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Hi folks! Searching on the Internet I have found an interesting article that includes a set of communicative activities that we can develop in the classroom. As we have been studying, one of the big challenges that language teachers face is to promote the skills of speaking and oral interaction. In several of the case studies the teachers express the difficulties they have developing oral language. However, as a language teacher it's really important to know what counts as speaking in language learning and how to promote such skills. I think that these are the advantages of using this kind of activities in the classroom: More exposure to the target language More authentic opportunities to use the foreign language Fun and interesting for learners These activities provides opportunity to use authentic materials Nevertheless, I consider that there is a big problem that we have to take into account: Learners can be resistant, specially if they are accustomed to teacher-centred styles of teaching. I hope you find it useful!

I found an interesting article on lesson planning. This article gives us some guidelines and interesting things to think about when planning a lesson such as the grammar knowledge and its effect on fluency. They pay a lot of attention to the importance of fluency activities, something that hasn´t come forward in our classes and that is not taken into account very often in the classroom. And fluency is exactly the reason why we are teaching/learning foreign languages. Fluency is what students need to be able to communicate with native speakers or speakers from other countries.

The silent period is the period of time in wich a learner hesitates beginning to speak a new language.