Public School English Teaching

Classroom space and Seating Arrangement (physical space-big/small rooms) Teachers must consider that students are members of a team; they should be able to see each other and to talk one another in English, and to facilitate interaction among them. One alternative of doing so is to arrange the classroom in patters of semi-circles, U-shapes, or concentric circles on large classes. If the class size is small, only one circle may need. In classes where the students come from different language background, it is preferably students do not sit next to each other of the same native language speaking; English will be more practiced in the classroom. Brown (2001).

After teaching the first two classes with this group of learners, I realized that neither the big amount of 40 students nor the space given for them as the classroom were positive factors in these English classes, and these issues might also interfere with the learning process, likely these two problematic aspects call my attention so much that I decided to execute some classroom management strategies looking forward to achieve a more pace classes and a stressful free environment as well. I also wanted to highlight that even the students were willing to participate in different group activities planned in advance because they were screaming “teacher me” or they were raising their hands up .It was impossible to carry out as a result of the fact that there was not enough space for these activities take place, therefore, I was pretty disappointed because I thought that throughout these activities not only the rapport would be enhanced but also would positive benefit this process too.

45 On the contrary, the 20% of teachers who answered that there were 26 to 30 students worked at night. In the same way, 7% of teachers who indicated that classes have between16 to 25 students also worked in evening hours. In the observed public high schools with night schedules there were adult students who work during the morning, they have not completed their studies, and need a High School Diploma to enter the university. Similarly, there were young students who help their parents at home or private business and they study at night. An important aspect observed in these classes was the high amount of absent students. That fact influenced class size because there were fewer students than usually and it was not possible to observe the teaching- learning process under real conditions.

metacognition and self-monitoring and (5) persistence. TBL was implemented for about two months with a group of English learners of a public school in Medellin, Colombia. The sample for this study was 20 students of tenth grade whose ages ranged between 15 and 18 years old. This is a case study framed within the qualitative approach. For data collection, the researcher used semi-structured interviews, surveys, and video recordings. The findings of this study suggest that TBL fosters ownership of learning as the participants clearly showed behavioral, cognitive and emotional engagement; self-directedness to achieve goals, a raise of self-confidence and self-efficacy to develop different tasks; planning, monitoring and evaluation of their learning process; as well as persistency despite the difficulties they had to face during the methodology implementation. The study concludes that TBL exerted a positive effect on each of the key aspects comprised in the ownership of learning model enriching the English language learning process.

Students need ample space because crowding causes problems. For example, a high-density school influences achievement negatively. The consequences of high density conditions that involve either too many children or too little space are: excess levels of simulation; stress and arousal; a drain on resources available; considerable interference; reductions in desired privacy levels; and loss of control. Coyne (2011) suggests that the capacity of students in a classroom is 25. About 30 to 40 square feet should be used per student. When giving instructions and tutoring in small groups, the schools should have small classrooms as well.

infrastructure. As a result of this study, it was identified that many teachers only use textbooks, dictionaries, workbooks and posters to teach English. Moreover, many schools have dilapidated buildings and these are used for classroom activities. Finally, the authors conclude that many schools have no adequate staff rooms and offices, and there are not enough supplementary materials to improve the teaching and learning process. During this study the authors did not find any limitations. Another important study was conducted by Subedi (2003) which had as purposes to identify how the interaction between instructional resources and class size is, which is the availability of the resources in every school observed, and how the class size affects the achievement of the students. As a result of this study, it was determined that the class size has influence in the achievement of the students; the effect was very negative because teachers need more materials and resources in large classes, and they have no available enough materials in the schools. As

discover how are we learning and teaching English language in some specific settings, especially in public institution where this project will be developed. Defining how learners learn and thus creating specific content for these purposes is such a relevant way to be innovative and pertinent when designing better or at least feasible ways to implement the teaching of English to conquer better results on the way this language is taught but also learnt. For this reason, Fleming (2006) mentions that” each student has different ways of learning due to the fact that they have different needs, knowledge and learning processes in terms of acquiring a second language “ (N.P) Thence, he proposes some strategies to be considered for each student and also the way students learn a second language. Those strategies are: Aural, record his/her summary notes and listen to the tape; read and write, reformulate ideas and fundamental principles for a deeper understanding; Kinaesthetic, using all senses to express and discover new knowledge and stuff; and Visual, looking at pictures, graphic organizers, videos, posters, slides, etc. These strategies are important at the time to teach in order to have a successful learning process as Howard (1983) stated that when students’ needs are met, they are engaged in their learning. However, when students are uninterested they get bored and sometimes resort to disruptive behavior. Therefore, it is necessary for the teacher the understanding of students’ learning styles in order to focus your lessons on a specific pre-design curriculum or syllabus for each intervention.

