My del.icio.us

http://del.icio.us/Weixi

Thanks to ICT lessons this week, I found several helpful websits. Not only do they provide many resources about ESL, but I can share with my friends.^^ So far, I’m still not familiar with the website, del.icio.us. It’s like the moment when I had my space in the wordpress website. Well, I believe I’ll get to know my del.icio.us with time and patience.

Star Wars!

The presentation given by the group 6 was like a brief show of the movie,Star Wars. The background music of the movie and funny props really fostered my interest in what was going to learn. Vincent, Hyde, Billy and Harry were all inherent actors. They seemed to quite enjoy what they were doing and be good at giving us deadpan humor which I found it made their acting more entertaining. I appreciated that students were exposed to the reading material with a literature content emphasizing the concept that reading enhances writing skills. I totally agree with it. However, it would be better to simplify the content. On the other hand, I like the activity that students were asked to write about how they introduce Tamsui if someone visits, since it has something to do with students’ personal experiences. But there was a downside that the group 6 seemed to give little responce and evaluation on our writing. I felt I just producing with no feedbacks from teachers or peers. As we all know, writing involves many skills and there’s still room for us to teach writing.

My Observation on EGRC of Li-shan Junior High School

The focus of our school visit this time drew to Li-shan Junior High School. The class observed by group A was English Gifted Resources Class containing simply six students. As I stepped into the classroom and saw the teacher, Ms. Hsu, it was a bit surprised to me that she was the person Tiffany and I ran into in front of the school’s gate before, kept looking at us and I thought she was just someone’s parent.
To start with the class, Ms. Hsu asked the questions to remind students of the story on Cinderella by way of putting the pictures on the board about some certain plots. After reviewing, the teacher played the CD and the students listened as well as repeated what they heard. Ms. Hsu explained each sentences by paraphrasing during this activity. At times, something related to the material were introduced. It could be seen in the example of the word “garbage” that Ms. Hsu mentioned other synonyms and further indicated what words were usually used by American and English. Furthermore, the teacher compared different words with the nearly same meaning: “painting” and “picture,” and pointed out what was the formal usage. I reckoned that these were helpful for students to use right words. And I noticed that there was an active learning atmosphere among the students that Ms. Hsu kept asking some questions which required students to find the answers by themselves. For example, the students were asked, “what is the highest roof in the world?” and it turned out that nobody knew, so Ms. Hsu then said, “This is today’s homework.”
The activity further moved on to the speaking section that the students were asked to choose the roles according to the story, “Cinderella” and try to mimic the tone that CD played. All of them did a great job that they seemed to be innate actors. Later, Ms. Hsu played the CD about the rest parts of the story. Interestingly, the teacher paused a while to make “prediction” about the plot, which worked in a similar way of the technique of teaching reading. Ms. Hsu put the questions like “Cinderella is not allowed to the party, then what can she do?” “What kind of dress does she wear?” and “what are her stepmother and sisters’ action?” Predicting what was going to happen next in the story made students look forward to learning. After listening to the CD, here came the assignment again that students had to create the ending of the story. The activity now focused on the exercise in the textbook, involving “True/False” and “Listening and Check” which the students were required to write down what they heard.
At the end of the class, I found that there was lots of homework for the students. Not only did they have exercises in the textbook, but the outside reading and role play. I cannot help but wonder that did they really have time to “digest” these overwhelming tasks? Being an observer on EGRC, I assumed that Ms. Hsu led the whole class with fluency that there was always smooth activity transition. Additionally, she kept her eye contact with the students and always had a smile on her face. Ms. Hsu did create a positive learning environment for her students in some way. On the other hand, those six students were well-disciplined indeed and quite active in learning. As long as the teacher put forward the questions, they responded right away. (Well… maybe it is the ideal student that most teachers will be pleased.) Unfortunately, students that a novice teacher will meet probably are the ones that have to get along with more challenges. Being a teacher, s/he must be good at the teaching and the class management to face the authentic teaching situation. It’s just that EGRC I observed is too perfect to be true. ^^

