in order to obtain the most reliable answers as possible because for students it is not easy to answer in English and our aim was to obtain real opinions from them. However, we have included these questionnaires translated into English. The main reasons for including these questions in the questionnaires handed in, were that we wanted to reflect on the teachers and students´ opinions, and consequently, propose useful solutions for real problems that are affecting the teaching of the pronunciation skills in our lessons. In order to achieve the goal mentioned above, we decided to create open questions so as to select the most relevant information letting the students express themselves in an open way with no pressures. Additionally, during the last week of our school placement we were observing the way in which our mentors worked with pronunciation during the sessions, taking notes of the most relevant details. Research Report. Evaluación e Innovación Docente Eva Brinquis Serrano, María Cuello Sánchez, María Galán Sánchez The vast majority of students, concretely 8, places themselves in the 3, 5 of them places themselves in the 4 and 11 of them in the 2. In general, students in this class consider that they have a good pronunciation but they should improve it. 3. What would you do to improve your pronunciation? All the students think that they need more practice both in class and at home. Additionally, they consider that travelling they will learn more about the language and they also believe in the use of real materials during the English lessons to improve their pronunciation. 4. Do you think that the English pronunciation is worked enough in your educational school? Why? Most of the students, concretely 11, think that English pronunciation is not worked enough during the English lessons. As a solution, they propose cooperative and motivating activities because they think they only work in grammar. 5. What do you think that the teacher could do in order to improve it? The vast majority of the students think that the teachers should spend more time working with the pronunciation using oral practice or games. Moreover, they consider absolutely necessary that the teacher speaks a good English and that he/she uses different methodologies. 6. What do you think that you could do in order to improve your pronunciation? All the students state that they could do more practice not only in class but also at home although it is true that during my school placement a few students practiced speaking in English during the lessons but the rest of the class do not use it. 7. When you hear a native speaker talking in English, do you feel like learning the language? That is to say, do you like how it sounds and do you feel attracted to learn the language? Most of them, concretely 13, believe in the importance of the English language. Only 1 student contradicts this idea and another one does not care about it. 8. Are you conscious of the importance of the English language around the world? Give several reasons to support your idea Research Report. Evaluación e Innovación Docente Eva Brinquis Serrano, María Cuello Sánchez, María Galán Sánchez All the group-class is conscious of the relevance of the English language in the current world, especially in the labour market and to achieve communication. 9. Are you afraid of using English to communicate? Why? Most of the students, concretely 14, are not afraid of using English to communicate because they believe in the importance of practice to learn and speak a perfect English. However, 2 of them feel fear when they are speaking in English because they are afraid of making mistakes. According to the results of the Official School of Languages Fernando Lázaro Carreter, we could observe that the students’ answers of this educational center were more mature and more coherent than those obtained in the Secondary schools María Auxiliadora and Pilar Lorengar, since the students are much older and most of them are adults. Therefore, the answers are different and consequently the results change. Hence, these are the results: 1. Do you think that the English pronunciation is important in the language learning process? Why? All of them think that the English pronunciation is highly important in order to be able to communicate with people, and very useful to make the recipients understand the utterances. 2. Which mark would you choose to assess yourself in your English pronunciation, from 1 (bad) to 5 (perfect)? Most of them think that they speak English badly because they ranged their marks very low (from 1 to 3), indeed nobody marked 5. In general, Official School of languages´ students believe that the first thing to improve their English is their pronunciation, which they consider very difficult and very necessary. 3. What would you do to improve your pronunciation? 15 students think that they should practice more, speaking more in classroom with their partners, and interacting more with the teacher during the lessons. Research Report. Evaluación e Innovación Docente Eva Brinquis Serrano, María Cuello Sánchez, María Galán Sánchez 6 of them think they should watch television or films in English more often, to read some book in English language, or listen to some English channels in the radio. 3 students think that it is necessary to study phonetics in order to improve their pronunciation. As they are adults, they prefer the self-learning and they consider themselves to be the responsible of their learning. So, learning autonomy plays a very important role in their improvement. 