Nowadays, the learning of English language is considered something very essential. It is used in almost all areas of knowledge and human development. Regrettably, most of the students of Ecuador that finish high-school recognize that they do not have a good level of English that will allow them to have an effective academic development. Consequently, students often lose a lot of opportunities such as jobs with better payment, trips, immersion programs, opportunities to improve their creativity and self-confidence to develop any work that involves English. For this reason, it is essential to do a research about the factors that affect the English language-teaching learning process, especially in Ecuadorian public high schools, in order to find out some practical alternatives that will help to the improvement of the students’ English level and to the teaching - learning process.

Law 115, (1994) states the mandatory teaching of a foreign language in public elementary schools. Although this Law does not explicitly state that the foreign language is English, that is a common assumption and all public Colombian schools have adopted English. Unfortunately this still is a problem for Elementary school teachers because they have not had the preparation to teach English and it is a constant struggle for them to comply with the requirements of the Ministry of Education, therefore taking in consideration what is mentioned before, local efforts can be made to provide some training courses to local language teachers, as well as those primary teachers who need to teach English to students that belong to this level so that the procedures, techniques and attitudinal characteristics of “María” would be involved in the process described in this paper.

the lesson, block and annual plans as the base, which allows them going forward, backward, or even remain more time than planned on a determined lessons to review, repeat and reinforce, if it was necessary. In addition, since a plan gives a wide view of the total school year, the lessons can continue faster depending on the level of students assimilating the topics. Moreover, planning permits teachers to have a historical report of the past and coming lessons, besides having a complete view of the whole year, considering teachers and students ’ roles and needs to adjust changes and improvements to have a successful teaching- learning process. About this Butt (2009, p. 1-2) states, “The key to good teaching, purposeful class management and the achievement of sustained educational progress lies in effective planning. Learning does not occur by chance ”

Gonzalez Pelaez, (2008) observed and described two English teachers who got their undergraduate degree at the National University in Bogotá. Interviews and observation sheets were used to collect the data. Regarding interviews, the format employed was based on Seidman’s proposal (1998) about the use of the three-interview series (sets of interviews) designed by Dolbare and Schuman (Schuman, 1982,cited by Sleidman, 1998); The researcher found that developing communicative competence in students implied more aspects than of the language itself. Teachers focused on students’ needs, interaction in the classroom and materials for every class.

Teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) in rural educational centers in the department of Antioquia presents a different dynamic with respect to urban institutions; in these rural schools it is important to determine the teaching dynamics and to value the processes of inclusion and exclusion that are perpetuated in their educational dynamics based on the guidelines of international and national public policies. This research is an exploratory and descriptive study of government documents and curricular guidelines for teaching English as a foreign language is used, the study of research projects and the assessment of educational dynamics identifies the need to expand the number of credits and hours of teaching in the English area, strengthen the training of primary school teachers with minimum English levels of B1 and B2 to respond to the needs of students in rural schools, which would similarly strengthen educational quality and present greater opportunities for the region.

Being this said, it is time to see how the objectives were met. First at all, the general objective was based on analyzing how second graders perform their agency. The first specific objective was based on identifying the strategies the students used in order to develop their agency. As a matter of fact, the students used of their creativity and their knowledge that was usually. On the other hand, the second specific objective was focused on explaining the involvement of those strategies in the development of the activities in the classroom. In fact, this way of teaching in which the teacher is not the only person who imparts knowledge, was useful as children could become agents since a very young age which might guide them in their life decision. For sure, this was just the beginning and I hope, I am not the only one who wants to develop this methodology. Despite the fact that future teachers at the university have great ideas, sometimes principals at schools can be reluctant towards changes. For sure, many factors might impede this to happen: the number of students, the time, the space and the will from both teacher and students.

