It is interesting to see how the language pedagogy moved from placing grammar in the center of instructional activities to placing speaking there (and I don't mean that speaking does not have a rightful place in this spot). When I was in school (as in before college), we focused on the form mostly and then starting with middle school we started to have classes aimed at oral skills development, where we would mostly give prepared speeches, it was boring as hell, except for two years when we had a Peace Corps volunteer. In college we also had oral skills classes, and on the contrary to any logic, we had to write at least two essays for every class meeting. This logical discrepancy bothered me to no end. The bottom line is that out of 75 kids in my high school class and about 200 in college the only ones that were fluent, really fluent in English, were the ones who had been to the US on FSA/FLEX exchange program. So much for the form-focused instruction.
I think that now ESL and EFL instruction settings are becoming more similar due to the development of technology. We can use podcasts, movies, live broadcasting and what not. I also think that role playing and communicative activities are a lot more productive compared to prepared speeches, which are basically academic writing and reading out loud combined (not too communicative, eh?).
Monday, February 23, 2009
02/16 Reflection
I really liked the activity we did with drawing pictures to the text, although I quickly ensured the role of the reader - I am a hopeless painter. There was a point when I tied to draw a maple leaf on the board, and miserably failed. I think it's a great activity for children or adults (it might not work so well with teenagers, as they are usually more self-conscious).
It was also great to hear Solen's presentation on teaching English. It is interesting how many of the behavioral patterns are spread across the freshman population. Do they get some secret handouts, saying "Never come to the instructor's office?".
It was also great to hear Solen's presentation on teaching English. It is interesting how many of the behavioral patterns are spread across the freshman population. Do they get some secret handouts, saying "Never come to the instructor's office?".
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Monday, February 16, 2009
Reading 02/16
I totally agree that listening is one of the most important skills. I was even thinking that technically it is possible to survive somewhere with listening, reading, and writing.
I really liked reading about possibel listening comprehension teaching techniques, although it seems that they might be a bit harder to implement in academic environment. One problem I have - is references to Jack Richards. I understand that he is one of the big figures in SLA, but last year I taught using his textbook, Interchange, and it was one of the weirdest textbooks I experienced.
I really liked reading about possibel listening comprehension teaching techniques, although it seems that they might be a bit harder to implement in academic environment. One problem I have - is references to Jack Richards. I understand that he is one of the big figures in SLA, but last year I taught using his textbook, Interchange, and it was one of the weirdest textbooks I experienced.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Reading 02/09
It's interesting how this week's MCM and HDB chapters go along the content of the English Structure and Pedagogical Grammar class.
Grammar-wise I agree with Larsen-Freeman that grammar is more a skill, than a fixed body of knowledge. You could say that it's even not a skill, but an ability to express yourself and structure your speech\communication. She also gives a three-fold scheme of grammar, with form, meaning, and use. Our texts described form and meaning, but did not say a word about use, which tends to be the most important and tricky part.
So, form is pretty obvious, it is concerned with the word forms, derivatives, suffixes, formation of tenses etc. Nothing fun here. Meaning can be a little more intricate, especially for polysemantic words (the absolute majority of English words). And finally comes the use - where and how is it appropriate to use this unit? What register and social context create the best environment for it?
This is where the corpora come into play, both in terms of grammatical structures and lexical units. On a side note, we were talking a lot in classes about using corpora, but I have been asking fellow TAs and it turns out that nobody is using it. I feel that corpora is not appreciated enough :)
Anyway, according to me, as many of our students like to put it, the extent of grammar instruction should depend on the person's goal. The more their profession is connected to English, the more grammar instruction they should get, and the more they should be taught to play with rules. On page 434 Brown gives a sample grammar exercise on Present Simple vs. Continuous. The last sentence is "The woman is very lonely because her children never (visit/are visiting)". The expected answer is kind of obvious, but actually both variants are perfectly acceptable. They would just mean different things.
The woman is very lonely because her children never visit -is a mere statement of fact.
The woman is very lonely because her children are never visiting has emotional appraisal and a negative one, I have to say. That is what grammar is all about to me. Using what you have to say what you mean. It could become a bit unclear how to determine whether the students is applying the rules in an unorthodox way or making a mistake. To me the borderline is their understanding of what exactly they are saying.
And by the way, what's with the "so-called exceptions to rules" on page 425? They are no exceptions anymore? Mans and womans decided to cancel this obsolete stuff?
Vocabulary teaching is also very unstraight forward. In ENG583 we recently read an article by Lewis, where he advocated for teaching vocabulary in chunks, as either semantic fields of words or collocations\institutionalized phrases and it makes perfect sense to me.
