Final Project
Facultad de Filosofía, Letras y Ciencias de la Educación
Escuela de Lenguas y Lingüística
Class of 2012 – American Literature
Who we are
Who we are
We are students from Fifth English Course at University of Guayaquil. We became classmates since we were in Third Course and we have been working in group work in different subjects for almost three years, that is why we think that we are an excellent team because no matter the subject or the topic in which we work on because each one is reliable and responsible at the moment of working together.
Hi, my name is Anibal Molina. I am in Fifth Course at the University of Guayaquil. I am a French teacher. I just started to believe in God and in people working for people. I do not believe in religions.
I would like to finish the University as soon as possible. I plan to work in a public high school during a year, and then I would like to live in Brazil and work there using my language abilities.
My name is Martha Atiencia. I am Fifth Course at the University of Guayaquil. My main goals when I finish the university are to continue with my studies to get my Master degree as an English teacher and work in an excellent high school. After that I would like to take my studies at Benedict again, finish with excellent grades and get a major as a traslator. I would also love working at the Oro Verde Hotel. Finally, I would like to learn about different methodologies to teach to my future students.
I am Giomara Jiménez, I am 28 years old. I am married and I have 2 children.
My short term plans for next year are working on my final project, at the same time, get a job in a private school to get experience. Later on, I would love to apply for a teacher job´s position in a public school. Another goal that I also have is to finish my TEFL program at "Universidad Casa Grande". As soon as I finish my bachelor degree, I would like to apply for a scholarship program and travel to the United States.
My name is Mauricio Loor, I am a student from the University of Guayaquil. This year I will finish my career and my goal is to become an English teacher. I would like to create an educative institution with my wife who is also a teacher and help disadvantages children in El Guasmo. But, I would also like to learn more English and I want to travel to the United States.
My country/City. Sightseeing places
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| Baños de Agua Santa (TUNGURAHUA ECUADOR) |
Baños
Baños is in a valley which has a temperate climate and it is a peaceful little city on the slopes of Tungurahua Volcano at 1,820 meters above sea level.
The city is also a Roman Catholic religious center, as some Catholic believers say that the Virgin Mary appeared nearby a waterfall. So a sculpture of the virgin, called Virgen de Agua Santa, was placed in the cathedral. The history of the town is intimately linked with the highly active
Tungurahua volcano.
Baños as reliable historical data, there was no a founder or no founding date. Just was populated with the arrival of small scattered groups of Indians (before the conquest. It was talk that our city was founded by the Spanish in 1553, but this is not certainly because at the beginning was almost populated by the kind of men of Lagoa Santa (Brazil), who entered by the Pastaza River basin to the limit with the Andes.
Baños is also an excellent place to learn Spanish, as its population is famous for good pronunciation and this city offers adventure sports such as trekking, horse-trekking, canoeing, mountain climbing and mountain bike. Nowadays, It is known as the "Gateway to the Amazon", as it is located on the Pastaza River.
Link Information: http://www.enjoyecuador.net/english/guiadestinos/banos-ecuador/banos-banos.shtml
My classes
American Literature
Objective
Our objective in this course we survey selected American authors representing the major authors, literary movements and fragments of the most significant works of literature produced in the U.S. since its beginnings to the present date. It also helps future teachers to improve their reading, communicative and critical thinking skills, letting them express judgments and comments about some chapters and creating a greater cultural awareness when exposed to essays, poetry, literary or film adaptations of the fragments.
Literary Event
The Slavery (1615-1865)
Source:http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Jc1RbUxQv4E
While many people came to the new world in search of riches, many others were brought against their will to the Western Hemisphere to be sold as slaves.
Slavery in America began when the first African slaves were brought to the North American colony of Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619, to aid in the production of such lucrative crops as tobacco. Slavery was practiced throughout the American colonies in the 17th and 18th centuries, and African-American slaves helped build the economic foundations of the new nation.
Actual Information
Each 2 December the General Assembly of the United Nations celebrates the international day for the abolition of slavery. This date is very important, especially for all black people around the world, because it means that humanity thinks about black people as honest folk with the same human rights. We hope that racial segregation does not exist never more in our planet.
Source: http://www.un.org/en/events/slaveryabolitionday/
Olaudah Equiano
He was born in approximately 1745 in what is now Nigeria. He wrote an autobiography about his life, which recounts being kidnapped from Africa as a child and sold into slavery. He bought his freedom and became part of the abolition movement. Equiano’s account is considered an originator of the slave narrative. He died on March 3, 1797, in London.
Source: http://www.biography.com/people/olaudah-equiano-39207
Open House
It was a nice experience for all of us. Anibal and Giomara worked together; they did an explanation about Anne Bradstreet ; Mauricio characterized Olaudah Equiano and Martha acted out in The Scarlett Letter as Hester.
The most important message for us was that through this chapter of his autobiography Olaudah showed that despite of being slaves they were human beings and in this narrative he talked about the worst conditions that he lived on the ship.
In this picture Mauricio is representing Olaudah Equiano, the Opression that salves suffered in that time, when they were abused and punished by other people.
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| This picture represents the age at that time. |
Reflective learning.
We believed that the teacher framed the classes and tasks through the constructivist approach, encouraging the students to build knowledge.Constructivism
It is a theory of learning and an approach to education. . Von Glasersfeld describes constructivism as, “a theory of knowledge with roots in philosophy, psychology, and cybernetics” (p 162).[1] Simply stated, it is a learning process which allows a student to experience an environment first-hand, thereby, giving the student reliable, trust-worthy knowledge. The student is required to act upon the environment to both acquire and test new knowledge.
