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.
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment