Post Info TOPIC: Teaching Listening and Speaking (Spring 2019) - Week 1 Reflections


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Teaching Listening and Speaking (Spring 2019) - Week 1 Reflections
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Spring 2019 Evaluation Form Materials Hosting Project 

Below is a set of simple guiding questions. These questions serve as a mnemonic and guide to the reflections you write about the practice you do in class on Wednesdays. Your evaluations do not affect the grade of the person who created the materials used for the practice, so please be honest. The reflections you post up, however, are part of how you will be graded in the class. 

Remember, you can post your reflections anonymously and then submit a paper version to me in class on Mondays.

 

Use these statements and your reactions to them to help guide your reflections. In your reflections you do NOT need to address all the issues included here. 

 

The materials generated useful practice. (useful - how?)
The task was clear and concise (I knew what to do).
I was pleased with my performance in the task/practice.
I was pleased with the performance of my group members.
The practice addressed at least one speaking strategy.
The practice is something that will help me develop my speaking skill (how?).

The goals (pedagogical/real-world) were clear.
There were no problems encountered during the practice. 

Have fun with this!biggrin

 



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Stephen
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RE: Teaching Listening and Speaking (Spring 2019) - Week 1 Reflections
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confuseNosy Neighboursconfuse

Stars for this activity: smilesmilesmilesmilecry

 

      Two pieces of paper were given to each students: one describing where a student lives and the other with pictures regarding what is happening within the neighborhood. When the papers were given, the students mostly looked confused. However, the instructions to the activity became clear, as the professor emphasized the fact that there will be no students that will hold the paper that describes what is happening in house 5. Some did forget this fact during the activity, but the others were willing to remind them that description for house 5 does not exist. The instructor was monitoring the students in front of class, and later encouraged those who were already finished to talk with him. He seemed open, and the students asked questions freely after they were finished, such as asking for instructions on how to pronounce certain words. The goals for this activity were clear. The pedagogical goal was to enhance students English speaking and listening skills, and the real-life goal was aimed on the interaction between the students, which was to get to know others better and communicate with them to reach one's goals.

      There were also some problems regarding this activity. First of all, the activity was aimed to enhance the students' speaking skills. Nonetheless, the bustling classroom caused troubles when students were exchanging information. When the listeners showed signs that they did not clearly hear or understand what the speakers said, the speakers would point to the pictures and give them answers, failing to get students involved in speaking or listening. (Pointing could be a way of nonverbal speaking, but I thought that this class is much focused on the process of speaking ENGLISH.) I thought that the instructor could mention about this ahead of time to prevent the activity's efficiency from decreasing. Second, there was a time limit. Most of the students finished in time, but some others were confused with their answers and lacked a bit of time. Third, the students were moving around in a relatively small classroom, which meant that it could cause troubles when the activity is instructed to the young. I thought the second and third problems could be improved by grouping students into groups of 8 initially, making the process less dynamic.

      Nevertheless, the interaction between students when they were looking for their target houses could not be ignored. For instance, the students were asking others, "Do you know who has the descriptions for house number *?" or "Do you live in house number *?" The students were also willing to communicate about the topic of how much they achieved regarding the assignment. The activity, therefore, acted both as an icebreaking, speaking, and listening activity.

      Overall, Nosy Neighbours was an activity that achieved its goals as an activity that was held in the first week of the course, but some alterations seem necessary depending on the average age of the student audience and the environment given to the instructors.

 



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Anonymous

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RE: Teaching Listening and Speaking (Spring 2019) - Week 1 Reflections
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We did two activities on this day. First, we were to compare differences between writing and speaking. After reading a short description of writing, we had to come up with another description of speaking that is opposite from the writing. This activity was quite tough because we had to come up with the answer within a short time. On the other hand, the second activity was much more active than the first one because we got to talk with new people while walking around the class. By asking questions related to the activity, in order to get the answer, we could be less shy with new people in the class.



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Anonymous

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We did two activities on 1st week. Professor introduced two activities which were one activity took a theoretical approach to teaching speaking and writing, and the other activity was more practical one. I am going to reflect on the practical activity in more detail. When students started 36 nosy neighbours, they were a little confused because there were many illustrations. However, professor let them know the rules of this activity. Talking with each other, students needed to find out who lives in Room 5.

While doing this activity, I could discover some characteristics of the activity. First, it is useful practice for beginners. Beginners usually have difficulties in what they should say or how to say. However, this activity presents simple sentences, so they can exchange the information easily. By telling the simple sentences to other person, they can acquire the speaking skill such as how to make sentence and how to communicate well. Second, this activity took long time and was a little complex because many students had to talk to each other going around the classroom. Therefore, I think that it is more efficient if it was done in a large classroom without desks and chairs. Finally, it was a great change to talk to others, so I think it is a good way to use ice-breaking class. In this sense, even though there were a lot of people I didnt know because it was the first week, I could participate in the class well.



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pickypoky

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RE: Teaching Listening and Speaking (Spring 2019) - Week 1 Reflections
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Nosy neighbourevileye

 

Possible Structural Patterns

-Whats happening in.....? -Whats ......... doing?

-What are ........ and ....... doing? -S/hes ......-ing.

-Theyre ........ing.

We were supposed to say those questions to start the conversation. (I mean any question, we just asked what number you are in..) But we knew the situation and just focused on listening to the answer we didnt practice those sentences. That made the process simple and fast and its not good for practicing speaking. I was trying to play a role play but other students looked as if they werent in the play. For example, they said Mr. Smith is doing blah blah. Its third person point of view. Anyway, it was quite fun and I think it is good for ice-breaking. We were barely know each other but we had a chat together to figure out whats the do washing and some vocabulary which we are not familiar with. In terms that we learnt most vocabulary from reading, we are less familiar with daily expression such as doing washing and making beds. No one understood my sentence at once. Was it my pronunciations fault? Probably but not sure. It was based on real-world practice, we are now able to use those vocabulary or expressions. Overall, it was useful to learn new expression by matching with pictures. 

And I had lots of fun! 



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Anonymous

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RE: Teaching Listening and Speaking (Spring 2019) - Week 1 Reflections
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Week 1: Differences between Writing & Speaking / Nosy neighbors 

   In week 1, students were able to have time for comparing between writing and speaking and finding who the nosy neighbor is. In the former one, we made a group with 3 people and discussed the characteristics of speaking on the basis of the one of writing. The thing that I thought interesting was that speaking conveys not only the word itself but also plenty of other invisible factors: intonation, gesture, etc. If we shout out "water!" in front of the river, then it is an exclamation, but "water..." in the middle of the desert, it is a craving. I learned a powerful function of speaking as a communication tool, and hope to learn it more deeply.

   The next activity was the 'Nosy neighbors'. This was one of the funniest games I've ever done in major classes. By moving around the classroom, students collected the clues indicating the cause of the nosy sound. The number I got was 2, and there were three sentences describing the pictures on the paper. There wasn't any problem when I was reading my one, but when I had to find out the pictures that others were describing, it was quite confusing. I only needed to depend on the spoken description of the picture and find out what it is. My partners tried to read the description by emphasizing the key points such as 'washing dishes' or 'watching TV'. I was again able to learn how interesting speaking was since it made me easier for me to find out the answer by catching their strengthen words. If it was writing, it might take much longer time for me to find answers.



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Anonymous

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RE: Teaching Listening and Speaking (Spring 2019) - Week 1 Reflections
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Reflection of Week 1: Speaking vs. Writing Some Differences

 

 In the class, we had 2 different activities, but Im going to deal with the first activity. We were given one paper with 10 statements comparing speaking and writing on a variety of aspects like practices and forms of language.

When I got that paper, I thought it is quite a valuable chance. Its because Im usually very interested in having this kind of discussion topic. Anyway, in the paper, there were 10 statements already written of Writing and 10 blanks for Speaking which we should discuss in the group. Through the directions that the professor gave and the guideline on the paper, it was very clear for me to know that we would have a short discussion with counter-point descriptions on 10 statements.

