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Date Posted: 17:04:10 06/15/07 Fri
Author: Sônia Nagy
Subject: Re: Task 4 from sônia Nagy to Andrea Faria
In reply to: Andrea Faria 's message, "Task 4" on 00:15:41 06/13/07 Wed

>Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais
>Faculdade de Letras
>Produção de Texto
>Professor Adriana Tenuta
>Student: Andréa Gomes de Faria
>
>
>Task Four - Argumentative Essay
>
>
>Looking for a balance between accuracy and fluency
>work
>
>
>It is Monday and Joan wants to start her lesson asking
>her students what they did over the weekend. She has
>just taught them the past simple tense and wants to
>know whether they are using it appropriately. “What
>did you do at the weekend?”, she asks
>enthusiastically. Pedro answers, “I played football.”
>“Very nice!” responds Joan. “I goed to the hospital”,
>says Maria, and seeing her teacher’s strange look at
>her she decides to explain, “Yes, my father operated
>and almost dead.” Another strange look from the
>teacher, who decides to interrupt. “Go is an irregular
>verb. The past is went. Repeat, Maria. I went to the
>hospital.” And poor Maria repeats the sentence and
>gets an “excellent” as feedback. The teacher then
>moves on to the next students and finishes her warm-up
>with a quiz on the past simple of irregular verbs,
>totally oblivious of what has just happened. However
>strange it may seem, this scene is repeated over and
>over in many of our classes, even the ones in which
>teachers swear they use the latest ideas of
>Communicative Language Teaching. It shows how obsessed
>some teachers generally are with keeping to their
>carefully planned lessons that revolve around
>practising form and training students to apply rules.
>However, in some classes the pendulum swings only
>towards the opposite direction and while students are
>given plenty of opportunities to talk freely they
>barely get any feedback on their use of the language.
>No matter where we stand in this issue, concerning our
>teaching practice, we should try to find a balance
>between accuracy and fluency in our classes, keeping
>an eye on our students’ needs not only as learners of
>a language, but also as people who have something to
>say.
> Few things are more rewarding in a language lesson
>than having students succeed in expressing their
>ideas, needs and beliefs. And this may be very
>difficult for some, not only due to lack of command of
>the language, but also for fear of exposing
>themselves. When we want students to speak freely we
>should make an effort to try to listen for content and
>control our anxiety to correct them, just as we
>normally do when talking to someone in our own
>language. If Joan, in the story above, had been
>interested in listening to what her students really
>had to tell about their weekend, she would have paid
>attention to Maria and been able to sympathise with
>her, instead of worrying about getting her past simple
>right. As Julian Edge states in her book Mistakes and
>correction, “… the importance of mistakes is that they
>should often be ignored. Students need the experience
>of being listened to as people with things to say.”
>(20) If we are working on improving fluency, it is
>only when mistakes interfere in the understanding of
>ideas that they should be a concern. When this happens
>in normal conversation, we generally stop our
>interlocutors and engage in a process of negotiating
>meaning, until ideas are clarified and the
>conversation can proceed. In class, we can do the same
>and stimulate our students to do the same with one
>another. It is as simple as stating that you cannot
>understand what the other person is trying to say or
>asking the person to try to say the same thing in
>other words. At the end of this kind of activities,
>teachers should always give students some feedback on
>their ability to express meaning, as well as comment
>on elements that made understanding difficult, such as
>grammar mistakes, pronunciation problems, use of
>expressions translated from L1 into L2 and which can
>cause problems of understanding for speakers of a
>different language than the students’ mother tongue.
> Teachers of the “Communicative Language Teaching
>generation” may imagine that anything goes as long as
>communication is flowing. However, matters are not as
>simple as that. The problem is not the CLT approach at
>all, but on certain misconceptions concerning
>communicative competence. Grammatical or linguistic
>competence, which is the ability to use the basic
>elements of communication, such as sentence patterns,
>lexical resources and the phonological system, is one
>of the competences we should acquire in order to be
>competent “communicators”. Therefore, accuracy is also
>important, because it helps us give a better shape to
>the ideas we want to express. Thus, efficient and
>successful communication is dependent on a certain
>amount of accuracy. Besides this, students need
>English for several different reasons and some of
>them, as passing exams, finding a good job, getting a
>promotion, will certainly demand a good mastery of the
>standard variety of the language, in its three aspects
>-- form, meaning and use. To help us deal with
>accuracy in a balanced way in our classes a good idea
>may be to begin by telling our students our intention.
>Secondly, we can introduce work on form in controlled
>practice exercises, after presenting a new language
>item. As they are less communicative and demand less
>attention to meaning, students can concentrate more on
>form and repetition of patterns, familiarizing
>themselves with new structures, before they move on to
>less controlled practice and freer expression. In this
>stage teachers should encourage self and
>peer-correction whenever possible. They stimulate
>autonomy and cooperation and get students engaged in
>listening to the language and reflecting upon it.
>According to Edge, “The more students are involved in
>correction, the more they have to think about the
>language used.” (27)
>In conclusion, fluency and accuracy are both important
>goals in the process of learning a language and should
>be addressed in class in a balanced way. There are
>occasions in which we must refrain from correcting
>mistakes that do not impair communication and there
>are others in which we should ask our students to be
>as precise in their use of forms as possible.
>Nevertheless, nothing is more important than
>acknowledging our students’ attempts to communicate
>their ideas, values and feelings and giving them
>credit for their accomplishments in the use of the
>language, as part of their learning process. After
>all, it makes no sense to us or our students to speak
>fluently and accurately, but be unable to express what
>we want.
>
>REFERENCES
>EDGE, Julian. Mistakes and corrections. New York:
>Longman. 1989. 70 p.

Dear Andrea,
I liked your sugestions for my essay, thank you !
In relation to your text, I have to say that I found your way to start it very interesting and I confess that, only after having read the text twice, I discover that, that teacher did not pay attention to the serious problem her student was telling her. I am in doubt if I identify correctly your thesis statement which is: no matter where we stand in this isue, concerning our teaching practice," we should try to find a balance between accuracy and fluency in ours classes"....
So, you developed your whole text about it.While in the conclusion , you closed the text up telling the reader that this two points are extremely important in the process of learning a language.You also added your opinion about what you also consider important as well.
Concerning your mistakes, I found 3 things, but if you don't agree, please ignore them.
They are:
To help us deal with ... ( I learned that when we have two verbs, the second has to be in the ing form) so, to help us dealing with. In this same sentence, I think there should be a comma after our classes.
5 lines down: After "in this stage" I would use a comma
as well.
As you text is well written, cohesive and coherent,congratulations!

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