Anacélia Gaspar
I live and work in Brazil.I've been an English teacher for more than 20 years now.I teach different age group students of all levels.I join FutureLearn Courses to keep learning and sharing.
Location Brazil
Activity
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
Thanks for the brilliant explanation in a clear, objective and yet detailed text.
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
I´d like to share with @ll of you this amazing article I´ve just read that incudes some of the aspects we´ve been dealing with in this great MOOC : "Most Classroom Teachers Feel Unprepared to Support Students With...
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
At College I´ve studied ADHD, but this was a long time ago and now I´ve realized it´s much more complex than what I´d thought. However, I´m really excited about all this learning and discoveries!
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On the other hand, maybe in specific cultures some behaviours are considered problematic ....
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Me neither!
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
In my opinion ADHD means a brain disorder.
I´m taking the course because I´m an EFL teacher in the mainstream system and I consider it important to know how to manage classroom situations and scenarios in an effective and affective way. -
Anacélia Gaspar replied to Lesley Lovegrove
I couldn´t agree more ;)
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
I´ve known this term for 20 years now.
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
Wow! Really excited to start!
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@NadiiaSukovanchenko Just sent you a request to join your group :D
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
Thanks for the video, but I still miss the time the Educators and Mentors provided us with a pdf doc to be downloaded containing all the resources and links mentioned during the week.... ;)
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Dear @ll,
I´d like to share this link with you, which contains an image that really matches one of the points that ha been mentioned in the video- when the teacher asks something and there is silence.https://teachers.wrdsb.ca/eslresources/2018/04/10/the-power-of-wait-time-for-ells-and-all-students/
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
Thanks a bunch you @ll, for the great variety of ideas and resources!!!!
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
I´d tell about my (fictitious) experience with a fortune teller and her predictions and ask the learner to tell me which tense of verb had been used and is (s)he could give a similar example of his/her own life.
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
I think my biggest challenge is to make sure that the recorded material will work on my platform because where I live the internet connection is not that good. In order to overcome it I think I could try asking a colleague to check it with me and help me out or even provide the link beforehand so that the learner can do the task at home, previous to the lesson.
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
I believe in my case the internet connection and the different online tools as well as the platform features.
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@GabyT I agree when you say we have to master the platform, which is a big challenge.
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
I think in the beginning I would not be able to solve students problems, in case they have one. And I´d also feel insecure and might forget which feature refers to which function :D
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
I pretty much agree with Corinne´s quote.
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@ThelmaM So am I :)
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
I´d rather work for myself, if possible. And I´m interested in teaching young adults and professionals. I´m not quite sure if I want to teach students from around the world I´m afraid it might be too much of a challenge...
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
I share Corinne´s reasons. I´d like to complement my main schedule, having something flexible at the same time.
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
I´m interested in teaching young adults and adults from my own country, either general English or ESP , working for myself, individually.
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@GabriellaDóczi-Vámos I mean jumbled sentence type activities : should this kind of assessment be avoided in tests, and only be used in class activities?
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@GabriellaDóczi-Vámos Thank you very much for your practical ideas regarding assigning students more autonomy via class activities. As for the organization-type activities, do you recommend avoiding their use in formal tests, when assessing students?
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@PamelaOlmos It was more than 10 years ago, and I was much younger at the time. But I can tell you it worked. I used to work hard at home planning my lessons very well detailed and all the resources that I´d need in class (since the school didn´t provide and the ones available commercially were too expensive for my personal budget). Part of my planning...
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
Done!
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
Done!
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Briliant! Thank you!
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I´m familiar to both techniques presented in the video - inference awareness and reciprocal teaching, but I´ve always used them with adult students in advanced levels. It´s good to know they can be applied to dyslexic learners.
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
What is your view of these tasks?
The tasks are creative and useful, and I liked them a lot.Would you use them in your context?
I think so.How would you adapt them?
In order to be able to use them in a big group I´d have to do them all on the surface of a table, and perhaps making use of mini boards. -
I used to use the same techniques when teaching preschoolers in a binational school. There were 25 students in the classroom and I was supposed to teach them how to read and write in English .
