Half way through your Ficha de Cátedra 1, you might now be in a position to start work on the three case studies you will find below.

Read them and start reflecting on them. Print this material out and keep it with you to work in class in the following weeks.

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Read the case studies and give your opinion. Use what you learnt: your theoretical background (your common sense and teaching intuitions might help A LOT too) to justify your analysis,

evaluation and recommended course of action.

Case Study 1 : Mariana

Mariana is a twenty-two year old, kind and devoted English teacher of a Fourth Year of EGB in a middle-class school in San Mart¡n. She has had no formal teacher education but has a more than acceptable compentence in the language. The Head of the English Department has warned her against using Spanish in the classroom. "Children have to be exposed to English alone from the very beginning" the Head insists.

Mariana tries hard : she normally uses a very slow rate of speech (She sometimes feels she even distorts her pronunciation in order to make it more accessible to her nine-year old students who have not been exposed to English before).

Mariana is very worried : her children do not seem to understand her. Her intuition tells her that she only needs to slow down her speech to be understood but this STRATEGY seems to be a complete failure. She has decided to ask you for expert advice.

Case Study : Josefina

Josefina is a thirty-six year old teacher of English in a state-run school of the quiet, upper-middle class neighbourhood of Adrogué‚. She teaches Sixth year pupils of EGB. Her children ( most of them around the age of 11) have had English in the Fourth and Fifth year but do not seem, according to Josefina, to have learnt much. Josefina has not had any kind of formal (or informal !) teacher Education . As a matter of fact, her only "teaching" qualification is a

certificate of a Sixth Year examination she passed at a Cultura when she was twenty. When she took over Sixth Year, she decided to use the same "methodology" her private teacher had used to teach her English. "If it worked with me, it will surely work with my own students" Josefina reflects.

She uses Spanish in the classroom as the sole medium of instruction ("or else the children will not understand" she insists). She presents the grammar rules explicitly. She "teaches" Grammar: she dictates the rules to the students and they put them down in their copybooks. The textbook she's using contains passages and dialogues followed by comprehension questions. She asks students those comprehension questions in English and they normally answer in English by

referring directly to the text and parroting the relevant parts. She sometimes gives her students sentences to translate from English into Spanish (some other times when they misbehave, she asks them to translate the whole lesson from the textbook).Her students show clear evidence of being bored and uninterested ("Their discipline is chaotic", Josefina complains) and do not seem to be making much progress (apart from carrying out the mechanical tasks she

Josefina is a conscientious person and lately she has started to wonder there must be a better way to teach these children English and to make her classes more attractive and effective. She has decided to ask you for expert advice.

Case Study 3 : Damián

Damián is a young and energetic teacher of English of a Fifth Year of EGB in a private confessional school in Carapachay, a quiet, middle-class suburb in Greater Buenos Aires. Damián is only twenty-two but he certainly looks older, probably because he is the serious type of person.

Demian has no teaching qualifications and has received no formal teacher training but he has a very good command of the language (especially of the formal aspects of the language, even when he really sounds quite fluent and flexible in his use of English). He loves Grammar and collects vocabulary items as a hobby (as many people collect stamps or butterflies). "If you are to say something in English,you must say it right, otherwise it's better to keep your mouth shut" Damián maintains.

His students often make mistakes when they attempt to use the language and Damián

corrects those mistakes immediately because , he says, he doesn't want his students to fix wrong language and especially for the sake of the class as a whole that might, if he doesn't correct, incorporate wrong language. Normally he provides the right rendering of the faulty language used by the students and gives them the rule (in Spanish) "Qué usamos con el verbo cuando el sujeto es "He" " is a typical exchange in his classes when a student makes a mistake.

Lately he has started to get worried about his classroom situation : students do not seem to internalize his corrections and ,worse still, he has to push participation as most of the students seem to have chosen to remain silent in his class. He has decided to ask you for expert advice.