INTRODUCTION

In education, teaching is the concerted sharing of knowledge and experience, which is usually organized within a discipline and, more generally, the provision of stimulus to the psychological and intellectual growth of a person by another person.

In the folowing e-folio, we are going to discuss topics that are completely useful for future teachers. tools such as lesson plans, teaching material, and teaching methodologies are important resources that we need to know in order to be good teachers.

Our portfolio covers

Tealearning English is a word game that basicly means teaching and learning English.We decided to take only the three first letters of the word teaching because it refers to the word tea which is an aromatic beverage prepared by pouring hot or boiling water over cured leaves that have taken a long time to be ready as well as teaching style takes time to be developed and polished by teachers.

Then, we have the word learning which according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary  is the activity or processof gaining knoeledge or skill by studying, practicing, being taught,or experiencing something. 
We consider this name fits well with our points of view about this subject which provides us tools to teach and make others learn.

THE CHANGING WORLD OF ENGLISH

THE CHANGING WORLD OF ENGLISH

By the end of the twentieth century, English was already on its way to becoming a genuine lingua franca, that is a language used widely for communication between people who do not share the same first (or sometimes second) language. As you could read, English was necessary to communicate with others. In 1985, Braj Kachru estimated that there were between 320 and 380 million people speaking English as a first language and between 250 and 380 million as a second language, but he predicted that the balance might change.  Kachur´s prediction come true, but in a much higher scale than he might have supposed. This means that English was becoming famous around the world, for it was the principal language of communication as a lingua franca. Though many people were not native English speakers, they were becoming foreign language speakers.

Nowadays, English is still important because many Latin countries have alliances with English speakers countries; therefore, is important and necessary for them to speak English. In our country, English is necessary to get a job, if you do not speak English, you have less chances to get the job then people who do speak it.

In the future,  English will be the first language spoken in many Latin countries because it has become so necessary for many things like communication that is the most important as we said before.

II Lesson plan as a success tool for teachers

To start with this explanation we have to know what a lesson plan is.
A lesson plan is the teacher´s guide for running a particular lesson, and it concludes tha goal (what the students are supposed to learn), how the goal will be reach (the method procedure) and the way of measuring how well the goal was reached (test, worksheet, homework, etc.)
How useful is lesson planning for teacher.
Many times the tachers do not know what to do in their classroom because they do not prepared a lesson plan to develop their classes. At the end of the classes students do not understand and do not learn anything of the class.
Lesson planning is very useful for teachers because it is a guide that helps them to develop a class.
Lesson plan shows an arranged series of steps that the teachers have to follow in order to develop an excellent and successful class and not only the class but also it gives teachers a good environment in the classroom.
A lesson plan is made up by some specific steps we have to take into account when we are designing our lesson plan.
Expectation, learning environment, resources, content, teaching strategies, clossure, and assessment.
b) What are the most useful parts in the lesson plan when teaching VYL?
Lesson plan is made up by many parts all of them are useful and important, butamong them there are other that are more important because they show us what we have to do, how we have to do it, and why we have to do it.
Here we have the steps we consider that are the most important.
Expectation in other words let´s says objectives.
Objectives: are very important, they are the bases of the whole class because if the teacher writes the right general and specifics objectives, and if he or she follows them teacher will know well what to do during the time that  he or she is developing the class.


Writing good objectives and put them into practice, the teacher will show to his or her students what he or she wants to achieve at the end of the class. That is why writing good objectives helps teachers to have the control of the class and to create a good environment.
Teaching strategies: this is another important part of the lesson plan because in this part teacher is going to introduce the topic of the class that is gong to be about through differents activities or dinamics,also students are going to realize if the class is going to be interesting or boring.
Clossure: It is important because is the phase of the lesson plan in which the teacher is going to realize if what he taught was understandable for students, and also clossure is important because in this phase students put into practice what they learnt from the class.
C) What was your own experience with lesson planning?
My experience with lesson planning was very interesting because I learnt how to create it and how to put in practice.
I prepared a lesson plan for every single class I taught I prepared it two or three days in advance for studying and prepared the material I was going to need.
Doing a lesson plan for every class helps a lot because we can take the control of the class; also a lesson plan that has been organized very well helps to achieve all the things we want to.
Teaching is very intersting and it becomes more interesting if we use our lesson plan every class we are going to teach.

