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IGOR'S COMMENT ABOUT TEXT 1 || HANSEL AND GRETEL

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IGOR'S COMMENT ABOUT TEXT 1 || HANSEL AND GRETEL

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The fairytale tells us a story about two young siblings called Hansel and Gretel. This story narrates how two kids were able to survive alone and more they stayed together and supported each other no matter what. Hansel and Gretel were two children that were abandoned in the middle of the woods to die alone. When their parents were taking them into the woods, Hansel started to spread breadcrumbs on the ground, but after waiting a long time for their parents to return they started to make their way back and  they couldn’t find it, because the birds and others animals ate all the breadcrumbs on the ground. After looking for days they stopped at a house made of candy that was habited by a cannibal witch. She locked them inside the house and started to feed the kids so she could eat them later. Gretel pushed the witch inside the oven, burning her to death. The children ran away and found their home again.

Hansel and Gretel is a fairytale, but we can connect the story with reality, because I was always warned by my family to not accept anything from strangers and Hansel and Gretel did accept help from a stranger. So, if I proposed this fairytale to work in a classroom, I would ask my students to read it and then I would ask them to rewrite the story but from their point of view if they were one of the characters. After the activity is finished, to finalize I would propose to the students to create a play based in what was written by them.

By asking them to rewrite the fairytale and create a play, I would be working with critical literacy, because in every part of the activity they would have to think by themselves to create a different thing.

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IGOR'S COMMENT ABOUT TEXT 2 || WEEKEND IN THE RAINFOREST 

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IGOR'S COMMENT ABOUT TEXT 2 || WEEKEND IN THE RAINFOREST 

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I personally like travel reports very much. They can bring back memories of something good or bad, it depends on how the trip was. But travel reports can be very useful for those that don’t know the place yet.

When we talk about reading, it usually comes to our minds books, more specific romantic books, but reading is not just romantic books, it's much more and, in this case, an informative news that can help a lot   someone's trip. A travel report can be a story, it can be news, it can be a romance and it can be all of those, that is why I love travel reports, and also because I love to travel.

In a classroom I would ask the students to write a travel report about their experiences, and how it changed their perspective about the local culture. After they had finished writing those, I would ask them to share their stories and see different travel reports by their colleagues.

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IGOR'S COMMENT ABOUT TEXT 3 || THE PRINCESS AND THE PEA

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IGOR'S COMMENT ABOUT TEXT 3 || THE PRINCESS AND THE PEA

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By talking about fairytale in the classroom we allow a more democratic access to the language, because it’s a popular subject and also it’s easy to work. When we talk about fairy tales, what usually comes to our minds? That is a kind of question that we, as teachers, can ask our students.

Fairy tales used to be a nice and relaxing subject to work with. Because it reminds us in our intimate about a time that things used to be easy.

By working with fairy tales, we, as teachers, can help the students develop a critical sense of view and “The princess and the Pea” is a great story for that, starting with the part of the prince looking for a wife who has to be a princess, showing the male chauvinism of the story.

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ANA'S COMMENT ABOUT TEXT 1 || HANSEL AND GRETEL

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ANA'S COMMENT ABOUT TEXT 1 || HANSEL AND GRETEL

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Hansel and Gretel is a fairytale that tells a lot about value. My mother used to tell me when I was a child as a warning against bad behavior.
Hansel and Gretel are a young brother and sister kidnapped by a cannibalistic witch living in a forest, in a house constructed of candies.  The two children escaped by outwitting her.

For this text the aim would be beginners, mainly young ages. We learned in class that we can use texts not only to literacy, but to critical literacy and for this reason I would use Hansel and Gretel to promote critical thinking and self-reflection. The coolest thing about this is that various morals can be deduced from this tale of hunger, greed, cannibalism. And, distrust of the stranger is the greatest one.
I would use this exercise at the basic level. Initially students would have to look for The Brothers Grimm biography, so when they discovered they were from Germany they  would have them take a "trip" and learn more about the culture of that country. Then as an activity, students would have to rephrase the story and create an alternate ending by continuing  it.

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ANA'S COMMENT ABOUT TEXT 2 || WEEKEND IN THE RAINFOREST

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ANA'S COMMENT ABOUT TEXT 2 || WEEKEND IN THE RAINFOREST

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Not only literary texts are important. Informative texts have a huge importance in our daily lives, because of them we can get in touch with new and old news.
The thing I found more interesting about the travel report is: it can inform and tell a story at the same time.
The travel report - also known as travel memoirs - is a record made by a traveller, sometimes in diary form, of the traveler's experiences, it can help other people who want to travel to the same place, I think it is very useful.
In class we discussed some activities that are great for students, I believe that listening with the text would be very dynamic especially if the audio seems to be very realistic.
I believe that the best activity to do in class would allow the students to write their own travel report ir order to improve their writing and knowledge background.

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IGOR' COMMENT ABOUT TEXT 4 || HAVING A COKE WITH YOU

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IGOR' COMMENT ABOUT TEXT 4 || HAVING A COKE WITH YOU

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I, in particular, have difficulties interpreting poems, but I believe they have an incredible power of critical literacy, because the reader is instigated to be able to understand what the author meant between the lines.

