1. Universidad Católica de la Santísima Concepción
Faculty of Education
English Pedagogy Major
English Methodology II
UNIVERSIDAD CATÓLICA
DE LA SANTÍSIMA CONCEPCIÓN
Reaction paper
Name: Daniel Gallardo
Subject: Methodology II
Teacher: Roxanna Correa

2. Summary
In this paper Hill be analized five texts about the obligations of the teacher at the time
of teaching in the classroom and how he can improve it.
The first text is called “Research in your own classroom” by Elizabeth taylor. This
text presents interesting ideas about how investigate your own classroom. Taylor
explains the possible consequences that may offer working in group. She says that
“those who prefer to learn from colleagues and from talking over problems and issues
might raise the topic when several teachers meet informally”. Then she says that it is an
important attitude to look through some articles or books, and also talking your ideas
with your colleagues, because it says that you have decided you would like to know
more.
The next points yhat Taylor presents are related to how you can investigate your
classroom. The first point about this is identify the topic you are going to investigate
about. The example provided in the text was to identify the learner roles in small-group
interaction compared with a teacher-directed lesson. After that comes the stage that
consists on collecting and analizing information needed to solve the problem founded
at the beggining of the investigation.
Finally, Taylor presents ideas of how her research helped her teching. “She was able
to see that even thogh there may be more interaction going on in small groups, a wide

3. disparity in learning background, particularly in levels of education, may result in some
learners continuing to adopt “participanting” roles, responding to the teacher
orientation of the most highly educated and most proficient member of the group”.
The second text is “The English Language as Professional” by Penny Ur. This text is
focused on the role of the teacher as a professional, and it starts by giving a definition of
professional; she begins saying that “ A “professional” is, broadly speaking, someone
whose work involves performing a certain fuction with some degree of expertise” but
she also explains that “a narrower definition limits tghe term to apply to people such as
doctors, teachers and lawyers, whose expertise involves not only skill and knowledge
but also the exercise of highly sophisticated judgement, and whose acreditation
necessitates extensive study, often university-based, as well as practical experience”.
After giving a definition, she presents some comparisons between the concept of
“Professional” with another classifications. For example, the comparison she makes is
between professional and Lay. She explains that “a “lay” population is a population
that does not belong to a specified professional group. One of the characteristics that
difference both groups is that “members of the professional group posses certain skills,
knowledge, and conventions that the lay population do not have”.
After that comparison she continues with the differences between professional and
some other concepts like amateur, technician and academic.

4. Ur finishes by explaining that teachers have not achieving on being professionals, or
not as its described in the text. Some of the conditions described have not yet been
realised, or not to the level she wouldlike to see.
The third text is “Continuing your teacher education” by H. DouglasBrown. In this
text Brown gives many advices and steps to have a good performance in teaching. He
starts by sayin that “one of the most invitoring things about teaching is that you never
stop learning”.
Brown presents some goals that can provide continuing career growth for many years
and help teachers to do a better job. One of the goals that he advices is “a knowledge of
the theoretical foundations of language learning and language teaching”.
After that, he talks about some stages and their characteristics that teachers must
follow in irder to be peak performers. Those stages are; Set realistic goals, set priorities,
taking risks and practicing principles oof stress management.
All the stages that Brown suggests are focused on succesful language teachers. He
explains that “one way to beging setting goals and priorities is to consider the qualities
of succesful language teachers”. Furthermore he explains the characteristics of his
concept of succesful language teachers. For example, he says that a succesful language
teacher must show critical thinking and competent preparation leading to a degree in
TESL.
Then, Brown, just like Taylor, gives some ideas about clasroom research. He declares

5. that”the main thing wrong with the world of esducation is that there´s this one group of
people who do it-the teachers- and then there´s another group who think they know
about it- the researches. The group who think they know about teaching try to find out
more about it in order to tell the teachers about teaching- and that is total reversal”.
Finally, Brown suggests five forms of collaboration between teachers. This five forms
of collaboration are: peer coaching, team teaching, action research, collaborative
curriculum development and revision, and the last one is teacher support group.
Joanne Pettis is anothe author that talks about the professional teacher. She focuses
her text in the principles, knowledge and skills that the professional teacher must have.
She explanis that “principles, knowledge, and skills are fundamentally integrated in the
professionally competent teacher. She says “ If I am to be professionally effective, I
believe I must ensure a balance in my expertise”.
About the principles, Pettis explains that “to be knwledgeable and principled without
the appropiate skills necessary to apply this knowledge is limiting. The knowledegeable
teacher who is also skillful is a powerful educator, and the adult ESL profession has a
substantial number of knowledgeable, skillful teachers”. She also says that “ the
principles that guide our decision makin can change over time and deserve to be
reconsidered periodically”.
Then, talking about knowledge, she explains that “the growing body of knowledge on
topics such as learning styles and language learning strategies, the role of discourse in
communicative language teaching, adult ESL/ literacy, and the cultural dimensions of
language learning and teaching beg for exploration”.

