Teaching English in a Secondary School !

Well it’s time to “take the bull by the horns”, today I have definetely made up my mind to write my project on SPEAKING and to use this blog as portfolio.

My name is Rosa Saló and I’ve been teaching English for 18 years. The main reason for choosing this topic to work on is that speaking is the skill in which I have worked less throughout my teaching career. It was just two years ago when I became more aware of it. Since I began working on it, in a serious way, a lot of things have changed but a lot more are still to change.

Teachers sometimes are not aware of our students’ needs, we should adapt our teaching and the materials we use accordingly. Why isn’t speaking more important than reading or writing?

Students, especially beginners, easily get frustrated because they want to express sophisticated thoughts and find themselves reduced to “childlike” state when they have to speak in English.

It these two years I have seen that is important to have a relaxing and supportive atmosphere in the class, it should be fun but also positive and, of course, business-like without forgetting to praise, encourage and motivate most of the students we have in front of us.

For that reason many opportunities must be given to the students to practise speaking and, in all those cases, the teacher will evaluate fluency more than accuracy.

I have decided to use a teacher Portfolio[1] because it is a tool for lifelong learning and professional development. It is a very useful when you are thinking, writing and talking about your teaching past, present or future. With this portfolio I will keep a record of my own and my department achievements and reflect on our teaching practice and experiences, especially those related to improving our students’ oral competence.

[1] You can read Olga Esteve’s article: El portafoli en la formació de professorat un intrument de servei i reflexió

or Philippa Butle’s Review of the Literature on Portfolios and Eletronic Portfolio (especially page 5) ePortfolio Project Reserch Report