MCM describes various methods for tackling unfamiliar, and probably the most popular one among both students and teachers is guessing the meaning from the context or associating one word to another. I remember reading a text about alternative energy sources, where it talked about solar energy as one of the most promising alternatives. As I was 12 or so years old at the moment, I had no idea of what "solar" means. So I guessed that it is a type of fuel and associated it with a Russian word that actually means diesel oil (solyarka, солярка). You can imagine how close my comprehension was. Since then I am a bit skeptical about the whole guessing thing, although i have been successful with it except for this one instance.
Grammar-wise I agree with Larsen-Freeman that grammar is more a skill, than a fixed body of knowledge. You could say that it's even not a skill, but an ability to express yourself and structure your speech\communication. She also gives a three-fold scheme of grammar, with form, meaning, and use. Our texts described form and meaning, but did not say a word about use, which tends to be the most important and tricky part.
So, form is pretty obvious, it is concerned with the word forms, derivatives, suffixes, formation of tenses etc. Nothing fun here. Meaning can be a little more intricate, especially for polysemantic words (the absolute majority of English words). And finally comes the use - where and how is it appropriate to use this unit? What register and social context create the best environment for it?
This is where the corpora come into play, both in terms of grammatical structures and lexical units. On a side note, we were talking a lot in classes about using corpora, but I have been asking fellow TAs and it turns out that nobody is using it. I feel that corpora is not appreciated enough :)
Anyway, according to me, as many of our students like to put it, the extent of grammar instruction should depend on the person's goal. The more their profession is connected to English, the more grammar instruction they should get, and the more they should be taught to play with rules. On page 434 Brown gives a sample grammar exercise on Present Simple vs. Continuous. The last sentence is "The woman is very lonely because her children never (visit/are visiting)". The expected answer is kind of obvious, but actually both variants are perfectly acceptable. They would just mean different things.
The woman is very lonely because her children never visit -is a mere statement of fact.
The woman is very lonely because her children are never visiting has emotional appraisal and a negative one, I have to say. That is what grammar is all about to me. Using what you have to say what you mean. It could become a bit unclear how to determine whether the students is applying the rules in an unorthodox way or making a mistake. To me the borderline is their understanding of what exactly they are saying.
And by the way, what's with the "so-called exceptions to rules" on page 425? They are no exceptions anymore? Mans and womans decided to cancel this obsolete stuff?
Vocabulary teaching is also very unstraight forward. In ENG583 we recently read an article by Lewis, where he advocated for teaching vocabulary in chunks, as either semantic fields of words or collocations\institutionalized phrases and it makes perfect sense to me.
MCM describes various methods for tackling unfamiliar, and probably the most popular one among both students and teachers is guessing the meaning from the context or associating one word to another. I remember reading a text about alternative energy sources, where it talked about solar energy as one of the most promising alternatives. As I was 12 or so years old at the moment, I had no idea of what "solar" means. So I guessed that it is a type of fuel and associated it with a Russian word that actually means diesel oil (solyarka, солярка). You can imagine how close my comprehension was. Since then I am a bit skeptical about the whole guessing thing, although i have been successful with it except for this one instance.
Reflection 02/02
I really liked the discussion about cross-cultural communication, that's always a fun topic to talk about, whatever side you're on.
The unit plan assignment was very useful in the sense that it let us feel what we are supposed to be doing for the actual graded assignment. I did not anticipate the sub thing, so I knew that my plan was not detailed enough. Maybe we could get an extra heads-up on the fact that we are writing it for someone else. It kind of goes without saying that the lesson plans we hand in are as detailed as we can make them, but with class work that is not always evident.
The unit plan assignment was very useful in the sense that it let us feel what we are supposed to be doing for the actual graded assignment. I did not anticipate the sub thing, so I knew that my plan was not detailed enough. Maybe we could get an extra heads-up on the fact that we are writing it for someone else. It kind of goes without saying that the lesson plans we hand in are as detailed as we can make them, but with class work that is not always evident.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
02/02 Reflection
It was interesting to have a class discussion on cultural differences, although I feel like I was the mean one in it. I haven't said it in class, but I actually believe that just being polite and tactful can cover for the most of the above said differences. And if you are not 100% sure that what you are doing is appropriate in this situation then either ask beforehand or don't do it. It might take some of the impulse off things, but bring in peace and quiet. I am pretty relaxed about people doing something I wouldn't do, usually it is obvious if they did not mean to insult you.
