Week 14 Class reffection - Testing and Evaluation

We started the class by actually doing a test designed for ESL students called AccuplacerESL. I was in group 2 and the test i did contained a writing exercise, a grammar and sentence meaning exercise. Considering the principles of testing that we learned in the previous class, i think this part of the test meets the requirement of validity, since it is challenging enough for students whose English is under evaluation. However, i could hardly see authenticity on display, because all the questions were asked separately and divorced from the context. One more thing, which also was a matter of concern for many students in the class, was the fact that our essays in the writing part were graded by the computer! I was really surprised at first when receiving the writing score after submitting my answer, and seriously had no clue how the computer, a machine with practically no brain, is intelligent and flexible enough to read and evaluate human writing. I believe by making the grading process quicker and easier, the designers of the test have, in some way, undervalued human ability and intelligence.

After discussing the test and voicing all our concerns and comments, we continued with a test-designing activity which was done based on a reading text. Our group was assigned a text about US history, and we had fun creating the exercises.

The last reading reflection of the semester - Just about time for evaluation and testing

As i do the reading for this week, it turns out that Chapter 24 in the HDB book was also the last reading chapter for last semester's class. However, just as assessment and testing have always been a matter of concern for teachers and students of all time, it's always helpful to re-read about them. This time, what stood out in my mind as i read is the test-taking procedure that the book mentions, including before-, during, and after-test strategies. The reason i am concerned about this is because in the book it says in order to ensure the face validity of the test, the teacher should prepare students for it, which seems to contrast with some of the experiences i had with testing as a student. What happened is for many subjects in school, we often had a kind of testing called pop quizzes, in which our teachers would give us a 15-minute test in class without prior notice. The rationale my teachers held behind this was to keep us all on task and to make sure that we all review the lesson before going to class. As much as this makes sense to me given the fact that many of us tried not to go to class not knowing what we learned in the previous class, it seems to go against the principle of testing, since the students are nowhere near well prepared. Still, on the other hand, i think this kind of testing works in a way that its spontaneity can most exactly tell the teacher what parts of the lesson stick to students the most and what not when they're not cramming for a test.

Also, anothing that is brought up in the book that i identify with is the alternative assessment techniques such as portfolios and journals. For sure these will help teachers evaluate students' performance more thoroughly and continually. Even though during my time studying English in middle and high school, i was tested mostly by formal testing techniques, i think these alternative ones will work well for students at these levels as well. For instance, the teacher can give students a writing prompt every week and have them keep a journal as a part of class work. Each week some journals will be chosen randomly to receive feedback from the teachers, so that by the end of the semester all students have their works read and corrected by the teacher.

Week 14 Class reflection

This week's class started with Ahmet's presentation about his experience in teaching composition to international students. To me what stood out the most was the difficulties he had when selecting appropriate textbooks for his students, especially when he shared that once he had to change the book in the middle of the semester because it didn't work for the students. This again brought it home to me how hard it is to design a syllabus and choose an accompanying textbook that will fit a class of students whom you hardly know when you plan the syllabus. Sadly, this is what usually happens in the teaching context in my home country, especially at middle and high school level, where we have a set of national textbooks designed specifically for each grade, and the teacher has to rigidly follow the sequence of units presented in the textbooks. Another thing that caught my attention was the follow-up discussion about assessment rubrics for native and non-native students. Personally i greatly agree with Dr. Smidt that at college level, there should be no difference in the assessment process between international studentts and their American peers. Despite the language barrier, we all go to class for the same purpose and one should not be judged only by his/her language abilities.

Next, Jodi gave a presentation about assessment and i think she did a good job presenting by making us actually do the assessment ourselves.

I really liked the next activity in which we worked in group to create and match definitions of evaluation techniques. This is a good demonstration of class activities, and i think it could be effectively used to review vocabulary. Next, we broke into smaller groups to brainstorm activities that can be used to test the four skills, and then carried out a specific one. What i like about this part is that after brainstorming we switched topics and demonstrated an activity that was listed by a different group, which enabled us to share ideas and learn from each other.

