The very last class was short and sweet. It was fun to go around and have a look at all the groups' posters and leave comments. It was also interesting to see how each group's research product came out and how after the research everyone got to know their topic better and deeper.
To me personally, the class was not at all a piece of cake. Reading and reflecting, researching and discussing, all of these and many other things kept me constantly busy and even overwhelmed at times. However, after all the hard work, what i experienced and learned was numerous and useful. I was able to gain thorough knowledge of several issues in second language learning and teaching, as well as reflect on my own language learning process. I learned how the language teaching theories developed over time, and how each method can be applied into the real teaching context so that students can benefit the most. All of this will apparently be very helpful for me in my future teaching, since it now becomes clear to me that as a teacher it's important to not only know how to teach, but also to understand why i teach the way i teach.
The process of doing the multi-genre research paper is also fruitful and inspiring. Even though there were times i felt confused about what i was supposed to do, overall i learn how to manage my time, look for references, work in groups and be as creative as possible in creating the genres.
Class interaction is also what i like about the class. The fact that we work in groups most of the time to complete class activities as well as class projects did make learning more cooperative. And at the end of the day, i am glad that each of my classmate has a lot for me to learn from. I loved the experience-sharing part and was inspired by their teaching stories.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Monday, December 1, 2008
The very last READING REFLECTION of the semester: Assessment and Teaching
I am not sure whether this is just a coincidence or a purposeful arrangement, but this week's reading comes at a very sensitive and presumably right time of the semester and touches on an issue that is of great concern to students and teachers alike.
As a student i (and i am sure i am not alone when it comes to this matter) have always wished that we could just go to class and study without having to take any tests and exams. School life would be much less stressful and easier to students then, but at the same time it has to be taken into consideration that without tests, exams and other assessment methods, it would be very likely that students would get out of school with a mostly blank mind! And in my opinion, this may be one of the reasons why testing and assessment have, for a long time, become an indispensable part of every school system, or as stated in the book: "a way of life".
Personally i find the principles of language assessment presented in the book extremely helpful and practical, especially to novice teachers who have little experience in test designing. Among these principles, validity is, in my opinion, the most important and also most difficult requirement to meet, since this feature dictates the overall quality of the test as well as the extent to which the teacher is aware of what he/she is teaching and the students' performance.
Another issue which captures my attention is ethical matters in language assessment. While standardized exams produce reliable reflections of the language proficiency level of test-takers, they do not take into account many individual differences that may adversely affect learner performance in the test. I have a couple of friends who are very good language learners in class, but always struggle when it comes to exams. The reason is because they do not work well under the pressure of time constraint and thus usually do not have enough time to finish the test. This brings it home to me that a variety of language assessment methods should be implemented in the language classroom in order to reduce the level of stress and anxieties that students may suffer. Continuous long-term assessment is also preferable and should be given priority in language teaching.
As a student i (and i am sure i am not alone when it comes to this matter) have always wished that we could just go to class and study without having to take any tests and exams. School life would be much less stressful and easier to students then, but at the same time it has to be taken into consideration that without tests, exams and other assessment methods, it would be very likely that students would get out of school with a mostly blank mind! And in my opinion, this may be one of the reasons why testing and assessment have, for a long time, become an indispensable part of every school system, or as stated in the book: "a way of life".
Personally i find the principles of language assessment presented in the book extremely helpful and practical, especially to novice teachers who have little experience in test designing. Among these principles, validity is, in my opinion, the most important and also most difficult requirement to meet, since this feature dictates the overall quality of the test as well as the extent to which the teacher is aware of what he/she is teaching and the students' performance.
Another issue which captures my attention is ethical matters in language assessment. While standardized exams produce reliable reflections of the language proficiency level of test-takers, they do not take into account many individual differences that may adversely affect learner performance in the test. I have a couple of friends who are very good language learners in class, but always struggle when it comes to exams. The reason is because they do not work well under the pressure of time constraint and thus usually do not have enough time to finish the test. This brings it home to me that a variety of language assessment methods should be implemented in the language classroom in order to reduce the level of stress and anxieties that students may suffer. Continuous long-term assessment is also preferable and should be given priority in language teaching.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Week 14 - Class reflection – Content-based instruction and Group work implementation
This week’s class started with Dr. Lybeck’s presentation about using Content-Based Instruction (CBI) in teaching Writing to non-native speakers. I was greatly inspired by the idea, especially when the content being implemented was Second Language Acquisition – a topic which is close to every language teacher’s heart. Also, since none of my language skill classes were instructed in this method throughout my English learning experience, it was hard for me at first to imagine how a CBI language class was like. And the presentation with detailed descriptions of how the teacher goes about teaching the students helped clear the mist of the unfeasibility of CBI in an EFL setting that had been with me since I was introduced to this method of instruction. This change of mind drives it home to me how as a teacher I can teach differently from the way I was taught, as long as the method benefits my students. Besides, as Dr. Lybeck stated, she wasn’t sure if the improvements the students made were due to the instruction or if there were any other contributive factors, still, I believe the instruction has an important part to play. One more thing this CBI writing course that I find really stimulating is that at the end of the course, students walk out of the classroom equipped with not only the skills needed to prosper in their academic writing life, but also a considerable amount of knowledge about second language acquisition that is surely beneficial to their language development in the long run.