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Clear and direct explanation of the rules with lots of practices manipulating concrete cues such as tokens, boxes, markers, counters, facilitate the learning process for dyslexic students. It implies visual, tactile and auditory drills with the use of these concrete elements and also different colors.
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
It looks like I´m going to learn a lot here.
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
Hi, I´m an EFL teacher living and working in Brazil. I´ve teaching for more than 20 years now and I teach in private schools in the mainstream system and language schools. I have groups of different levels, ages and interests and needs, as well as different course programs. I´m here to keep updated with the latest ideas through sharing and learning, and meet...
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
What did you enjoy most about the course?
What I liked most about the course? So many things, but I´d like to highlight being taught how to calculate facility values in a simple way that I could understand.
Do you think that your knowledge of language assessment has developed? In what ways?
Yes, I do. And I´d like to thank all the team of Educators, Mentors... -
Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
Done!
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
Reliability is something that concerns me a lot when preparing two versions of the same test. That´s why I always design them at the same time, trying to have the same structure, content and types of items, as well as same scoring scales, in order to achieve the results mentioned in the video. But I do not find it easy at all.
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
I totally agree with Barry O’Sullivan : common sense is the key!
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
Te answers to all of the questions proposed above have been somewhat positive, if not 100% yes, at least partially, and as we all know nothing is perfect I feel quite confident about my tests, knowing there is room for improvement - always.
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
I feel happy to verify I follow these guidelines suggested in the video!
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
If I have understood it clearly there is a problem with questions 2 and 4, question 7 has probably been guessed, and question 5 and 8 are shown as too difficult.
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
Thanks a lot for sharing this helpful and useful information with us!
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
Taking into consideration it is an achievement test I understand that Questions 5 and 8 are too difficult and Questions 3 and 9 are too easy.
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
Producing tests for students is part of my attributions as an EFL teacher.
Most of the time I teach General English groups - although the academy I work at offers other kinds of courses.
It is basically an achievement test that aims is to verify students abilities in the content area covered in the material used consisting of a separate skills summative... -
Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
What age(s) are the learners you teach?
I teach 9-12 years old; 13-17 years old; young adults and adults.In your experience, what assessment tasks work well with them?
With 9-12 year olds all kinds of games (written, oral,virtual/digital) , role-plays, flashcards work well with them. They like competitive tasks. I try to avoid long tasks and unknown... -
Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
In your teaching context, do you test skills separately or assess integrated skills*? Why?
In formative assessments I prepare integrated skills tasks, because that´s the way we use language in real life. These tasks consist either in classwork or homework assignment.
But in summative assessments I prepare separate skills tasks , so that weakness in one... -
Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
The tests that I use to assess my students in the language academy I work for are similar to the first model , and each skill is assessed separately.
How do you feel about the test? I think the tests are rather long.
What do you like about it? The tests are reliable and valid, though.
Is there anything you would like to change? The length of the tests, if... -
I have tried portfolio assessment about 10 years ago, when the coordination of my institute implemented it in the school and abolished formal assessment.
Unfortunately, neither my personal experience with it nor my colleagues was a positive one, and after 3 years of its implementation the school abolished it and returned to the formal written assessments.
I... -
Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
Which of these kinds of tests do you make or deliver? Are you happy with these tests, or is there anything you would like to improve about them?
I usually make achievement tests, but sometimes I have to design placement tests a well. And I think there is always something to improve about them. -
Anacélia Gaspar replied to Wendy Nurwenda
@JoannaDavidson this is something I´ve learnt here : that dyslexia exists in a spectrum. Thank you!
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
I found the task design activity and the feedback very useful because we had to think of a practical idea on how to apply the theory we´d seen previously.
I liked receiving feedback from my colleagues very much because we can enlarge our own perspective on the same topic.
I liked the experience of writing feedback to my colleagues, it´s an opportunity to... -
@DaveyYoung I totally agree with you that the lesson plan was too open and although I haven´t received my feedback yet I have already provided feedback , and so I have seen that other people have come up with a more structured lesson plan than mine, making it more clear.
