Running head: IMPLEMENTING A LANGUAGE ADVISORY PROGRAM.

The implementation of a language advisory program in the teaching of English at Cecyte

Cancun III.

Maria Laudelina Dìaz Navarro.

Cecyte Cancun III.

Marìa Laudelina Dìaz Navarro, Language Department, Cecyte III.

Marìa L. Dìaz N., Language Department, Cecyte III, 20 de Noviembre Av., Reg.203.
Contact: marialaudelina08@hotmail.com
Running head: IMPLEMENTING A LANGUAGE ADVISORY PROGRAM.

The success of the teaching-learning process does not only depend on pedagogical

and didactic factors, especially if it is the case of a foreign language as English. It is very

common to hear our students expressing opinions like I am not going to make it, or It is

too difficult for me, or The teacher never pays attention to me. Then, one can realize that

the students are feeling too lonely in the path to learning and a feeling of frustration

arises till they become completely demotivated toward the target language.

It is the case of a great number of adolescent at the Scientific and Technological

High School “Cecyte Cancun III” who are overwhelmed by personal problems, academic

problems, and drug problems and feel that when they go to school they need at least a

person who they are comfortable to talk to.

Consequently, the present paper is intended to briefly show the necessity of

implementing an advisory program at Cecyte III as a way to strengthen connectedness

between students about to quit high school (and mainly due to failure in learning English)

and an adult advisor taking into consideration that an advisory program can be arranged

in such a way that the advisor encounters as frequently as necessary during the school day

with those students who need academic and socio-emotional support.

Key words: teaching, learning, assess, oral, validity.

At Cecyte Cancun III students graduate from three different specialties:

Tourism, Sales, and Computer science and taking into consideration that the main

economic income of Cancun is tourism, the students need to reach a good level of English
Running head: IMPLEMENTING A LANGUAGE ADVISORY PROGRAM.

for their future jobs; yet, when we assess them, it can be noticed in a considerable

quantity of them how it is still hard for them to deal with some common linguistic routines

such as greetings, and farewells, just to mention some; these topics and others need to be

reinforced before we continue with what the syllabus demands in a renewed and fresh

way that does not cause them to bore and that really leads them to learning.

To this aim, I have worked with first semester students of tourism, group B (as they

are beginners) in the implementation of an advisory program in order to help these pupils

to improve their abilities in the use of the language they are learning in any situation and

to deal with problems other than academic ones that are negatively influencing their

learning.

Then, the question that may arise is: is language advising useful? Definitively, it is,

though it requires lots of planning, coordinating activities, being understanding to others,

among certain factors, but the reward is when we see our students are grateful for the

help received and they show it using the language and all the words we receive from them

as shown below:

Thank you, teacher, for all the help you gave us and in my particular case because I

speak Maya and it is hard for me to speak English …I really enjoy all my sessions with

you and I also learnt to solve my daily problems… I will miss you… Can I call you some

time?

Table 1. Opinion of Student A about his advising sessions.

Running head: IMPLEMENTING A LANGUAGE ADVISORY PROGRAM.

But what is language advising? As for me, it is all the activities we may implement

to support our students while learning the foreign language and I would add that the

activities should not only be designed for students with difficulties, but also for those who

have less or any problems with the language in order to avoid coming ones in the way we

help them to work on their strengths.

The activities can be worked in one or more meetings depending on the students´

needs and they can be online or face-to-face. In the case of the students selected for the

present paper, the majority of the meetings (there were held 10 sessions during the

month of November with 8 students) were face-to-face since the students did not count

on the necessary technology for online activities; on the other hand, they required a direct

contact with the advisor (I took the responsibility of being their advisor as I do not teach

the group selected) due to the deficiencies they have.

There were chosen 8 students from first semester, group B of tourism, four male

and four female students. They studied their junior high school in a community near

Cancun and their L1 (first language) is Maya; they are asked to learn Spanish too, in order

to fit in the society they are adopting. On the other hand, they belong to a medium to low

socioeconomic level and their families are of a dysfunctional type and they cannot always

attend school.

Consequently, it is really hard for them to get all the linguistic material they should

through their lessons, if we remind of Maslow´s pyramid and we are understandable

enough to see that they sometimes come to school without eating (as it is set in Maslow´s
Running head: IMPLEMENTING A LANGUAGE ADVISORY PROGRAM.

pyramid if their physiological needs are not satisfied, they will not be able to carry out any

intellectual activities). Besides, it is hard for them to follow the teacher´s explanations on

L2 (second language) as they have a mix of the linguistic information of their L1, Spanish

and English.

Also, these pupils are facing an unfavorable psychological condition since they

need to reinforce their self-esteem as they regard themselves as inferior and establish

constant comparisons with their classmates if we take into consideration that adolescent

of our times are considerably superficial and pay too much attention to the origin of

people and their belongings. Thus, during the sessions there were planned activities that

also implied solidification of values and viewpoints taking advantage of the language as

shown below:

Role play

Student A. You are new at school and need help with a homework. Ask a classmate.

Student B. You need to use a tablet for your homework and a classmate who is not a

close friend has one. Ask him/her for help.

Student C. You like to work by yourself and you have a tablet with internet. Some

classmates need your help.

Table 2. Activity oriented and carried out in an advising session.

First, the students were challenged to carry out the role play as they had been

taught the lesson “Using technology for school homework” and the teacher had provided

some vocabulary as well as the grammatical structure corresponding to present

Running head: IMPLEMENTING A LANGUAGE ADVISORY PROGRAM.

continuous. Nevertheless, they were not able to establish the required conversation

because they did not use the tense correctly; moreover, they did not know the

appropriate lexicon.