The unit plan assignment was interesting, and I feel like I have a back-up plan in case I don't come up with anything better.
The unit plan assignment was interesting, and I feel like I have a back-up plan in case I don't come up with anything better.
Monday, February 2, 2009
Week 4 Reading
This week's reading has basically two parts: teaching culture and integrating the four skills. I will start with the latter - I think that integration is one of the most promising ways of organizing instruction. I had courses, where we would do reading one day, writing another, grammar next week and listening comprehension some other time. And I could never understand why we wrote the longest essays for the Conversational skills part.
Teaching culture is especially acute for me as an ESL teacher and student. I think that it has to be done both implicitly (by modeling behaviour and showing examples without putting emphasis on it) and explicitly, with specific tasks and presentations. Another part of teaching culture is teaching or informing the students about cultural references. Just last week we read an essay in my comp class, which was about an African-American woman, who changed her name from Jill to Itabari to demonstrate her identity. The essay had a number of cultural references, c.f. someone called the author Miss Idi Amin. If you don't knw, who Idi Amin was, the scale of assault escapes your attention. We discussed the references in class and I was surprised that nobody mentioned the title. The essay about changing the name in search of one's true identity was inconspicuously titled What's In A Name?. For me that was a bit weird, since the message of the monologue is that a name does not define who we are, where as the message of the essay was the opposite, so the title created a nice little conflict, which I wanted to discuss. To my surprise none of my 25 students identified the title as a quote.
Teaching culture is especially acute for me as an ESL teacher and student. I think that it has to be done both implicitly (by modeling behaviour and showing examples without putting emphasis on it) and explicitly, with specific tasks and presentations. Another part of teaching culture is teaching or informing the students about cultural references. Just last week we read an essay in my comp class, which was about an African-American woman, who changed her name from Jill to Itabari to demonstrate her identity. The essay had a number of cultural references, c.f. someone called the author Miss Idi Amin. If you don't knw, who Idi Amin was, the scale of assault escapes your attention. We discussed the references in class and I was surprised that nobody mentioned the title. The essay about changing the name in search of one's true identity was inconspicuously titled What's In A Name?. For me that was a bit weird, since the message of the monologue is that a name does not define who we are, where as the message of the essay was the opposite, so the title created a nice little conflict, which I wanted to discuss. To my surprise none of my 25 students identified the title as a quote.
Week 3 Reading
One of the things that I find most different in the US graduate education, and education in general, is the idea of reflection. I can not imagine a professor in my alma mater, i.e. Ukrainian University, assigning us to write a reflection on our attitude to grammar or pronunciation, or teaching. I also never saw most of them reflecting on their own classroom practices. We had a course called Home Reading, which was basically a lit-based class, where we would read a couple chapters from a fiction book at home and then do all kinds of activities in class. We had three professors teach that course in different years. They all had books they were teaching for 5+ years, where they knew every line by heart and made it boring as hell. I remember wondering, how they endure saying the exact same things over and over, year to year. I could never do that, I remember thinking. Last year I taught three different groups of three levels, and I loved it, because no class was the same. This year the idea of reflective teaching was one of the central ones in the TA-workshops, and we had assignments and discussions that promoted it. We were composing teaching narratives, observing other people's classes etc, and I think it's wonderful. Teaching is an ongoing process, the moment you think you have it and you're ready to rest on your pedagogical laurels, you are done as a teacher, especially if we are talking about a practical course (I can sort of see the argument for basic lecture-based courses, although not quite).
I also liked the MCM chapter on classroom research, since that is something I am doing at the moment. A quick digression. Last semester, when we were doing the multi-genre paper in this class I was totally puzzled for the first ten weeks at least. I had never done anything like that before and it made sense to me only while I was listening to the explanations, five minutes after it was a blur. So, I started reading books on the multi-genre, and ended up taking this approach with my comp class (there were two of us doing that, out of 25). Finally, multi-genre papers became my thesis topic and I am now collecting the data. So, it was interesting to read about something I can really relate to.
I also liked the MCM chapter on classroom research, since that is something I am doing at the moment. A quick digression. Last semester, when we were doing the multi-genre paper in this class I was totally puzzled for the first ten weeks at least. I had never done anything like that before and it made sense to me only while I was listening to the explanations, five minutes after it was a blur. So, I started reading books on the multi-genre, and ended up taking this approach with my comp class (there were two of us doing that, out of 25). Finally, multi-genre papers became my thesis topic and I am now collecting the data. So, it was interesting to read about something I can really relate to.
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