4. Do you think that the English pronunciation is worked enough in your educational school? Why? 21 students, the vast majority of the students, consider that English pronunciation is not worked enough in the school due to the lack of time in the lessons and the high number of students in the classrooms. In spite of each session lasts two hours, there is no time enough to work all the skills appropriately. Only 4 students think that English pronunciation is well worked in the lessons, and there is no need to change things. 5. What do you think that the teacher could do in order to improve it? 8 students think that the teacher already does lots of things in classroom related to improve their English pronunciation, so they think that she should keep on doing the same. 7 students think that it is necessary to practice more and speak more in classroom in order to improve the pronunciation. 3 of them think that teacher should spend more time in class teaching them how to pronounce correctly, and 5 students think that the teacher should follow a different methodology, providing them the phonetic transcription of the audios and recording listened in the lessons. 6. What do you think that you could do in order to improve your pronunciation? 17 students think that they have to practice more their pronunciation by means of speaking more in English lessons. 6 students think that they should watch television and films in English, read more in English, surf to the Internet and do some interactive pronunciation activities at home and so on. Only one student think that drilling and repetition would help to improve his/her pronunciation. Research Report. Evaluación e Innovación Docente Eva Brinquis Serrano, María Cuello Sánchez, María Galán Sánchez 7. When you hear a native speaker talking in English, do you feel like learning the language? That is to say, do you like how it sounds and do you feel attracted to learn the language? The vast majority, that is, 22 students love how the English language sounds. They consider English accents very attractive, and in general they would like to speak as native people do. They attend lessons in an Official School of Languages because they like this language and they are highly interested in learning English. They feel motivated to learn the language for different personal reasons. Only three students think that English language does not sound really striking. 8. Are you conscious of the importance of the English language around the world? Give several reasons to support your idea. Everyone, that is to say, all the students are aware of the huge importance that English language has in our society and in the worldwide. They wrote that English language is the most spoken language in the world and that nowadays it is very relevant for working. 9. Are you afraid of using English to communicate? Why? 20 students are frightened of communicating in English with others, they panic when making mistakes in English. Generally, they feel shy while speaking in English and they are afraid of not being understood by the receipts. They admit as well that they do not pronounce brilliantly the English language and their sense of the ridiculous is very high, so they do not make any effort in pronounce better, which makes more difficult their learning and blocks their improvement. Only 7 students are not afraid of using English to communicate. After having analyzed the answers obtained in the questionnaires handed in the three educational schools, we can state the following general conclusions. All the groups see the utility of the English language except for one student of the public IES Pilar Lorengar that do not believe in the importance of the English pronunciation. Generally speaking, the youngest students chosen to analyze their opinions included in this research project, think that their pronunciation is good Research Report. Evaluación e Innovación Docente Eva Brinquis Serrano, María Cuello Sánchez, María Galán Sánchez or quite good (3 or 4) which is not coherent according to reality although students in the official school of languages are more realistic and not so optimistic ranging their marks from 1 to 3. We think that this can be related to their ages and, consequently, their maturity. According to the answers obtained in question number 3, all the groups of students believe in the practice of pronunciation, the use of real materials like songs and films and the necessity of travelling. Regarding the results of the fourth question, the majority of the students think that pronunciation is not worked enough, but a minority think that it is worked enough even though they suggest that pronunciation should be worked and practiced more. In general, students’ opinion is that teachers should invest more time teaching English pronunciation and they should use different methodologies in order to achieve the main goal. Regarding the strategies that the students could apply in order to improve their pronunciation, most of the students consider that they should practice more (speaking and listening English both at home and in class), using real materials such as songs or videos, and repeat sounds in English class. It is important to highlight that in the sample of 2nd year of CSE, many students stated that they would not anything to improve their pronunciation, but we do not exactly know the reasons. Maybe it is because they are convinced that their pronunciation is correct enough or because they are not interested in English at all. However, the vast majority of the