Reflection on the final project

My reflection on the final project
I think it must have been a very difficult project for every one in sophomore because we did not have any chance to do a micro-teaching before.
At first, I had a vague idea on how to do it, and we planned our lesson, but the lesson plan was denied by the professor. This made me confused on what exactly we should be doing. Now, I was confused. I did not know what to do or what not to do. Luckily, professor helped us in misery. After listening to her, it was everything we needed. Now, the goal was clear. It was not just criticizing the traditional classroom lesson. It was figuring out how to make the lesson better. It was very hard at first, but after the professor's help, we were on the roll.
It was very hard project, but after having a chance to design a newly made lesson, now I have somewhat more confidence on teaching.
Preparing for the project took a lot of time, energy, and effort.
After watching other group's presentation, it made me think everyone has great ideas, and that I should learn more.

Week 12 Speaking

< Discussion Questions>

1. What is a goal to teach speaking? How can English teachers to achieve this goal?
-Communication process (effectively)
-Deliver message to others, listen and react in English appropriately
-Balance between input and output
-Comfortable atmosphere

2. Explain the following terms and types of speaking activities
*content-oriented vs. form-oriented input
-Content-oriendted: focus on information (lectures, weather report, news, movies)
-Form-oriented: ways of using the language (vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar, read aloud, intonation, fluency, My Words, spoken accuracy, grammar chants and songs, tong twister)

*communicative vs. structure input(output)
-Communicative output: fluency, meaning-based, message, less attention on errors
-Structure output: correct forms, specific structure, fixed dialogue, repeat, make students comfortable, accuracy

*information gap
-at least two people
-meaning negotiation actively involved; more meaningful
-two different roles
-communicating to get the information from another person
-zigsaw

*picture narrating vs. picture describing
-picture narrating: based on several sequential pictures; Students are asked to tell the story taking place in the sequential pictures by paying attention to the criteria provided by the teacher as a rubric

-picture describing: give students just one picture and having them describe what it is in the picture; fosters the creativity and imagination, public speaking skills

*role play vs. simulation
-role play: students pretend they are in various social contexts and have a variety of social roles; fixed; use imagination

-simulation: more elaborate; create a realistic environment; dramatic

Speaking tools

Chat robots could be good tools for students to practice speaking. These could easily be done by homework or also class time. Some useful sites for chat robot includes Alicebot, Fake Captain Kirk, and Voki.
For example, 'Alicebot' site includes chatbox with a robot computer program called Alice. If students go to this site and click 'chat with Alice', students will see the robot Alice and a blank which says 'you say:'. Here, students can freely ask questions to 'Alice' and practice some English forms and vocabularies with her. Students will be 'human' and when they ask her questions, Alice will reply. It is automatic replies but students can have fun. She is not real but it feels like real because some of her questions are funny and some serious. These days, students are really into computer games and like doing something with the internet, this resource could be an excellent tool for students to practice both reading, writing, and speaking. Because the answers Alice provides are the same for all 'humans', the teacher can give homework such as 'find out Alice's interests or hobby' by make them use certain forms they learned during class.

For 'Fake Captian Kirk', the same things reply. Good aspect of this site is that students can hear Captain Kirk's reply through headphones. Also, his character seems like from the space, so many boys would probably enjoy talking to him about their curious questions about the outer space. Many teenage boys are fascinated by outer space.

For 'Voki', students can create their own character, and it is always fun to make your own imagination character. After making one, students can type in the blank some sentence they want to hear from, their own character will say outloud for them. For speaking practice, it will be fun because they get to hear from their own creative image and not some automatic voice mail.

Listening tools

From the listening tools we have studied, I have realized there are so many good listening materials to be used during English classes through the internet.

Podcasting is the digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program. It is possible to download audio or video file to your PC, and post them on the blog.

iTune U sites could be useful sites for college level students. Many American universities offer iTune U and all the students from around the world can download some of the lectures they want to listen to. I think this is brilliant idea because or else, students not in American would never have any chance to attend a Harvard lecture. These sites could arouse students' attention and motivate them. Since the lecture are designed for English speakers, and they are college-leveled, it could be difficult to comprehend at first. However, as students get used to listening them, it could increase their listening skills and also the knowledge about their major.

There are also podcasting sites for kids.
For example, there is a kids site called 'Storynory' which includes lots of children stories. Children can click on the story they wish to know about. The site provides listening and also the script so children can say aloud while listening to their favorite stories. Since many of the stories are already familiar to them, and they like those stories, children could be motivated. There are no videos available, but children can instead imagine the scenes from the stories because the recorded voice does an amazing job at the intonation and pronunciation, making it sound like a real life story.

podcasting example

Target Students: 2nd grade in Korean Girls Middle school, advanced level students

Goal of the lesson: to introduce Brother Grimm' stories, chose Snow White because the girls voted for it in advance. To improve students' listening skills combined with writing and speaking.

