Reflection 5: Websites that might help

This is “Aaron”, a pretty new Spanish-speaker in the ELD class. He is 15 years old. His notions of English are basic, almost nothing. Aaron arrived at the ELD class just two weeks ago. During the first days he was very afraid of the teacher to asked him; the only response he gave her was “yes”, or simply he avoided her. Since the days have being going on, Aaron has been gaining more confidence in the class but not enough to participate actively in it. However, he has so much potential! He learns everything incredibly quickly. Besides, he learns and is able to use what he learns from that exact moment.

I am convinced of Aaron could get more proficiency in the English language if he had constant practice and support in the target language. I mean, if Aaron could exercise what he knows, and try new contents by himself, he would obtain greater results in the four macroskills (Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing). Moreover, Aaron would succeed more and more if he took risks in his own learning. In that last point, I personally think that a series of websites pointed to a revision of some repeted patterns of the English language would be useful for him, in order to give him some hints of how the English language works campaired to his native language.

I think that Aaron has not specific needs, he just needs help in every aspect of the language in order to commuicate with others. That is the main goal; make him participate a little bit more in class. And, when he goes getting more confidence using the language to communicate with his classmates, and be understood by them, he will be able to get into more difficult and challenging tasks.

These links take you to a series of different webpages where English is taught through games. It is enormously useful for students to learn some new vocabulary because by getting the lexicon bigger, they are more prompt to speak and communicate with others.

http://www.britishcouncil.org/kids.htm

http://eslbears.homestead.com/Contact_Info.html

http://www.vocabulary.co.il/

http://www.saberingles.com.ar/games/index.html

The idea is that the student uses these webpages whenever he feels the need of learning some new vocabulary. But, as he is an teenager, and he must have many other things in what to think of, I would suggest him to use it twice or three times a week until he really feels he is doing good in what relates to vocabulary.

By using these websites, the student should get some more vocabulary to use when talking with people inside and outside of the school. He should be capable of using at least some content words to get right track in the communicative process.