Final report on Teachers development course

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I know I have to learn more. This course helped me and my language level has increased but I need to continue practicing specially with the richness of my vocabulary because even when I learned more words through the readings, listening and grammar exercises, I think my biggest weakness is that I express myself with a general vocabulary instead of using a sophisticated one. So I will be working with that, finally that´s the only way to continue increasing my English level.

Cultural Awareness Day by day we are living in a challenging world and the only way to face it´s understanding that, even when cultural differences do exist, we have as well some similarities with the English-speaking communities. This may all seem so obvious that it is silly to discuss. However my point is that we, teachers, can influence the acceptability of other cultures in our students. We can show them that language is not only a tool of communication but it also shows our behavior and our perspective of people. One way in which an educator expresses his or her educational qualities is through imagining the world during the experiences and understandings of others. That´s what I experienced in most of the activities where we read and learned about people and culture from other countries, to mention one; the story of “American and British English” I learned why are different these two languages. So, to focus my student´s attention to English language and culture, I could ask them to imagine that they are the other who now shares some of their problems, to do some research about natural disasters in other countries, to look for information in encyclopedias and on the Internet and to create an association to help victims. After thoroughly acknowledging the reality and effects of cultural similarities and differences, I feel safer in asserting my belief that many of the tools that this course offers us is and will help us.

Teaching Strategies The most useful teaching strategies I learned during this course, are all related to the habits mentioned in Andrew Churches´ investigation, first of all we, as teachers and learners, have to realize that we can use all of our resources available, methods and tools not only in a classroom but in our daily life, we have to adapt the curriculum to our students reality which will bring them a significant knowledge.

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