October 18, 2013
We started our session by sharing our adaptations to a MAC lesson. Great moments of reflection and some thought-provoking comments so that we may continue this learning path for Teaching Advanced Levels.
Our instructor asked us to discuss what has happened in the classes we have taught and what evidence we could give to support our action research topics. The most mentioned activities were: revisiting of language by proposing different activities, i.e. pictures on the board, writing parts on the board. Eliciting words and grammar via concept questions and systematizing it by themselves. Pausing in order to allow them to experiment with the language and going back instead of speeding them up or spoon-feeding.

The most important areas for working with texts are pointing out patterns and similarities, helping learners to discover ways of storing and retrieving vocabulary items, applying different techniques and media for presenting vocabulary and thus making it more memorable, encouraging to appreciate the sound, beauty and origin of words and chunks.

To wrap up we read a text from Scrivener's book on associations, learners should be encouraged to make associations so that they may internalize new lexis. Next blog entry I will summarize ways of applying this to our Advanced lessons.

Cheers,
Juliette