Pre -Teaching Training Course

Following our PTTC meetings on Fridays afternoon, on April 25 we received professor Graça talking about Cultures all over the world. We have discussed about habits, the way of how society behaves. She told us the history of languages used in the past, like Latin, and French besides Portuguese and the way some languages tend to disappear through time. She also pointed out the importance of learning the English language nowadays,language used in the USA, mainly because of the economical power of that country.
According to recent date, 45% of the population in the world speak English. Professor Graça said that there is a very famous motto that says: "If you know English the world will be yours" , and asked : Is it correct or it seems to be an insulting?
After a long conversation about this subject she gave us some English Patterns Practices and made us to feel the importance of teaching Grammar associated with exercises and texts. We've made a lot of exercises adopting the repetition method and at the end of the lecture we were told to prepare an English lass.

Why to construct a blog?

A blog give us our own voice on the web.
It's a place to collect and share things
that we find interesting,a personal diary
or links to web site that we want to keep
or to remember.It's a way to organise our
own thoughts, it's even a way to organise
our studies and our knowledge with
special friends or with people that we
have something in common.

Humanity Live - Scorpions

Pre -Teaching Training Course

Pre- Teaching Training Course + Workshop + Immersion

Finally a holyday to update my blog.
Regarding the PTTC I would like to make some comments about our meetings that I, unfortunately, didn’t have the chance to make it before.
After the opening by Denise de Paula from UFSCAR, presenting the lecture “Developing the foreign language teachers competence” in which she had the opportunity to tell us about her own experiences in this area, we had a Lecture by Maisa Fatureto “Beyound the limits”that showed us the importance of always keep our minds and eyes very open to improve our career according to the market needs. To keep the motivation up and never give up.
On April 4th it was Bia Pucci’s turn and she presented us a revision of many language structures, and many communicative activities as well. We have done a lot in such a little time. It was very useful and enjoyable.
On April 12th we received an enthusiastic and capable teacher Alessandra Masson. Fantastic afternoon. It was highly productive.
Immersion: I am speechless.Amazing. We’ve learned a lot, we’ve improved our communication skills and the atmosphere was great, full of joy and enchantment.
Note: The catering was remarkable!
On April 18th: Leila Maxwell started the lecture by using a warm up technique. After this we had a class about written and speaking production and the main points that teachers must look out in these forms of activities. We worked with a phonetic table, played some guess games and so on. It was interesting. Leila Maxwell is indeed a great teacher. “She’s a tough cook”.
By the way I would like to thank Virginia, Angela, Eduardo and the staff for the kind and warm reception. You’re great. Congratulations for this brilliant project.
CleoniceCB (Cléo)
Uberaba, April 22nd ,2008

If I can stop one heart from breaking

If I can stop one heart from breaking
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching
Or cool one pain
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again
I shall not live in vain.

Emily Dickinson (l830-86)
Complete poems

How to teach vocabulary

Professor Jeremy Harmer reports that words are quite important. And why are them so important? Words are what a language is made of, their meanings, how they relate to each other. He says that we have a magic ability to twist their meanings sometimes and it make the language very fun. It's true. The more knowledge we have in this field, the easiest way to communicate ourselves, bigger is the possibility to make people to understand us. How to improve our range of vocabulary? There are many books focusing this subject, but according to Harmer vocabulary is more than merely lists. Meanings sometimes can change if our intention is to use it metaphorically, how they can be form, changing a noun to a verb, for example.
He believes that perhaps the best vocabulary exercises are reading and listening.
Students can learn vocabulary from many ways : by showing objects or pictures, listing a number of things in categories such as fruit, furniture, clothing, vegetable, by matching words with definition, through music and so on.
Harmer also point out that apart from teaching vocabulary, teachers should also help students to acquire vocabulary related skills, such as dictionary use and guessing strategies. I agree with him and I consider these points very important.