III. Comparing traditional teaching and  21st  century teaching

 It is well known that everything in life has to evolve, and Teaching is not the exception.

There are some traits that define 21st century ELT practitioner that we will discuss here. 

1. Internet

We can say that around ten years ago people did not have easy access to internet, but now we all have the oportunity to obtain so much information just by the click of a button.

   Teachers take some advantages of this wonderful tool when it comes to innovating the teaching material, for example, a teacher can present a video to the students to make the lesson entertaining.

2. Technological devices

  To use technological devices in the classroom has become popular in recent years. Since EFL students do not have the opportunity to listen to spoken English every day, they have to use devices such as audio players to get used the language and its proper pronunciation.

  Currently, there is a device which is widely used; we are referring to the smartphone. Both teachers and students own one, and it helps them to improve their English skills by using some apps e.g. electronic dictionaries.

3. Creativity 
 Perhaps this point will not include all the teachers ,but some of them really cares about it.

 Creativity allows teachers to use different material, sometimes develop by themselves, to make lessons more understandable for students.

4. Open Mind

 This is an important point when it comes to dealing with different ways of thinking.

 21st century teachers must have the ability to understand every student's point of view even when they may disagree with it. It is very important for the purpose of manteining a good raport in the classroom.

5. Mistakes

  Sometimes teachers make mistakes in the classroom, but that is a common a normal situation since they are only humans.

 The thing is that in the past teachers were perceived as perfect individuals who did not made mistakes, and if they were wrong,they did not correct themselves. Now, we know it is impossible to be perfect, and we can be mistaken more than zillion times; therefore, the important thing here is to provide the right information to the students especially when they are learning a new language.

6. Realia

 It has been proven that people learn and improve  better when they are exposed to real situations to put into practice what they know about.

 When learning English, students need this type of material to get familiar with possible scenarios in in real life where they will need to use their skills to establish a proper communication.

 materials such as dialogues, short conversations, and readings have been designed to help students get used to the language, but native speakers do not speak like that. That is why real material that teachers present in the classroom helps students to perform better.

7. Patience

 A language is a complex entity which we will discover little by little, but first we need to know the basic things.

 As we know, English is not our mother tongue, but we are pretty interesting in learning it. An English student must know pronunciation,grammar structures, and some phrases of the language, but sometimes all this information is too much to be stored quickly. So teachers must be patient to deal with certain mistakes and help their students overcome them.

7. Lesson Planning

 Today's teachers plan everything that they are going to teach in the classroom, for they must give the students reliable information.

 Teachers cannot assume that their students will learn what they need to know by chance.

 Today's teachers should know what expect to accomplish their objectives aimed to their students' development.

8. Encouragement

 Teachers have an important role in students' life as they can influence their views.

 That is to say that if a teacher empowers his or her students to do their best, they would probably try to do so, but if this teacher does the opposite, his or her students might not improve their skills. Today's English teachers encourage their students to grow and progress academically.

9. Assessment

 Learning material includes more multicultural content based on both local and global resources to help students gain multiple perspectives and understanding.

10. Critical thinking and problem solving

 Today's teachers encourage their students to use different types of reasoning as appropiate to the situation, analyze the context to obtain the best conclusions, and solve different kinds of non-familiar problems by using both traditional and creative ways.

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• Salient traits between NESTs and non-NESTs

The differences between NESTs and non-NESTs lie in their strengths and weaknesses. 

Non-NESTs tend to be more knowledgeable grammar-wise whereas NESTs have the advantage when it comes to vocabulary and pronunciation because they acquired this language since they were little children. 

NESTs need to study more grammar while non-NESTs have to work a bit harder at improving their vocabulary and pronunciation.

NESTs tend to focus harder on pronunciation and vocabulary in order to make their students sound naturally.

Non-NESTs tend to over-teach grammar points as they want their students to use the language properly.

NESTs are much more likely to give stdents better examples of natural language, with a lot of phrasal verbs, idioms, slang because they have already experienced this natural kind of communication.

At the end the difference lies in the teacher’s ability to implantl in students a desire to become better speakers of the language and in the teacher’s capacity to respond to students’ needs and help them feel more confident about their knowledge and prepare their students´ for the world they are going to face.