The last class discussion about testing was informative, but what struck me was when we talked about authorities and power, the conflict between innovative ideas and long-rooted practices, and the issue of how to apply what i learn here to the real teaching context in my home country. I know it will be hard for a novice teacher like me to try to change routines and customs that have been around for a long time, so as everyone in class was suggesting, i will try to be well-prepared and probably start with small steps first.

Week 13 Reading reflection

This week's reading continues to deal with the issue of Teaching Writing, with more focus on how to go about designing an effective writing course.

Among the issues that second language teachers need to take into consideration when it comes to developing a writing curriculum, i am particularly interested in teacher's response to students' writing, including giving feedback and correcting errors. One of the reasons why this issue captures my attention is because during my process of learning English writing, i've encountered one incidence in which the teacher collects students' papers and returns them graded, but with no major correction or feedback to indicate how good/bad the students are doing. As mentioned in the book, teacher feedback is essential to students' improvement in learning writing and can come under written or oral form. Based on students' linguistic backgrounds and preferences, teachers can choose the feedback type that works best for their students. According to my experience as a second language writer, feedback that is worded under the form of a suggestion or question rather than direct indication of errors seem to work best for me, since they drive me to get back to my paper and try to figure out how i can improve my writing by answering the teacher's questions or following his/her suggestions. Also, in my opinion, the most important and also one of the hardest thing for teachers to achieve is to make sure their feedback has some sort of influence on students' performance. This can be done by making students produce several drafts before the final products, and the teacher makes sure that teacher or peer feedback is given to each draft.

Class reflection - Week 12

This week's class focused on teaching writing and the first activity we did in class was to take a look at a course syllabus designed for a college-level writing class and brainstorm all the principles in teaching writing that we see being displayed. Overall, i think the course fulfills most of the principles, and the instructor is also very clear about what she wants the students' writing products to be like. The text-heavy feature of the assignment instructions, in my opinion, rightly serves the purpose of maximizing the degree of clarity rather than overwhelms the students.

Next came Bekir and Chris presentation. Bekir focused on teaching and learning writing at a global level and brought up very thought-provoking questions for the whole class to discuss. One of the questions that i found interesting was whether to consider writing as a skill or as an art. And i agree that it should be a combination of both. Also, in my opinion to second language learners more emphasis should be placed on the first aspect than on the second one, since it is true that even though many of us can write fluently, it takes more to produce an artful piece of writing. Meanwhile, Chris addressed the issue at a more specific level, particularly he had us deal with some techniques that can be used to teach writing mentioned in the book and come up with specific writing activities.

For the last part of class we did our video tape analysis in groups and i must say this was my favorite part. Kizuna, Lilian and I had a great time watching each other's teaching video and we tried to give as constructive comments to one another as possible. I really valued the class time devoted to this activity, and felt like we were real colleagues who were working together to share experience and help improve each other's teaching performance.

Week 12 Reading reflection - Teaching Writing

In this week's reading, there are a few points in Chapter 21 - HDB book that capture my attention when it comes to teaching and learning the skill of writing.

First, the book distinguishes two types of writing that has been used in academic context: real writing, in which the purpose is to express oneself, and display writing, where writing is a primary for the display of a student's knowledge. Personally i have never thought of writing in this way before, and that's probably one of the reasons why i am really delighted by this. It seems like in school the a large amount of writing falls under the second category, where students are "forced" to show teachers how well they grasp the knowledge in form of writing. And i wonder if that, in any case, may cause the lack of love for writing in some language learners, since they are not writing in their own will. Still, i think one of the things that language teachers can do here is to turn display writing into real writing, or in other words, create an authentic need for students to write about what they have learned. In my opinion, this can be done by a number of ways, one of which being to change the way a writing prompt is worded. For instance, if the prompt which asks students to write about how to make a birthday cake is categorized as display writing, creating a context for the prompt such as "The birthday of your friends' mom is approaching and she wants to make a birthday cake as a surprise to her mom. However, she doesn't know how to make a good strawberry birthday cake and writes to you for help. Write back and show your friend how to make a birthday cake." Here the issue of keeping a specific audience in mind while writing is also brought into play.