However, some of the questions were too deep and ambiguous to think of rapidly and say. Especially, the 6th question was the most difficult one to consider the counterpart. I thought it required a lot more complicated side; however, it didnt. After the class, I looked up the sample answers which he uploaded and the answer to the 6th question was quite simple. The way it approached was totally different from what my discussion mate and I talked about. It was just about phonemic features. I realized that when we have a discussion on these kinds of academic topics, then getting approach to the one needs to be more basic and even relatively theoretical.

 For me, although I didnt give a lot of thoughts on the discussion, this was a very meaningful activity to think again of the features of speaking & writing which people probably dont put much emphasis on. Also, I was pleased that I could listen to my classmates and get various opinions from them. Because of the time limit, the discussion was paused on the 7th question, but it would be great if we can give and take our opinion more.



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Anonymous

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RE: Teaching Listening and Speaking (Spring 2019) - Week 1 Reflections
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Nosy Neighbours

The students participating in an activity received an arbitrary house number and information about it. And they introduced themselves as if they are really a person living in the house. Then they told what their family is doing. By doing so, they gathered information about people living in houses number 1 to 9. After that, students could find out noisy cause of people living in house number 6.

The goal of Nosy Neighbours is to find out why people living in house number 6 are so noisy. The goal was clear and concise enough that everyone could understand what to do. This kind of activity gives you the desire to complete the task. All students stood up and actively participated in practice. I also enjoyed doing this practice. Especially it was fun to ask each other's given information in a given name (for example, Mr. White) before they even introduce themselves. I think it can be also used as an ice break game.

However, there were two problems that I found while practicing. First of all, there was a problem when exchanging information with each other. When some students heard "Mrs. White is cooking the supper.", and cannot find the corresponding picture quickly, some speaker pointed the picture with a finger. The instructor needs to tell the students to never look at each other's paper in advance. Secondly, because there were so many people involved in the activity, some people had same information with others. This caused the problem. For example, there were students A and B. Student A had no information that student B had. But student B tried to avoid the conversation with student A because student B had already obtained information from others. When conducting such information gap activities, the number of people involved in the activity should be considered.

 



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Anonymous

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RE: Teaching Listening and Speaking (Spring 2019) - Week 1 Reflections
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<

In class, after making a group of three people, professor handed us papers to discuss with group members. The content in the paper was about the differences between speaking and writing. The feature of writing was represented in each number of questions and what we had to do was to discuss and write the feature of speaking whose characteristics are somewhat contrary to those of writing. Since Ive learned English as a whole, I didnt have a chance to analyze and learn  the distinct characteristics. Through this activity, I was able to

organize and understand the differences. Also, since I have to convey my ideas precisely to group members, I had to mobilize all the speaking skills that I have such as using appropriate vocabularies. Lastly, as I go through questions, I thought it is essential to understand the features of each section of English when it comes to English education since there will be appropriate and efficient ways to teach regarding their different features.



<Nosy neighbors>

In the next activity, we were given a paper which was full of drawings.

Drawings in the paper were people doing specific activities and they were surrounding around 9 identical houses. Also, professor gave out small notes which contained information about whats happening in one houses. By using the information, I had to know whats happening in house 5. Since I only had information of house 4 I had to know by asking others whats happening in other houses. Then the remaining picture would be match with house 5. By sharing information that other classmates have, people had a chance to say hi and get familiar to each other. Also, I thought when children learn English, I think they could learn expressions to illustrate specific behavior by answering, since they would have to read their notes repeatedly to let classmates know the information. Above all, it was the funniest activity that every students can enjoy.

 



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Anonymous

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RE: Teaching Listening and Speaking (Spring 2019) - Week 1 Reflections
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          When I first heard about nosy neighbor game I was not sure what I was supposed to do even after I received the papers given information about the activity. However, when the professor explained about the activity, I came to know that I should find out what the people in the house No. 5 was doing. The task seemed to be clear and it looked interesting. 

          It was our first class so we were nervous and shy. However, to do this task we needed to talk a lot and communicate one another even though we were not familiar with each other. By conducting this task, we had a chance to talk a lot and we could break the awkward silence. We were willing to cooperate so I was pleased with my performance and also pleased with the performance of my classmates. 

          Nosy neighbor game seems to be useful to teach beginners who need to practice and use various verbs such as dance, have a shower, fight, play, make, drink, wash, read, clean, etc. and how to apply them into a sentence by saying what people are doing. This activity doesnt seem to require high speaking ability because students were given sample sentences and they just needed to listen and speak the pattern sentences to achieve the goal. 

I also think that this activity using this material is an effective way to practice both speaking and listening because you need to listen to your classmates precisely and speak to your classmate clearly to get the information of what people are doing in the house No. 5. It is also a useful activity for speaking skills when you learn present progressive or past progressive tense. 



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Anonymous

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RE: Teaching Listening and Speaking (Spring 2019) - Week 1 Reflections
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 Speaking vs. Writing

 

1. While writing is a series of words which humans have created throughout the history, speaking should be noted as an innate behavior. Though it is true that humans of all races from different parts of the world speak numerous different languages, we never learn how to speak. In other words, we hear, learn, and memorize vocabularies; yet, we are never taught how to produce sounds.

 

2. Usually, writing never conceals itself unless it is physically harmed. On the other hand, speaking can both be permanent and not permanent. Daily conversations in casual settings may be easily forgotten; yet, lectures or speech conducted by so-called important, influential people may be recorded and left to be permanent.

 

3. Except for the very casual situations, writing maintains a certain standard format. However, speaking is usually less standard. Considering both the casual and formal settings, we do not usually spend time thinking all the things to say in order before we actually speak.

 

4. Punctuation is one of the crucial factors for writing in order to give readers a better understanding. Contrarily, we do not need to care about capital letters, commas, or exclamation marks when we speak. We simply need to make breaks at certain points and move on.

 

5. Writers put a lot of effort into creating and describing contexts. Speakers on the other hand, can constantly look at the listeners and check how well they have understood, which is limited for the writers.

 

6. Writers only have written words when it comes to communicating with readers. On the contrary, speakers can use facial expressions and hand gestures as well as different tones of their voice.

 

7. It usually takes more time to write, and writing is permanent. Speaking also requires time to think; yet this varies from a casual setting to a formal situation. However, speaking can be less permanent. (similar to answer #2)

 

8. While writing is a one-sided process, speaking should be viewed as an interactive behavior. In most settings, there are one or more people to talk and share ideas with. (excluding the situation where a person makes a recording of him/herself talking to no one: for instance, a vlog)

 

9. Speaking is not as formal as writing in most situations since we tend to care much less about the exact punctuation or spelling. Yet, speaking can also take place in formal situations: for instance, giving a lecture or a speech

 

10. While mistakes are more noticeable when we write, they are less notable when it comes to speaking. Listeners do not usually get confused even if speakers do not make every sentence a whole sentence or disregard all the commas or question marks. (similar to answer #4)

 

Before encountering this task during our first week of the class, I have been thinking speaking as a more light and the one which can forgive more mistakes while writing is mostly more formal. Yet, I came to realize that this is not true for each and every setting. Though some questions were not one hundred percent clear, they gave me and my group members the opportunity to delve into how both can be more formal and more informal or more permanent and less permanent depending on situations and how well we try to preserve.

 



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Anonymous

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RE: Teaching Listening and Speaking (Spring 2019) - Week 1 Reflections
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Week 1:

Noisy neighbour

 

On this first week, we started two different activities; the first one we wont comment on it because it didnt imply the direct use of students listening or speaking capacity, the second one, on the other hand requested students to speak to one another.

The principle is simple: starting from the context given by the teacher the students have to find what the house number 5 is doing by interrogating its buddies in the classroom. Each student is given a family and its activities in a specific house, from the handout they have to link pictures of activities to the house where they happen. The task was quite clear and simple to understand and to practise.

As we did this exercise in the entire classroom, my first impression was that it would be less confusion in the space of the classroom if the activity was kept in groups of students. Indeed, the activity in itself is very repetitive because the students have to ask the same kind of questions over and over again and repeat the same answers (which is good in some way because they get to remember those structures through the repetition), it seems then it is a sort of loss of time to make all the students go around the entire class and interrogate the same number of house.

