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Treball Final de Màster Universitari en Professor/a d'Educació Secundària Obligatòria i Batxillerat, Formació Professional i Ensenyaments d'Idiomes. Codi: SAP419. Curs: 2017/2018. At present, new technologies are very popular especially among young people and tools such as mobile phones and computers are a big influence in their everyday lives. Therefore, language teachers have begun to use Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) during their lessons in order to motivate students and get them involved actively in the classroom. The aim of this project is to find out if ITCs boost secondary school students’ motivation in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom. With that purpose, (1) learners will use their mobile phones, laptops, and/or tablets in order to complete two online tasks (i.e. ‘WebQuest’ and ‘Kahoot’); and (2) students will also complete a ‘Self-Assessment Questionnaire’. Expected results show that students involve actively during the sessions and learn faster with the use of these online resources. Finally, these expected results may make evident that the students who participated in this study might become more motivated because they enjoy working in a digital context with the aim of learning English.

Treball Final de Màster Universitari en Professor/a d'Educació Secundària Obligatòria i Batxillerat, Formació Professional i Ensenyaments d'Idiomes. Codi: SAP419. Curs: 2017/2018. The study of Language Learning (LL) has been increasing during the last decades and, as consequence, a great number of approaches emerged to teach languages such as English. For instance, the Task-Based Approach (TBA) which employs real-life activities in order to develop language competence. Furthermore, a trend called Educational Innovation (EI) appeared in the late 1990s. This trend promoted a change in the way of teaching languages by introducing new methodologies and resources like Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). ICTs could improve learner‟s features like autonomy. Autonomy in LL could be defined as the degree of independence a student has when learning a language. Thus, autonomous learners would not need the help of their instructor to a great extent. In addition, few factors could affect the learner in LL. For example, motivation and attitudes, which have been linked to LL success (Gardner, 1985). Hence, taking into account those aspects already mentioned, the focus of this dissertation is the preparation of a didactic proposal for the English subject in a 4th ESO class. This proposal combines ICTs, motivation, and autonomy by asking the students to prepare a biography and to expose it in front of their colleagues. In order to motivate the students, they would be free to choose the topic of the biography and the colleagues they want to work with. After the presentations, students will play a brief game in order to retain the knowledge acquired from their colleagues‟ expositions. As a conclusion, it has to be taken into account that this proposal has not been introduced yet. Nonetheless, it appears that this proposal could be a great opportunity to improve learners‟ digital and linguistic competence and autonomy while they are motivated towards LL.

Treball de Final de Màster Universitari en Professor/a d'Educació Secundària Obligatòria i Batxillerat, Formació Professional i Ensenyaments d'Idiomes. Codi: SAP419. Curs acadèmic 2016-2017

Treball Final del Màster Universitari en Professor/a d'Educació Secundària Obligatòria i Batxillerat, Formació Professional i Ensenyaments d'Idiomes. Codi: SAP419. Curs acadèmic 2015-2016 Enormous changes have taken place in second and foreign language learning over recent decades (Rossi-Le, 1989). Currently, there is a growing interest in the factors that influence the learning of the four language skills. This accepted interest is especially reflected in the field of Applied Linguistics, which has shifted its emphasis towards learners and learning (Cook, 2013). In order to prosper in this complex process, students need to get over some obstacles. However, the way they face these difficulties in the classroom setting seems to vary among them due to the different ways they usually perceive information (Skills, 2007). Hence, this final postgraduate dissertation examines the learning strategies that allow foreign language students to deal with the problems that may arise during their learning process, which may be influenced by their learning styles. In particular, it focuses on direct reading strategies and more specifically with their manifestation in the assorted sensory preferences in English as a foreign language context. Then, it aims to prove that perception varies among individuals and therefore, learners do not use the same learning strategies when they are reading. Finally, the results of a small-scaled study are shown with the intention to provide some evidences that seem to demonstrate conclusively that learning styles have an impact on the direct reading strategies that learners use.