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What is your opinion of the methods we suggested in the reading and in the video presentation?
I just loved all the ideas suggested here in this Mooc.Would you use them?
I´m willing to, if time allows me.As it has been said in the 3.9 somments the amount of content teachers are supposed to cover nowadays is a constraint.Do you think they are easy to...
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
Such great ideas! Besides, I´ve reconized my own teaching in the first task, just that I haven´t tried the warm-up suggested, when students are asked to give hints to the teacher about a word to be guessed. Next time I will sure do it.
The idea about teaching parts of the house is also very engaging and simple to administer because it involves different steps... -
Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
Part 2:
Regarding the use of mind maps, I´ve been applying this technique in my practice for quite a long time now, when teaching writing lessons or conversation/speaking ones, making use of different types of this visual graphic tool. -
Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
Part 1:
When I first started teaching, with no proper training at all, just my CPE certificate, I used to do activities like this with my kids and pre-teens students in A1-A2 levels, based on my previous experience as a student in elementary school when learning my native language, in the 70´s. In fact, when I applied this idea to my teaching practice I had... -
@MargaretBueno I do too.
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Anacélia Gaspar replied to Larysa Lopata
@LarysaLopata Yes, it all depends on the situation.
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Anacélia Gaspar replied to Anacélia Gaspar
@OlenaRossi Thank you for the feedback.I´ve been learning so much you you all here!
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
The English Profile and the Text Inspector are sites I was already aware of and know how to use. In fact the Text Inspector is part of my routine when creating tests. However, the other sites besides being totally new to me are also an enigma as I could not understand how they work and so how they could help me. The reason why I´m looking forward to hearing...
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
From my point of view, modified cloze tests and C-tests are easier than cloze tests. Depending on the kind of words selected to be omitted from the text this type can become the easiest one.
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
Yes : C-tests.
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
Since I try to have different test items in my tests I usually have one set of items in a multiple choice format.
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
When designing my tests I always keep in mind that it has to fit the curriculum I´m teaching (group age and level) and that the task types and topics are familiar to my students. Regarding the topics I also think about it being interesting and
Another of my concerns is that the amount of items are in accordance to the allocated time and that correction is... -
Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
I couldn´t agree more with Barry´s ideas and comments. In my school grammar is assessed directly and indirectly and it works very well, since we can see the good and positive results when students finish the course. I think giving feedback to students on their tests is a way of preparing them to be aware of their weaknesses and strengths, so that they can be...
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Anacélia Gaspar replied to Larysa Lopata
@LarysaLopata How weird, because i always think about levels when preparing a lesson, no matter the teaching point - grammar, vocabulary etc
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
According to the structure I´ve checked my students are at A2 level, which is correct.
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
The tests I prepare for my students look more like the Aptis format.
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Anacélia Gaspar replied to Anacélia Gaspar
@OlenaRossi In fact, what I meant in my answer was grammar tasks and vocabulary tasks in one test, but now I´ll have to think if Ihavent´prepared a lexicogrammar task. For example, when I ask students to use the appropriate idiom to answer a fill in the gaps exercise in a test, but remind them they are supposed to make any necessary changes, is it a...
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
I usually test my students on form, meaning and usage for the written tests; whereas the pronunciation only for the oral tests/interviews.
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
I have decided to assess vocabulary and grammar together , in the same part of the test, because of this difficulty of mine of separating one from another.
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
I personally don´t like word lists.
On the other hand, I usually use a tool to check the level of a text before using it with my students. -
Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
A very interesting experience, since I´d never done a similar test and didn´t know this particular one.
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
I test :
a) single words and two-word lexical items with clear meanings, and when creating the items I usually think of a very direct way of testing such as matching the image to the word ;
b) fixed and semi-fixed expressions, and then I think of a context, such as a dialogue;
c) idioms, and in this case I try to contextualise in a scenario or give a... -
Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
As a student at the mainstream system my English tests used to measure grammar and vocabulary in a very traditional grammar translation method. Later on, in the language academy I´ve attended, there was a very communicative approach, and I remember vocabulary used to be a constraint for me.
