Learning more than English Project

About this blog

I have created this blog as a resource for teachers and students of English as Second Language and as part of the 'Master Universitario en Tecnologías de la información y la Comunicación en la Enseñanza y Tratamiento de Lenguas' (UNED-2011/2012), as well as part of the resources used by the members of the Department of English Language of IES Belén (Málaga, Spain).

My intention is that our students can use an easy ITC tool as a blog and knowing more about the language they are learning, in this case English from a sociocultural perspective. This is the result of my experience as teacher of English, and how I have tried to introduce cultural aspects, connected to the different topics proposed by the Educational Laws, as well as according to the needs and interests of our students in Compulsory and Post-Compulsory Secondary Education.  

They have the need to know other cultures, being part of the current society, where we all are interconnected by the new technologies. So they have the chance to acquire more knowledge from a different point of view, using this as a class tool or as a complement, and having the possibility of working with this material in class, or making that our students could work by themselves from their houses.

I pretend that my students could develop the communicative competence from all the perspectives, that is, applying the language rules and structures they have learnt on a communicative context working with all the skills: listening, reading, speaking and writing.

Moreover, I try that students combine these aspects with the use of the Internet resources, by means of videos, audios, and online texts that they can comment, as well as sharing their opinions about different topics.

In relation to the selection of topics, I have tried that the users of this blog could work with familiar topics, as sports, health, traveling, environment,... always taking into account that the potential users of this blogs are teenagers, students from 12 to 18 years (especially Post-Compulsory Education Students, because of the level of the contents), and that they must work with this multimedia material.        

Finally, I must mention that the material and resources used in this blog combine real material, taken from webs as Youtube, as well as specific material and resources created and adapted to the teaching of English as Second Language.