Technical-Computer English Cultural Factors Cooperative Learning Teaching-learning process

Speaking skill is the productive skill in the oral mode. Like the other skill, speaking is more complicated that seems at first and involves more than just pronouncing words. There are five components of speaking skill that can be defined as follows: pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension. To be a good speaker the English learners have to master all of the components. However, besides those linguistic components above there are many factors that influence speaking ability. Cooperative learning method can be an appropriate method to use in teaching learning process to improve students speaking skill. Cooperative learning method has several techniques that stimulate the student to make verbal interaction with the other member of the class. Cooperative learning method is a method that divides the class member to several groups and arranges the students to work in a group. This method is useful to encourage the students’ activeness and responsibility to their own self and their team members. (Darsini, 2013)

capabilities of the Ecuadorians to a high level of education becomes one of the most important pillars to face the difficulties of a world that is undergoing major crisis and with little favorable conditions of life. At the same time, it also will help to improve the skills of the students and it enables them to be integral people and human beings of quality. For this reason, teaching English as a foreign language in all stages of education is very important because it allows learners to understand different cultures, become competent in different areas and be able to get new achievements beating all the new challenges that they find on the way applying their own knowledge, experience, and cultural heritage.

Abu-Rabia (1996) conducted other a research to determine how students’ attitudes and cultural backgrounds affect their reading comprehension of familiar and unfamiliar information in their first and second language. Eighty three students from two intermediate schools in southern Israel participated in the study. Most of the participants in both schools were from families of low socioeconomic status, and they studied English 5 hours a week. The method used was quantitative. Data was collected through reading tests and questionnaires. During the research process, the participants completed a 15-rain pretest about the stories they were to read in the investigation. A week after the pretest, the participants were administered a 20-rain questionnaire to assess their attitudes toward learning English. The reading tests were administered 2 days later; each group of participants received one story a day for 3 days.

With the results of both data collections, the authors learned that the book had a section of enhanced practice of the linguistic forms and reading skills. On the other hand, the study showed that the text book lacked sufficient listening and speaking practice, thus leading to a reduced practice of speaking skills in class. The book also does not give enough cultural diversity for the students to learn about other cultures and consequently lack use of different expressions used in such contexts. Other important findings include the lack of complementary and support material such as video or CD’s which can support exercises of listening and speaking.

The use of adequate resources is imperative in any class, especially with second language learners. Gower, Phillips & Walters (2005), mention that the use of a board in a classroom is quite vital; and, the utilization of an overhead projector has become popular in recent times. But, real objects, pictures, flashcards, CD players, worksheets, games and, the use of a computer inside the class, are the most common and useful resources that educators handle during the teaching-learning process. Focusing on the same theme, Woodward (2009) refers to dictionaries of many types, as practical tools as well as the course books; which include recordings, workbooks, and readings. It is considered by the researcher as a “central tool”. Besides, the study implies that using rods to point out specific items during the class is important. Thus it says that other important tool that teachers can utilize is the pictures pack which can be performed by educators and it is broadly used in teaching EFL

International relationships are constantly opening doors and linking nations and societies; it also presents diverse and creative contributions in economic, educational, cultural, and social fields. In the same way, it generates opportunities to get to know and be known around the world. In consequence, different communities had been motivated to evaluate English proficiency levels and programs offered to their population- students, teachers and professionals- in order to take action to improve these; or just to take a step forward in the pursuit to reach excellence.

As we have seen in the graphs above the number of students is another decisive factor that teachers consider affect the development of a productive teaching-learning process. One of the int erviewed teachers said “As we know thousands of public schools across the country are seeing their class size swell because of budget cuts and teacher layoff, undermining a decade-long push not only by parents but administrator and policy makers to shirk c lasses’ size”. In fact, how the number s of students in classes have risen across the country has been directly affecting the teaching-learning process. Do you use teaching resources (TV, tape/cd recorder, computer(s), projector (s), smart board, and supplementary materials)?

Another frequently used resource was the projector, which was used along with the computer to present slideshows, video and specially designed software for smart boards. All of the monitored institutions had this resource available for teachers but not all of them had enough projectors for teachers to use. Using this resource was not a problem for those teachers who had it available in the classroom, but for those teachers who had to ask for this resource previously in order to use it was kind of frustrating. Even though they followed the steps asked for every institution to have this resource, sometimes they did not get it on time for class, or they had to plug it which took an important time of the lesson and obviously affected their planning. For the reasons given some of the teachers preferred not to use the projector even though they had it available in the institution.

showed that as in many countries, there is a lack of well trained ELT teachers. Those that are available, although having taught for more than 1 year proved to have poor educational skills. A number of the teachers that taught to the 4 th and 5 th grade students did not like the idea of having to teach to them, because they were not taught how to teach ESL to students at this age. The methodology was very poor and showed that many students worked individually and only used textbooks; proving that the EST process is very lacking. The evaluation process came from a very unfriendly aspect of evaluating the student’s achievement instead of the teacher’s

On the other hand, the four teachers who do not use group-activities in class expressed the following as the main reasons students’ basic -level and the indiscipline caused when forming groups. The students’ basic-level of English knowledge from eighth, ninth and tenth grade of (EGB), caused immediate students ’ distraction toward other activities such as, talking to each other in Spanish using electronic devices, which are common and varied among students and disturbing classmates. In addition, the indiscipline generated when basic-level students did not know how to perform the assigned activity, or simply did not show any interest; then, these students distract and foment indiscipline among the others.

