PDF superior Some factors that affect the English language learning process in primary public education in some institutions from Bogotá.

Related to what the authors mention, the public school in Bogotá should work with the whole of the educative community to improve the result in the project of bilingualism in the school. The resources are not important, but the participation of actors of the primary public school will make a huge difference in our city, there are two types of schools: Private and Public, both have different ways of teaching. Some private schools usually include English in other subjects like science and mathematics in addition to English, hence they have more English language learning hours per day, this adds an English environment for the students, and fast reach of goals in the learning process, another big difference is that the private schools have more native speakers as English teachers, more about this topic will be exposed below.

classroom, type of furniture, and the style of teaching determine the way in which the teacher has to organize seats in the classroom. The teacher has to analyze the space that is necessary to do the different activities; it is important to consider that students and the teacher has to move easily in or around the class; this let the teacher to control how students work and give them the opportunity to rearrange seats when they need. Also, West (2010) adds that seating arrangement can change as your class change; for that reason, this author gives some examples of seating arrangement. The first form in which the teacher can arrange seats is orderly rows, in this way the teacher can keep eye contact and move around students when needed. The second one is horseshoes, in this form the students will feel more capable to share ideas, information, and feelings because horseshoes arrangement makes the class more intimated. Finally, the teacher can make students to seat around the table in small groups in order to help the teacher to control students and help a student effectively.

instead of the observer being a silent inquisitor, possibly creating anxiety and confusion. Richards & Farrel (2005) state that observation provides a great opportunity for inexperienced teachers to see how senior teachers conduct a lesson, as well the observed teachers can enrich their knowledge receiving some advice or suggestion of a different point of view about solving a particular situation or problem; therefore, it is a very positive experience for both sides, having the chance to interact and share new ideas, expertise and to discuss concerns and difficulties. It is also explained that the points an observer can study are the timing, activities, techniques, participation and language. Student’s Motivation

Therefore, the Secretaría Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología SENECYT (2012) through the Subsecretaría de Calidad Educativa did a public teachers‟ evaluation in the year 2011. The results showed that a 60 % of evaluated teachers had a grade between level A1 and A2 according to the Common European Framework of Reference. For that reason, SENECYT established that high school and university education of English language in Ecuador has not an adequate proficiency level; this limits graduate students the chances to study in English spoken countries. SENECYT also claims that it is clear that the knowledge of English language is very important in all the teaching stages so it is necessary that teachers train on methodologies to have better results in public high schools.

motivation among high school students. This investigation data was taken from the EFL De-motivational Questionnaire, applied to one hundred and sixty five subjects from Nemoneh high school in Maragheh, Iran. Concerning the research hypotheses, the findings revealed that teacher personality and behavior, teacher‟s teaching method, simultaneous learning of many languages, attitudes toward English, learners‟ experience of failure, learners‟ lack of success and learners‟ characteristics were accepted to have affected students‟ motivation, whereas the effects of learning material and course content and learning environment on the students‟ motivation were rejected. One

Another consequence of the reduced space was the level of noise in the classroom. Since students’ seats were too close to each other, lea rners talked a lot between them and it impeded teachers to teach classes adequately, students did not behave well and their level of attention was poor. In consequence, the reduced space affected the teaching- learning process. Regarding that, Shalaway & Beech (1998) mention that students behave well and achieve academic goals when teachers provide them a good classroom space according to learners’ needs. But in Ecuador, teachers do not choose a classroom, they are assigned one. Moreover, lack of classroom space is a problem that has been affecting public Ecuadorian high schools since a long time. Even though classrooms in public institutions are designed to hold up to 30 students, class size usually exceeds that limit. This situation is caused by the high demand of educational needs among

they do not have appropriate resources; while 7 of them that represent 46,66% answered that they do have them. 33,33% of the students surveyed said that the teacher uses appropriate resources in class, while 66,66% of them answered that the teacher does not use appropriate resources in class. Nevertheless, the observation contrasted those teachers and students who answered that they have appropriate resources in class. This contrast could be evidenced because in fourteen out of fifteen observations done teachers did not use any resource to teach. Teachers just had the board to work with and even for listening activities they had to do them as dictation because they did not have a cd player or any equipment to play the listening track. The surveyed teachers agreed that all institutions need laboratories of English equipped with all the necessary implements and other resources that assure a real learning of the language and therefore, their practical use in the daily communication.

As shown in the graph for question 9, 53.33% of the observed teachers said they do consider students´ needs, and 46.67% said they do not. However, the observation and students´ questionnaire showed that those who said they take students´ needs into account really do not. It became evident that teachers know what their students´ needs are or some of them but do not care much. The importance of taking students´ needs into account while designing the lesson plans and classroom activities, as well as choosing material is vital. Some teachers assume that all their students have the exact same needs and treat them all the same way. Nevertheless, it was easy to notice that each student was different and they needed to be treated differently. Some students understood fast, some did not. Some had difficulties in reading comprehension others in writing. Most had a lack of vocabulary. Some students had a lower economic level than others and in some cases there were students of different ages in the same classroom. All these differences are students´ needs which need to be taken into account and are not. Some teachers justify themselves by

According to some teachers, it is difficult to do many activities where they have to rearrange the seats because they think that students do not see this change as useful. Instead, the students use it as a reason to create disorder and disturbance in classes. After these comments, it seems that teachers and students were not very honest with this answers because of the comment mentioned before. They tried to let the author know that they do not do these types of activities with frequency, but responded to the question they answered with “yes”.

The Ecuadorian government has realized the importance of having our high school graduates be able to use the English language at the same level as those of the rest of the world. The Ministry of Education has launched a project to improve the knowledge of English as a foreign language. This program will be aiming at three main aspects: Ecuadorian students will be able to reach a functional level of command of this language, the standards for this program will be aligned with the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR); new evaluation parameters will be set for English Language for English teachers entering the public school system, and a continuous training system will be established for English teachers. These steps will be in their working order by December 2013. (Ministerio de Educación, 2012).

As it can be seen in the graph 12, all the teachers (100%) answered that they have 31 or more students in their classes. During the observations, it was possible to notice that in some courses, there were more than 40 students, being classes too crowded to teach successfully, and being difficult for teachers to walk around the classrooms to check student s‟ work. Besides, it was observed that the teachers had to speak aloud to get the students attention, and in some cases, it was necessary to repeat the instructions wasting time; this was because the students who were sitting at the back of the classroom could not clearly listen to the teacher.

On the other hand, Harmer (2007) explains that small classes have considerable advantages over large classes. Stating that, while in a group an individual student only gets a part of the teacher attention, in a small class the teacher focuses exclusively on one person at a time; in this sense, students get deeply enhanced feedback from their teacher, and last but not least, teachers enter into a really dialogic relationship with their pupils in a way that is considerable less possible in a large group situation. However, the same author mentions that students and teachers in small classes may be affected by monotony since the active interaction of large classrooms it is not present.

However, if teachers want these activities to work properly in their classrooms there are some guidelines they need to think about. For instance, it is important to make sure we give very clear instructions about the task to be performed so students know exactly what to do, it would be a good idea to write these instructions on the board. Besides, teachers should ask students to make positive noise only so that all the groups may work without distraction. Another consideration is time; students should know when to start and when to finish the activity. Furthermore, it is very recommendable for the teacher to be constantly moving around the classroom to check groups‟ work as well as to give timely feedback.

However, this was hardly done by most of them during the observed lessons. For instance, from the needs considered in the present study (age personality-attitude-aptitude- motivation-and learning styles) the mostly considered by the educators was age, since no one of them brought in topics that were not related to their pupils´ age or too difficult for them to understand; in this respect most of the educators were aided by the workbooks they use, which as being developed by professionals, have their content quite properly selected and sequenced; nonetheless, some educators had developed their own syllabuses or modules, so they have been the ones who have selected the topics, materials, and activities according to the age range of their pupils.

resources (textbook, board, markers, CD player-in some cases-) are not enough for delivering really effective English lessons, others stated that more technological devices as overhead projectors, computers, CD players are urgently needed, and another teacher said that she does not consider appropriate the resources as they are insufficient and because every time she wants to use those that exist she must go to other rooms and arrange in too much advance for not coinciding with other teachers using the computing lab or audio-visual room, and even doing so there are troubles sometimes.

interviewed teachers have an English bachelor ‟ s degree; 40% of the teachers have an English master degree; and 7% of the teachers have other type of degree such as doctor or engineer. During the interview, the group of teachers with an English bachelor ‟s degree explained that they studied English for an average of six years at different language institutes in the place they live. The time while teachers have been teaching English varies according to the years of experience, some of them have been working in the field during 10 year; others for 20 years; and others for 6 years. Those teachers expressed that the easies skill to teach is reading. It was not possible to continue gathering information about other aspects such as advantages or disadvantages of teaching English in Ecuador or the benefits of staying more time in an educational institution due to the fact that an important proportion of teachers has a A2 level and they were not able to give accurate answers in the interview.

This research work has identified the factors that distress the English teaching-learning process. Recognizing them was a real necessity for us as researchers. We found that teachers and students lack the necessary linguistic background and, they will have the opportunity to know how dealing with inappropriate classroom behavior and most importantly, how to improve their English language skills. In fact, teachers need to be prepared to teach in a better way, students need to be willing to study effectively, and educational institutions and government should provide the facilities for doing so.

As said above, visual material is also used in EFL classes. Watson (1999) says that the board (chalkboard or whiteboard) is the most common visual aid used in the classroom. According to Watson, this teaching equipment can be used for writing practice in which the teacher can underline and circle words, write in capitals, use different colors, show connections, use ellipsis, draw pictures, symbols, diagrams, tables, maps, etc. Another type of visual material is video. As stated by Cunningsworth (1984), video material helps the teacher to make the learners practice English in a very well-contextualized manner since they can see and listen to the language in use. Apart from video, there are other teaching materials used for making the learners see the language in use. These materials include newspaper articles, brochures, tickets, letters, advertisements, and announcements (Cunningsworth, 1984).

La frase nominal central presentada con propósitos de producción de lenguaje en los años 8-10 incluye frases nominales simples y complejas. Como en el caso de la gramática del verbo hay restricciones en términos de complejidad para propósitos de producción. Por esta razón el artículo determinante + adjetivo + sustantivo no se presenta con fines de producción en el primer año, más bien el objetivo es establecer el determinante (a, the, some, a lot of, -s) y su relación con el sustantivo y concepto de sustantivos contables y no contables con ejemplos de algunos de ellos.

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.