6. Finally, talking about skills she suggests that “in the absence of knowledge, skills are
of limited value. Skillful teachers, who have amassed an effective array of activities and
techniques that they can and do employ, but who have not developed a parallel level of
knowledge, limit their effectiveness”.
The last text to be analised is “Cascade training and teacher´s professional
development” by David Hayes.
This text is retated to the model that miniteries often uses and is called the cascade
model. But beacuse the experiences of this model in in-service development has tended
to show that it is more often reduced to a trickle by the time it reachs the classroom
teacher, Hayes went on this topic trying to change the situation.
Firstly, he talks about managing innovation. About it he says that “it needs to be
recognized that teachers are at the heart of any innovation within national education
systems and, therefore, that they and the contexts in which they work need to be studied
to inform the innovation process”.
Another point that Hayes mentios is about strategies for introducing innovation. In
this poitn he refers to the “cascade” model, in which training is conducted at several
levels by trainers drawn from a level above. He says that “ it has a number of
theoretical benefits which make it attractive to planners of change on a large scale”.
Finally he presents the characteristics or principles of PELP ( Primary English
Language Project) and its participation throughout the system. One of the principles

7. mentiones is Participative development, which says that the idea is to maximize the
potential of everyone in the cascade- from the project manager to the coordinators to
teachers in school.
Another principle that Hayes mentions is the Reflexibility. He says that “training and
development activities within the project are reflexive, applying at all levels of the
teaching-learning system. Courses for trainers model features of courses for teachers;
these, in turn, model features of classroom instruction”
Evaluation
Taylor´s (2002) presented the idea of researching in the classroom. It was an
interesting exposition in terms of giving advices of how to do an investigation in the
classroom and about the cooperative work with their colleagues, and its reasoning was
clear and simple..
Her ideas were well argued showing that the kind of people, or how they liked to
work was a factor that really help to choose how to research. She also argued her ideas
by showing how she did her investigation, and the results that she obtained.
It will be false to say that she neglected any posture, bacause she presented both
postures, the advantages and disadvantages.
It will be true to say that she was persuasive, because she was sure about she was

8. saying, and also at the time of saying that reasearches in classroom must be done by
teachers and not by people who say tha knows about the subject and they are not present
in classroom. Even though she says that the researches made by people that are not
involved in the classroom were useful anyway.
Another point that she gave and represented her persuasive attitude was her
suggestion about showing the results of the investigaton, using a lot of examples
because it would make it easier to understand by the teachers, and teachers would be
able to use it or trying.
I could say that one of the questions that she inspired me to investigate was “how can
research in my own classroom help my teaching?”. This is a question that all as teacher
should do to ourselves, in order to improve our help to students to reach learning.
Ur´s (2002) talked about the differences between professionals and lay popualation,
between profesionals and amateurs and between profesionals and technicians.
I pesronally agree with some of her proposals and disagree with others. For example: I
agree that maybe the professional may have mor knowledge , certain skills and
conventions, but that is not a reason to underestimate the lay population, the
tecchnicians or the amateurs. The amateur, as the text explains, may do things for fun ,
for the love of it, not having the same trainning that the professional but its dedications
should be taken into account. It could be that because of his motivation he could

9. preparate himself well, not at the level of the professional, but he coul do a good job ass
well.
Then, while talking about the differences between technicians and profesionals, it can
be seen that technicians are more skillful that professionals. Another point to consider
before saying that professional are above the others.
In the same part of the text that talks about technicians is presented the concept that
technicians could be considered professionals and viceversa. It is an interesting point of
view that takes into account the job the will do.
In my point of view, Ur was not convincing. She didn´t give any powerful reason to
support her ideas. She established that professionals are above thhe rest but it is just like
an opinion, because she doesn´t have explícit proves.
Brown´s (2001) presented a logical and interesting view about the goals that the
teachers may set to themselves in order to develop a good teaching.
Brown presented the idea of peak performers. In this topic he refers about what
teachers shoul take into account if the want to be peak performers.
I believe that Brown´s text was really interesting and certain. It presents a logical list
of rules like set realistic goals, which is verys certain, also setting priorities, taking risks
and practising principles of stress management. I personally enjoyed this rules, because

10. I think they are exactly what we need to do to success on being peak performers, and I
strongly believe that every teacher shoul follow this.
Just as Taylor did, Brown presented advices to follow while making classroom
researches and expressed that the researches in classroom shopud be done by teachers
and not by people that is not directly involved in the activities in the classroom.
Now, talking about his ideas about investigation, I would say that they followed a
logic structure, just like Taylor, but the difference is that he didn´t present an
investigatioon made by him like taylor did, and that made his presentation less certain
that Taylor´s.
Pettis’ (2002) presentation was about professional development. She gave a big
emphasis to the innovation of teachers. She explained that it was important to know
that we will never stop learning and we should take innovation and updating as
important parts of our professional development. I agree with this, because all
knowledge and technologies increase and it is our duty to pay attention and follow that
kind of development.
She was persuasive by saying that to be knowledgeable and principled without skills
necessary to apply the knowledge is limiting, and when said that development of
teaching competence is ouur professional reponsability, and we can undertake a wide
range of activities in fulfillment of this obligation.

11. In terms of innovation, Hayes (2000) presentation was about teachers as the heart of
the innovation in education. He supported his reasoning by saying that the context
where teacher developed needed to be studied so that they can inform about the
innovation process.
Hayes is persuasive by presenting the teachers as the heart of any innovation within
national education system. There he presented the idea of the cascade model, that was
supposed to change the curriculum in Sri lanka. This idea was put into action by the
PELP. I think that puting into action the investigation, as Talor did, make its
presentation authentic and credible.
One of Hayes arguments was that teachers should evaluate themselves. In My
opinion this is certain, and all teachers must do it, in order to see the possible mistakes
they coul be making and solving the different problems that they may have.

12. References
Brown, H. D. (2001). Teaching by principles: An interactive approach to language
pedagogy (2nd ed.). Pearson Education.
Hayes, D. (2000). Cascade training and teachers' professional development.ELT
journal, 54(2), 135-145.
Pettis, J. (2002). Developing our professional competence: Some reflections.
Methodology in language teaching: An anthology of current practice, 393-396.
Taylor, E. (2002). Research in your own Classroom. Methodology in language
teaching, 397-403.
Ur, P. (2002). The English teacher as professional. Methodology in language teaching:
an anthology of current practice, 388.