Second, the matter of timed writing is also worth mentioning. As stated in the book, for the purpose of evaluation, many in class activities require students to finish their writing in a certain amount of time and after handing the writing students rarely have the chance to get back to it and see what improvements they can made. Although timed writing is necessary in assessing students' writing skills, especially when they prepare for English tests such as TOEFL or IELTS, this does put them under a lot of pressure and make writing a painful rather than delighting experience. Also, this can also cause the bad habit of not planning or proofreading the writing, since often times students give an excuse that they run out of time to do these steps . Language teachers, therefore, need to be really sensitive when it comes to writing within time constraint, and makes sure that we give our students enough practice to familiarize themselves with speed writing when they need to.

Week 11 Class reflection - Emergent reading and writing

The class began with a small discussion started by JoAnn's question as to whether or not gender makes any difference in one's ability to read and write, since according to JoAnn's experience, her daughter learned these literacy skills much faster than her son. As we discussed in groups and then as the whole class, it seems that most people agreed that this has more to do with individual differences than gender. Also, in my opinion, the fact that one child can read or write faster and better than others rests heavily on the amount of time and practice he/she devotes to reading and writing. Another thing about early reading and writing that i feel greatly identified with and which worked well for me is that very often what one reads at the early stage of the literacy development process will stay longer than anything else read at a later age, and this can also nurture a love for reading and writing which may continue to be with a child for a good long time.

For the first activity, we watched a short clip about a teacher teaching reading to a group of young students and then jotted down the literacy development principles that we saw being demonstrated. The list that we were able to come up with after that includes guessing the content of the reading, explaining difficult words, reading aloud, taking school activities home, taking into consideration students' interests, and another interesting feature spotted by Stephanie is "finger following along". A couple of ideas were then brought up to explain why the teacher did that (and this is also usually done by teachers who work with young learners as well). In my opinion, this gesture might be used to keep young learners focused on what they're reading, in case a large number of reading lines may distract them. This analysis of reading principles very much reminds me of a reading software that i was exposed to while i tutored English language learners at Franklin Elementary school last month. The software is called Reading Naturally, and as i learn about the principles for developing learners' reading skill, it becomes clear to me that the software follows closely these principles. The reading texts in the software are categorized into different levels and based on their language level, each learner is assigned to work with a certain number of reading passages. A goal is set for each learner by the teacher and he/she has to reach that goal before being able to advance to a higher level. Each reading practice starts with the learner choosing a topic he/she is interested in. The computer will then pick a passage and the student first needs to guess what the passage is about based on the picture given. New words are then explained and the learner is asked to pronounce them along with the computer. Then comes the main part of the practice: the student reads the passage along with the computer several times before reading alone. Comprehension questions are then asked to check how well the student understands what he/she has just read. Personally i found this software a very good tool to help second/foreign language learners practice their reading skills, both reading aloud and silent reading. Students can also learn accurate pronunciation of words and good intonation as they read along with the computer.

The next and also last activity was a fun one, when in groups we went out looking for and chose among library resources some artifacts that can be used to teach reading and writing to young learners. Chris, Stephanie and I picked a book about farm animals and decided to use puppets as reading aids. Each student is assigned an animal role and is given a puppet representing the animal. As the teacher reads the story, the student whose role is mentioned would make a sound of the animal role he/she plays. We thought such direct involvement would make reading more fun and exciting to young learners. After working in our group, we got the chance to work together with Thea, Rachel and Brian and exchange the activities we had. I must say the books our partner group chose were all suitable for teaching young learners, and Thea was a really good narrator as she demonstrated the activity to us.

Reading for Week 11 - Literacy and Second Language Teaching and Learning

This week's reading focuses on literacy skills in early childhood and then shifts toward literacy development in second language teaching and learning.

The first part of Chapter 5 in P&B book reminds me very much of my own experience in learning how to read and write in my native language. I remember at the age of 5 i often held a newspaper upside down, made up things and read it to my father, having no idea why my mom was trying to resist herself from laughing. I also took all of my mother's notebooks (she is a teacher) and traced her handwriting after having been bored with drawing a whole lot of meaningless and disorganized lines. This perfectly matches what is described in the book about young learners' great desires to grasp and develop literacy skills. It also brings into attention that adults or teachers can take advantage of this feature to "plant" the love for reading writing in children.

