The objective of my personal Project implementation was “the implementation of activities for software programming in the context of an English language learning class, to promote the use of the English language in real work situations.”
The first part of my project was to find out information on what do the students use in their working life related with English. I made three interviews and it was very surprising for me to find that they had to do lots of thing in English, not only programming, but sometime reading texts, analyzing complete manuals, and the most surprising, writing the manuals themselves, something that in my opinion requires lots of knowledge on the language.
On the other hand I wanted to know what was going on in class meanwhile they are learning with me, the answer was also surprising. When I observed teacher Edith’s session and when I interviewed her I discovered that even some of the students who have a good proficiency level felt insecure when using the programs in English, and they always try to find the Spanish version, although sometimes it does not even exist. That gave me the idea that they feel insecure when facing the language challenges.
All that information made me wonder again, what material should I include in the project implementation? What could be the best way to include the software information in class due to the limitations on time and the curriculum given by SENA? At the beginning I thought in creating complete sessions of software in English, but then I realized that I would have time limitations and that it would be redundant with what they do in class, I would also have difficulties with computers, additionally I am supposed to stick to the program created by SENA, it opened my eyes and I realized the it was not going to work. That is why I decided to include the software embedded inside the topics of the course, not separately, so for example when I was teaching “there is, there are” I also included the vocabulary of a program menu and they described it; When we were talking about giving instructions, they created a tutorial for a software program, and so on. It made it easier for the teacher and softer for the students.
In terms of motivation it really surprised me, unfortunately I lost some of the class recordings but let me tell you that there were moments that the inclusion of software vocabulary or software topics transformed an ordinary class into a passionate discussion where everybody wanted to participate.
One of the hardest parts is to decide what to include and when to do it, I think I need to work a little more on that, experience some other possibilities and make decisions based on the classes given trimester b trimester. Another issue that makes me wonder is if the real effectiveness of what I am doing, that is why I asked the teacher Edith Nancy to help me keep track of the students that she knows feel scared with the English. We are still waiting for the results but so far it seems that is working.
The best part of all this process was to witness that small changes can cause an important impact in the learning process of the students. And that the reflecting on your own teaching may bring lots of nice consequences. Additionally for me was very interesting to see me teaching, sometimes you make a picture in your mind but then when you observe yourself from other point of view the things change a lot. Actually it was one of the biggest surprises, I also gave me more ideas on what to improve in my own teaching.