Bekir, Kizuna and Veronika’s presentation about learning styles and strategies which followed was really concise and informative. One issue which was brought up by JoAnn during Bekir’s presentation about the use of group work and which is quite familiar to me was the fact that during group work, students may turn to their native language without teacher’s notice. Even though this is a quite natural thing to do when students at a modest language proficiency level have difficulty expressing themselves in the target language, it takes away one of the main purposes of group work implementation, which is to foster the use of English within smaller communities and to maximize students’ talking time. In my experience, many of my teachers used “financial punishment” to deal with this problem. That is to say, the teacher goes around to observe the students while they are working in groups, and apart from taking notes of mistakes and answering questions, he/she also listens and notices students who use their first language more than 2 times in the discussion and writes their names down. At the end of the class, the teacher reads the name list out loud and students whose names are on the list must give a particular amount of money to the teacher. In my case the amount was not too big but it was large enough to “bother” students who resort to their first language too often. Though this solution did work for some of the speaking classes I was in, personally I don’t like it since it seems too straight-forward and the involvement of money may adversely affect student-teacher interaction. To me, a more effective solution teachers might use is to assign each student in each group a specific role, and among which there is one called “moderator” – whose job is to make sure all group members limit their use of the native language during group discussion. The moderators may be asked by the teacher at any time during the group activity to report on how many times their groups have turned to the native language to make sure they are doing their job properly.
The last activity of peer-reviewing on the last two genres was useful as always. Also, I was glad that Dr.Smidt gave some explanations and examples of the posters that we are to make during the last week of class. This gave me a clearer picture of what to be included in the poster presentation.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Week 14 Reading reflection - Learning styles and strategies
This week's reading discusses the issue of second/foreign language learning from quite a different perspective: learners' learning styles and strategies.
According to the learning styles analyzed in the book, i categorize myself as a visual, extrovert, sensing-sequential, closure-oriented learner. However, before reading the chapter in the Apple book, i hardly had any idea of what my learning styles are except for the visual one, since i remember we did a survey on this matter during the first weeks of class. That's why i really like what the book says about the teacher's own awareness of his/her own learning styles, since they go a long way toward dictating his/her teaching style. Also, thanks to the reading i come to fully understand how important it is for language teachers to always keep in mind various learning styles of the students when designing classroom tasks/activities. Of course as teachers we can't cater for all of our students' need, but it always pays off to do as best as we can.
Another issue which captures my attention is whether or not to teach students learning strategies. In my experience as a foreign language learner, this is definitely useful and necessary. Such strategies as how to memorize new vocabulary and use them appropriately or using guessing abilities when reading, listening and speaking in a foreign language that I learned from my language teachers have been really beneficial to me. However, as indicated in the book, the teaching of learning strategies should not be made into a separate lesson, rather, it should be a small part which is well incorporated into the language lessons, so that learners can take it as a piece of advice rather than something they HAVE TO remember.
According to the learning styles analyzed in the book, i categorize myself as a visual, extrovert, sensing-sequential, closure-oriented learner. However, before reading the chapter in the Apple book, i hardly had any idea of what my learning styles are except for the visual one, since i remember we did a survey on this matter during the first weeks of class. That's why i really like what the book says about the teacher's own awareness of his/her own learning styles, since they go a long way toward dictating his/her teaching style. Also, thanks to the reading i come to fully understand how important it is for language teachers to always keep in mind various learning styles of the students when designing classroom tasks/activities. Of course as teachers we can't cater for all of our students' need, but it always pays off to do as best as we can.