Literacy development in second language learning, however, oftentimes does not seem to work in such a motivational way. In fact, apart from very young children who learn a foreign language roughly at the same time as they learn to read and write in their native language, many second language learners find it challenging to practice and master literacy skills in their target language. A wide range of literacy development activities mentioned in the book are therefore very helpful as language teachers work with students to help them develop their reading and writing abilities.

Week 8 Class: Creating Creative Speaking Activities

This week's class continues to focus on the skill of speaking, which seems to be a never-ending topic to talk about when it comes to second language teaching and learning.

Marya started her presentation by posing two questions of choice: accuracy and fluency; segmentals and suprasegmentals. Personally i think it is not easy for language teachers to separate these concepts when it comes to real teaching contexts, since the lean toward one or the other depends on what and whom we teach, and that the imbalance is only applicable at a certain point in the teaching, not throughout the curriculum. For instance, if we teach students a grammar point or how to pronounce a new word, it will be tremendously helpful if the focus is on accuracy, since we do not want our students to have an incorrect perception of that grammar point or word pronunciation right from the beginning. Meanwhile, in a speaking activity where the purpose is to get students to talk, fluency should come first and accuracy should be present only when the teacher corrects students' errors afterwards.

The next part of the class that took place in the GLL was about running a google search for speaking activities after a quick wholeclass brainstorm. Again the Internet is a great tool to look for teaching ideas, and we were able to find quite a few resources that can be used for teaching speaking. I myself found a website where music is multipurposefully used in TESL, such as as speaking prompts (have students listen to the song "And i love you" by The Beatles and use it as a prompt to describe their boyfriend/girlfriend or an "old flame"), or materials to practice intonation, etc. In my opinion, apart from achieving the language goal, songs or music, as culturally enriching artifacts, can also be a good way for students to know more about the L2 culture. Also, i liked the activity of each group going over to another group's findings and using what had been found to create a speaking activity. This was undoubtedly a very effective way to share resources among teachers, since the Internet resources are huge and one might not be able to find what others do. My group worked with some very interesting pictures and we created a story-telling activity based on the pictures.

Peer review of Part 1 of the Final Portfolio, the last activity of the class, was useful as always. The break-up of this assignment into two parts did help reduce the workload we will have to do at the end of the semester, which i really like.

After today's class, the biggest thing that lingers in my mind is how to create speaking activities that are fun, inspiring and engaging to students. In my opinion, this requires a lot on the part of teachers, such as of experience, creativity, good observation, the researching and learning spirit, motivation... The list may then go on...

Week 7 - Class reflection - "Let's talk about talk!"

This week's class started with Kizuna and Aaron's presentation about teaching the skill of speaking. I think they were very successful in leading the discussion and getting everyone in class to share our own experience in learning to speak in a foreign language. Apart from the issues that may pose difficulties for students mentioned by Kizuna that i greatly agree with, to me another challenging problem when speaking in English is the lack of vocabulary. Since the impromptu nature of speech does not give me enough time to think and choose the vocabulary, i often find myself running short of words to express my thoughts. Therefore, i really liked it when in the next part of their presentation, our presenters mentioned some speaking strategies that can be used to get students talk and facilitate their speech.

The next part of the class which took place in the GLL was very interesting and inspring to me. Since the computer did not work very well, we were divided into two different groups, one listening to the recording and evaluating the students' oral performance, and the other designing speaking activities using props and puppets. Personally, i found the SLOM criteria are too general to reflect the oral strengths and weaknesses of students. However, it can be a great guideline from which language teachers can build a more specific evaluation form depending on the proficiency level and the needs of their students. Next, i found it very exciting and intriguing when watching the other groups who were assigned to work with puppets present their activities. I love Bekir and Jodi's use of animal puppets to teach the modal verb CAN. I like "Chris and company"'s Minnesota-based activity. I was inspired by Kizuna and Brian's use of frog act as story-tellers, and found Chao, Marya and Stephanie's choice of props very interesting, especially the model of organs that Stephanie "wore", which i think can be very useful for teaching about body parts. This fun and practical activity greatly reinforced the usefulness of realia and props in making a scene for a speaking activity and arousing students' interest in the task, thus getting them to talk more freely and enthusiastically. Also, this activity brought to my attention the bountiful resources for language teaching and learning that are available in our library.

