Contextualizing Language


Well this topic is kind of new for me, but I can see that it is very interesting in order to make the teaching process more effective. When you use contextualization, you involve many things at the same time because you teach relevant things for the students and things that they want to know or talk about. It is important to have an idea of their likes, desires and things that are valuable for each student, for example something that is important for a teen like talking about girls and boyfriends, it is not important when you are teaching to kinder garden students.
In this way the teacher has a big responsability because you have not only to teach the topics that are assigned for the level you are teaching, but also you have to make it nice and dynamic for your students. In this process you have to consider their capacities, the environment and the social expectancies.

In the video I could see that students were motivated to participate. They did things that were relevant for their level eg. Children like to move their bodies and sing; teens like to make dramas or presentations like those they have in the real life e.g. talk about drugs, sports, hobbies etc.
I think that this kind of teaching is acceptable in our society because we know that we live in a world in which we have to communicate with others and interchange opinions, and as in this type of teaching students learn as a team (it can be in groups or pairs), it becomes easier for teachers to have succes in their objetives.

But, there is something that we have to take into consideration, and it is that teachers that develop this method have to be very creative, transmit that they also enjoy what they do because there are some teachers that don´t enjoy their job, and they don´t pay so much attention to students´ necesities. Specially in our country I think that if we want to use this method as a way to teach students according to their needs, we have to train teachers because most of them would not be prepared enough to teach around contextualization language.

THINGS THAT A TEACHER HAS TO CONSIDER.

1-ESTABLISH RAPPORT. Well, the first time I heard about this, I didn´t understand the term, but what I can say now is that it is the relationship between students and teaches.This relation is useful for both because it makes the teacher´s job easier, and it allows students to learn throughly. In this point the teacher has the power to choose the way of his class because if you do not interact with your students, or you do not create a friendship with them, the results are going to be disastrous.
A teacher must be integral, and she/he has to combine a lot of elements in a class.eg.

-To be a friend, but to be a leader at the same time.
-To inspire trust and respect too.
-Make students to know that they are intelligent, but not know-all.

This is related with:
2-BALANCE PRAISE AND CRITICISM

As I already mentioned the teacher has to have a balance, and this also includes a balance when you gjve praise or critism to your students. You have to know that if you do not apply these resources in a good way, you can affect your students instead of help them.
For every action we have different results, and something that is nice for you, can be destructive for your students, so you have to analize what your are going to do, to say, to use and to apply in your class and with your students.
This is going to help to:

3-Generate energy. When you are sure about what you are doing, and you enjoy your job, you can create a classroom energy. Remember that the person who is front as a model is the teacher, but if the teacher wants to sleep, students cannot feel motivated.
At school I didn´t like English because it was boring, and I imagine that my teachers only wanted to earn money because they didn´t look happy when they were teaching. I thought that English was boring, but now I realized that it is not. The problem is that teachers do not transmit
that energy that students need. They do not make students feel the necesity of learning, so most people at schools hate English.
In this example we can see the importance of the teacher´s behavior during our learning process. So, as English´s teachers we have to be the first who enjoy our class and what we teach; if not, we are going to be an obstacle for our students´ process.