Another issue which captures my attention is whether or not to teach students learning strategies. In my experience as a foreign language learner, this is definitely useful and necessary. Such strategies as how to memorize new vocabulary and use them appropriately or using guessing abilities when reading, listening and speaking in a foreign language that I learned from my language teachers have been really beneficial to me. However, as indicated in the book, the teaching of learning strategies should not be made into a separate lesson, rather, it should be a small part which is well incorporated into the language lessons, so that learners can take it as a piece of advice rather than something they HAVE TO remember.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Week 13 classtime reflection
Although the reading covers many things, this week's class primarily focused on the use of literature in the language classroom.
Starting with Adib's concise and well-run presentation on using a short story (or fairy tale) as a teaching material, the class proceeded with another short story-based activity, and i really enjoyed the task we were asked to do: thinking of as many teaching activities developed from the story as possible. Our group worked hard and came up with 20 activities, and it was also interesting to hear other groups share their ideas. Through this activity i came to fully understand how such a small literature work can generate lots of teaching ideas and a variety of thoughts, how important it is for language teachers to be creative and adaptable in creating learning tasks, and one last thing being the sharing spirit among teachers. Since different teachers may have different approaches toward the same teaching materials, sharing experience and the tasks that are designed can help enrich the teaching scenario and circulate bright teaching ideas.
Also, as the issue of blogging was raised, i think i am one of the students in the class who likes blogging and find it interesting and inspiring. Since i have been keeping a personal blog on Yahoo360! for more than 2 years, to me blogging is not a stranger, rather, it is a good way for me to express my opinions, feelings, ideas and more importantly, to share and to be shared. Unlike a personal diary in which the writer writes to herself/himself, blog entries, as long as they are not so personal, are for the writer to share his/her viewpoints and emotions, which very often come out more easilyby means of writing than speaking. The exact same things apply to this learning blog of mine. I find the blog another means for me to communicate with my teacher and my classmates besides class hours. And it seems i am able to express myself much more here than in class, since 4-hour meeting each week is defintely not enough for everyone's ideas to be listened and shared. As a future teacher, i will definitely use blogs as one of my teaching tools, especially when i teach writing.
The following discussion about the final portfolio was really helpful, and Bekir and I were able to figure out what we needed to include in the portfolio. I found Pair-work work really well here.
Starting with Adib's concise and well-run presentation on using a short story (or fairy tale) as a teaching material, the class proceeded with another short story-based activity, and i really enjoyed the task we were asked to do: thinking of as many teaching activities developed from the story as possible. Our group worked hard and came up with 20 activities, and it was also interesting to hear other groups share their ideas. Through this activity i came to fully understand how such a small literature work can generate lots of teaching ideas and a variety of thoughts, how important it is for language teachers to be creative and adaptable in creating learning tasks, and one last thing being the sharing spirit among teachers. Since different teachers may have different approaches toward the same teaching materials, sharing experience and the tasks that are designed can help enrich the teaching scenario and circulate bright teaching ideas.
Also, as the issue of blogging was raised, i think i am one of the students in the class who likes blogging and find it interesting and inspiring. Since i have been keeping a personal blog on Yahoo360! for more than 2 years, to me blogging is not a stranger, rather, it is a good way for me to express my opinions, feelings, ideas and more importantly, to share and to be shared. Unlike a personal diary in which the writer writes to herself/himself, blog entries, as long as they are not so personal, are for the writer to share his/her viewpoints and emotions, which very often come out more easilyby means of writing than speaking. The exact same things apply to this learning blog of mine. I find the blog another means for me to communicate with my teacher and my classmates besides class hours. And it seems i am able to express myself much more here than in class, since 4-hour meeting each week is defintely not enough for everyone's ideas to be listened and shared. As a future teacher, i will definitely use blogs as one of my teaching tools, especially when i teach writing.
The following discussion about the final portfolio was really helpful, and Bekir and I were able to figure out what we needed to include in the portfolio. I found Pair-work work really well here.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Week 13 Reading reflection - Overwhelmed with knowledge!
This week's reading covers a whole bunch of practical issues in teaching and learning, and even though i felt overwhelmed to be taking in a large amount of knowledge all at once, there are quite a few issues that i am really interested in.
First, it is the use of literature as a material for content-based language teaching. I used to think literary works are very often difficult for learners who learn a foreign language. However, as the author indicated, there are at least three advantages to using literature in the language classroom, the most important of which, in my opinion, being that literature gives students insights into what and how language can be used to convey personal viewpoints. Thanks to the reading in which the author describes clearly how a content-based literature lesson operates , i can picture in my mind how i will be using literary works in my future teaching in a way that they bring effectiveness and freshness to my language class.