Week 7 Reading reflection - Teaching Speaking

As i read chapter 4 in the P&B book, i felt identified with a lot of what was stated since i've experienced some of them as a language learner. Also, the reading gives me more indepth ideas of the speaking skill from a teacher's perspective.

First, i like the techniques to promote oral language development which are put forward and find them all very intriguing as a learner. Among them, the one which has the most lasting impression in my mind when it comes to practice speaking is drama. I remember doing a lot of short skits in my freshmen year's English Speaking class. My teacher would start by giving us a picture which could be interpreted in many ways, and as a group we described the picture, came up with a short story that related to the picture and then acted it out. My friends and I always had a lot of fun creating the plots and reciting the skit together. More importantly, i could see a lot of improvement in my friends' oral competence as the semester proceeded, since in the skit, all of us got a role and even the shyest person needed to speak up to contribute to the whole performance. The technique worked so well that at the end of that semester, I even started to develop a love for acting, a skill i had never thought i would be good at. In my opinion, this fun activity, together with other interesting ones listed in the book and else where, should be regularly used in the speaking classroom. Just as we don't like to talk when we feel anxious and stressed, language teachers can hardly expect students to speak up if they don't feel comfortable with the atmosphere and the people around them. Creating fun activities, therefore, can be a great solution. Also, i agree with what the book says about letting students have some say in selecting speaking topics and materials. Again the student-centered principle works here and it reminds us of how beneficial it can be to give students a certain amount of freedom in their learning.

How to assess students' oral performance is also an isssue which is worth mentioning. Personally i think both informal and formal assessment play an important part in the evaluation process. Informal asssessment may reflect students' speaking ability better if students feel so nervous in formal assessment that it adversely affects their performance. Meanwhile, formal assessment will give teachers a better idea of how students perform in formal contexts such as individual/group presentations. Besides, in my opinion, it is good that language teachers have a list of evaluation criteria in mind before they go about assessing students, and that these criteria may vary depending on the main focus of students. Moreover, it'll be a good idea to make these criteria clear to students right from the beginning of the class, so that they'll know what to focus their efforts on and somehow turn these standards into their own learning goals.

Week 6 Class: Teaching Listening

In this week's class, i think Stephanie and Thea did an awesome job presenting the topic of teaching listening. I really liked the way they demonstrated different teaching methods and then got the whole class to provide the name of each technique. I also enjoyed the activity they carried out after that and thought the drawing made the listening very interesting. These activities best exemplify one of the statements mentioned in the book, which says students' listening ability is at its best when they listen for a purpose, and in my opinion, it even works better when that purpose is fun and inspiring.

Next we had a small discussion about the most effective listening activity we had either carried out or been taught, and it was interesting to hear which methods work for each of us, as well as different ideas about one activity, such as dictation. While Kizuna and Stephanie found it boring and ineffective, dictation seemed to work well for Chris and Bekir. I don't think any one is completely right or totally wrong here, it just depends on each person's learning style, preferences, and the way he/she was taught as well. For me personally, i experienced a lot of dictation when i learned Vietnamese in elementary school, and as far as i can recall, this method helped me tremendously with my spelling and punctuation. In second/foreign language learning, i think dictation can also help with students who have difficulty with punctuation, since i know a lot of students might not know how to appropriately use periods or commas when writing in English.

The next part was Solen's presentation about his experience in teaching the four skills in his ESL classes. As i am observing his ESL 101 class, i was able to see a lof of truth in what he shared, and personally i greatly admire his language competence as well as his teaching.

The last portion of class time was devoted to planning for the Final portfolio. We were able to get into groups and discuss how we would go about collecting artifacts for the first half of the porfolio. Adib, Bekir and I were able to decide which artifact to use for which standard, as well as distribute the work among the three of us. I feel more comfortable with the final portfolio this time compared to last semester, since we have everything made clear right from the beginning.