Treball de Final de Màster Universitari en Professor/a d'Educació Secundària Obligatòria i Batxillerat, Formació Professional i Ensenyaments d'Idiomes. Codi: SAP419. Curs acadèmic 2014-2015 This case study investigation appertains to modality 2: educational research. Its aim is to disclose the predominating learning styles among students when learning any second language. After analysing the created Learning Styles Test, which follows Felder and Silverman’s classification, several results and conclusions have arisen. Plenty of students learn actively and some others do no show any preference in the visual/verbal dimension. Furthermore, because of the large amount of students with no predilections for one or more dimensions, it could be considered that they have not acknowledged the way of studying which best fits them.

Treball de Final de Màster Universitari en Professor/a d'Educació Secundària Obligatòria i Batxillerat, Formació Professional i Ensenyaments d'Idiomes. Codi: SAP419. Curs acadèmic 204-2015 We are in an era in which Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have become increasingly important, specifically the use of computers. Nowadays, people need computers for almost everything in order to make their lives easier and faster: for doing research projects, working in an office, doing tasks, keeping your accounts, and even for spending a good time when you are bored. Children and teenagers should understand the importance of using computers appropriately and need to learn how to make the most of computers. This paper, thus, is aimed at presenting students a didactic unit using a digital environment and video game themed lessons. The reason why I suggest using video games as the main topic is because video games and technology are teenagers’ reality nowadays, 8 out of 10 play or have played video games at least once in their lives, and most of them have a huge interest in them. Therefore, I thought it would be a good idea mixing these two universes into one didactic unit. By using online resources, computers and video games themed lessons, students would feel more motivated and willing to learn. The aim for this paper is to present this didactic unit to students in the 1st course of ESO and to analyze the results of the implementation afterwards. Finally the reader would be able to read my reflections on the results as well as my improvement proposals upon this didactic unit.

Treball final de Màster Universitari en Professor/a d'Educació Secundària Obligatòria i Batxillerat, Formació Professional i Ensenyaments d'Idiomes. Codi: SAP419. Curs acadèmic 2014-2015 Students with low intellectual capacities are equally important as other students. Therefore, there is a need to make a contribution in the field of language learning by providing them with online reinforcement tasks which are going to increase and reinforce not only their knowledge about the target language but also their motivation and their self-esteem. In order to do so, the present project seeks to provide an analysis of the educative requirements of students with special educational needs especially low intellectual students as well as to develop low intellectual students’ communicative competence by conveying motivating online reinforcement tasks.

Treball final de Màster Universitari en Professor/a d'Educació Secundària Obligatòria i Batxillerat, Formació Professional i Ensenyaments d'Idiomes. Codi: SAP419. Curs acadèmic 2013-2014 The purpose of the present study is twofold. Firstly, it attempts to determine whether Jclic as an instructional tool can improve students' ability in using present perfect simple, since this is a troublesome form for many English language learners. Secondly, it aims at identifying the effect of the use of Jclic on student engagement and motivation. In other words, this investigation seeks to find out if student engagement and intrinsic motivation in the learning process are heightened while using Jclic to carry out instruction. In this study, the present perfect simple is presented in contrast to past simple in order to strengthen students' knowledge and understanding of the two tenses. A description and practice activities, involving the use of both tenses, are presented. The investigation is carried out in the 3rd term of the academic year 2013-2014, throughout the teachertraining programme performed at the High School I.E.S Álvaro Falomir in Almazora (Castellón). This project has been designed to cover three 55-minute class sessions, with seventeen students in the 1st Year of Bachillerato (Upper Secondary level). This is a classroom action research with a quasi-experimental (before-after) design, focused on studying one problem within a single classroom, and consists of a single cycle of planning, acting, observing, and reflecting. In addition, in order to obtain a better triangulation and complementarity regarding data collection, the mixed methods: quantitative and qualitative are used. The data collection instruments used to measure student outcomes are: 2nd end-of-term English exam results (as pre-test), 3rd end-of-term English exam (as post-test), a self-assessment questionnaire (about the Jclic intervention) and observational field notes. Analysis of the data is undertaken using the Paired Two Samples Student's T-Test for differences in means, percentage in bar chart for means as a whole, percentage in pie chart for overall motivation level and Likert scale for motivation level per questioned item. The results indicate that there is a statistically significant difference in present perfect usage between the pre-test and post-test scores. In addition, data analysis reveals that the use of Jclic software, as a computer-assisted language learning (CALL) tool, can increase students' engagement, motivation, and learning achievement. Then, computer-assisted instruction (CAI) can complement teacherdirected instruction by means of intrinsically-motivating activities that are helpful to students for improving their academic performance and thus be better prepared for the University Entrance Exams. Moreover, the results of this study can be useful for English teachers as they can use students' achievement data in order to make instructional decisions to change classroom environment and improve learning. Finally, the critical reflection leads us to plan the second cycle, for which the action plan is refitted and the research process redesigned.

