Web site review

For this post, I will review the following site: http://banlangteaching.blogspot.com/2009/09/principles-for-teaching-ell-students.html

I agree with a lot of information found on this blog post. The author suggests using a number of multimedia tools like music, television and radio in the classroom. I've always been an advocate of using authentic materials in the classroom. I absolutely love exposing students to news Web sites in the L2 because there is such an abundance of information there for all levels of proficiency. Music is also a big part of my teaching philosophy. When I am studying a new language, I love to listen to the culture's music for a number of reasons; it helps you develop an ear for the language, you learn new vocabulary and exposes you to some cultural elements, as well. As a number of my former teachers (and professors) have done, I would love to carry on the tradition of playing some music at the beginning of each class to catch students' attention. I would use the Internet to find the music. 

The author of this post also suggests using some other technique that I have learned and talked about in other courses at USF, such as slowing speech and enunciating, using gestures, role-playing activities and dramatic interaction to reinforce what is being learned.


I think the information here is very useful, and what I like most about this post is that it can be read as a sort of list, a list of rules of thumb for foreign language teaching. I would like to keep this bookmarked so that I can refer to it in the future and apply some of these strategies to my lesson plans.