participants of this research consider the English language important and attractive, and they feel like studying English. In addition, they are aware of the importance of this language in all over the world and in the labor market, as it is proved in the answers of the question number eight. Generally, students stated in the questionnaires that they are afraid of communicating in English, however they believe that the best way to learn the pronunciation is practicing and speaking a lot. We think that Spanish people usually have the sense of ridiculous very high, which impedes their learning of other languages. So, they admit that this fear is a problem and they know that they have to make an effort so as to get the solution to avoid pronunciation errors. Research Report. Evaluación e Innovación Docente Eva Brinquis Serrano, María Cuello Sánchez, María Galán Sánchez Apart from the results of the students of the three educational schools, we handed in different questionnaires to our mentors and other teachers from the department. Now, we show below the results obtained in these questionnaires once compared among them. Questions Charter School Maria Auxiliadora Public IES Pilar Lorengar Official School of Languages Fernando Lázaro Carreter We consider that students generally do not pronounce English correctly. Which methodology do you use to learn the language pronunciation? -Explain English sounds -Drilling -Listening -Correct and revise pronunciation -Use key words -Invite students to participate -Drilling -Explain English sounds -Feedback Phonetic exercises Do you use RP as a reference or you also use other varieties of English in your lessons? -No answer found because she did not know what the RP is -RP -Not only RP but also American English and other international varieties Do you think that the textbooks used in class contain enough pronunciation exercises? Are they efficient? -There are few exercises but they are efficient -There are enough exercises but other activities are also integrated -There are not enough exercises but some of them are efficient Do you use additional materials to teach English pronunciation? -Photocopies -Pictures and songs -Not only Photocopies, songs and pronunciation exercises but also difficult words in order to call the Research Report. Evaluación e Innovación Docente Eva Brinquis Serrano, María Cuello Sánchez, María Galán Sánchez studens attention Which methods do you use in order to improve the students pronunciation? Could you mention some of your best strategies? -Correction, listening, drilling and reading in class -Read songs before listening, reflect about errors and interaction -Use of the language lab, transcriptions and drilling In case any of the students has more problems with pronunciation than the rest, which alternatives would you use? -Individual work but she thinks that it is impossible because of the high number of students in each class -Monitor and check using self-assessment and repetition -Exercises in which students record themselves to later listen to them but there is not enough time -Reading aloud Which difficulties do you see in the nowadays classes (because of the high number of students, their characters etc…) to the teaching of English pronunciation in particular and the teaching of the language in general? -Too many students -Lack of interest -Students do not see the utility of English pronunciation -Too many students -Bad acoustics -Too many students -Shy character -Bad acoustics -Not enough time Which new methodology and ideas would you add as English teacher in the terms of pronunciation to create a more effective learning? -To build a language lab -To read aloud -To call students attention with topics of interest -To know what are the main objectives for teachers and students Use of phonetic links on the internet -Pronunciation and oral exams -Reading aloud -To create more graphic courses in which pronunciation Research Report. Evaluación e Innovación Docente Eva Brinquis Serrano, María Cuello Sánchez, María Galán Sánchez was the main aim -Try to make students know the value of pronunciation After having analyzed all these results, we can generally conclude that concerning the methodology they actually use, we can find a wide variety of exercises in every educational school. On the one hand concerning the varieties of English used during the lessons, it is shocking that in the charter school Maria Auxiliadora, the mentor states that she does not know the concept of Received Pronunciation. Generally speaking, in all the educational schools RP is used although we consider interesting that in the Official School of Languages many other varieties are shown during the lessons, indirectly transmitting the students the idea that not only the English language spoken in Great Britain is the relevant one but also that as students they should know the other varieties and their characteristics. On the other hand, the amount of pronunciation exercises included in textbooks, generally speaking, the mentors in the different educational schools think that they are not enough but they are efficient indeed. Apart from that, they believe in the use of extra materials like photocopies or worksheets. If we consider the use of additional materials during the lessons, the mentors state that they include them and the most popular among them are songs and photocopies. As regards to the different methods applied to teach pronunciation, the ones that they consider more efficient are reading aloud in class, drilling and interaction. Nowadays, teachers