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.

important reason is that Whole- Group activity is helpful to demonstrate the progress of their students into the same theme. Other reason given by teachers is that Whole- group activities enable students to work effectively in cooperation. So, the students work with their classmates and teachers helping each other. Another important reason is that it is important to work as community to improve the learning. On the other hand, a few teachers did not write the reasons why the use this activity. The observation of the classes showed a different result. It was notorious that only two from fifteen teachers applied a Whole Group activity into their lessons. One teacher prepared a lesson in which the students were asked to express their ideas about the topic. Later, the students were asked to answer some questions to demonstrate what has been taught or done in that lesson. Another teacher asked to the students fill a graph organizer with regular and irregular verbs. But the majority of teachers did not use a Whole Gropu Activity. So, the teacher’s questionnaires

The second study conducted by Sharma (2007) was directed to study the condition of different types of government schools; it includes the common classroom settings, the condition of classroom movement of the teachers, and the condition of classroom interaction. In order to prove it, three different observation forms were made: one to get the information about the classroom setting, one for the movement of the teachers, and one for the classroom interaction. The results of these observations were interpreted statistically and descriptively. The conclusions of this study are the following: the classroom setting of most of the government aided schools at primary level of the district is not suitable for the beginners. The small crowded classroom with polished cemented chalkboard attached on the front wall, is the principal teaching material. Teachers do not seem to be prepared for the lesson. There is a narrow space left between blackboard and the first row benches which brings problem for the movements of the teacher. Similarly space between two columns is found very narrow, that is the reason why most of the teachers do not try to conduct different activities to develop communicative competence.

In relation to this topic, Brown (2007) sustains that all kinds of observations conducts to a useful learning for teachers whether with objectives of training, of evaluation or when it is a pair observation. Teachers are starting to understand that upon being observed in its actions and educational performance by other people allows them to have a clearer vision. It permits them to improve its weaknesses and to promote its abilities for teaching. This benefit reaches also to the ones that carries out the observation because they can be seen reflected in others. It also helps to obtain ideas for their professional growth. The recommendable frequency would depend on the teachers’ need. It can be once a week to detect mistakes in the process

In observation three, the digital exercise was not possible to be projected on the board, so that the learners could have worked on it. Only the desktop projection could be seen, but it was frozen. At that moment, it was not possible to detect the problem. However, the learners could work on the exercise by lending them the laptop in order for them to proceed with the digital exercise. Finally, after the lesson execution, accessing the Displays Preferences dialog box and making the corresponding change solved the inconvenient. On the other hand, it was stated that the experimenter s volume was too low. (ence, it co uld be an indicator of shyness, respect, or personality feature. Also, it was demanded that the experimenter needed to use American English intonation. It should be taken into account that teachers have their own unique characteristics such as the usage of British English intonation.

As far as The Natural Approach is concerned, Richards and Rodgers (2001) point out that this approach is seen as a traditional method of teaching because it focuses on observing and interpreting how students learn their native and second language in an informal setting. Moreover, it is important to mention that the same authors state that from the beginning of a lesson, The Natural Approach emphasizes language exposure in order to make good the learning preparation; it means that there is an amount of time in which students hear linguistic input before they make an effort to produce the target language being learned. In addition, House et al. (2011) say that in The Natural Approach, the target language provides learners with input in a meaningful way since techniques such as TPR as well as mime and gesture are used.

Other methods and approaches are Whole language teaching and Content-based instruction. Richards & Rodgers (2001) explain that student-centered learning, reading real texts, focus on real and natural events are some of the characteristics of the Whole language approach. With reference to the Content-based instruction, the authors explain that language is taught through content subject matter because in that way learning becomes motivating for learners but this approach can be challenging for teachers because they need to acquire knowledge in the subject matter. Finally, the authors mention that Whole Language approach makes emphasis on using language naturally in the same way students learn their native language. In addition, learners use language functions such as apologizing or for egocentric thinking just as the way people do it in everyday life.

3.2 Learners. Fourteen native speakers of Spanish, who were enrolled in: Accounting, Administration, Bio analysis, Biology, Business, Engineering, Human Nutrition and Microbiology studies at the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador in Quito, participated in the research. From the fourteen learners: nine learners were female, that is, sixty-four percent while five learners were male, that is, thirty- six percent. All were university learners ranging in age from seventeen to twenty- five years old. The more frequent ages were: nineteen and twenty; the less frequent ages were: seventeen and twenty-five. In relation to the English language program at The Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador in Quito, it provides eight levels, two per one of the following denominations: elementary, pre-intermediate, intermediate, and higher intermediate. The fourteen learners belonged to the fifth level, which was an intensive level and it corresponds to intermediate. The learners attended the English class from Monday through Friday, from seven am to nine am, with a total of eighty class hours.

Hammer (2007) explained that for adults this could involve enrolling in an English class. On the other hand, for a teenager it could be picking one subject over another for special study. This type of motivation which comes from outside the classrooms and may well be influenced by several of external factors such as family and classmates is often referred to as extrinsic motivation, the motivation that students bring into classroom from outside. On the other hand, we have intrinsic motivation, which is the kind of motivation that is produced by what take place inside the classroom. We should try to find out what the real motives are for the students to learn a second language and in that way make the class interesting and enjoyable.

It is very important to plan a lesson because the decisions that the teacher makes when planning are based on the needs, problems and interests of the students. Planning a lesson contributes to have a successful lesson learning. Some teachers plan because they want to feel more confident and get to know better the theme of the lesson. Other teachers plan because it is a school ‟ s requirement. Harmer (1991) suggests that a lesson plan must include a description of the class; a recent work; objectives; the content which contains context, activity and class organization, aids, language, possible problems; and additional possibilities.