Lexical Approach

The lexical approach has a lot in common with the communicative approach; it examines the importance of lexical phrases (chunks of language) and its important role in fluent speech. The fundamental principle of the lexical approach is that language consists of grammaticalized lexis and not grammar. It gives lexis more importance because it sees it as more powerful and easier to learn than grammar. It also states that we usually talk in chunks and collocations rather than focusing on the grammatical structures of a sentence. It was first used by Robert Lewis.

Metacognition

Summary of Metacognition

What is metacognition?

Is knowledge and understanding of our own cognitive processes and abilities and those of others, as well as regulation of these processes. It is the ability to make your thinking visible.

Metacognitive knowledge is knowledge that we hold about our own thinking, and the thinking of other people. We are usually able to report metacognitive knowledge if we are asked about our own thinking and it includes things like:

Understanding that having a strategy might help you to solve a problem more efficiently or that having an essay plan may help to keep your argument on track.

Knowing that it is more difficult to concentrate in a room that is noisy than one which is quiet.

Knowing that you are good at remembering people’s faces but not their names, while your friend is good with names, not faces.

There are three types of metacognitive knowledge that each play a role in learning and problem-solving:

Declarative knowledge: “knowing what” – knowledge of one’s own learning processes, and about strategies for learning

Procedural knowledge: “knowing how” – knowing what skills and strategies to use.

Conditional knowledge: “knowing when” – knowledge about why and when various learning strategies should be used.

Self-regulation on the other hand, refers to a set of activities that help learners to control their learning. Research has shown that metacognitive regulation supports performance in a number of ways, including understanding where to direct attention, using strategies more reliably and efficiently, and developing awareness of difficulties with comprehension. At the heart of self-regulation are three essential skills:

Planning.

Monitoring.

Evaluation.

Planning involves working out how a task might be approached before you do it. For example you might make predictions before reading, select a strategy before tackling a problem, or allocate time or other resources before commencing work.

Monitoring refers to the pupil’s on-task awareness of progress, comprehension and overall performance. Stopping every so often to self-test and check for understanding is a good example of monitoring. Monitoring ability is slow to develop and even adults find it difficult but it can be improved with training and practice. 

Evaluation requires the student to review the outcomes and efficiency of the learning experience. Evaluation includes revisiting goals and conclusions, deciding how to improve next time, and examining learning from another person’s perspective to diagnose problems

Why is metacognition important?

Metacognitively able students are aware of a range of strategies to help them to learn, know that they can direct their thinking & essentially are active rather than passive learners (at least some of the time!) – engage with material that is to be learned, with stimulating situations, actively question and plan.

Cognitive vs. Metacognitive Strategies.

Metacognition is referred to as "thinking about thinking" and involves overseeing whether a cognitive goal has been met. This should be the defining criterion for determining what is metacognitive. Cognitive strategies are used to help an individual achieve a particular goal, while metacognitive strategies are used to ensure that the goal has been reached.

Metacognition and Cognitive Strategy Instruction.

Cognitive Strategy Instruction (CSI) is an instructional approach which emphasizes the development of thinking skills and processes as a means to enhance learning. The objective of CSI is to enable all students to become more strategic, self-reliant, flexible, and productive in their learning endeavors. 

- Here I left you the link of a  video about Metacognition. I hope you like it. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoKUcRwLCWA&feature=related

Metacognition Homework

Possible ways to foster Metacognition.

1.-Analize the prior knowledge of the students.

2.-Discuss Learning with Students.

3.-Conect the new information with the information that students know.

4.-Self regulation about the strengths and weaknesses of the students.

5.-Monitoring their proper learning.

What is automaticity?

Is the ability to do things without occupying the mind with the low-level details required, allowing it to become an automatic response pattern or habit. It is usually the result of learning, repetition, and practice.

What is Cognitive Load?

Is the capacity of the brain to understand something, also is the excessive information that the students receive.

Create an example of how teachers can change the amount of “extraneous cognitive load” on an assignment.

Maybe trying to use some power point presentation in a simple way with the minor information possible. Also use things like comparative tables or maybe pictures.

When have you felt that you had a "full" cognitive load?

When I have to learn a lot of information like, dates, concepts, names of the most important people in a specific year.

Lesson Plan. Catedra 1

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?7x737i5w8wjx1b3

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?73au774rh2w83cl

SIOP

SIOP: here is our planning we did, hope you like it and welcome any constructive criticism to further improve our work.

                                      

 http://www.mediafire.com/view/?2mu0ik5vo7m2ffo

Coursebook Analysis

                                           COURSEBOOK ANALYSIS.

 We agree that the objectives are in the introduction and they are also present at the beginning of each unit.

The approach is acceptable to the target community because it deals with topics from Chile.

 The layout is average, but the print is too small and it tends to confuse the student.

 The book has a lot of pictures and it helps the students understand better.

 The topics and tasks are interesting, but they aren’t varied, they’re the same for everyone.

 The instructions are very clear; the students don’t have difficulties understanding them.

 We think the content is presented gradually, in context that students have a more systematic learning in level of difficulty.

This is very good, because they learn from the most basic, to then get to learn the hardest part.

 We think that in the next four points, meets expectations, but we think that in these, much depends on the management of the teacher, if we talk about, explanations, vocabulary, grammar, we believe that teacher's task is to see how significant those contained in the practice, with appropriate teaching methods.

 When it comes to developing the four skills, do not assign the greatest credit to this book, because it only works with two of the four skills, which is very wrong because as future teachers we would like to work with material that allows us to develop our work to the top. so on that way our students have access to the best.

 We think that this type of text does not allow students to independent learning because it focuses more on how the teacher presents the content , and how the teacher directs it.

 In our opinion we think it makes too much guidance for the teacher. Even, we can’t find examples of Activities for each item presented in the book.

 Yes, the book has an audio cd

Not easy to get in municipalities schools because they don’t have enough material for a class, But for schools that do not belong to municipalities, means a significant monetary expense.