Noticing

I have never heard the concept of noticing before with regard to language teaching. Noticing is the process by which the learner pays attention consciously to the input that he receives. The result of this process is that the learner learns grammar because he put lots of attention to the input provided. The input which is internalized and learned by the learner is the intake. And when the learner does this process consciously, we called it noticing.
Noticing involves paying attention to meaning as well as to form when learning a language.
I think that during my years at school, when I learned English we used to pay more attention to form than to meaning. The teachers who taught English to me thought that the most important part of the language was grammar and not meaning. We focused mainly on form and we did not pay much attention to the content and to the communicative component of language. We were asked to practice a lot, to do lots of drills and to practice structures in our textbooks. We never gave much importance to meaning, which I think is very important.

A communicative teacher according to Medgyes

 


          It is difficult to be a communicative teacher according to what Medgyes says that communicative teachers have to be and do. A communicative teacher has to fulfill so many requirements and has to have so many qualities that it sounds overwhelming. In the first place, according to Medgyes's article the communicative teacher has to know about everything and to be able to adjust to any situation, she has to be versatile. She has to be s technology expert and also a great psychologist. She has to have multiple skills in order to be able to do everything that she is asked to do. She has to be creative but at the same time "down-to-earth". These are all the things that we should "be" as communicative teachers. But there are also many tasks that a communicative teacher has to perform. She has to focus on the specific needs of each students but at the same time focus in the whole group; she has to listen and pay attention to students needs and expectations; she has to focus on meaning and on form when teaching.
          I think we would all like to "be" all these things and be able to "do" all these things. But it is very clear that all of this great and ideal theory was proposed by theoreticians that have never been in our place and have never even been inside a real classroom. I agree completely with the ironic tone of the author in this text. It is very easy to say and think about all the things that every communicative teacher "has to be" and "has to do", but it is quite different and much more difficult to put them in practice inside a real classroom in a real school environment.    

The communicative teacher

This is a great article and I think that it trully reflects waht a teacher micht feel whe trying to apply the Communicative Approach in her teaching. There is a huge difference between believing in the theory and applying that theory in our daily teaching practice.
In the first place I think that every language teacher aims to be learner-centered. It sounds beautiful, but in real life this is hard to apply and to make it true. We try to teach using a learner-centered approach, but we aslo have to deal with a whole group which is composed by twenty or more students and most of the times we consider the class as a whole rather than considering each student by himself in teaching situations. A learner-centered approach is the ideal methodology for every single language teacher. But I think that it really takes to be superheroes to really accomplish this goal in every single lesson or learning situation.
Another difficult task for Communicative teachers is to focus o meaning and on form simultaneously. Every teacher should at least try to pay attention to this two very different and almost opposed aspects of language. This is the theory, but it takes a lot of time and dedication to achieve this in real teaching situations.
The third point that Peter Medgyes talks about in his article is the fact that a real communicative teacher should provide her students with real communicative situations. I think that we all try to do this, because it is the way in which our students get to learn meaningfully. To create and desing real communicative situations also takes a lot of time and dedication, because it is much easier to follow a text book and make our students drill. This makes me think about another point mentioned in the article that is very interesting: The text book. It is obviously easier for a non-native teacher who teaches in a non-native speaking country to follow a text book instead of designing her own activities. But if we want to expose our students to real communicative situations in which real information exchange is needed, we should not be using a text book by itself. I think that text books should be used as a supportive material. The text book certainly offers great material to practice language, but we should try not to turn it into some kind of teacher's manual.
As you all see, there are many points to reflect on in this article. Very interesting since it deals with real life situations for teachers.  

The importance of creativity in education

I think that creativity is a really important part of the learning process. It is important for the students to develope their creative capacity. Teachers have an extremely important role in this process of developing creativity, because we have to encourage our students to learn, to think and to express ideas in their own original ways. Creativity is as important as literacy is, I definitely agree. I think that literacy helps the students to develop their creativity and improves their imagination. Therefore, to encourage the creativity in our students we should encourage them to read and to become involved with literacy.
Our goal is to lead our students to learn in a meaningful way. The most meaningful way to learn is to do it in one's own learning style and using one's own capacities. Therefore, we are suppose to encourage each one of our students to use his own capacities, learning style and imagination in his learning process.