In this pictures we were preparing our open House, it was delightful because all students helped to build this knowledge. We worked together, we constructed knowledge through the practice in the classroom with our classmates .
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| This picture is represented the Film “The Scarlett Letter” |
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| Giomara and Anibal in the Open House. |
The motivation for learning
It is very important to be motívated when we learn a subject, in this case in American Literature we were motivated for our teacher and classmates. According to Von Glasersfeld (1989) sustaining motivation to learn is strongly dependent on the learner’s confidence in his or her potential for learning. These feelings of competence and belief in potential to solve new problems, are derived from first-hand experience of mastery of problems in the past and are much more powerful than any external acknowledgment and motivation.
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| Yomaira made the costumes for some participants. |
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| All of us were motivated to work the Open House. |
With this dance and the sketch, we motívated other students to study American Literature because it is really interesting.
The role of the instructor
In this case, Miss Glenda Morales helped us during the American Literature Open House, she gave us ideas for our stands. Miss Glenda was with us, and she contributed with new ideas. We belive that she is an excellent instructor for the students.
Instructors as facilitators
According to the social constructivism approach, instructors have to adapt to the role of facilitators and not teachers When a teacher gives a didactic lecture that covers the subject matter, a facilitator helps the learner to get to his or her own understanding of the content. In the former scenario the learner plays a passive role and in the latter scenario the learner plays an active role in the learning process.
Dynamic
In our Open House there was a lot of Dynamic between us, because all enjoyed working with our outhors or in my case I was very dynamic with the role The Scarlett Letter. It was very fantastic, I really enjoyed with my partners.
Collaboration
The collaboration is very important into the Constructivism, because in this step we have to work together and in the Open House we had a lot of collaboration to accommodate the scenery for this event.
Technology
Values
Responsibility
It was a work where responsibility was underlined for each student.We divided the task and everyone made it from his own. On weekends we got together and shared the necessary information, finally we accomplished our assignment.
How does help us this theory in American Literature as a Second Language?
The constructivism is very important not only in this subject but in all subjects, because this theory will help the students to build the knowledge.Link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivism_(learning_theory)#Historical_and_Theoretical_Roots
Linguistics
Objective
The objective of this Linguistic task is to help students improve their pronunciation and learn creative ways to reinforce language.Activity during the semester
One activity that we had to accomplish as students was working with a Tongue Twister, as future teachers we had to apply this in a mini class in order to work with multiple intelligences with the whole class.
All of us were motivated to work with this activity because it made us look up for some techniques that could be useful for our students; we researched on internet for resources that we saw as new methods to develop by following different strategies in our mini class.
Those are the links that Miss Glenda gave us as a resource in order to work on our project.
http://esl.about.com/od/englishlistening/a/ttwister_master.htm
http://www.uebersetzung.at/twister/en.htm
Reflective Learning
It is the process of internally examining and exploring an issue of concern, triggered by an experience, which creates and clarifies meaning in terms of self, and which results in a changed conceptual perspective.
http://jhp.sagepub.com/content/23/2/99.abstract
One of our tasks in our Linguistic class were the Tongue Twisters. All the students were assigned to choose a Tongue Twister, presented in a mini-class using all the innovative resources to have an innovative mini-class, interactive and using relia.
Our tasks as students started because we needed to choose from a long list a tongue, which we could use in a mini class with our classmates in order to apply multiple intelligences with all of them.
Technology
We used technology by searching on internet pictures and videos according to the Tongue Twister that we have chosen.
Our goal was to apply musical intelligence in order to motivate students by breaking paradigms, it means that we made them sing the Tongue Twister.
Nowadays, Technology is important because in this global world, we have to be according to the actual system where students are using technology and we can make an interactive communication between teachers and students.
Source: http://www.buzzle.com/articles/importance-of-technology-in-schools.html
Colaborative Work
In addition to the previous information, we also observe a great collaborative work. For example, we followed up all the activities that each group did and everybody learned of each other.
Source: http://flesl.net/Teaching/pair_work.html
Values
We also applied values in our work. For example: We showed respect of our classmates´ work, by giving comments and encouragement for their work.
We were sincere with our opinions about the explanation of their activities, by telling our opinion in a kindly and thoughtful way.
http://www.k12.hi.us/~mkunimit/honesty.htm
Something else that Tongue Twisters involved was «Multiple Intelligences».
There are different kinds of students in a classroom and that is an important
reason for Miss Glenda made us apply one or more multiple intelligence in our
presentation.
While we were doing our research we realized that Multpiple Intelligences play an important role at the moment of teaching.
We could identify that each person has a different kind of learning,
we applied this activity in ourselves first and then we can apply it when we
will be teaching to our students.
Musical intelligence: the ability to understand and create music. Musicians, composers and dancers show a heightened musical intelligence.
"Being intelligent does not always mean that someone tests well -- a problem with Which teachers and school administrators have struggled since the earliest days of organized education." Howard GardnerSource: http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/curr054.shtml
Teacher´s Role
Our teacher accomplished the role of Prompter while we were doing this activity. She encouraged us to achieve more and she was feeding in a bit of information and language to help us proceed.
Source: How to teach English, Jeremy Harmer, 2007 pag. 25.