THE YOUNG LEARNER

IV. THE YOUNG LEARNER

To teach to young learners was an amazing experience for us. Our students behaved in different ways as is expected from students aged 4 to 6 years. Though some of them were willing to participate in class and help the teacher with everything he or she needed to do, others were hoping the morning to finish and go home without doing anything but playing. There were some students able to express themselves; what they want, like, dislike or even hate, but there were others with problems to express their feelings. If they did not like something, they prefered to remain silence than say something afraid of being  ¨punished¨.

Sometimes when they had to work in pairs, they wanted to work with their best friend or to work in an specific table because it was their favorite color. something that caught our attention was that if from X table a student was alone, there was always more that one student that wanted to move to that table to be with him or her, and that is something that we can observe in kids; they love their friends, and they like to help them very time they are able to do it. Some Children like to share the toys or even food, but there are others that cry if someone touches their things. 

We had many creative students able to use their imagination in a way that it was out of our minds. There was a smart little girl  able to say even the mos difficult word to pronounce for her age, and if the teacher asked something from a week ago, she answered without doubting about her answer. 

If we compare the children we taught with the book Tachin English to Children, we can say that their behavior is similar to the kind of children that the book describes.

V. LISTENING, ORAL WORK, READING, AND WRITING

V. LISTENING, ORAL WORK, READING, AND WRITING 

We all agreed that teaching has been a great experience for us since we had the opportunity to learn from children and share with them our knowledge.

When people start learning a new language, they must be exposed to the different forms of it.

It is very important that children get used the language by listening it because at the age of five years old they do not know how to read or write yet.

In fact, Listening is the first skill that children acquired. Children trusted us when they asked for some words, so it meant a big responsibility for us.

We had to be really prepared to face any kind of doubt of question from our students; we did not want to teach them to mispronounce a word.
Children presented some problems when speaking, for example, they could not pronounce "three" properly as they were not accostumed to the language and to its particular pronunciation.

Reading and Writing were skills in which we did not focus so much because they have not learnt how to read or write.

We consider that the most difficult skill to teach is speaking.

Salvadorean children are not interested in learning English yet, and because of their lack of interest they forget easily words and their meanings not to mention pronunciation.

CONTRASTING OUR OWN EXPERIENCES AS A KINDER GARDEN TEACHERS IN EL SALVADOR WITH THE THEORY GIVEN IN BOOKS

Being an English teacher in El Salvador is a difficult task. Children do not care about about the language because they do not need it. 
But children who are learning English as their second language find a way to form part of a big group of native speakers as well as to survive in that environment.

In other words, English has an important and somewhat vital role in their lives.

We think that if children needed the language to survive here in El Salvador, they would engage with the language.

ACTIVITIES TRIED IN CLASSES

We decided to try some of the activities described in the book “Teaching English to Children” in order to accomplish our objectives in our teaching practicum.

When it comes to listening, speaking, reading, and writing, there are some activities that help teachers in developing these children’s skills. Let´s take a look at some of the activities we decided to put into practice.

Moving about

When we asked our students to physically move about, they always used to show excitement about these types of activities.

We usually used them for assessing their understanding of previous topics by using some commands or by asking them to mention what they had learnt before.

This was a successful and useful tool since our students enjoyed doing activities that involved physical movements.

Listen and color

This was an entertaining activity for our students. They have a huge imagination, so they carried out this task in a magnificent way.

They could relate the colors in English to some objects in the classroom and to the color pencils when they were asked to do so.

We did not change anything in these activities; besides, they were helpful and advantageous for both teachers and syudents.

Silhouettes

We used them to present a new a topic in order to make our students feel comfortable in the class. We tried doing silhouettes of an airplane, a bus, and a car to teach means of transportation. Students kept paying attention during the whole presentation of this topic, so it meant this resource caught their interest.

Straight Copying

Since very young learners do not know how to read, it is obvious that they can not write. But it did not mean that our students could not recognize some consonants or vowels. Though they did not understand what they were writing, this experience helped them make contact with spelling -an important feature of the language. 

VI. WHEN THINGS GO WRONG IN CLASS

When things go wrong in class 

By Helen García

Internal Disturbance

In my personal experience, I had to dealt with a cute disturbance in some classes. I had a little boy who always liked to walk around the classroom while I was teaching, and even when his teacher was doing it.