As we just said, the task doesnt require the students to form the sentences and so the task is more centred on making the students speak in order to involve their pronunciation and probably also their ability to talk to someone else in English in a more comfortable way. And at the same time, since the activity is based on interaction it is also requiring the students to listen to each other; nonetheless the activitys main focused is not, for me, on the listening part even though it includes some. This task focused more on giving confidence to the students in their ability to speak would probably need to be followed or preceded by a grammar lesson or task-based lesson on everyday life.

One of the problems of this activity was for me the drawings, not all of them were clear in showing what the sentences were describing and so, it might be a factor of distraction and/or switching languages depending on the age of the students. Plus, I noticed that some students (including me) in the class were not waiting for their buddy to answer the questions but looked directly at their paper, and that, after a while they tended to not ask questions anymore but just read their paper and listening to their partner. 



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Anonymous

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RE: Teaching Listening and Speaking (Spring 2019) - Week 1 Reflections
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On the first week of class, we completed two different activities: difference between oral and written aspects of English, and Nosy Neighbors.

Personally, I felt that the first activity was particularly appropriate as the first class activity, since it gave me a slight idea of what expect in class. Before class, I grouped written and oral English altogether as just methods of communication, and never really considered the difference between them, let alone how that difference can effect communication between individuals. So, it was interesting to see how very similar, but also remarkably different written and oral aspects of communication could be. Throughout the activity, I was able to grasp a much broader idea of English as a means of communication through my group members and their opinions.

The second activity, Nosy neighbors, was much more active. It was nice to get to talk to new classmates, and I think it served as a great ice-breaking activity, making the classroom environment much more friendly. There were some difficulties figuring out which picture some of the statements were referring to, but that was mostly because some of the pictures were a bit more confusing and misguiding than the others. Also, because the whole classroom was very loud and a bit hectic, I had to pay extra attention to the person speaking in front of me, which surprisingly became helpful in terms of enhancing listening skills.

Overall, I think the first class activities day went about really well! The task of both activities were extremely clear, making them very doable. And since they were both doable, all students were able to participate! The high level of participation made everything go a lot more smooth. Also, the whole class involved a lot of both speaking and listening, which is directly correlated to the fundamental objective of this class.



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Anonymous

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RE: Teaching Listening and Speaking (Spring 2019) - Week 1 Reflections
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           In our first class, we had two different activities and one of the activities was Nosy Neighbours. Frankly, Ive never heard about it and Ive never played this activity before, so when this paper was given to me, some of pictures on the paper without any words or letter made me confused. However, it finally turned out to be much clearer since the professor explained the instructions. To talk about how to play this game briefly, by moving around the classroom, one should describe where a person lives and give full explanation what is happening within the neighborhood to the partners to help them to collect the clues.

Actually, when others were describing the pictures they have to me, it was quite confusing to find out the correct pictures since the only thing I could was listening what they describe. Both my partners and I tried to place an accent on the key word. For example, when one of the pictures I have was the picture of a person taking a shower, then I accentuated the word SHOWER to help my partners to find out the correct picture easily. If it was writing, not speaking, it might require more time to find the answers.

Through this activity, I was able to learn that the spoken description is very significant when communicating each other. I think Nosy Neighbours is absolutely a proper activity for the students since it helps them to enhance both English speaking and listening skills. Anyway, it was an activity that emphasized the importance of the interaction between the students.



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Anonymous

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RE: Teaching Listening and Speaking (Spring 2019) - Week 1 Reflections
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Nosy Neighbors

 

       The first impression I received of this activity is that it will be helpful in developing communication and interaction skills for beginners in English. The activity provides general practice for introducing yourself to others, telling others about yourself and people you know, as well as asking others about themselves and people they know. Unlike activities that dont require students to move around or dont have a specific goal (in this case, figuring out what is going on in House #5) set, Nosy Neighbors makes students get out of their seats and talk to each other willingly to become the first one to solve the problem. Simply said, it is a smart way of taking advantage of a positive aspect of competition and students competitiveness. In the process, learners can also pick up new vocabulary, especially verbs commonly used in everyday life. During the activity in class, there was some debate on what wash up means. Someone claimed that it meant to take a shower and another student looked up the word in a dictionary. It turned out that the term means washing the dishes or parts of the body (especially hands or face). If it wasnt for this activity, those students wouldnt have learned that particular term. 