Another highlight I can perceive while reading is the use of project work and group work. These methods are extremely helpful in getting students to have closer contact with the target language outside the classroom, especially in the EFL setting. The wide range of project topics that are proposed in the book is really inspiring and practical as well. I am determined to appropriately apply these into my future teaching. With a bit of adjustments and creativity, i believe such group work projects would benefit students in many ways and create an authentic learning experience.
First, it is the use of literature as a material for content-based language teaching. I used to think literary works are very often difficult for learners who learn a foreign language. However, as the author indicated, there are at least three advantages to using literature in the language classroom, the most important of which, in my opinion, being that literature gives students insights into what and how language can be used to convey personal viewpoints. Thanks to the reading in which the author describes clearly how a content-based literature lesson operates , i can picture in my mind how i will be using literary works in my future teaching in a way that they bring effectiveness and freshness to my language class.
Another highlight I can perceive while reading is the use of project work and group work. These methods are extremely helpful in getting students to have closer contact with the target language outside the classroom, especially in the EFL setting. The wide range of project topics that are proposed in the book is really inspiring and practical as well. I am determined to appropriately apply these into my future teaching. With a bit of adjustments and creativity, i believe such group work projects would benefit students in many ways and create an authentic learning experience.
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Week 12 class reflection
This week's class focuses on classroom observation and the features of different classroom settings.
Marya's presentation was very focused and task-based. I think our group had a good discussion in finding arguments to support for the use of communicative instructional settings. Also, the fact that this setting has the most advantages also made it easier for us to prove our points.
The next activity of observing and commenting on an English classroom in Korea was demanding yet interesting. The activity the teacher in the clip was carrying out was very much creative and practical, which can give students authentic language practice. However, he was apparently dominating the classroom with too many instructions and a lot of talking. As i was watching the class, i wonder if the students understood what the teacher explained or not, since they mostly just smiled and nodded their heads. But then i came cross the next clip which featured the students' activity right after the first teacher-talking clip, and it seemed all the students knew what they had to do and the exchange between the student customers and bank tellers went really well. This indicated that even though his instruction-giving techniques needs more skills, the teacher was able to get the students understand his instructions. Through this activity it became clear to me that apart from teaching, observing and evaluating other teachers' teaching is also an important part of being a teacher. As in many other professions, teachers can learn a lot from each other's success and failure. It is therefore necessary to develop a critical mind so that constructive criticisms can be made to enhance the teaching quality.
The next part of peer-reviewing the next 2 genres was useful. Our group reviewed the works of Aaron, Stephanie and Adib and i must say their genres are very well-connected to their research questions and after reading their genres i can clearly see the benefits of using creative written works in teaching. Also, our works were reviewed and commented by another group. The recipe received good feedback, but the diary genre definitely needs more work. I was really disappointed when i first heard the comments on our diary genre and for some moments it occured to me that the genre was a complete failure. However, as i think more about my classmates' comments and advice, i came to realize how subjective i was as a writer when i created the genre and i feel thankful because I had a chance to have my work reviewed.
Marya's presentation was very focused and task-based. I think our group had a good discussion in finding arguments to support for the use of communicative instructional settings. Also, the fact that this setting has the most advantages also made it easier for us to prove our points.
The next activity of observing and commenting on an English classroom in Korea was demanding yet interesting. The activity the teacher in the clip was carrying out was very much creative and practical, which can give students authentic language practice. However, he was apparently dominating the classroom with too many instructions and a lot of talking. As i was watching the class, i wonder if the students understood what the teacher explained or not, since they mostly just smiled and nodded their heads. But then i came cross the next clip which featured the students' activity right after the first teacher-talking clip, and it seemed all the students knew what they had to do and the exchange between the student customers and bank tellers went really well. This indicated that even though his instruction-giving techniques needs more skills, the teacher was able to get the students understand his instructions. Through this activity it became clear to me that apart from teaching, observing and evaluating other teachers' teaching is also an important part of being a teacher. As in many other professions, teachers can learn a lot from each other's success and failure. It is therefore necessary to develop a critical mind so that constructive criticisms can be made to enhance the teaching quality.
The next part of peer-reviewing the next 2 genres was useful. Our group reviewed the works of Aaron, Stephanie and Adib and i must say their genres are very well-connected to their research questions and after reading their genres i can clearly see the benefits of using creative written works in teaching. Also, our works were reviewed and commented by another group. The recipe received good feedback, but the diary genre definitely needs more work. I was really disappointed when i first heard the comments on our diary genre and for some moments it occured to me that the genre was a complete failure. However, as i think more about my classmates' comments and advice, i came to realize how subjective i was as a writer when i created the genre and i feel thankful because I had a chance to have my work reviewed.
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