Hello everyone!

My name is Alina Simut, I graduated from the University of Oradea in Romania with a BA in English Language and Literature in 2005. I also have an MA in Creative Writing at the West University in Timisoara. For the last nine years I have been teaching English especially to pre-teens and teens at a high school here in Oradea (a town in the west of Romania). I am really happy to find out that I will be part of such a varied team of educators, coming from different countries and sharing the same need of discovering and sharing new teaching methods. Besides teaching, I also enjoy writing poetry in English (I have one volume published here in Romania, and another one looking for its path to publication, who knows where); I also take great pleasure in travelling or simply spending time with my family. Again, it is a real privilege for me to participate to such a course and to be part of this team. Looking forward to it all!

Alina Simut

I totally agree with Peter Rilleys opinion that Generation Y is a feedback-dependent one. In his article Understanding and Teaching Generation Y, Rilley emphasizes the importance of having students discover their mistakes by actively involving them in the process. As opposed to other types of learners, belonging to other generations, students from Generation Y respond better to active involvement in the course of mistake identification and correction: () the more we encourage learners to
discover their own mistakes and those of peers, the more active they are in the learning process and, therefore, the more appropriate the process is for Gen Y. This cohort prefers to have time to think about and generate the correct form rather than having the teacher supply it. (2012:6)

In my experience I also discovered an aspect that Rilley himself mentions: Gen Y does not respond to reprimand. Students feel discouraged from studying when the teacher uses an authoritative, rebuking tone. Pointing out students mistakes and reproachfully insisting on them is not a solution for encouraging them to study. Most students are interested in improving their results and we should find methods that provide the necessary feedback without cutting from their interest in the subject matter. Pre-teens especially are very sensitive, competitive and preoccupied with learning and getting good grades. Occasionally we have projects in class (for instance A Presentation of My Town or My Hobbies etc.) and, while the student presents his/ her project (on cardboard, with photos), the rest of the class listen carefully and put down on a piece of paper 2 things they liked about the project and 2 things they didnt, thus the student also has his/ her peers feedback, not only mine. The student gets the feedback and must make at least two changes that s/he thinks necessary, according to his/ her classmates suggestions. Then, they submit the final paper for grading.

The issue of time has always been mentioned when setting out to do something outside the common frame of teaching. In my opinion, time is more of a problem to us teachers rather than students. As the author of Avoiding Projects states we never seem to have enough (time) and there are so many other things to do. Perhaps the argument should be taken a bit further towards the basic problem: projects are regarded as time consuming to the detriment of learning: all along the project students tend to switch to their mother tongue and to lapse from the normal studying pace given by the teacher. Nevertheless, students are very excited about being part of a project irrespective of the subject matter. And they are indeed willing to put their effort and spare time at stake just to have the sense of accomplishing something grand, of real importance. That is why I think we should invest our energy into designing projects for our students, at least once in a while, and have them participate into something where the result is not only a mere grade, but also feeling content with being part of a team, contributing to the positive results of a whole group.