       After having participated in the activity myself, I felt that it would be crucial to keep the number of participants to 9 people. Each house should only be assigned to one person or else it wont be a fair game. Reflecting to my own experience in class, some students who already got the information about the house that I was assigned didnt share their information and just left as soon as they heard I wad from the house she already has the information to. If this happens in a university-level class setting, there is a big chance that it will also happen in other classes. The only way to prevent this and give everyone fair chances is to limit the number of participants to the same number as the number of houses. Then, this makes the downside of the activity the fact that it is only effective for small classes. If educators want to use this activity effectively in a bigger class, then they would have to adjust the game by adding more houses and families. 



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Anonymous

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RE: Teaching Listening and Speaking (Spring 2019) - Week 1 Reflections
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Speaking verses Writing

It was quite a hard process to compare speaking and writing. There were so many features of writing than I expected, and it was not easy to compare each of the features. Many features were related to each other and some were overlapped. We had a chance to have a discussion and share our opinion with 2-3 people. If it was to write down the features by myself, I couldve not thought of more things Ive missed. By having a discussion, I could have a chance to learn what others think about my opinion and listen to what others think. It was good to hear when the other person said something Ive never thought about.

Especially, It was hard for me to understand the 7th question. I didnt understand the first sentence writing takes time because it must be planned, but it is changeable. I could not find out how this leads to the next sentence which talks about the permanence of writing. Sadly, we couldnt have more time to discuss the question due to the time limit. We spent too much time having a discussion of the questions in front.disbelief This made me realize that next time, we should portion out the time properly.

By having a discussion of differences between writing and speaking, I had come to know the principles of both speaking and writing deeply, since I rarely put much focus on the essence of speaking and writing ordinarily. It was a good opportunity to lay the groundwork of English which I think is so important.



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Anonymous

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RE: Teaching Listening and Speaking (Spring 2019) - Week 1 Reflections
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Nosy Neighbors

When the professor handed out two sheets of paper, I didn't know what it was at first.
But when I heard the explanation, i could understand perfectly.
Nine houses were in the middle of the paper, and around it was a picture of what people were doing. The students had to find out what happend from the fifth house. On the first paper that professor gave me, there was one house number, except number 5, and it explained what some people were doing. Finally, to find out what happened in the fifth house, I need to find people with different numbers, except for the number five. I had to communicate with other students about what we had.
It was a natural activity to listen and speak.
It seems to have been an activity that was not very complicated, it was simple, and it could increase the participation rate.
The method of activities was not difficult because it was simple.
I was walked around with paper and i looking for students with different numbers of house and talked to them. First we exchange greetings, then asked the house number and mark a person's specific behavior. I was happy that this activity was simple and funny, and that a situation was created where I could naturally talk.  Looking around at the other students, they all looked as if they had simply finished their activities as I did.  Because other students' papers were marked with the same answers as mine. Also, when they were active, they seemed to enjoy themselves as much as I did.
 
However, some students believed that there were  some people who lives in fifth house.  Also, I could see students confusing about the pictures, but they talk naturally to others and found the truth. Also,they asked  professor. It was impressive moment to see that  professor explained the confusing picture in detail. What's clear about this activity is that I could  talking to the other person. It was an activity that would  be impossible to find an answer without speaking.
 
An activity that, after all, naturally engages students in speaking.
In my case, I feel a little bit of pressure when I talked about spontaneous presentations or asking questions. However, this activity didn't have that kind of pressure at all, and everyone was involved.
It was a way of talking through play, so I didn't feel any pressure in what I said in English.Also, because not only I but also other students all use English, speaking ability is going to go up.


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Anonymous

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RE: Teaching Listening and Speaking (Spring 2019) - Week 1 Reflections
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<nosy neighbours>

that day was the first activity class in this course. I am a very shy person so i have a sort of little problem in speaking when I have a conversation with someone at the first meeting, especially in English. I need a time to get used to new classmates, so that I hope there's active and energetic activity. I especially enjoyed the second activity among two, because it was easy and more active and energetic, which made me feel relieved to talk. I expect there will be so much fun activity like this a lot.  



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Anonymous

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RE: Teaching Listening and Speaking (Spring 2019) - Week 1 Reflections
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Week 1: Differences between Writing & Speaking / Nosy neighbors

 

 

On the first week, we did two activities: Finding differences between writing & speaking, and Nosy neighbors. 

 

First, my group member participated group work very well in Differences between Writing & Speaking. She participated team work so actively that I can find differences between writing and speaking easily.

Although it was a little bit tough because we had very short time, we finally found the answer. Second, my speaking skills were a little bit improved because of Nosy Neighbors activity. It was really simple activity,

but it needed a lot of speaking. I was not confident with my speaking skills because I tended to feel nervous whenever I spoke English. However, my class members helped me a lot. Moreover, I learned some English

expressions like playing cowboy. It was really valuable.

 

 

For me, this class can help not only teaching English speaking, but also my English proficiency. Since I am an outgoing person, I can adopt this class very easily.

Although this class needs a lot of participation, I can participate this class as well as possible. 



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Senior Member

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Teaching Listening and Speaking (Spring 2019) - Week 1 Reflections
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This is the reflection from one of our excellent classmates. I am reposting it for her!

 

The 'Writing/Speaking' activity is useful practice in two aspects: learning new language items and improving thinking ability. Through this activity, learners can acquire new vocabulary and expression naturally. By discussing, students learn how to pronounce the words, improve listening skills, and practice speaking. Also, this activity helps enlarge background information and improves thinking ability. This practice gives information regarding writing and speaking. In addition, students discuss and think by contrasting the features of writing and speaking. 

 

The 'Nosy Neighbors' activity is something that will help me develop my speaking skill. Firstly, it makes me practice speaking using 'continuous present tense' repeatedly. Secondly, I can learn how to describe pictures. Thirdly, it is relatively more interesting. This is why it helps me develop my speaking skill.



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Stephen
Anonymous

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RE: Teaching Listening and Speaking (Spring 2019) - Week 1 Reflections
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* W1 Nosy Neighbours Activity Reflection (Modification) *

We had a first activity class that day in this course. I am a very shy person so I have a sort of little problem in speaking when I have a conversation with someone at the first meeting, especially in English. I need a time to get used to new classmates, so that I hope there's active and energetic activity, and there it was. I especially enjoyed the second activity, nosy neighbours, because it was easy and more active and energetic, which made me feel relieved to talk.

However, I felt a little sorry, because we had only focused on activity, so we just met and left after just reading explanation paper. Because of time limitation, we just read the paper to complete the task, without much talk or consideration. Although it had this kind of personal sorriness, the paper still helped me lessen the load of my mind as a first activity with my first classmates. I expect this course will have so much fun activity like this a lot.



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Anonymous

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RE: Teaching Listening and Speaking (Spring 2019) - Week 1 Reflections
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  In the activity The nosy neighbor, I could see that the four strands were in balance. What we can call well-balanced language course contain the four strands. Students would work out their ability to accept and produce some meanings through receiving input and giving out the output. To add, the instruction focused on grammar or vocabulary is one of the four strands, and developing fluent language ability of student is also included in those four strands.

  In the nosy neighbor, the learners can practice both receptive ability and productive language skills. The learners listen to other students describing the picture and they have to activate their own language in order to explain what happens in their given pictures to their peer students again. In other words, learners can learn through both listening and speaking, which is learning through both meaningful input and meaningful output. Thats the aspect of the first and the second strand.

  There is instructors intention to let the students acquire certain kind of vocabulary sets. I could figure this out because on the worksheet there mentioned possible structural items, essential vocabulary items of this activity. It can be concluded that the teacher who planned this activity wanted to let students practice certain kind of vocabulary items and sentence structure. Therefore, the nosy neighbor contains the third strand focusing on form/deliberate attention to language items.

  Through describing whats presented in the picture cards, the learners are able to gain fluency because they get more familiar with the already known or newly known languages by repetition while describing. For example, the learners going to use essential vocabulary items in the worksheet frequently, and they will use the possible structural patterns presented in the worksheet. This kind of communitive activity help students use certain vocabulary items and structural patterns, which results in improving students ability to communicate.



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