Listening

           LISTENING

As a teacher, I am aware that listening is among the skills Ss have more difficulty with,   especially when Ss listen to native speakers, or recordings with different accents. Thus, the Ss need training on listening to different kinds of conversations; for instance, advertisements, face to face conversations, dialogues, telephone conversations, watching T.V. programmes and films. An example of a practical guide for listening is shown below.  

Skill: Listening	Sub-kills: Understanding lexis; understanding phonological features; understanding gist/main ideas; understanding specifics/important details; and making inferences by social context, background/real-world knowledge.
Objective: To listen and perform specific activities using a dialogue	Activity: Listen to a dialogue

In this guide, listening is combined with different elements in order to enhance learning such as: visual pictures, answering questions, vocabulary, speaking, information gap activities, and so on.

All the activities are supervised by the e-tutor at all times.

It is indispensable to consider

"La tutoría es ante todo un espacio para la reflexión y el análisis que permite el conocimiento de si mismo, la búsqueda de alternativas y acciones en el caminar del estudiante"

Rubén González Ceballos

Es indispensable considerar que como parte de las herramientas básicas para el acompañamiento tutoral; la entrevista tutorial, el registro y seguimiento de la trayectoria de los tutorados, y la detección de necesidades y conocimientos resultan particulamente valiosas para una tutoría exitosa.

ORGANÍZATE, CONCÉNTRATE Y HAZLO

Piensa en estas preguntas y contéstalas

ESTE EJERCICIO LO HARÁ CADA SEMANA Y LO ENVIARÁ AL E-TUTOR. POR FAVOR VEA EL EJEMPLO.

Esto es lo que puedo hacer  sin tener problema.	Esto es lo que es un poco más complicado para mí.	Puedo hacerlo con un poco de ayuda.	Esto es muy difícil para mí y necesito mucha ayuda para hacerlo.	Esto es muy difícil.	De ninguna manera puedo hacer esto, es muy difícil.
COMUNICACION	ESCRITURA	LECTURA	PRODUCCIÓN ORAL	AUDICION	COMUNICACION
Saludos Preguntar por direcciones Responder preguntas	Llenar un formato (nombre, fecha de nacimiento, teléfono...)	Entender  textos cortos (10 líneas)	Explicar algún tema	Reconocer oraciones  en una película	Entablar un diálogo con un extranjero
SEMANA

Online Tutoring

Berge’s (1995) posits that the conditions necessary for successful on-line instruction are categorised into four  main areas: pedagogical, social, managerial, and technical.

Pedagogical (Instruction itself, goals and learning objectives, feedback, etc.)
Managerial (tracking progess in their students, getting useful data, administration issues, etc.)
Technical (provides technical support, solves queries, uses different types of e-tools.etc.)
Social:  (encourages social interaction, establishes a good learning environment, promotes discussion, etc.)

Lentell (2003) asserts that tutors need to have knowledge and a broad conceptual understanding of their field. They have to be effective listeners and communicators, to be a coach, facilitator, mentor, supporter and resource. They have to listen, to shape, to give feedback, to motivate, to direct, to appreciate – broadly to be developmental and problem solving.

Online Tutor

Any person taking charge of supporting and enabling students to learn online effectively.

Online tutoring requieres the following skills:

• Good organisation
• Good personal characteristics
• Subject expertise
• ICT literacy
• A flexible approach
• Excellent communication/discussion skills
• Interactive and collaborative skills
• Time management skills

Some benefits of online tutoring are:

Improving positive attitudes to the subject, better grades, highly effective study habits, developing successful learning skills, encouraging confidence, and so on.

THE PRACTICAL GUIDE DIAGRAM

This guide helps the students to develop their vocabulary learning skills and perform the activity in a quick way. This guide is also useful by helping the students who need further practice and reinforces their reading speed as well. In short, it leads the student(s) to learn vocabulary whilst practicing her/his reading aloud sub-skill(s).

READING

In order to design the guides it is essential to take into account the following points: selection of relevant texts, students’ level, e-tivities, time to solve the guide and checking answers together with the students, among others. These guides also help students to develop and consolidate their language learning skills and sub-skills altogether.

The guides are based on the sub-skills needed for reading such as: skimming, predicting, proofreading, scanning, gist reading, intensive reading, extensive reading, inferring meaning (of vocabulary in context, or of the writer’s point of view), and so on.

It is evident that in order to read and comprehend texts students need to manage vocabulary; however, vocabulary should be learned in context. When students learn vocabulary in context they might be aware that one word might have different meanings according to the specific context. They also might see that vocabulary has different connotations and that quite often words are associated with other words, hence changing their meanings.

I provide an example of a guide below. This guide favours key vocabulary and the meaning of words related to reading. It emphasises that the students need to learn vocabulary in context and that the students might use any electronic devices available. At the end of the activities the student(s) can write any comment about the guide.

Skill: Reading	Sub-kill: Meaning of words	Comments
Objective: Practice  the new vocabulary in context	Activity: find the key words meaning in context	Ss comment on the activities

THE PRACTICAL GUIDES

The practical guides are the most important element regarding online tutoring methodology. In this case, students are using them with multiple purposes: content review, practice of different activities, clarification, or just to reinforce their prior knowledge in their continuous language learning journey. The e-tutor guides the students along the process of using these guides effectively; in addition, these guides have a clear purpose each one of them and also are related to students’ needs, which in turn are related to different skills and sub-skills of the language itself.

https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/sub-skills

THE COMMUNICATION

The communication is very important for a good and successful online tutoring. Thus, technology provides different forms of communication and worldwide communication. The channels of communication are video, texts, audio, or multimedia materials. In a few words, the Internet offers a wide variety of media to communicate and learn English. Online tutoring uses transactions, problem identification and negotiations and different kinds of input as well. As an e-tutor, I have to work together with the students in order to guide them appropriately to solve their learning issues. I believe that tutoring online will help my students to improve their English learning, and their life in general.