are aware of the problems that some of the students can manifest when learning pronunciation in a foreign language. Thus, the answers given by the mentors are that they would make use of individual work, they would monitor and check students using self-assessment and they would practice with recording exercises, a good device to evaluate themselves and know in which point is their pronunciation learning. However, in all school centres is confirmed that it is impossible to incorporate these mechanisms into the real lessons because of the high number of students per class and the lack of time claiming more divided groups in the English lessons and longer sessions. Concerning the difficulties observed by the mentors in the nowadays sessions, they all consider that there are many students per class and this fact impede the effective pronunciation teaching-learning process. Moreover, relevant difficulties Research Report. Evaluación e Innovación Docente Eva Brinquis Serrano, María Cuello Sánchez, María Galán Sánchez are bad acoustics, the lack of interest in both secondary schools, the shy character of adults attending the official school of languages and the lack of time. Eventually, in order to solve the problems previously mentioned, the mentors propose new methodologies or strategies such as reading aloud, frequent visits to the language lab, oral examinations focusing on the improvement of pronunciation, the use of phonetic links on the internet to promote individual autonomy of learning and the attendance to courses specialized in pronunciation. Research Report. Evaluación e Innovación Docente Eva Brinquis Serrano, María Cuello Sánchez, María Galán Sánchez Discussion As general results, we can affirm that: - students think that pronunciation is not enough worked in the different educational schools where this research was done. - All the students except two consider the English language important and are conscious of the relevance that it has all over the world. - Most of the participants are optimistic concerning their pronunciation because they position themselves in a high score regarding their pronunciation, however, the students in the school of languages, that coincidently are the most mature, are more realistic about their pronunciation and think they must improve it. - Most of the students believe that to improve their pronunciation, it should be worked more during the lessons using a different methodology. - Most of the participants feel themselves ashamed when speaking in English because of their fear to make mistakes, but, at the same time, they are conscious of the fact that they are obliged to speak if their aim is to improve their pronunciation. Concerning the teachers interviewed, we can state that: - All of them think that the pronunciation is not enough worked during the sessions and the books contain few exercises to work it. Moreover, they confirm that they have to use additional materials if they decide to work on it. - All of them affirm that there are too many students to work with the language and the sessions that generally last 50 minutes are short. With all these data, we are now able to answer the questions previously mentioned at the beginning of the essay.  How is pronunciation taught? Pronunciation is taught in different ways depending on the educational school although there are some identical methods such as drilling and the explanation of the English phonemes.  Are the existing methods enough and effective? Concerning both the teacher´s and the student´s answers, the existing methods are not enough although some of the teachers state that although being few they are effective. Research Report. Evaluación e Innovación Docente Eva Brinquis Serrano, María Cuello Sánchez, María Galán Sánchez 8. GRAPHS 1. Do you think that the English pronunciation is important in the language learning process? Research Report. Evaluación e Innovación Docente Eva Brinquis Serrano, María Cuello Sánchez, María Galán Sánchez Research Report. Evaluación e Innovación Docente Eva Brinquis Serrano, María Cuello Sánchez, María Galán Sánchez 2. Which mark would you choose to assess yourself in your English pronunciation, from 1 (bad) to 5 (perfect)? Research Report. Evaluación e Innovación Docente Eva Brinquis Serrano, María Cuello Sánchez, María Galán Sánchez Research Report. Evaluación e Innovación Docente Eva Brinquis Serrano, María Cuello Sánchez, María Galán Sánchez 3. What would you do to improve your pronunciation? Research Report. Evaluación e Innovación Docente Eva Brinquis Serrano, María Cuello Sánchez, María Galán Sánchez Research Report. Evaluación e Innovación Docente Eva Brinquis Serrano, María Cuello Sánchez, María Galán Sánchez 4. Do you think that the English pronunciation is worked enough in your educational school? Research Report. Evaluación e Innovación Docente Eva Brinquis Serrano, María Cuello Sánchez, María Galán Sánchez 15% 85% Official School of Languages Fernando Lázaro Carreter Yes No Research Report. Evaluación e Innovación Docente Eva Brinquis Serrano, María Cuello Sánchez, María Galán Sánchez 5. What do you think that the teacher could do in order to improve it? Research Report. Evaluación e Innovación Docente Eva Brinquis Serrano, María Cuello Sánchez, María Galán Sánchez Research Report. Evaluación e Innovación Docente Eva Brinquis Serrano, María Cuello Sánchez, María Galán Sánchez 9. Are you afraid of using English to communicate? Research Report. Evaluación e Innovación Docente Eva Brinquis Serrano, María Cuello Sánchez, María Galán Sánchez