After their unsuccessful attempt, I provided a series of exercises trying to avoid

close-up view exercises (which propitiate an isolated practice of the grammatical

elements) and using more performance exercises, though moderate at the beginning and

helping them to find the vocabulary (some links were given as well as the suggestion of

books other than their textbooks) and solving or leading in finding ways to partially

eradicate their failings.

Though the revision of the sources used for this paper connects with the idea that

there is not too much certainty about the effects of the advising sessions in the learning of

the target language as the majority of the sessions never take place in isolation and the

students are enrolled in a language class or use self-access centers making it difficult to

know which of these factors (the advising sections, being enrolled in a language class or

using self-access centers) was the one which led them to change their learning condition.

Notwithstanding, advising has a significant role in the students´ behavior toward

learning the language and it was seen in the ones that attended the sessions planned for

the paper; the change could be seen as their autonomy started growing though there is a

difference among these eight learners regarding motivation; three of these pupils (the

most motivated) were the most interested in attending the advising sessions and I clearly
Running head: IMPLEMENTING A LANGUAGE ADVISORY PROGRAM.

noticed improvement in the way they approached their learning and got a certain level of

independence.

To reach the goals explained above, the advising sessions carried out were

characterized by the implementation of motivating activities, negotiation with the

students, personalization when required, flexibility and by using as many language

resources and materials as possible. Also, the students were let to decide whether to

come or not and when to attend the sessions; booking was not a priority of this

experimental advising program as Fu (1999, p.107) wrote:

A person will come for what the counsellor perceives is a substantial and

interesting discussion or learning dialogue, and then the counsellor never sees that person

again, therefore getting neither any feedback nor report on progress (or lack of it) .

This does not mean that it always went that way and that the sessions will

necessarily be fruitless, nor one may get the idea that the sessions lack clear objectives,

thus, the learners are not provided with continuous guidance. Then, it is important to

remark that a distinctive characteristic of language advising is that it is challenging and it is

a lot different from classroom teaching since it takes a lot of time to an advisor for

becoming very well trained in performing as such.

When comparing my teaching experience with this experience of advising, I

noticed the advantages of the latter since an advisor is more available to monitor progress

and offer help stress-freer than when teaching, especially at Cecyte III where the groups of

students are so numerous (first semester groups rate between 44 and 46 students).
Running head: IMPLEMENTING A LANGUAGE ADVISORY PROGRAM.

Consequently, when the eight students who received advising were in doubt about which

materials to use, or how to practice in a more conscious way what they had learned in

class, it was also easier for me to give the required pieces of advice.

It was a different experience from the ones in the classroom as I did not feel to be

in control too much, especially because it was not so complex to know what the students

were really doing and what their immediate needs were. However, when teaching in the

classroom, the environment can seem so impersonal sometimes since time does not allow

to give the necessary attention to all the difficulties the pupils may have.

Moreover, advisory sessions bring about the possibility to make links with the

outside world as they give access to an extensive variety of materials and opportunities

for practicing, letting the students advance in their learning process of the L2.

Doubtlessly, an adviser needs to follow a code of ethics which should comprise

some aspects as the ones below:

1-Be interested on the advisee´s needs and problems.

2-Responsibility while solving or helping to solve the conflicts that may arise

between he/she and the advisee.

3-Be integral as a promoter of honesty and truthfulness.

4-Respectfulness as he/she has to respect the dignity, individuality, confidentiality

and privacy of the students.

Running head: IMPLEMENTING A LANGUAGE ADVISORY PROGRAM.

5-Fairness as the capacity to give reasonable judgement that does not lead to

unjust practices.

6-Commitment as they are getting a moral and ethical obligation to attend the

sessions and have the students acquire the most of them.

Conclusions:

During the advisory sessions carried out, it was noticed a change in the quality of

the learning of the eight students selected. Also, a relationship was established between

each of them and my performing as an advisor.

During the process, both parties (the students and I) were in learning and teaching

roles which formed a two-way interaction and the learners were considered as essential

part of the training process.

My experience as an adviser depended on my knowledge about these learners and

on the unquestioning relationship we built.

Thus, the implementation of an advising program for the teaching of English at

Cecyte Cancun III is necessary and will bring about optimum results.

References:

Dvorak, J. (2004). Managing Tutoring Aspects of the Learning Assistance Center.

Research for Educational Reform.

Running head: IMPLEMENTING A LANGUAGE ADVISORY PROGRAM.

Fu, G. S. (1999). Guidelines for productive language counselling: tools for

implementing autonomy. USA: Frankfurt.

King A., Staffieri A., and Adelgais A., (1998) Mutual Peer Tutoring: Effects of

Structuring Tutorial Interaction to Scaffold Peer Learning. USA: Journal of Educational

Psychology.

McCarten, J. (2007) Teaching Vocabulary. Lessons from the Corpus. Lessons for the

Classroom. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Mynard, J. and Carson, L. (2014) Advising in Language Learning: Dialogue, Tools

and Context. USA: Routledge.

R. Miller, W. and Rollnick, S. (2013) Motivational Interviewing. Helping People

Change. New York: The Guilford Press.

Salatas W., H. and Schneider, W. (2010) Metacognition, Strategy Use and

Instruction. New York: A Division of Guildford Publications, Inc.

Running head: IMPLEMENTING A LANGUAGE ADVISORY PROGRAM.

You Your friend

1-I watch tv in the afternoon. 1-My friend/He/She watches tv at night