1. The final unit was the systems of language, which are divided into three:
vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation. For me it was a very interesting unit, for I
consider pronunciation to be a very relevant aspect when teaching a language.
I learnt that, since one of the main purposes as ESL teachers is that our students
achieve an acceptable and useful level of the language, we should teach
pronunciation through the communicative approach. CLT invites our students to
interact between them so they develop the appropriate skills in order to
communicate with other people outside the safe atmosphere of the classroom,
focusing on the importance of imitating and learning from native speakers, a lot of
practice and the use of chunks of speech as a much more natural way of learning
the language.
I was actually very glad to learn more about this approach indirectly, considering
that is one of the approaches I would like to put into practice with my students
once I am a teacher. I also believe that learning from my classmates was a very
engaging activity because I reflected my work on theirs; hence, I was able to
identify the most significant ideas and create a perspective of my own.
To conclude, I have to admit that even though I am quite aware that teaching
pronunciation in our schools is a very complicated goal to achieve, I consider that
we as future teachers of English should always foster a better level of language
proficiency in our students through the exposure of the varied systems of the
language.
Camila Cuevas A.