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.
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2 comments:
I agree that many of the SLOM criteria is too general and I think that's why many of us had different interpretations of how it should be administered/applied to each student. Thanks for the comments on the presentation!
Like I mentioned earlier on Stephanie's blog, Aaron and Kizuna did a very good job on their presentation. I said that I can relate to it because I started out as an ELL student myself. The difficulties are what I am talking about. Learning the English language and the challenges that came along.
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