Week 11: Kumar ch 9 & 10 and Brown ch 17

These chapters help me visualize the importance of teaching lessons that include all the language skills (speaking, listening, reading and writing) because these are interrelated and mutually reinforcing. In every classroom I have observed, the lessons always involve every language skill, from a beginning discussion to engaging in an activity. It is not possible to teach without incorporating all of the four language skills. In a lesson, there is usually a discussion to prepare the students on a topic (writing on the board and reading from the board), then classroom interaction between students to students or with teachers occurs (speaking and listening), after that there is group work or individual work, which can include all four skills depending on the activity. This is one lesson, and there is various lessons throughout the school day, so all four skills are necessary to focus on when teaching a classroom. Teachers should follow an integrated skills approach. Reinforcing all language skills will help students understand the new language and interact with it in various ways. We use them together inside and outside the classroom to create a more meaningful learning environment and this can definitely help our future L2 students achieve a higher proficiency level. If the students are encouraged to interact using all four language skills, they will be prepared to engage in an actual communicative exchange with a native speaker outside of the classroom with more confidence. It is also important to teach them how to appropriately create coherent text/utterances that will fit a given situation within a specific social setting/ cultural context. It is essential to understand the linguistic environment in which a word occurs to ensure the proper understanding of the item in other contexts. Especially for L2 learners, it might be difficult for them to engage in a communicative exchange if the stress and intonation are not right or utterances are not mentioned at the appropriate contextual setting. L2 learners come from different cultures with different norms, so we need to teach them the norms of the new culture by encouraging them to focus on the context of culture and situational setting when engaging in linguistic activities. It is necessary for them to learn the norms of interpretation within the culture to appropriately interact with the community. They will benefit by avoiding to stress intonation on the wrong words or asking a question without sounding rude. It is interesting to read about teaching the appropriate cohesiveness features in sentences that ensure propositional development. This will help the students develop situational context making an interactive exchange communicatively coherent. Even if the communicative interaction between two individuals has utterances that lack cohesiveness, it can turn into a incomprehensible phrase. I enjoyed reading these chapters because this is what I have been learning in my curriculum and instruction classes and using throughout my school years. These chapters offer a variety of ideas and activities that I can use in my future classroom.