The poem having a cook with you is the embodiment of what I think of a poem. In reading classes we discussed different types of text, but as incredible as it seems the more it worked on me was the poem text.

Working a poem in the classroom is essential, as well as practicing reading in different perspectives, you will also be able to develop a different critical sense than for example from a journalistic text.

For activities, I would suggest doing the exercise with the poem in something interactive, especially if the students are teenagers. I would propose an interpretation activity, the students would have to read the text, form groups and interpret that scene in an interactive and fun way, and so the students will be motivated to look for different interpretations of that text to be able to pass to the others that didn’t read yet. So, interacting in a relaxed way students will learn and have fun with reading, which is difficult to be found in our country now a days.

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As recognized that reading is a complex skill, these texts are considered easy and appropriate to all kinds of readers, to those who have ease with reading to the ones who don't. So, We  can relate the three components in the reading skill as mentioned by Geoffrey Broughton; A, the recognition of the black marks; B, the correlation of these with formal linguistic elements; and C, the further correlation of the result with meaning.
These are diverse texts that could be worked on by all ages; fairy tales for example  are a good way to keep students focused as well as being able to be used as a motivation factor and creativity enabler. We will consider that for those who are starting to read, they would be less interested, for example, in reading a report, since it would require a lot of intellectual effort to understand something advanced for a beginner.

The others texts can be used to introduce a more difficult challenge to the readers, the students are going through a new level so even to them it’s possible to design useful and achievable reading activities with, for example, a travel report, that isn’t difficult enough as a newspaper report, but it’s interesting enough as a fairy tale.

From our point of view, the article “Clarifying Differences Between Reading Skills and Reading Strategies” helps us understand the differences between reading skills and reading strategies. The article starts talking about the students’ difficulties in reading comprehension, because when we talk about teaching reading skills the teacher must be aware of the students’ hardships.

We chose this subject because we can link it with the texts we worked with in class like, for example, the “Teaching Reading Skills in a Foreign Language” and “Teaching English as a Foreign Language”.

We chose the travel report because it’s a type of language easy to work in a classroom and also because we learned so much from it. When we were reading the text we learned a little about the geography of the country, which is Ecuador, and we learned about the animals and about the culture.

The text about fairytale genre reminded us of our childhood, something that we thought we had forgotten and it’s an easy and relaxing reading that could stimulate students in reading class as well, because they may remember something from their childhood like we did.

Bibliographic reference:

BROUGHTON, Geoffrey. Teaching English as a Foreign Language. Disponível em: <https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HFQ6iaL0qmC3SJr0yB0WH-6WA9fKdDON/view?usp=sharing>. Acesso em: 18 nov. 2018.

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1.   Hansel And Gretel (Grimms' Fairy Tales)

2.  Day 8, Weekend In The Rainforest  (Travel Report)

3. The Princess And The Pea   (Fairy Tale)

4.        Having A Coke With You (Poem)

5.  Developing Cultural Awareness In Foreign Language Teaching (Article)

6.  Clarifying Differences Between Reading Skills And Reading Strategies  (Article)

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TEXT 5 DEVELOPING CULTURAL AWARENESS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING.pdf

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TEXT 6 _ CLARIFYING DIFFERENCES BETWEEN READING SKILLS AND READING STRATEGIES.pdf

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IGOR'S COMMENT ABOUT TEXT 5 || DEVELOPING CULTURAL AWARENESS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING

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IGOR'S COMMENT ABOUT TEXT 5 || DEVELOPING CULTURAL AWARENESS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING

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I have worked as a teacher of Portuguese as a Foreign Language and I know what it's like to have several cultures in one place and have to deal with them. Sometimes it is complicated because we have to get rid of our prejudices and distance ourselves from various stereotypes that make us misjudge the culture of the other and stereotypes that can sometimes be against our own culture.
So, I really liked this text since besides teaching Portuguese I have to teach who we are and how we live. I believe that the process of immersion in the language is the best way to teach culture and the language itself, after all, language and culture.

This is the activity that I would do in the classroom: I would divide the students and choose some countries so that the students can do a research about the country, the language spoken, the main traditions and beliefs. After all, you do not have to travel the world to know it.

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ANA'S COMMENT ABOUT TEXT 3 || THE PRINCESS AND THE PEA

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ANA'S COMMENT ABOUT TEXT 3 || THE PRINCESS AND THE PEA

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By using the fairy tales we allow ours students to have a more accessible genre of reading, they are written in a easy language and are more attractive for those who dislike reading; they are particular special to talk about critical literacy because they allow students to use their own words to explain both world and word through the stories they read.
I believe that a story as “The princess and the pea” is worth to start initial discussions in the classroom, it can let the students be comfortable to show their ideas. A way to work with this genre is to bring different cultures to classroom and let students know how many different beliefs are in different stories from all over the world. This would make the students reflect critically about respecting others perspectives and understanding their own culture.
Indeed, fairy tales are so fun to work with and it’s a way to develop critical thinking skills. In our reading classes we saw that some literature is not accessible to the beginning learner, but "The princess and the pea" doesn't fit in this case, because this kind of literature does not have to wait for advanced knowledge of the language .
This is the greatest reason why this is a good text to work with after all. I believe that a good activity  to work a fairytale in classroom would be bring the culture that is the aim of the text to  introduce it  and start a discussion , then we can suggest to the student to write a parapraph about a culture they know. This is a way of put world knowledge and writing together.

