The last week

I have to say that I was a bit stressed when I saw the message on fronter that we were going to blog about Didactics, and the reason was that I had a different plan for these weeks. I have tried to do as you said but I have also just continued on my original plan.

I have also commented on the discussions but just one time on the discussion around Krashen. I decided to work more with him, and mad a blog input on just him. I have to read more about him and to study him harder to be more able to discuss him.

Throw these weeks I have read a lot and made some good notes and tried to think outside the box. I like to blog, and think that I will continue on it later if the context fits to blog about.

I am really sorry that I haven’t done exactly as you would like, but I had a plan and I really wanted to continue it.

Stephen Krashen (1941)

Stephen Krashen is mostly famous for his strong opinions around how to teach. He has also published more then 350 papers and books that contribute to the fields of second language acquisitions and reading. His opinions have been highly discussed al over the world.
Krashen's Theory of Second Language Acquisition consists of five main hypotheses:

1. The Natural Order Hypothesis:
“We acquire the rules of language in a predictable order,” That means that the acquisition of grammatical structure proceeds in a predictable order. Things go on as expected and the old way of teaching.

2. Acquisition/ Learning Hypothesis:
This hypothesis claims that adults have to ways to gain competence in L2; acquisition and learning. Acquisition is very similar to the L1 development, where they use the language for real conversations. Learning means the way that L2 is learned like throw rules and practice.

3. The monitor hypothesis:
Where learning functions as a monitor or an editor of the output.

This shows how the monitor works. Where you have a goal or something that is acquired for you to learn and you see yourself on this line and that has been learned throw an input. There are many different ways of input. Just continue reading this text.


4. Input hypothesis:

Can be explained in four different ways;
- It relates to acquisition.
- Learners acquire new or more language only by being exposed to comprehensible input, which means that the learner exceeds what is expected of him/her. The learner first knows what the meaning is and then he learns a new language.
- When there is enough comprehensible input, the i+l will be acquired automatically.
- That fluency can’t be taught directly, but is comes over time. Where it can be influenced by a lot of things like social factor. If most of your friends and family speak an dialect it is most likely you would speak the same way as them.

5. Affective filter hypothesis:
Is a filter that prevents the input from reaching the language acquisition device. For this to work the learner has to not focus on the language and only on the content. Where teachers make assignments that lets the students speak without think about the language they are using and the language becomes natural to them throw these exercises.

I haven’t been quit able to write everything in my own words because I think that these facts take time to learn and that this is a way for me to start learning about Krashen. I have used our books and also some pages on the internet. Like this one; http://homepage.ntlworld.com/vivian.c/SLA/Krashen.htm
I hope that in some short time I will be able to tell this in my own words, and to be able to know this so much that I can learn somebody.

How I think that practices works in learning something

To learn something you have to practice a lot. If you think about John Dewey’s theory about “learning by doing,” he thinks that you learn something by doing it your self.
When you fore instead think about when you where studying math at school and you where going to learn about the multiplication table. You had to practices, practice and practice. The best way to learn something is to practices and to diversify different ways to learn. John Dewey’s theory is the way that I would think that you have to teach to gain the best result.

Do you remember the multiplication’s table?


Homework is one way to get children/students to practices. But homework is also after somebody’s opinion “a way to do nothing.” If you are going to be a teacher you have follow up on the student’s homework. That means a lot of work for you, and a way to ease the teacher’s job is that the parents also follow up on children doing their homework.
If children practices and practice it is most likely that they would learn something and my opinion is that you learn something by doing it. So if “doing it” means to practice then you most likely will succeed. So if you also diversify different ways to practices, like in groups, learning something visual, learning by a lector and/or by just practicing on your own.

Everybody has to practices to learn something. There are different ways of practicing like for instead studying. We as students have to practices a lot to learn something, and to think outside the box when we read. Like in didactics we have to acknowledge the different theory’s to find out how we would teach our self. I have to say that the ability to think outside the box’s gives everyone a very good chance to actually remember this and hopefully to never forget it, or know how to use this for themselves in their own teaching.

PRACTICE MAKES A CHAMP;

The second week

This week I decided to work with the books and started with chapter one in English teaching strategies. I read throw the pages and wrote down the keywords in my notebook. This way of learning is the best for me. I read throw it and afterward write down the keywords. I think it is good to know how you learn best before you start to think about how to adapt the teaching to the students.
After this chapter I read about the English Subject Curriculum to see how the curriculum has changed from 1959 and up to now. Teachers today are very different, some are very traditional and others are very new think by giving the students more free passes to explore their own mind. After reading about this I started to talk to my mother about her education around English. She started to learn English in the fifth grade, due to the fact that she was a student at a very small school and that the forth and fifth grade was in the same classroom. I myself experienced that when I learned English. I was first introduced to English in the second grade when we learned how to count to teen and the different colors. This was learned in the same classroom as the third grade.
After this I started reading in teaching a foreign language. This I had earlier read it but decided to refresh my memories. I wrote down my own keywords to make it easier for me to refresh my own memories later on before the exam.

After I had done al this I began to think about my self as a teacher; I decided to see every student as a different person and to try to teach after their needs. I read throw my own notes that I had taken in class and also some of my old notes from last year about the different strategies.
I also read throw chapter 2, 3, 4 in English Teaching Strategies and next week I wan't to work with these chapters in the same form as this the others chapters.

I now have learned about the changes in the curriculum and also some of the most know strategies and have thought about this and how I myself would like to teach.

The first week

I am really sorry about the late publishing of my blog. I have been traveling and have been without my computer. That does not mean that I haven’t worked on didactics.

I sett out some goals for me to archive through these weeks; I was going to refresh my memories about what I learned last year, and to read a lot about Didactics.


I started week 1 with some repetition over what I learned last year. The different theories, and found out that I really needed to refresh my memories about these subjects. I found out that it is some similarities and also some thing in this term that I haven’t learned last year. Last year we focused on the different chapters in the book and tried to rephrase that into our own word and how we would place ourselves to these different ways of teaching and what is the best for every single student we were going to teach. This we but in a blog, and the link is http://aibloom.blogspot.com/ if you want to read it.

I have to be honest to you and say that I haven’t read enough about didactics the fist week because I focused on reading more literature. But I brought my earlier notes from class with me and tried to refresh my memories and also thought about what I already now while I was one this trip.