The Humanistic Tradition

These methods are based on a "common belief in the primacy of affective and emotional factors within the learning process" (David Nunan). All of them propose that learners must feel confident and motivated by the target language and its culture to learn it succesfully; on the other hand if these conditions are not present, not even the latest methods and techniques will make students learn.
 Earl Stevick has interpreted the humanistic methods in language teaching and he concluded that there are five functions of the teacher, because the emotional attitude towards the teacher is really important.
 These functions are:
1.- The cognitive function: the teachers posses the knowledge and students expect to receive it.
2.- The classroom management function, students trust that teachers will organize properly: time, techniques and materials.
3.- Practical goals, teachers have to create correct syllabuses, in order to, show clearly what they are going to learn.
4.-The personal or interpersonal function, teachers are responsible to create an adequate  atmosphere where the emotions are met.
5.-This is the most important function, teachers must be motivated and enthusiastic to radiate it to their students.
The Community Language Learning created by Curran, states that "learning another language is probably the most anxiety provoking activity an individual can undertake in the classroom". So this method claims that a community of learners sholud be created in the classroom and move them to be completely autonomous from teacher. But this method, cuold be non appropriate to be used by unexperienced teachers, because it points to the emotions and attitudes of learners and "destroy the very cohesion and solidarity which the method is supposed to create"
 Another method is called The Silent Way, it was devised by Gattegno, on 1972, the most important  thing for this method is "the importance of the inner state of the learner in the learning process" again the affective carachteristic is pointed as very important to learn.  One of  the problems is that this method suggests to teach very few vocabulary words and language models. Even though the syllabus and the classroom techniques are conventional, the role of the teacher is to assume in an indirect way monitors the process of learning.
 And the last one, called Suggestopedia suggests that the learners are able to memorize a huge amount of information, they just need to be relaxed almost hypnotized, using music and controlling breath they could learn up to three thousand words in a day. This information has been refuted by some researchers.

Strong and weak skills

I like english, but now studying the master, I've noticed that speaking is the weakest skill, I think because I don't speak at my job and because of this I'm not fluent, it looks like I don't know the right words, but I do know them I just can't  use them at the moment I'm speaking. To improve this skill I try to watch T.V. programs in english and keep some  expressions in  my mind, the  thing is, if I don't have the opportunity to use them they will be forgotten. Another idea that comes to my mind is to ask my teachers and classmates to correct me when I make mistakes. Listening is getting better, thanks to T.V. too and of course, classes, I'm getting used to different "pronunciations" from our teachers, but it's great to understand easily.
 I believe that my strongest skills are reading and writing, it's easy to me to write and read about something, I think it's because I have more time to think about and look for the unknown words in the dictionary.
 Even though, reading and writing are a bit easier for me, I think the best way to be fluent in a second language is to practice it in a natural context so, this is what I have to do  from now on, specially speaking in classes, taking a deep breath, think carefully on the best words and ..........speak.

How did I learn English

When I was  eight years old my parents bought a new house in a new niegborhood, so I had to go to a new school. In this school everything was taught in English, everything except Spanish of course. I remember that the teacher spoke in English all day long, but it wasn't hard for me to understand. I had to learn many vocabulary words with their meanings in spanish and learn dialogues by heart to represent in front of the class. We also read stories, listening to the teacher and trying to follow  the lines with our fingers. That's what I remember from third and fourth grade.
 In fifth grade, it was a bit different, there were levels from the higher to the lower. I was in the higher; at the begining I felt lost because the rythm of the class was too fast for me, reading on my own, answering questions aloud, learning vocabulary words in english and of course grammar, many diferent exercises to practice present perfect or past continous. But as we always read a text, those structures were in those texts, so it wasn't so difficult, the teacher taught us a "kind of formula" and then we applied it making the exercises. At the same time, every week, we had to learn 10 or 15 verbs and their tenses, and every week represent different dialogues or tell poems in front of the class. The stories were about different topics, one month travels around the world, the other buying at different shops etc....
 In high school, we wrote many texts and read some books but I remember only one "Tom Sawyer" I don´t know why I forgot all the others.
 Even though learning english was easy for me and I liked it a lot, it was too different from how english is taught now in my school.