The shock between my knowledge and motivation learning Slovak.

            At the beginning as a bachelor in languages I thought I was really motivated to learn Slovak, but when feeling came up from excitement and interest to frustration because I could just understand a few of words but it was impossible to communicate at that time with accuracy when the teacher asked us to play some roles, I did not want to speak because I was afraid I was going to say something wrong or my partners mocked me. Before that class I had a motivation because I was going to be exposed to a new and unfamiliar language but later on I realized I did not have any reason to learn it.  I felt that visual aids were really necessary to make me familiar with such a language in order to associate words with images to retain some words

            Having this enriching experience has helped me reflect on my learners’ emotions when everything they hear, read, write and say is in English, particularly for beginners this situation can make every day in class a very frustrating situation.  It is disappointing to sit in a class and you understand only a little, and when you want to say something but you are unable doing it in English.

             In this type of situation to avoid the emotional and behavioral problems, it is necessary to work through sociocultural and affective factors to help them quickly adjust to their new second language acquisition experience, to show the opportunities they can have in the academic and labor market. Learners must be aware that this is a natural reaction when we are exposed to a new language in our life. 

Teaching requires scientists and craftsmen.

Education is the backbone in every society, as it responds to the needs posed by world diversity, in that sense, the knowledge of good teaching becomes the bulwark of sustainable development and simultaneously starting point for making social, political and religious decisions. To respond to these needs in any setting where teaching is present, it is necessary to promote quality education and to stimulate highly innovative competencies of each student to generate changes in educational programs that present internal conflicts related to the approach of new methodologies and tools to solve teaching problems. For this reason, instructors are generating a suitable connection between students and knowledge, this implies that instructors are scientists because they should be in search of knowledge and updating according to last educational trend, this is equivalent to be more knowledgeable to teach properly and adapt to the changes it can generate in the short term.

            Besides, instructors must also be craftsmen, to find methods that help shape and build and finally to reify the knowledge, but raising techniques that contribute to the second language acquisition in conjunction with the apprehension of the whole knowledge by all learners, depending on the context in which is unfolded. Thus, teachers being both scientific and craftsmen can foster an education system based on science and technological skills, which enable an organizational restructuring, a generation of new skills, behaviors, and improved implicit cognitive skills adapted to each context specifically. Finally, it will facilitate the inclusion of values ​​that help strategically address the goals of each educational system and particularly the learners whose goals are articulated with the economic and competitive society.

How applied linguistics help you be a better language instructor.

     "Applied linguistics is an interdisciplinary field of study that identifies, investigates, and offers solutions to language-related real-life problems. Some of the academic fields related to applied linguistics are education, linguistics, psychology, computer science, anthropology, and sociology." ("Applied Linguistics” - Wikipedia).

                Applied linguistics is essential because it drives the instructor’s mind in a different way, this article focuses on second language acquisition because teaching is not just providing information to follow a syllabus, since students not only need to “learn”, but they need to “acquire” that knowledge seeing that we learn all time new things in and out the classroom but we forget them easily.  When talking about a language the “Acquisition” must be the most important in the instructor’s goal, it means, students must have the process of gaining a skill and knowledge, they internalize such acquisition forever. Otherwise, an instructor would be wasting time teaching many topics without noticing that students acquire the knowledge, that’s why it is seen in most schools, the lack of English proficiency. I will give you an example: I teach in a 50-minute class these words among verbs, nouns, adjectives and prepositions: fetch, buy, go, love, pack, car, dog, car audio, wheel, at, from, on, in, over. For beginners is difficult to acquire in long-term memory all these words, instead they can learn them in a short-term memory but that is actually a waste of time. Therefore, if the instructor has knowledge about applied linguistics, his way of teaching would change totally, that’s is to say, he would be able to look for a manner in students to achieve that they acquire those words in long-term memory through mnemonics for instance. It is a technique that is designed to assist the memory, often referring to a word or group of words that can be associated with the information being remembered. There is an example to use it appropriately, for one class he chooses some words which are related in order to use association. He writes the word “Car” on the board, and ask students to imagine they are driving a red Ferrari and there are three beautiful women with them, they are going a hundred miles an hour through a long highway, so they need to be careful and keep the “wheel” direction straight, besides they need music, so they are going to turn on the “Car Audio” and play electronic dance music.

              In the mentioned process each word is linked to another one, we used association and visual images to retain these words in long-term memory because they were able to acquire them and wherever they need to use those words, they will be stored in their brain.

Second Language Acquisition Mind Map

Recommended Site To Improve Our Teaching

Quizlet is a free website providing learning tools for students, including flashcards, study and game modes. It was created by high school sophomore Andrew Sutherland in 2005 and now contains over 400 million study sets. All of the material is user-generated.

http://quizlet.com/

• This is an example of a game to have feedback about my presentation, just click on Piaget's Stages