Process: to listen to an Snow White ending, which is somewhat different from the fmailiar Snow White ending. Students should talk in groups about the ending of Snow White and provide an alternative ending (write as a group).

Podcasting as a listening resource tool: Students should listen to the ending of Snow White uploaded podcasting file several times and each person in the group should upload their own recorded alternative ending using 곰녹음기, upload the file.


From: http://storynory.com/2006/07/31/snow-white/
-Storynory, audio stories for kids.

Week 10 Listening

1. Explain the two listening techniques: top-down vs. bottom-up and tell us when you employ each technique for what purpose.
Bottom-up: listening very carefully, to details
Listening test, explain direction, solve the problem

Top-down: get the main ideas using background information, guessing from context, listening to a chunk
Drama, TV, radio, talking with friends, music, novels, lecture, Korean context, predict

Implication: depending on the focus, purpose


2. What type of listening materials do you think good for top-down or bottom-up strategies? Review the listening materials and select some for each.
Bottom-up: academic texts, listening tests, dictation activities, phone #
Top-down: real-life stories, news


3. What is podcasting? Discuss the benefits of doing podacasting for L2 learners.
-digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program, regularly. Search and download audio or video file downloaded to your PC, post them on the blog. People who RSS your site could download.
-1. T choose the right podcasting site, authentic material
2. Ss could pick what they are interested in (self-searchable), maybe authentic materials or educational, ESL materials

-Benefits:
1. T can provide more various, interesting materials
2. challenging materials for advanced students (additional materials)

wikispaces- sleeping ugly (our own version)

Once upon a time, there was an ugly girl in the little town. Boys in town always made fun of the girl with her face. But the ugly girl doesn't care about what other people said. She always look at the bright side and she nursing her sick mother by herself. One day, A witch came to the little town and see the girl's mother and said. "I think it is not useful to nursing your mother because she is almost die of terrible disease." The ugly girl shocked by what witch said to her. So she begged to the witch for saving her mother. Finally witch said there is only one way to save her mother. It was the way that the girl fall in a sleep forever replace her mother's death.

written by Yoon seon

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She was in a distress. In fact, sleeping forever was already like death. She didn't want to lose her life. But she had to save her mother. Eventually she told her mother the story about the witch. After listening the story, her mother suggested cheating the witch. That is, they prepare a orangutan to transform it into the ugly girl. Fortunately, she looked just like a orangutan. They captured a orangutan that is most similar to the girl in the forest. At last, they got their ducks in a row. And the appointed day was comming. They thought the orangutan would sleep eternally. So it had been no problem.
Written by Dahye^^

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The girl heard the witch's footsteps on the front door. She checked that the orangutan was asleep, dressed up just like herself. She covered the orangutan's face up with the blanket just in case the witch might become suspicious, and hid herself inside the closet behind the bed. Her heart began to beat loudly, she was scared. The girl's mother stood in front of her bedroom to beg the witch, just in case the witch would change her mind. The girl heard the witch talking to her mother, and she was surprised by the witch's voice- it was a voice of a male! The girl heard her mother ask the man who he was, he said he was a follower of the witch and the witch sent him instead to do the job. In just a few seconds, the girl thought of a new plan. That man was popular in the town for having no girlfriend his entire life. So the girls in town all gossiped about him being attracted to really ugly girls. As thinking about this, the ugly girl quickly got out of the closet, put the orangutan into the closet, and lied down on the bed instead. She thought the man would fall in love with her, change his mind about bewitching her, and cure her mother's disease. Her new plan was perfect.

Written by Chanmi

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Eventually, the man came up to the ugly girl. The girl's heart was hammering in her chest. When he saw the ugly girl, he heaved a sigh of despair looking ceiling because of her bad appearance. However, his appearance was worse than her. So, he suddenly thought that this girl could be his girl because her appearance was similar to him. Therefore, he cured ugly girl's mother without any exchange. After curing, he said to the ugly girl, "Run away from here with your mom, and wait for me in the Lampland where nobody knows." In this way, she ran away with her mom and married with the man and conceived twins who were not ugly anymore. Thus, they lived happily ever after.

Written by Sun

How does technology help task-based writing?