Teacher Interview Report

Feedback on Teaching Reading

Well, our presentation didn’t come out all right. These continuous sections of teaching reading, pre-reading, during-reading and after-reading, have something to be adjusted and modified. In the initial warm-up, we used power point as our teaching aid. To draw the link between students’ prior knowledge and the topic we were going to present, we then tried to display the picture of General MacArthur and a string of questions on the author. The teaching moved on to the main body which generally works in the mode of teacher-centered. I think it is alright to be teacher-led at times but somehow it is hard to get students’ attention. To get away from this possibility, we strived for figuring out what kind of “garnish” could be with the “meal.” To be honest, I like the “synonym” part and sentence making. Finally, the teaching ended with 4R activity which is similar to the information hunting. Well…I got to say sorry to all of you since the worksheet seemed a bit hard for you. I thought that all of you would certainty see the sheet as a walk in the park, so I made it much more challenging. This was my first time to prepare the worksheet on gap filling. And I’m about to keep this in my mind. Again feel sorry about that.
By the way, the two songs I played as the backgroud music were as follows, hope you enjoy it!^^
1. Sugar Ray – Answer The Phone
2. Avril Lavigne – Runaway

Group3 and Croup4, Good for You!

In everyone’s perception, it is undebatable that the abilities of listening and speaking are connected tightly. For group3, it is effective to present a film without showing its subtitles as the warm-up. However, there is one thing I’d like to point out. The worksheet which group3 passed down left me with a bit haste to fill the gaps on it. Maybe it’ll be well modified to leave much amount of words between each blank. On the other hand, I agree with the repetition of role plays which students can be well informed and get to be familiar with the vocabulary. The teaching sequences of group3 are fairly smooth as a whole.
As for group4, wow…the presentation was not so much a real lesson as a TV program. Like the group3, they did well in warm-up. It could be told that they tried their best to create a learning situation authentic to the real life. In addition, I like the website they displayed as the presentation of ppp strategy. The visual aid was graphic and in turn I could focus my concentration all the way to the end of their presentation. Today’s both groups did excellently and had something in common. Among the similarities we’ve talked in class, role play is the part I’m particularly interested in. Since it not only triggers learners’ attention to their peer’s acting, but allows them get to familiarize with the learning concept effectively by way of the process of acting.

