Reflections WEEK 3

Using Hot Potatoes application can be very useful to create material that accompanies your lesson. There is no doubt that this type of application can be of a great value when you are creating your own material. There are occasions that as a teacher, you require developing some material to support your lessons. This could be due to either the lack of material on the subject you are teaching or because you want to adapt the material or part of the unit to your students group. Nonetheless, thinking of the time available a teacher has both to prepare his or her classes and to check students´ development, I find difficult to spend time creating new material too.

It may not be realistic, but I would love to believe that there is a good amount and quality material available to teach English and therefore, we would not need to spend time developing our own material too, unless, as I said before, it was for a specific purpose.

As I am writing these lines, it comes to my mind, the idea that Hot Potatoes could also be used in a English classroom, as learning material itself, where students had to create their own questions in relation to a text they have just read (in order to develop their comprehension skills), or creating, for instance, their own crossword about specific vocabulary for other classmates to do. This idea, (where students develop different skills by preparing material for their colleagues) comparing to the idea of having to create our own material for the class, makes me feel more comfortable, Otherwise, I believe that even though this tool would be very useful, being realistic, on a frenetic day to day teacher´s life, we may not have so many opportunities of using it.

On the other hand, Dotsub has offered me a great insightful of how subtitles are introduced in a film, which I have really enjoyed. Once more, introducing subtitles to a short movie for our English class can be a tedious and time consuming task, which I find difficult to see how would pay off. There is no doubt that, personally, this has been an enjoyable and interesting learning experience which I would love to repeat with some sort of movie. 

Nonetheless, if transcribing 4 minutes has taken us hours, how could I prepare any material for my English class using this tool? Once more, it comes to my mind the idea of having to use this tool as English learning tool itself, which student could use it as transcribe, for instance, songs or similar type of material that are of their interest; deciding, therefore, by themselves, what they would like to learn about.