Week 6 Reading - Teaching LISTENING

Confusion

Anxiety

Fear of technological problems

Insecurity

Embarrassment

Lack of materials

These are just a few things i had on my list when i think back at my past experience in learning the skill of Listening. As i do the reading for this week, i greatly agree with the author when he states that Listening was even a more neglected skill than Speaking in Language teaching in the past. The book mentions a lot of reasons why this happened, among which i feel highly identified with the idea that because the listening ability comes so naturally in one's first language acquisition, and no one has ever been taught how to listen in their native language, the same assumption is applied when it comes to second language acquisition. However, the truth is: Listening in a second/foreign language is a completely different story, and learners definitely nees a lot of instruction and practice in order to become a competent listener in their target language.

About Teaching Listening, I really like Brown's idea of dividing the set of skills into two: macro and micro. In my opinion, these two levels create the main principles and criteria upon which language teachers can build up their own syllabus in teaching Listening depending on the proficiency level of students, as well as conduct their formal and informal assessment on students' performance. Also, the listening techniques listed in the Brown book can act as a guideline for language teachers, and i think they will work best if there are a good combination of bottom-up, top-down and interactive exercises. One more thing i would like to add to the teaching principles is to always set a specific goal for each listening lesson and lead students to using specific skills to obtain that goal. For instance, for one particular lesson, the goal can be listening for main ideas, and the skill exercise might be one which requires students to answer questions about what the speaker wants to convey in his/her speech. These goals of course vary depending on students' needs, but form my point of view, to make sure that students are always listening for a reason is very important. This is reinforced in Morley's principle of task orientation in developing listening materials put forward in the Apple book.

Moreover, like other language skills, the mastering of the skill of listening requires a lot of practice outside the classroom, especially in the case of EFL learners. Back to the Listening-experience list i made above, in order to overcome these obstacles and better understand spoken English, i did a lot of self-study and practice. It was not easy at all at first. Imagine how frustrated you will be when listening to people talking but can only have a very vague idea of what they're talking about, you'll know how hopeless i was at the time. Not to give up, then, was my biggest challenge, since naturally no one wants to listen to something they can't understand. And it turned out that to me, even though it does not make me a perfect listener in English, practice does enable me to make progess. Therefore, i greatly agree with what is discussed in the book about the development of self-access listening materials. This will raise students' awareness and drive them to do more self-study in listening, especially to EFL students whose exposure to the target language mostly takes place in the classroom.

Week 5 class reflection - Feb 9

In this week's class, we started with Stephanie and Rachel's presentation on Teaching Vocabulary. I really like their idea of using a list of strange words and getting us guess their meaning based on the context they were used. In my opinion, this is a very good way to raise students' awareness of the important of contexts in teaching and learning vocabulary. Besides the contexts, learning word roots can also help students when they encounter new words, as in our group, Thea was able to guess the meaning of the word Mesonoxian correctly right away, since she knows in Latin -ox has to do with night. However, in my opinion, this vocabulary learning technique should be used for high-intermediate and advanced students only, since as teachers we wouldn't want to make vocabulary learning more complicated to our beginners' level students.

The next part of listening to Diana presenting her research on teaching vocabulary was practical, since it's always good to listen to a senior sharing experience. As i am observing the ENG 101 class in which Diana is trialling her vocab teaching technique, i have been able to see that the vocab cards work for the students in the class. Since this activity gets these students to spend a certain amount of time each week sitting down and investigating closely a certain number of words in several aspects (meaning, collocation, word-map, etc), it helps faciliate the learning of vocabulary and help students understand what it means to really know a word, and build up for themselves a good vocab learning strategy in the long run. Still, explicit vocab learning like this, from my point of view, works better for adults/ mature students who know clearly the importance of having a large vocab size in learning a foreign language, than for young learners whose learning style and goals are much more vivid and stimulus-based.