Treball final de Màster Universitari en Professor/a d'Educació Secundària Obligatòria i Batxillerat, Formació Professional i Ensenyaments d'Idiomes. Codi: SAP419. Curs acadèmic 2014-2015

Treball Final de Màster Universitari en Professor/a d'Educació Secundària Obligatòria i Batxillerat, Formació Professional i Ensenyaments d'Idiomes. Codi: SAP129. Curs: 2014/2015 The following Master’s Thesis is about a proposal enhancement, which consists on my experience related to the Practicum following the methodology of action research. Firstly, I identified the area to improve during my first period observing the lessons and by a survey given to students to answer some questions about the subject (annex 1). As we can observe in annex 2 there are a lot of students who ask for a bigger use of digital resources. When the first period came to an end I started writing this Teaching Unit keeping in mind their requests, which I implemented during the second period. During this last period I have carried out a participation table following the humanistic methods emphasizing the active role of the student during his or her learning realizing about their needs to carry out the learning process. The sessions have been structured to follow the activities as tasks divided into pre-task, task and post-task. “A task is a piece of classroom work that involves learners in comprehending, manipulating, producing or interacting in the target language while their attention is focused on mobilizing their grammatical knowledge in order to express meaning, and in which the intention is to convey meaning rather than to manipulate form. The task should also have a sense of completeness, being able to stand alone as a communicative act in its own right with a beginning, a middle and an end." (Nunan, 2004: 4).Besides, one of the most important tools used in this Teaching Unit is the WebQuest. This is “a research guided-activity, where learners use information collected mainly from internet resources. WebQuests can focus or be based on learning activities that offer the teacher the opportunity to integrate the Internet technology in the curricula, and thus allow learners to achieve their learning through knowledge construction” Girón-García (2013: 172). The use of WebQuests helps to encourage students’ autonomy. The main objectives of this proposal are to encourage students’ motivation, capacity and autonomy. The results have been more than satisfactory because the tables I used reflect a high level of participation regarding the first sessions.

Treball Final de Màster Universitari en Professor/a d'Educació Secundària Obligatòria i Batxillerat, Formació Professional i Ensenyaments d'Idiomes. Codi: SAP129. Curs: 2013/2014 The aim of this paper is twofold: (1) reflecting on the new challenges that our educational system is facing nowadays, given that it is becoming more and more diverse; and (2) reflecting on what we can do, as teachers, in order to address diversity in a positive and inclusive way. First, I have looked trough the scientific literature regarding Inclusive Education and Cooperative Learning, analyzing their main characteristics and the elements that make the latter an ideal way to address diversity in schools. And secondly, I have designed a proposal in the form of a teaching unit introducing cooperative learning activities addressed to a secondary class of EFL (English as a Foreign Language) which, due to space limitations, has been included in the form of an annex (Annex I). These are the objectives that I have contemplated: 1) To review the existing literature about Inclusive Education and Cooperative Learning to deepen in the knowledge of both concepts. 2) To address Inclusive Education with Cooperative Methodologies as an ideal way of attending students diversity. 3) To design a teaching proposal based on Cooperative Learning in the form of a teaching unit applied to Secondary Education, taking into account those educational methods which make students learning easier in diversity contexts (Annex I). In order to reach these objectives, I have done some extensive reading on the bibliography concerning both concepts and I have come to the conclusion that it is really important to reorganize and restructure ordinary schools towards the same direction: inclusion, so that this way we will have a quality school for everyone. I have also come to the conclusion that Cooperative Learning is a great way of attending students’ diversity without dividing them and making the most of this diversity.