Reflection of Week 3: Who (What) Am I?, Storytelling of my 3-day holiday
1. Who (What) Am I?
In week 3, this time, I became the host of materials for speaking. What I prepared for hosting was Who (What) Am I?. The purpose of it was to improve their skill to express the detailed point of things like cabinet, rabbit, or mayonnaise.
When I decided to make this the finally fixed material, and through preparing for this, I realized, that it will be able not to extract a lot more expressions from my students. However, when it came to the actual situation, it did get their outputs from them a lot more than what I had expected. Additionally, I think this is quite more fun and meaningful materials because the students seemed curious and interesting when I explained how to do this; also, it is because they could use the expressions theyve used just before in order to clarify the person Bs answer, which resulted in making those expressions much more sophisticated and precise than previous ones theyd uttered.
On the other hand, there were quite lots of empty points, I think. During the activity and after the activity, I was always realizing my weakness inside the skill to lead the activity and the system of my activity, of course.
Firstly, from starting with a simple mistake, I should have found the way to operate this in the different number of groups each other. This activity would be a great fit in the 2-people-group. However, in the activity, because I didnt participate in the game (but, just observe the game procedure and help them to make it done smoothly), this was operated in 2-people-of group & 3-people-of group. Right now, this let me think of the reason why, by the groups, the game did either last for 30 minutes or didnt last for 30 minutes. Probably, it was because of the number of group members. By the number of members, there was a varied range of utterances, resulting in the ending time of each card set.
Secondly, I set one of the game rules as that person B (who knows what is on each word card.) could only say yes or no. By the way, different from Id expected, I should have changed the rule into that they can give one-simple-sentence of hint only relevant with the question, as well as give one-simple-sentence of hint relevant with the question. Thus, even in the middle of the activity, I changed like one above I mention. Before I changed, they were struggling hard to ask questions and guess the answer (I think why they were paying too close attention to ask and guess was there was another rule that they can ask only till 10 questions and after then, they should pass to another word card.); however, by changing the rule, the conversation for questions and their guess became much more activated and various. Especially, there increased lots of complicated questions not just like Does it fly?, but like Can we see it around here?.
At last, this was the real first time for me to host materials. There were many things to fix overall but to sustain and just improve. I hope, in the 2nd hosting which will be after my mid-term, I can become to satisfy the students in the group with my advanced materials. This advanced materials will have to include all the details enhanced from my weakness mentioned above.
p.s. for Professor
The site said, "Your comment is too long. Please shorten it.' so I can't help but divide into 2 comments. I will submit my 2nd comment right away.
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cafe mocha
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RE: teaching Listening and Speaking (Spring 2019) - Week 3 Reflections for Amazing
At the second activity, there was a member of my group, Amazing, Harins materials which I would tell my story of my holiday for 3 days. She brought lots of pieces of the simple picture, such as passports, bones, a taxi, a boat, a bench, a couple, and so on. Those kinds of materials were perfectly enough to make us get highly interested in the activity. Also, it felt much easier for me to tell my story freely because there was not a fixed situation except for the 3-day holiday. In addition, the small picture cards were so simple and irrelevant with one another that I could make my storytelling quite creative and even much more fictional. (yes, Ive also known that it is a fiction already.)
During the activity, firstly, as she said us to choose 5 cards, I chose the cards such as a taxi, a language, rainy, a boat, and bones. I changed a boat into a big cruise on my own mind because she instructed that we can freely change and think of the meaning or shape of the pictures on cards. This resulted in a variety of width of our thoughts; for example, though we chose the same picture card, each person thought it as different meanings or shapes. By the way, after we all told our story and listen to others, there left time for about 15 to 20 minutes. Therefore, she asked us Why were you choose that country and those pictures? Actually, I did not choose the country because on the first day, it was rainy all day, so I just always took a taxi and studied the German language at my home, and, on the next day, it became sunny, so I took on a huge cruise and enjoy myself taking a rest. On the last day of the holiday, I was still inside of the cruise, go shopping around the cruise, and lying on the beach bed in front of the big swimming pool. I think the freedom to choose and think of the meanings had me make the story in that way of such a quite creative thought.
Even after we had done the second question from her, there left a little time for about 10 minutes. Thus, we did a small and additional activity suggested by one of our group, which was to make a little long story relaying one sentence by one person with the picture cards. It made me feel like a cooperative game that everyone was nice & friendly and tended to become helpful for others utterances.
Overall, sayingin one sentence, this activity is kind of heart-warming for me because it made me come up with my ideal holiday to-do-list. In addition, indeed, I learned a lot from her materials; for example, there was the importance of visual materials, a well-organized instruction, the clear purpose of materials, etc. Thus, I am planning to reflect all of them related to my materials and apply to my advanced materials later.
p.s. for Professor
This is my 2nd reflection following the above (or below?) one.
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Anonymous
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RE: teaching Listening and Speaking (Spring 2019) - Week 3 Reflections for Amazing
<Teaching Listening and Speaking(Spring 2019)- Week 3 Reflections>
TESL 1710834 Yoo Seoyoung
<Who(What) am I ?>
The first activity was called Who(What) am I. I involved this activity as a participant, one of the member of the group. This activity started from making groups of 2 or 3. Then by taking turn being A and B alternately, I had to ask questions to person B about the topic written in paper if I was person A and vice versa. There were diverse animals and things in the paper which we could see in daily lives.
Speaking skills that I could practicing through this activity was making patterns of questions. For example, if I am a person A who has to find out what is written in a paper person B is holding, I have to think of keen questions to know organize its features and then finally to get the right answer. I had to make questions like Is it an animal?, Does it have four legs? and so on. Therefore, I thought it was a great practice to make such questions because we not only had to make appropriate questions based on previous information but also had to make grammatically right questions that subject and verb is correctly matched. Also, everyone seems to have fun while doing the activity.