The last activity which took place in GLL focused on Grammar instruction. I was puzzled at first when Dr Smidt raised the question of "the difference between focusing on form and focusing on forms. This reminded me of how one small grammatical item could make a difference considering the meaning of words, and how important it is for learners to be thorough when learning new words. Back to grammar instruction, the activity of going back to our previous lesson plan and thinking of all grammatical items we think students need to know in order to understand the lesson was fun yet demanding. It turned out that we would have to provide students with a lot of grammatical background knowledge in each of the lesson, and what's more challeging is how to integrate such knowledge into the whole lesson so that students won't feel overwhelmed.

Reading reflection - Week 5: Teaching Grammar and Vocabulary

In this week's reading, the focus is on the teaching of vocabulary and grammar, two important areas which have undergone quite a lot of ups and downs in the language teaching history.

Generally speaking, i myself feel highly identified with a lot of ideas which are brought up in the reading, such as no matter how important the communication approach is in the modern language teaching world, vocabulary and grammar cannot be underestimated, since these two elements provide the backbone for all language skills. Anothing i like is the conclusion that grammmar and vocabulary are acquired most effectively when they're presented in concurrence with other language functions and items. That is to say, students will learn best when the lesson is not primarily focused on intense learning of grammar or vocabulary, but is designed with a specific communicative goal in mind.

Also, i find the Grammar teaching techniques in the Teaching and Principle book really helpful. As a language learner, i have experienced many of these techniques such as charts, objects, maps and drawings and most of them worked for me. Since grammar has a lot to do with rules, these systematic generalizations, in my opinion, help make grammatical structures ease their way into students' mind. However, since grammar is dynamic, it is necessary that language teachers also direct students' attention to some exceptions and changes that may happen, especially in real-life language usage.

As far as vocabulary learning is concerned, apart from the main principles put forward in the book, in my experience, it is important and helpful that the language teacher guide students toward developing vocab-acquisition strategies. This may include a number of factors, which may vary depending on learners' learning style and preferences. For instance, visual learners may learn best when associating new words with pictures and illustrations; while auditory learners may prefer to listen to the word several times before they really remember it. Also, memorization, even though it is passive, is greatly needed in learning new words and phrases. Encountering and using words in context is also a very effective way to learn vocabulary. To me, a new word cannot enter my mind until after i actually use it in speaking or writing, or after i encounter it at least 3 times. The use of monolingual dictionary, as mentioned in the book, is also a good method to learn vocabulary, since it minimizes the incidence of L1 translation. The list of vocab learning strategies can then continue to be built up by both the teacher and students and at the end of the day, students will have a wide range of options from which to choose those that work best for themselves.

Class reflection Feb 2 - Culture's fun

Today's class focused on an issue which, i think, is interesting to most English language teachers, especially to Non-native English teachers who teach in the EFL setting.

Thea and Rachel started off with a very interesting question that somehow surprised them in the reading. I was also puzzled at first when reading what the book stated about how native students would feel when someone (especially non-native students) borrows their notes. Even though i myself have never actually borrowed notes from my classmates since i came to study here, i wouldn't think they will be reluctant to lend me their notes if i ever ask them, and perhaps that was also why Rachel and Thea found it somewhat "shocking". In my opinion, even though the writer is American himself and as a highly educated person what he wrote about the American culture is mostly reliable, his viewpoints do not represent those of all Americans, and this was clearly shown in class today. I believe any ESL learners who come across the article and read this cultural note would never dare to ask their American classmates for the notes, while the issue might not be as serious as the author said. This brings it home to me that it always helps to be cautious when making judgements about any particular cultural issues. And generalizations, even though they're necessary in creating a significant initial idea of a culture, should be kept in moderation. This is what language teachers should always keep in mind when learning about the L2 culture.

The presentation went on really well as the two presenters got us to talk about more culture-related issues such as cultural differences in speaking and writing between L1 and L2. The idea which was highlighted was that non-native speakers may use inappropriate language behaviors that they themselves don't even notice. According to my experience, inappropriateness in language use here not only refers to speakers being unintentionally impolite when using the target language, but also to the fact that some may be too polite and use very formal language in casual contexts. This was made clear in the following class discussion about the way foreign students addressing professors in the US. The issue of appropriateness, therefore, should be viewed from two ends and deserves considerable attention on the part of language teachers.

