Today I had the pleasure to meet the staff of the Smoke Squadron, from the brazilian Air Force Academy in Pirassununga, SP.
Everybody is so nice and helpful that they even took me to a demonstration flight, as you can see minutes before take off in the picture.
Ok, I've been there, but there was no flight, at least with me. April Fool's Day!
This week I had the pleasure to meet Dennis, an exchange student from the USA. He's in town as part of the well known Rotaty International's youth exchange program.
Dennis is a nice guy from Oak Lawn, Illinois who seems to be having a good time around here.
He's taking up the third year in high school at Anglo, where I've been teaching since last February.
This week, Dennis made me an undeniable offer: he wants to make a presentation about his country, culture and, to top it off, American slang to my students. I intend to bring this event to all my students in both elementary and high school, as long as they behave themselves before, during and after it. We'll see.
I don't know exactly when he's coming for that, but it's soon, anyway. If you'd like to get to know him a little better in advance and satisfy your curiosity, these are some links about Dennis. The Google picture is from his street, one of those houses must be his.
http://dennisevashenk.blogspot.com/
http://www.myspace.com/dennisevashenk
Thanks for reading, and never forget: English rocks!!! and so do I... LOL
It's been a busy week.
I finally managed to finish my article for the University. I took a graduate course in English language in 2007 and as a final assignment I had to write a 50-60 page long paper, but as time went by, the requirement is no longer so strict and I had the chance to get even with the Uni with just a 15-page article. It was hard work anyway, but way lighter than 60 pages. So, if you want to check it out just go ahead and download it. It's in Portuguese, and as long as it's not necessary there won't be any English version, but, who knows, in the near future, if I feel bored at home and feel like translating something there will be one.
Thanks for dropping by.
Here are the title and the abstract of the paper.
A produção de vídeos como agente motivador no aprendizado de Inglês como língua estrangeira no Ensino Médio
VIDEO PRODUCTION AS A MOTIVATivational AGENT for ENGLISH as a foreigh language LEARNING IN HIGH SCHOOL
Alexandre Bueno Santa Maria
RESUMO:Este trabalho investiga a eficácia de uma atividade de produção de vídeos como agente motivador do aprendizado de Inglês como língua estrangeira entre alunos da primeira série do ensino médio de um colégio privado da cidade de São João da Boa Vista – SP. Foi solicitada aos alunos a criação de pequenos vídeos sobre músicos e bandas de sucesso nas décadas de 50, 60, 70 e 80. O objetivo foi observar se esta atividade traria progressos motivacionais observáveis no comportamento dos alunos e no rendimento acadêmico.
Palavras-chave: Motivação; vídeo; Inglês como língua estrangeira; ensino médio.
ABSTRACT: This paper investigates the effectiveness of a video production activity as a motivational agent in favor of learning English as a foreign language among high school first graders in a private school in the city of São João da Boa Vista – SP. The students were asked to create short video passages about successful musicians and bands in the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. The goal of this research was to check if this activity would yield observable motivational progress in students’ behavior and academic scores.
Keywords: Motivation; video; English as a foreign language; high school.
Licenciado em Letras com habilitação em Português e Inglês pela Universidade de Franca.
| a_produo_de_vdeos_como_agente_motivador_no_aprendizado_de_ingls_no_ensino_mdio.pdf |
| File Size: | 347 kb |
| File Type: | pdf |
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Hi everybody!
New year new life. This year I'm working on an unprecedented project in my school, the Pen Pal. That will work as a cultural awareness tweak in my classroom activities. I'm making contacts with schools in English speaking coutries in order to have our students communicate through letters and e-mails. I strongly believe this activity will act as a motivational engine the will help me overcome the problems we face here when teaching English as a foreign language. The biggest complaint my students have is that they will never need to effectively use English in a social interaction. In fact, most of them are right due to the dimensions of our country and to their personal aspirations regarding carrer and life in general. Anyway, my goal is to provide them with a real need to use the English language, so that they will value the classes and start to understand that learning a foreign language at school is not just a matter of obligation.
Thanks for visiting my blog and feel free to comment and add suggestions. I'll try to log in as often as I can in order to update it with the latest news about the project and other interesting stuff I came accross.
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