The incidence of some practical activities on writing skill improvement for children attending the 6th year of basic education at Hernando Taquez School, during the second term, school year 2008 - 2009

Abstract

Actual teaching of English demands the use of practical teaching techniques in order to get a correct language learning, therefore, the employ of ludics during the English class constitutes an essential requirement because children get to be interested in any subject mainly by means of games. It is so difficult to get children´s attention by using the old memoristical methodologies where they are just mere receptors of knowledge rather than being participants of the learning activities. Low scholar output in the foreign language area has been produced as direct consequence of passive teaching activities. Therefore, it is clearly indispensable the use of didactic material according to the level of learning, this is not just on the case of English but it can be also applied for the case of any other language learning process. Getting to keep student´s attention along the whole English lesson is indispensable because it is the main tool to get success and to measure the comprehension level the teacher is achieving from his students. Teaching must not be seen like a moment limited to an activity where the student just repeats what he is hearing from his teacher but it is also important that the teacher also realizes about the necessity of developing the four language skills. I do not mean a teacher may be able to develop at their full capability all the four skills nor mind taking into account the short time lapse of a forty five minutes class it´s impossible- but the teacher may prioritize, let´s say: writing, and then use fewer time on practicing the other 3 language skills. The teacher must turn into one conductor in mixing skillfully the ludic activities so getting the students take part in the activities with pleasure. I think the use of some practical activities like: wordsoups, crossword puzzles, flash cards, scrambled sentences, mimic games and making sentences from pictures, etc, was the key tool that let me to get success in improving the writing skill on the children I worked with in the present project execution.