The following discussion about cultural differences was very interesting. Since everyone in the class has had some encounters with cultural differences in some way, it was very nice to listen to everyone sharing different stories. However, i think it would help if we could go into more details about how the language teacher goes about teaching culture in the language classroom, as inspired and suggested in the book.

The next part of working in groups and picking an approach to design a rough unit plan was intriguing as well. Chris, Stephanie and I chose Experiential as our approach and we had a lot of fun creating a week-long lesson plan for students to learn about fundamental astronomy through a field trip to the planetarium. Though we misunderstood the instruction a little bit and made a week-long instead of a month-long unit plan, the activity did give me an idea of how to create an actual unit plan later.

Overall, today's class was fun (and short :D) and apart from the professional knowledge, i walked out of class learning more about the culture of the language i am learning. "Groundhog day", "super bowl", "lemon stands" - all these culture-specific terms, i believe, will stay with me for a good long time in my teaching and learning life.

Reading Refection Week 4 - Culture in the English classroom

This week's reading in the MCM book delves into an issue which, as far as i remember, was mentioned as one of the teaching principles in the Teaching by principles book: cultural issues in the language classroom.

Looking back on my English learning process, it now becomes clear to me that while i was clearly taught how to write a good academic essay when it comes to the skill of writing, i barely had any idea how to use formal and informal language when it comes to speaking and normally transfer the conversation norms from my first language to English. And even until now i still find myself not competent enough when it comes to conversing in English in formal contexts. Therefore i greatly agree with what the book says, that the incorporation of the L2 culture into the teaching of English in an EFL setting is highly necessary. One more thing being stated in the reading that i feel greatly identified with is that the teaching of L2 culture does not separate from the teaching of the language skills such as Listening, Reading, Writing, and Speaking. In fact, cultural characteristics, especially invisible ones, will be most effectively conveyed when they go hand in hand with what the students are practicing in class. This, however, may conflict with the 4-F approaches to teaching culture (folk dances, festivals, facts, and foods) brought up in the discussion questions at the end of the article. In my opinion, the 4-Fs approaches should be used to teach culture to student-teachers or English majors who need to have in-depth knowledge about the culture of their target language rather than to ESL/EFL students.

Class reflection Jan 26 - Issues in Professional Development

This week we focused on professional development and different ways in which teachers can develop professionally.

In his presentation Brian was able to bring up and get the class to brainstorm many issues concerning professional development, among which attending conferences seemed to be the most catchy and popular one.

Concerning professional conferences, i myself attended a workshop at my home university held by an organization named Teachers helping Teachers (THT) in conjunction with the Japanese Association of Language Teaching (JALT), in which experienced English teachers from Europe, North America, Australia, South America, and Asia come to give presentations to English teachers at developing countries such as the Philippines, Bangladesh and Vietnam. Even though i attended the conferences as a student-teacher, i could see they were really helpful for our in-service teachers who do not always have an opportunity to be exposed to new changes and ideas in the language teaching world. Also, considering the fact that in many countries in Asia teaching is an honorable yet not economically wealthy career and teachers very often have a lot more to worry about outside the classroom apart from their teaching, conferences and lectures are good chances for them to immerse themselves in a highly integrative and professional atmosphere and talk and share ideas and experiences with each other, as well as motivate them to never stop learning and enriching their professional abilities.

Also, in my opinion, to non-native English speaking teachers, studying/going abroad to get to know more about the language and the culture they are teaching is a fruitful way to develop professionally, since however well a teacher is trained to teach a foreign language, it's always useful that he is able to get first-hand experience in using the language himself. Bearing this in mind, the Vietnamese Ministry of Education and Training has set a goal to send 2/3 of our English teachers to English speaking countries to study/ do research and enhance their abilities by 2020. Even though this is not easy concerning our economic situation, i greatly hope this goal will be met within the time prospected.

The next part of brainstorming all the questions we might have about various issues in language teaching and learning and writing them down was practical and useful in many way. My group came up with quite a few of them and decided to focus on the use of podcast in language teaching. It was interesting and at the same time challenging to create a detailed plan on how to carry out the research after that.