Thank you for your comment, Gabriela!
Girls, read Gabriela's comment under the entry 'A naughty question'.

This is Romina's comment:

"Hello! Here is my comment. I think that the parameters for a comfortable intelligibility would be determined by the boss' accent. If he speaks RP English, then this variant should be the focus. Otherwise, intellegibility would be connected to all the aspects that convey meaning, includng paralinguistic features, body language and intonation as well as sounds. "

Please discuss the part of the text I highlighted.

A naughty question

Hi, girls!

How do we decide whether our student will be intelligible to his/her boss?? Will we establish any parameters for 'comfortable intelligibility'?

My last entry will not allow you to post your comments (I must have have pressed the wrong key somewhere!) I hope it's OK now, so please leave your comments after this entry.

Hi, dear students!

I've been reading your comments.

The responses from the three students who did respond (shame on the other three!) had some features in common:

All of them would have this ideal student talk about himself/life/job, etc., in order to check the student's

• fluency (Gabriela and Graciela)



• skills (Marisa)

FURTHER QUESTIONS!

• What are the pronunciation skills required of this student?



• What importance do you attach to fluency?

Graciela speaks about “the usual way of asking and giving information”.
Is there a “usual way”?
In what sense do you think the term is used?

Two of you also suggested playing tapes recorded by native speakers of English.

• Any native speakers?

Webpage project
This is a project for the creation of a webpage for the benefit of a group of student teachers doing the subject Language and Oral Expression IV at a public tertiary teacher education institution in Buenos Aires province (ISFD No. 3), within the Teaching of English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) program.

This webpage is intended to fulfil different objectives:

Ø Give students an overview of the subject (home page)
Ø Provide a copy of the syllabus together with the bibliography selected for each unit.
Ø Provide links to useful sites, where students will find extra information, and/or activities for teaching pronunciation they can use with their students during their practicum.
Ø Provide links to radio stations and other sites where they will have a chance to listen to different English accents, and practise and improve their listening skills.
Ø Provide links to websites that will allow them to read and listen to beautiful English poems, thus giving them the opportunity to practise pronunciation in a literary context.
Ø Create a space where students will have some of their contributions to the class blog uploaded and commented on by the teacher.

Thus, the website will foster the use of technology as an information vehicle for exploring knowledge to support learning-by-constructing through access to needed information, and by comparing perspectives, beliefs and world views; and – in combination with the class blog – both as a tool to support knowledge construction, representing learners’ideas, understandings and beliefs, and as context to support learning-by-doing, representing and simulating real-world problems, situations and contexts.
Students are expected to profit from their acquaintance with these technologies that allow them to look for new text and audio/video materials and offer them an opportunity to be in touch with each other and with the teacher any day of the week, to share ideas, reflections or questions.

A blog for sharing and caring!

This is a blog devoted to English phonology issues. I've created it to interact with my dear 4th course students at the ISFD No 3: Marisa, Romina, Gabriela, Graciela, Mariana and Elizabeth.
I hope we can all enjoy sharing information, opinions, reflections and questions, outside the classroom as well as inside.

Here goes the first challenge:
Imagine you have a new adult intermediate student who wants to develop his/her listening and speaking skills in order to interact comfortably with his/her newly arrived boss, who only speaks English! What would you plan for your first class?

Please publish your suggestions as comments to this entry (remember there are no 'right' or 'wrong' answers!)

my first entry

let's go on learning
and let's do some teaching...

the wide world's out there
let's do some work!