3. How does technology help task-based writing?

There are many useful tools to help task-based writing. There are actually lots of fun sites for students to have fun while writing. One of the aspects of task-based writing is providing an alternative ending to the original story or create your own story. For example, in wikispaces.com, the teacher can set up a topic or genre, one student can start creating his own story, maybe a paragraph, then other students could follow, and maybe the last member of the group could finish the story, give an ending. If the teacher gives a topic which is similar to an actual reading book but just change a word or so, then students would be excited to create a totally different story.

These kind of writing activities could be followed by grammar, spelling, or vocabulary checker such as spellchecker.net. If the student puts his paragraph(that he wrote) into the box in spellchecker, it would provide some correct or alternative options for parts of your sentences.

These kind of tools could be shared by many students or groups, therefore is interactive work.

Week 6 Writing

1. From commnicative language teaching (CLT) perspective, Writing practice should be interactive. Discuss how English teachers can provide interactive English writing experience for students.
-Traditionally, writing is usually individual work, not interactive work (pen+paper+dictionary)
-Communication tools (twitter- exchange comments)

1)Students share the pen with the T adn classmates. The written text is structured and compoased by both Ss and T together.
2)Making writing conditions more authentic by specifying audience, situation, purpose, and intention
-Interactive writing: some purpose for real-life (send message to others, information, recording, resume) to certain different audiences (expect reactions)
EX) 이순신: provide an alternative ending as a group, write a comical scenario (drama script), compare his childhood to my childhood
EX) Suppose you are a children story writer to kindergarten students, use easy vocabulary to write about General Lee's childhood.
3)Interplay between texts, writer, and readers

-brainstorming as a group (add opinions and ideas together)
-collaborative writing
-peer-editing
-group-research
-whole class examination of texts produced by other students (comments, feedback)
-whole class discussion

2. When we write for authentic purposes, there are always audience (except secret diaries or self-notes). Discuss types of writing activites for different audiences.
-write an appreciation letter in parents day
-movie review
-fan letter
-writing portfolio
-write a letter to the author of a story
-exchange letters (pen-pal)

Reading tools

BRAINPOP

If you log into Brainpop, one of the tools for reading, you will see many categories. If you type ESL in the search engine, for example, you will find several levels you can try on. There are free trials and free lessons. One of the good things about Brainpop is that it is colorful and attractive, since students will most likely use this cite. For every unit lesson, there is a dialogue presented in animation. At the bottom, you will find words to know, games, reading, writing, listening activities, and so on. There are so many activities in just one lesson, with the use of all four language skills.
I think this cite is useful for beginners of English, especially young children. There are animation, motion pictures, and games, which can attract their attention easily and also make them follow your lesson, get what they need to get from the lesson. And there are so many lesson plans for teachers to use. I think it's good to use several tools together, for example comic cite. However, it would be better if the teacher combine these tools with more reading materials such as Dear Abby or TIME for kids. TIME magazine has a section for kids to read, they are easy to follow and with pictures and short stories. For children who do not like to read or cannot read difficult materials or are just not interested in the world news, it would be a good online tool for reading. Using children's stories tools would also attract students' attention, plus they give children some moral lesson to take in.

Week 5 Reading

Top-down Approach
-focus on meaning (background knowledge, past experience)
-get the main point of the text
-Ignore grammar structure and vocabulary
-Follow the logical sequence
-Quick reading
-Cartoons, internet articles

Bottom-up Approach
-Specific information, details
-Grammar structures
-Prepare for exams
-Textbooks, poetry

Interactive Approach
-Depend on the purpose of reading
-Balance two approaches in L2
-Integrate

Intensive Reading (정독)
-Similar to bottom-up
-Quality of understanding
-Tests preparation
-Appropriate amount of reading
-Textbook or workbook
-Understanding better
-Thoroughly understanding the meaning
-Challenging
-Reading accurately
-Easily get bored

Extensive Reading (다독)
-Top-down approach
-Quantity; fluency
-Build cultural and subject matter knowledge
-Fun, knowledge building
-Authentic materials; easy
-"Why" reading? - to enjoy reading itself
-Long time to improve the quanlity of reading

Week 4 Grammar

1. Common problems in teaching grammar
-teacher-centered (deliever grammar to students)
-does not give us time to practice
-students easily get bored after just the teacher explaining, it's not fun memorizing the rules
-too difficult grammatical terminology
-should teach how and when to use grammar rules (4 integrated skills)
-never saw real life samples, just examples and exercises

2. Recently defined goal of teaching grammar (teaching -ed forms)
-use short stories or recent experiences
-let students talk in -ed forms (role play, pair work)
-teach the pronunciation too

Teaching integrating grammar for CLT

Pre-grammar stage:
Post a picture on the board, a picture of a group of students doing different things in the sea. Then, the teacher asks: "What did the students do during the last summer vacation in Haewundae?"

While-grammar stage:
The teacher asks the students the question, "What did the students do during the last summer vacation in Haewundae?" The teacher gives one answer, "Kate worked as a life-saver in Haewundae." Then, several students continues to make sentences from the picture. "Alex swam." "The couple walked around the beach." The teacher tries to correct students when one answers in a wrong form, not directly, but encouraging students' efforts. Then the teacher shows other similar pictures and this time, let students make past tense sentences without the teacher's help. The teacher shows some irregular past tense verbs and explains using sentences like above with pictures to motivate the students' interests. The teacher makes sure students had enough practice.

Post-grammar stage
The teacher askes students about their last weekend. Some students raise their hands and answers. Then, the teacher ask for pair work about things they did last vacation or holiday. Then, some students tell interesting experiences to the class, and those who did not participate writes their experiences in correct -ed forms and hands them in.

Vocabulary programs

After this class, I found out so many useful and effective vocabulary-related programs in the internet that can relate to vocabulary teaching. Teaching vocabulary is one of the hardest part, even though every part of teaching is hard, of teaching, I think. Usually, it is the role of the students to just memorize hundreds and thousands of vocabulary. But, there are certainly some other ways to motivate the students' interests to learn and memorize vocabulary well and fast. It is important to make it a meaningful learning, not just rote learning with lots of drills and exercises only.

I think for younger or beginner leveled learners, showing lots of pictures or games would interest them and make them memorize vocabulary faster. Therefore, I think the site of making the crossword puzzles is somewhat interesting and fun. This site is especially good for reviewing what they have already learned.

For students who are somewhat more advanced, I think they would want some challenges. To check their vocabulary proficiency, the site of Wordsmart challenge would be a good practice for especially students about to take the SAT. The signing up for this "game" is somewhat easy and short, and you just have to click the start button and click on the similar meaning in the multiple choice. The game shows the context the word is used and you have to answer each in 20 seconds. You can check your score later. It's interesting, provides enough challenge, and there are smiley or frowny faces as you answer the question correctly or wrong and there are sounds to them. You can compete with your classmates or just check for your own challenge. Also, you don't need teachers, rather, students can work by themselves and improve their vocabulary skills. You just need a computer that is accessible to internet. It's not boring because the '20 seconds for each question' gets you busy and work fast. The time limit makes you nervous but with numerous practice, you will find yourself more confident and not nervous or embarrassed anymore.

vocabulary teaching

I have tried several different methods in learning vocabulary.
One traditional way of learning vocabulary is to just to write down on a paper as you memorize each vocabulary from the vocabulary list. Keep going until you finish the book.
This could easily get the students to be bored, and tired, exhausted from memorizing, just like memorizing lots of grammar rules.
One method I like to use is to memorize the synonyms and antonyms as I memorize each word. At first, it may get you tired because you have to personally take the effort to find all the synonyms and antonyms (if it is not listed in the book), and it takes longer time to memorize one word. However, as you go through this practice, you will find yourself memorized lots of vocabulary that are related. This will affect your English skills, all speaking, listening, reading, and writing. In writing, you can choose different, difficult words because you don't want to repeat the same words over and over again. This could make you smart. As you memorize this way, as you memorize more words, you will find that you have memorized many of them already, they are all connected or related. You would find yourself very smart. Later, when you think of a word, you will be able to say outloud lots of its synonyms and antonyms. I think this method is very practical and useful for the future.

web 2.0 examples

blog
wikipedia
cyworld
youtube
twitter
facebook
myspace

Week 1 web 2.0

8 Key Factors for successful language learning
1. Learners have opportunities to interact and to negotiate meaning.
-should orally interact with each other, have conversation; socially exchange real message (NOT: role-play; YES: talking about last weekend)
2. Learners interact in the target language with an authentic audience.
-with the people involved in the real English communication
3. Learners are involved in authentic tasks.
-participate in activities with authentic audiences in real situations
4. Learners are exposed to and encouraged to produce varied and creative language.
-use the technology, etc
5. Learners have sufficient time and feedback.
6. Learners are guided to attend mindfully to the learning process.
-should be motivated and pay attention to the learning process (NOT: test-outcome)
-evaluate the students' improvement; writing reflection
7. Learners work in an atmosphere with an ideal stress/anxiety level.
-less stressful environment, should feel comfortable
8. Learner autonomy is supported.
-self-directed learning


WEB 2.0
1. user-centered; active
2. system
3. posting; create
4. tailored; change things on my own purpose; add or delete; customized
5. open to everyone; easily accessible
vs. WEB 1.0