Perhaps, this particular point is of essence in Ecuadorian public high schools today, mainly because of the number of students that a public school teacher has to handle on a daily basis, which does not allow him or her to pay much individual attention to one particular student, even if they have all the good intention to do it, there is simply not enough time, which is 40 minutes or 45 in the best cases. It was observed that when teachers wished to review materials, such as quizzes, homework, or simply run an indiviual performance quiz, they did it in two class periods, in other words in 80 minutes. For this reason, they preferred group activities to teach their lesssons.

objectives to be achieved are not met. This is why the case study will be our tool to: Create a didactic and innovated material that meets the characteristics of a book that engage second grade students and making them improve their language skills focused on the speaking and listening. This case study helps us to identify possible problems after knowing in depth our object of study. With relevant data collected, we will be able to identify conventional factors for the creation of our didactic material, the idea is that when designing this material, it has the appropriate characteristics so that it yields good results in learning and teaching, taking into account the contents, the methodology, strategies and dynamics of the class in contrast to the book based on didactic activities and reliable information. Taking into account the above, as researchers we must realize each problem, since it is what allows us to have a clearer idea of the product we are going to design focused on the students’ encouragement and the skills’ development contributing on the second grade students’ needs.

81 pero, pero entender eso para cuarto, que es uno de los temas que uno tiene que ver ahí según el currículo que le dan a uno, eh, como que yo decía, no. Yo miraba videos, yo preguntaba a los compañeros licenciados en inglés y unos decían una cosa, otros decían otra, o sea las versiones se cambiaban, ¿yo a quién le creo?, o sea ¿cuál es la realidad? ¿Sí? Hasta que hace poco le pregunté al profesor del ILUD y ya más o menos comprendí, o sea no era como me lo decían. (Yes, “how much” and “how many”, that I don’t know if I’m even pronouncing it the right way, but, to understand that is part of some of the topics that they have to learn in fourth grade according to the curriculum that we are given, and I said like “no”. I would watch videos, I would ask some of my co-workers who are English teachers and some said one thing, others said another thing, I mean, the versions changed. Who do I believe? I mean, what’s the reality? Yeah? Until I recently asked my English teacher at ILUD and I kind of understood, I mean, it was not what I had been told.)

the ICT resources used in the course, specifying the educational usefulness on a five-point scale (i.e. 1: totally useless; 2: slightly useful; 3: useful; 4: very useful; 5: most useful). Added to that, the course evaluation was also looked at on the questionnaire. An open-ended question was included to gain knowledge of training teachers’ choice of assessment tools (question 10). We were particularly interested in establishing not only effectiveness, but also detecting if any evaluation instrument failed to assess trainees. Besides, we were curious about trainers’ confidence to reach course objectives in the unique context these courses take place at: taught entirely in English by teachers for teachers in a very short period of time. Therefore, training teachers were asked if they considered it necessary to have any kind of didactic training (question 13). Instructors were also encouraged to report on lear- ners’ attitude, motivation and expectations, as we were curious to know their perceptions of students’ performance in these courses (questions 6 and 7). Finally, we aimed at finding out if training teachers believed that courses met students’ expectations (question 14), as we already had students’ views on this issue (Pena and Olivares, 2011), and thus we could compare and contrast both sides of the topic. 6

Meetings and conversations with the principals of the school were conducted in order to make this investigation possible. Since one of the aims was not to cause troubles for the institution, an appointment was scheduled with the head master, director and the teacher in charge of 3rd grade from the high-school in order to talk about the project and ask for permission to conduct the study. Once the researcher had the approval to accomplish the investigation, the participants were told about the inquiry in a very understandable language about the project. Hence, they were informed about the new English class with music during the period of two months. Students did not opposite to the idea and decided to make part of the investigation. Moreover, in order to protect the integrity of the people involved in the study, pseudonyms were used with the purpose to keep the real identity of the high-school and people during the collection of the data process.

and the results from the observation sheets. The information from the teacher`s questionnaires was taken to describe the results of the research, and the information, from the other instruments, was used to interpret and contrast the results with an important argument of discussion. Upon observation of these incidents, this research evidences that the factors which most affect the English language teaching-learning process in Ecuadorian public high schools are factors concerning classrooms, because of the conditions in which they are kept, such as the class size, classroom space, seating arrangement, and teaching resources. Definitely they are not suitable for a correct English language teaching-learning process.

The aim of the first study was to investigate the effects of resources and class size on stude nts’ achievement. This study was done by Subedi (2003) and consisted on selecting a sample of teacher from 30 different high schools in Nepal who answered questionnaires to gather information of their teaching practices in all the classes; they also answers a final survey based on the feedback provided by the questionnaires. The analysis of the results showed that there was little effect of class size on average classroom achievement. Besides, the effects of teaching resources on the learning process were positive but decreased as the class size increased. Therefore the researchers conclude that achievement increases when teaching resources are used appropriately but class size affects negatively the learning process.