Samia's e-portfolio
Samia's Portfolio: Communicative Approach
Introduction
This portfolio is an overview of the course "Abordagem Comunicativa" which I took in the first semester of 2007 in Faculdade de Letras of UFMG, Brasil. The course was taught by the Professor Deise Dutra.
To check out the course program, click here.
The objective of this portfolio is to show how my learning process was developed, including some important artifacts which helped me learn about the Communicative Approach.
The artifacts I am going to to present in this portfolio are:
1. Forum discussions
2. First Individual Task
3. Textbook Analysis
4. Second Individual Task
5. Essay
1. Forum discussions
For 14 weeks, we were assigned to post on the forum, discussing some questions presented by our professor, Deise Dutra. All the forum discussion was based on concepts concerning the Communicative Approach, as well as our view on how education took place taking into account the premises presented by the texts we studied. Also, we were always asked to discussed how we could observe these premises taking place having in mind our role as English teachers and students.
The importance of these discussions was to create an environment in which the students, together with the teacher, could be able to check their understanding of the texts, as well as to arise problems concerning the readings and possibilities of application if the theory to our reality as teachers and learners.
Click here for a general view of our forum.
Especially important for our understading of what the communicative approach is was discussed on the third week, in which we could compare the communicative approach with the audiolingual approach. Alse, we reflected on which of these approaches were more representative of our experiences as teachers and learners of English.
Fourh week, question 1 was a discussion about Krashen and Terrell's theoretical model for second language acquisition, in its five hypothesis. We were asked to discuss one of the hypoithesis. Since it is a very important text related to second language acquisition, I think it was very relevant that we discussed it.
On the fifth week, question 1, we discussed the importance of integrating skills in order to lead to real communication. Here, we emphasized that without integrating the four skill, it would be impossible for use to communicate effectively in English. On the fifth week, question 3, we had the chance to discuss Xaviers' text, in which he presented several tasks which could be used in the Communicative Approach. We were asked to discuss about one particular kind of task from the text and to relate it to our role as teachers and students.
I definitely do not discard the other discussion we had about the Communicative Approach, but I chose to mention the discussions above because I consider them of major relevance to my learning this semester.
2. First Individual Task
The first individual task had two parts: the first part of the task was about my learning experiences and the second one revealed what I learned about the communicative approach as we had discussed it the course.
The text I created which was my First Individual task is below: