Archive for June, 2006

ICT to improve Motivation in EFL Classrooms

By Lisbeth Rivas 

This research tents to provide a viable solution to motivation problems in EFL Classrooms, and tries to encourage teachers to use and interact with new strategies such as ICT in their regular practice as a mean of recycling and reinforcing activity. Technology provides a new world of information and communication. Due to its importance, it is used by a great amount of people in almost all the everyday activities they do. Using technology as a factor to improve motivation can lead teachers to improve the student’s learning process and help them to be interested in learning English. Since, for students the use of internet and its tools are very attractive and motivating.

Laura´s Research

Research studies done in different educational systems than those of Latin-American sustain that there exist differences in the verbal ability and the scholar achievement performance in English related to gender that favor the female gender, increasing as students advance in the different educational levels.  The present study has the purpose of detecting if there exist the differences mentioned before related to gender in students of middle school and the first year of high school.  To do this study, students from both genders belonging to the last 10 groups of high school students that graduated from the Unidad Educativa “Academia Washington”, located in Caracas, Venezuela, where chosen.  Additionally, results (marks measure as percentiles) obtained in the verbal abilities test from the IOWA Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) where taken to investigate the variable verbal ability and the grades obtained by the students at the end of each school year in the traditional scale from 1 to 20 points to investigate the scholar achievement performance. The “t of student” test and the analysis of the variance of one factor to compare genders, simple regression techniques and analysis of simple linear correlation to determine the predictor power of one variable over the others were done using the SPSS statistical computerized package.  In general, significant differences were obtained favoring male students in verbal ability and favoring girls in scholar achievement performance.  Apparently, verbal ability does predict the scholar achievement performance in English in this specific school.  It is recommended that this same study be replicated in other institutions so as to observe if the differences are kept and as to enhance the information available with respect to the relations between gender, verbal ability and scholar achievement performance in English given that these type of studies seem pioneer in Venezuela.

Yolimar´s research

My research project has to do with a proposal for the application of games as a tool to teach grammar, games can be a helpful resource to prove not only a communicative context but to make the students interested in learning grammar, due to the fact that the English grammar is very different for the Spanish one, our students can find learning grammar difficult and boring. This topic arises from my experience in Fase de IDA” where my students felt more exited about learning and practicing English through different games