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ANA'S COMMENT ABOUT TEXT 4 || HAVING A COKE WITH YOU

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ANA'S COMMENT ABOUT TEXT 4 || HAVING A COKE WITH YOU

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I'm an incurable romantic and poems lover. When I've  watched the movie "Beastly"  I've found this incredible poet named Frank O'Hara. His poems are known to be written in a very simple literary language and still be strong and deep, his special subject was the encounter of the active sensibility with the world about it through extravagant fantasy, a ready wit, and a detailed realism of feelings. The poem Having a Coke with You particularly is so soft that you could read in less than three minutes.
In classroom we discussed the criteria of choosing a text to work with, it can't be too easy neither too difficult in order to stimulate the students to think and understand the black marks on paper.  I believe that using poems in general can be a great choice to improve reading speed and other reading skills. We can start using more easy poems and then we rise level as they go through the development of reading and reading aloud.
There are several ways I could work with this poem in class depending on the purpose,  If I were to use this poem to promote interpretation I would propose the students to work in pairs, then I would give them a sheet  with a place in world - probably one who have been mentioned in the poem - and they would have to play a scene  telling why they would like to be having a Coke together in that place. This is a way of showing that we can work with poems in an interative way, not only reading, repeating and interpretating in the tradicional way. Working with poems can be fun!

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IGOR'S COMMENT ABOUT TEXT 6 || THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LEARNING STRATEGIES AND SKILLS

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IGOR'S COMMENT ABOUT TEXT 6 || THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LEARNING STRATEGIES AND SKILLS

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Reading skills and strategies are very similar, but not the same. I got a little bit lost when I was reading, however what I got from the text is: when the action is a deliberate, conscious, metacognitive we have a reading strategy, on the other hand when it becomes effortless and automatic the reading strategy has become a reading skill.
I believe that knowing the difference between both can makes better readers.

As an activity I would ask the students to summarize the main ideia of the text and to define the difference between reading skills and reading strategies, in order to know if the understood the text. Since we are talking about an extremely difficult article I would suggest this activity to intermediate or advanced students.

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ANA'S COMMENT ABOUT TEXT 5 || DEVELOPING CULTURAL AWARENESS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING 

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ANA'S COMMENT ABOUT TEXT 5 || DEVELOPING CULTURAL AWARENESS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING 

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Learning a new language is not just systematizing grammatical rules until arriving at an intelligible dialogue, it goes beyond that. When you learn another language, you accept the world it is in and the setting that characterizes it. I believe that the language we speak, that is our culture, shapes the way we see the world we live in and how we live. One thing that had a huge importance to me while reading the texts was the fact that we can teach culture through language teaching, this is a way of understanding that everyone has their place in the world and that we are not all the same. Also, it teaches important values, especially how to learn to respect our individualities and other people.
I remember of a text called "Novas Práticas de Leitura e Escrita: Letramento e Cibercultura" by Magda Soares we read at class which said that when it comes to reading the most important thing isn't the text itself, but the context you're reading it at the moment. Thefore I am sure that one text won't have the same meaning for me, a girl who's living in Brazil in 2018 to a girl who could read the same text in 2010 but lives in North Korea. There are lots of things behind the text like our culture, background, and those things give it a different meaning.

A great activity to develop cultural awareness and to work with this text would be ask  the students to bring to class a proverb or folktale they know from their country. Then, in pairs they would have to search for similarities in foreign texts. This would promote
the idea that other cultures exist and like ours we have to respect them. Also, work with texts where we have to find the roots of who we are and of who our ancestors were can be really fun!

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ANA'S COMMENT ABOUT TEXT 6 || THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LEARNING STRATEGIES AND SKILLS

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ANA'S COMMENT ABOUT TEXT 6 || THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LEARNING STRATEGIES AND SKILLS

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I am really surprised that exists a diffence between skill and strategy, I didn't know!
This text is so interesting, it's common to teachers to get confused with these terms - as I was before. Basically it says about the difference between both, a strategy differs from a tactic in that one develops an overall strategy to achieve a specific goal, within which appropriate tactics are used to achieve that success. A third element, skill, is needed to implement the strategy and tactics.
So, they're connected, but aren't the same.
I think this text is a difficult one, so it may be worked with high intermediate level, you can see through the text a big range of vocabulary that would make a difficult understanding for beginners. The activity I would suggest would be of interpretation: to divide the text  and the students, then they would read and would give their interpretation of the piece they had, this way they could summarize the text with their own words and help other students to understand the text piece by piece till they build it entirely.