Nowadays, this difference still remains, and when I prepare a test... -
Thanks for sharing this great material with us! I´ve been learning a lot here.
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
Well, the scoring is better, but the spelling and speed problem remains. I wouldn´t use this for my students, even for a class activity.
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
First of all, I don´t think it´s a suitable task for an A2 level listening test; and the marking criteria is not well balanced neither transparent.
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
I use videos for teaching purposes a lot and both my students and I like it very much, but I´ve never used for assessment purposes.
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
I always use materials available. What I do sometimes is to create my own questions. It is less time consuming an it has a more authentic result.
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
In my institution we have been designing listening tests that include all these listed subskills. However,not in the same test, but along the semester in the two opportunities we have to test our learners, so that the listening part is not that long .
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
If the task involves some writing I only deduct points if the student is in a B - C level, in the language institute. In lower levels just if it prevent us from recognising the extent to which the reading text has been understood.
And I usually inform my students beforehand of how they will be scored. -
Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
I have tried the APTIS, just for the reason it is new to me and I liked the fact that the tasks do no require the candidate to write, which means the items are rated based on the reading skills only. It has happened to me just recently , I designed a reading test for 12 year old learners from the 7th grade and by the time I had to correct and grade them I...
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@JohannaTruijens Congratulations!
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
I usually choose a text based on my students interests and needs as well as the topics that have already been covered in their textbooks. Then, I check the vocabulary and grammar, and think of what kind of questions or activities can be done. If it is a class activity I don´t mind if the level is a little bit ahead or below, because I can work on that with the...
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@CarmenMedina I use the text analyzer too.
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@AtiyaBokhary I agree. I could only understand because of the picture.
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
Would students from the country you are based in be familiar with the topic discussed in the article?
In my country students wouldn´t be familiar with any of the topics discussed in any of the articles.Do you think the article gives enough explanation on the topic for everybody to understand it (even if they were not familiar with it in the first...
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I agree with you , and would just add some points : 1) I´d also use it when preparing students for IELTS or any other similaar academic proficiency exam; 2) I´d use it with Business English students; 5) I´d also use it when preparing students for proficiency exams or IELTS.
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
When preparing a listening test I think about the same points that I consider when preparing a reading test ( students language level, duration of the test, topic, authenticity, different types of questions) , besides clarity of the material- intelligibility.
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
When preparing a reading test I take into account:
the learner´s language level compared to the text (grammar and vocabulary);
the length of the text in relation the amount of time they will be allowed to accomplish it;
the topic - always related to what have been studied in class and at the same time contextualized (as well as authentic, if... -
Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
I just loved this discovery tool!
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
So far I have no questions about the material covered this week (or at least I think so).
Since I have very little experience with dyslexic students I could not contribute very much in the discussions and comments, but I´d like to thank you all for your reflections, suggestions and comments because I have learnt a looot! -
@LellyB Thanks for the great job !
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
All this multisensory input made me remember that last month ,while teaching parts of the body, I taught my students form 7th grade a simple hand clapping game :
http://funclapping.com/song-list/a-sailor-went-to-sea/
And challenged them to learn the first part of the rhyme in order to have an extra point in the month average grade for class...
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@azzashawki Thanks for sharing this interactive grammar program - Tense Buster. I had never heard of it before your mentioning it here. Is it a free tool,do you know?
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Thank you@ll for the great contribution , I´ve learnt a lot with your comments !
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
In theory, all the accommodations suggested are quite simple and look feasible, but in practice it does not turn out like that due to a series of factors. Just to mention some, the institution I´m working at the moment does not want the group to know that there is a classmate with dyslexia, not even the student herself is aware of it, according to the family,...
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Anacélia Gaspar made a comment
They have had difficult and struggling experiences and memorising new words, vocabulary or rules has been hard for them, as well as understanding the meaning of new concepts whether in vocabulary or in grammar.