The majority of times I could provide him an activity to do, but he worked so fast that I had to be ready with an extra activity for him. After few days, I could run the situation in a good way knowing that I needed to have some tasks just for him in order to maintan my class in control.

External Disturbance

The most common external disturbance I had to face was the recess as there were so many kids running, playing, and making noise outside the classroom.

It was really difficult to keep talking while other children were outside playing or talking. My students usually were visited by their brothers or sisters during the recess, so it broke our learning atmosphere. 

I learned how to deal with this situation by asking them some things related to the previous topic, by singing songs, or by playing a game that required them to put into practice the things they had been studying. I can say that after some days we did not notice the noise or their relatives’ presence.  

Too Long Activity

I asked my students to fill a drawing using little balls of paper; nevertheless, they did not like to work using that material. They were willing to work with this material at the beginning, but after some time had passed, they seemed unwilling to continue working. All my students started the task, but unfortunately, they could finish it that day.

In my next class, I continued with this topic in order to finally complete it. 

Having experienced that situation, I never carried out another activity similar to that one again.

The tips presented by the book were really helpful for me. I put into practice the ones about the too long activity as I did not know what to do with that unexpected situation. I could solve the other situatiations by using my commom sense, and surprisingly, I acted as the book suggested; thus, the tips it provides are completely advisable for those who are going to work with children.

THE CLASS WENT OUT OF CONTROL

By Hugo Melgar

It happened the first class; there were many children, and I did not have any experience with children. At the beginning, they were very interested because they were going to learn new things about English.

I started the class with a warm up activity, and children enjoyed the activity. I thougth that the class was going to be easy, but it was somewhat difficult.

That day I taught them “the parts of the body”; I chose that topic because it seemed to be easy to learn and teach. When I started to teach the class, children were paying attention, but some minutes later they got bored, and they started to talk to each other, some students wanted to fight. The teacher realized that there was a big noise and that some students wanted to fight, so she talked to them and children calmed down and started to pay attention again.

I continued teaching the topic, but they started to feel bored again. I thougth in developing another activity in order to get students´ attention, so students and I played the activity called “Simon says.” I told them “if the activity works, we are going to colour” and they understood very well, so the activity worked very well.

I learnt a little bit how to deal with little kids; also, I learnt that a class can finish very well even though if it starts bad, but if we as teacher know how to deal with that terrible situation, we are going to be saccesful teachers.

The tips in the book are useful for TVYLs because they help us how to deal with children and how to deal when the class goes out of control. If I had not read that chapter, I would not have known what to do with that problem.

by Susana Martínez

In my experience as a teacher, I had only two problems while I was teaching:

 1-  There was a boy that had to take medicine prescript for his psychologist to behave and not to punch other kids, but he ran out of medicine in the middle of the month, so he started o misbehave and punch other kids. The problem was that if I said something to him, he would have started to cry and even punch me sometimes, but I could handle it by putting him to help me to do some activities because he liked to help.

  2-   Another problem was that sometimes the teacher had things to do with some kids, so she asked me to teach them for more time than usual. The problem was that she never told me that in advance, so I did not prepare anything extra the first time, but I started to prepare some things to be ready for those situations. 

Fortunately I had a small group, so I did not have any other problem.

VII. THE TOOLS OF THE TRADE

VII. THE TOOLS OF THE TRADE

In our teaching practice classes, we used some tools that helped us so much to teach, and they are the following.

*Board games: this tool was very useful in our classes because children payed attention and they showed interest in the class, this tools worked very well.

*Toys: this tool is one of the most useful because children like playing with toys. We used this tool in order to teach little kids because they understand and feel excited to learn new things; also, toys help teacher connect the child´s world outside the classroom to what is happening inside the classroom.

*Wallcharts:  also it was very useful and important because the kids felt happy when they saw the draws that was on the charts and they can know the name of objects, animal, and other things.

*English corner: It is another important tool because children felt happy when they started to see all the chart that the teacher used in the class stuck on the wall, and if they do not remember something they only went to the english corner in order to remember the things they had forgoten.

Useful	useless
Puppets	Class mascot
Paper dolls	Card board boxes
English corner	Word sentence cards
Pictures cards	Word card display (flexible order)
Card games	Word displays (inflexible order)
Transparencies	Book reading cards
Calendar
Clock

We classified the tools in useful and in useless.

The tools we classified as useful are very important and easy to put into practice with little kids as these tools are easier to understand for little kids because they are not ver complex, and little kids feel more confortable, pay more attention and obviously learn better.

We classified the tools in useless because sometimes these tools ca be very complex and children can turn bored because of that tools, sometimes children are not accustomed to things that are complex and they do not pay attention and the classes turn boring. The classes can turn boring because teacher uses complex tools and sometimes these tools do not help children in their learning because they do not understand what to do.

We as teachers have to find and apply tools that are suitable for the age of the children in this way they are going to learn very well what we are teaching.

VIII. Assessment about how useful the TVYL practice is in our way to become an ELT teacher

VIII. Assessment about how useful the TVYL practice is in our way to become an ELT teacher

By Helen García

Most of the time I feel confident about my language skills as I can understand the meaning of a speech or share my ideas, but when I face a stressful situation, for example a presentation, I get anxious. Even though I know this feeling is something commom among students or people that have to be in front of an audience, I still feel afraid of having a bad time because of it.

In spite of this treacherous feeling, I have improved so much my English proficiency by losing the fear of speaking in class even though I continue making some mistakes which I need to overcome in order to succed as an English language student. Besides reading some teaching books was a task so entertaining for me that I did not notice I was learning new vacabulary in the process. I feel satisfied with my improvement as I know so many things I used to ignore. I will keep learning everyday, for there is so much knowledge I do not know yet.

It takes time and needs dedication to develop English proficiency, but it is very important since I will be a teacher, and students will trust my words. I enjoyed teaching so much; I learned from my students so many priceless things that have changed my life positively and encouraged me to do my best.

               by Susana Martínez

One of the things that I know that I am good at it is to speak in front of people, but the problem is that I get too excited and speak so fast that I make basic grammar mistakes sometimes, but this course helped me a lot with this because we had to do many presentations in front of our classmates.

Though sometimes I felt frustrated because I did not feel ready, I had the opportunity to learn from my mistakes, improve my weakest points and overcome some mistakes too, but I know that I still have many things to learn and improve, things in which I will continue working to become a better student and teacher.

What I enjoyed the most during this process was to work with kids because though I was the teacher, they taught me many things that I will carry with me till the end, things that have helped me to be better, and that have encouraged me to do and give my best every day.

TEACHING MATERIALS

X. TEACHING MATERIALS

Teaching materials are the resources a teacher uses to deliver instruction. Each teacher requires a range of tools to draw upon in order to assist and support student learning. These materials play a large role in making knowledge accessible to a learner and can encourage a student to engage with knowledge in different ways.

Some of the most useful teaching materials are: 

1- Posters: porters are very useful when teaching because they help the teacher to call student´s attention, for posters contain no letter, just pictures, and they are also colorful. poster can be made with recyclable paper, color paper, drawings, pictures or printed images.

2- Charts: Charts are the most common teaching material used for teachers. Though charts are very useful to teach, if they are not well made, they can be a disaster. Some of the things that we need to take in to account when making charts is that the letter needs to be big enough for everyone to see it, it has to be legible, and it does not have to contain spelling mistakes.

3- Cartoon strips: Cartoon strips are very interesting and can be really useful to teach. You can use them to teach a series of classes. You can start one day just with two or three images and continue adding more the following days, so students will be expecting for new images and for what they are going to learn that day. One hings that we need to take in to account with this is that if they are not colorful or creative enough for kids, they will lose interesting in that and will get bored easily. 

4- Puppets: Puppets can be really interesting for kids, but the problem is that they are a little bit hard to do and sometimes kids already know that it is the teacher who is holding the puppets, so they sometimes try to grab them when the teacher is using them. When that happens, the teacher can no longer use them because students do not pay attention to the class anymore. 

Every teaching material has its advantages and disadvantages. The most common ones are the lack of creativity, and the miss used of them. To create a good chart or, poster, or any teaching material, you need to think about what you are going to teach and how you want to do it, then think about the size of it and do not be afraid of using colors, kids really like that, but be careful to because sometimes less is more.