My First Visit to Lishan High School

Tiffany and I reached in Nei-Hu at about 8:20 am. As I took my first look at Lishan High School, it was like a castle in the fairy tale. The surrounding area was not densely populated as I thought and so the air was fresh. I could tell that the school was newly set up by the whole school buildings as well as the feeling that people there revealed. There was a signboard which was read “A School of the Future” giving me a thought, “Wow, it must be provided with great technology.” This is my first impression about Lishan High School. Put it as a footnote that I think it is quite economical, since there were lots of facilities of sensoring lighting system at school.
I was in the group A. The teachers we visited had different teaching styles which were involved in their individual’s characteristics. The first teacher we visited was Ms. Liu. She started the lesson with some simple review questions about an article, “Echo and Narcissus,” which she had covered it before. At that time, I was a bit embarrassing since stories on ancient Greek mythology were a far access for me when I was in their age. Ms. Liu then indicated the intended lesson objective clearly. Here came the first activity: tape listening on “Echo and Narcissus” along with its reading content. The learning activity was followed by an array of questions asked by Ms. Liu. There were some features I jotted down concerning the way she presented questions to her students. To start with, she asked for students who were picked to look her eyes and answer the question in their own words. Furthermore, Ms. Liu asked questions step by step along the plot, including “who, what and when.” The way she presented was quite logical and clear-cut. Interestingly, she kept repeating the question about 6 to 7 times while asking. My understanding is that she intended to help students who were absent-minded remind of her questions. Repeating questions, on the other hand, can speed up students’ train of thought. As for students, to my surprise, they all were able to give answers in fluent English.
The following activity was “word building.” Ms. Liu introduced three vocabularies on the board. Students then familiarized those vocabularies through a tape listening on the story of Tantalus. Later on, teacher again asked questions to help students piece together about what they heard. The learning activity smoothly went on with tape listening again with the handouts. There were some vocabularies on the handout. The learning activity, consequentially, turned to sentence making. Ms. Liu set an example by herself first. Continually, she went over those vocabularies one by one with students. In the meantime, students were asked to make their own sentence with a certain vocabulary. The former learning activities I mentioned were all teacher-centered, I might say, given the patterns of interaction were like teacher asking and the students giving answers in response. The last learning activity was that students were allowed to discuss with their peers and showed their sentences on the board. Since students produced the sentences on their own, the activity was student-oriented, let me put this way. The whole sequences of those activities were fairly coherent and smooth, except from the time management was a bit out of control. By the way, as I took a look at those vocabularies on the material, amazingly to me that some of the words like “condemn” or “recede,” were out of my knowledge as I was in the second year in my senior high. “Nowadays senior high students are really excellent in English,” I was wondering.
Our following class observation led to the class308 conducted by Ms. Yuan. Today’s topic was about handling stress which was directly displayed with some simple questions by Ms Yuan. Questions giving to the students are like, “Have anyone of you ever had pressure or distress in your daily life?” or “How did you handle it?” To start with, Ms. Yuan distributed handouts which require students to write down their own troubles and stress. Ms. Yuan put herself as an example sharing her trouble and how she dealt with it. The activity further moved on to the pair work that students were asked to find a partner that s/he trusts on for help and suggestions. There was a girl, by the way, asking me about how to get an easy access to memorize vocabularies. After the completion of the blanks on the handout, Ms. Yuan picked up some students and asked them to share what advices they were given. I noticed that, however, the whole class was a bit out of control. Since some students haven’t finished the sheet yet, inevitably it was hard for them to draw their attention to what other people said. The next learning activity was to read some dialogue poems about friends, parents or dream on the other handout. Some students were chosen to read out the poem. After the reading section, here came the last activity. Students were required to find a partner or two members to create their own dialogue poem.
It’s interesting to me that teachers with different characteristics actually can initiate different atmospheres among the class. As I was in the class207, it appeared that there was something pushing me to focus my concentration. While I was in the class308, I felt a sense of comfort to be with them.

About Grammar Teaching

I found that Group Two provided a quite smooth transition during their presentation. As the first presenter, Shirley did her job that she gave students clear instructions about what they were going to show in class. Besides, I really appreciated that they applied a game as the warm-up activity. It was a nice shot indeed, since my concentration was caught and I kept looking forward to what the coming show was. Still, there was a great interaction between the teacher and students. In a word, Group Two really succeeded in meeting those points which I think they are rather difficult to achieve as a beginner.

To strike a balance between both extremes of a structured based curriculum and the interaction in class, I have an idea that playing board games might be helpful. Once I went to Wall Street language institution, I found board games were largely used in class, including Snakes & Ladders and clue games. A foreign teacher would explain the targeted grammar structure first by presenting a certain situation or story telling. Then it was time to practice by playing board games which were structure-based communicative activities. While students were involved in the game, our foreign teacher jotted down mistakes we made. Later on, teacher explained proper usage of words and grammar in response. I think that teaching grammar in this way quite fits into cognitive approach to the communicative one.

Learning Vocabulary Can Be Fun.

There are some certain effective ways to learn when it comes to vocabulary teaching. Definitely it is quite helpful to pick up vocabulary by learning English prefixes and word roots beforehand. Making interesting associations with words is as useful as the method mentioned above. Here’s an example, use your imagination to think about the word, “assiduous” which means someone is diligent. Draw your imagination that the former three letters “ass” which can be thought of “work ass out.” Here’s the connection then that someone works his ass out indicates that the person is assiduous. Wouldn’t it be fun learning vocabulary? Besides, learners will keep those words more impressively in mind.

Comments for Group #1

It’s admirable that you shot the film by yourselves. In the self-made video, your acting is quite natuarally. This video certainly draw my attention. Apart from what we evaluate in class about your weaknesses, you seemed to leave a moment of blank during the transition to another activity. That’s why my excitement failed to last all the way to the end of your presentation. Anyway, I like your self-made video. Good for you!:-)