However, there were some points that I think it seems to need an improvement while doing the activity. First, it would have been better if the host explained the rules in more precise and understandable way. Since the game started really quickly, I had to read paper and understand by myself. I think it would have been better after making sure everyone has understood the game. Second, it would have been funnier if we used open ended questions, not yes or no questions from the beginning of this game. I think it was a good idea of host to change in the middle of an activity because it was difficult for us to know the thing within 10 yes or no questions.
Other than that I had so much fun while doing this activity and everyone did too. I thought of changing the group at a certain point would be fun as well because it would be a great chance to get familiar to each other while doing the activity.
<Making Stories by Cards>
The second activity was to make plans by selecting 5 cards. The host said we should all pretend that we went on a 3 days trip to anywhere we want and we should introduce our plan to the group members. And we have to make stories with cards which showed various places, foods and people.
I had picked up 5 cards and assigned them appropriately to make good plans. It was fun to introduce our plans as though weve been there.
At the beginning the host said we should introduce our plans like were in day 2. However, all misunderstood her directions and we said all of our plans like we had come back from our trip. So we only used past tense during the activity. I thought it would have been a great activity to practice past, present, future if we had done the activity as she planned before. Nevertheless, the activity was great enough to practice English speaking skills. Since I had to organize and say 3 days in sequence, it was inevitable for me to use conjunctions that indicates time order such as first, next, last and so on. Also, we had to use diverse expressions by using verbs in a card to make reasonable plan.
However, I felt really sad after hearing her original plan. It would have been a wonderful activity if we all understood her directions before starting an activity. Also, I felt that there were so much time left after doing the activity though it must have been a rather easy activity for teslers that could be done really fast. I thought it would have taken long if it is done by children. Anyway, I think it would be better if the host had come up more activities using the cards.
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favorite
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RE: teaching Listening and Speaking (Spring 2019) - Week 3 Reflections for Amazing
Five of us were divided into two and three and received word cards. Only one person could see what the letter is, and the rest had to guess the answer by asking ten questions by taking turns. The letter was covering from animal to a common product which we can see easily in our daily life. I thought the activity would be helpful for L2 learners to study comparative since I found out that I frequently used expressions such as Is it ~er than sth?. For instance, when the answer was elephant, I could narrow the range of the answer by asking Is it smaller than a tiger?. The learner can naturally try to use advanced expressions by themselves in order to get into the answer. Moreover, according to a thesis from Han(1991), we can differentiate the use of does,is and can when using interrogative sentences as well as the respondent gets to know how to match the form of their answers with the questions. (ex. Q: Is it able to swim? A: Yes, it is. / Q: Does it eat animals or plants? A: Yes, It (does) eat plants.)
The overall parts of the activity seemed to be really helpful for students on improving their grammatical and conversational skills. However, it would be better if the host had given a clearer notice before the game started. For instance, all of the participants should not have watched whats written down on the word card, but we werent noticed so that some of us accidentally saw what the answer is. Therefore, we needed to throw out some of the cards which the answer was exposed. Moreover, the expressions that participants used seemed to be too repetitive. It has a merit that learners can get used to the same expression on and on, but still, there is a problem that they are not able to be involved in true conversation since the form of questions and answers are limited to Is it~ ? Does it~?. It could be better if the activity has broadened the range of its conversational expressions.
What did I do on my travel?
The host prepared a 20~25 number of photo cards and let us choose three of them. The situation was like this: we are having travel for three days and currently, we are on the second day. By using the cards, we should make the story of our travel, allocating each card into describing the story of the first, second, and third day. The card I chose was a passport, tiger, a person with a hurt leg, and taxi. This is the story that I made : I decided to go travel to africa, so I picked(past) up my passport and headed(past) to the airport yesterday. It seemed to be a perfect journey, but unfortunately I met a giant tiger in the jungle, so now I am crying(present) for my bloody leg bitten from the tiger. I will take(future) taxi and go back to my hotel as soon as possible. By using all of the past, present, and future tense, the learner can get used to the different grammatical expressions depending on tense. I thought this activity has plenty of common points with the story retelling activity of last week. By making ones own story by using photo cards, learners are able to convey their ideas using descriptive expressions. According to the thesis from Lim (2005), students learn how to switch their words by using synonym when there are similar-meaning words repeated through storytelling in L2. So did I when I was doing the activity. At first, I used the word travel, but switched it with the synonym journey when I had to use it again. It will be really helpful for L2 learners to broaden their lexicon by stimulating their lexical activity.
After the activity finished, I asked the host about the intended educational purpose of the game. There were two main educational goals she set, one that I expected and the other I couldnt. As I already recognized, she targeted the well-organized use of tense(past, present, future). However, it was quite unexpected that there was a compare and contrast activity she had intended to. I think it would be better if the host gave participants an additional mission of compare and contrast expressions before the activity had started. Moreover, Since the activity end up quite early (15 minutes left after the gave finished), it might be better to choose more cards and make our stories a bit longer to fill up the time limit.
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Anonymous
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RE: teaching Listening and Speaking (Spring 2019) - Week 3 Reflections for Amazing
Minju introduced an interesting speaking game which is who(what) am I?. She gave us the instruction paper about the procedure of this activity. We needed to be divided into two teams, and we had to choose one of role A and B. Person A had to ask an appropriate question about the word on the card. On the other hand, Person B was the person who had to answer Yes/No.
Through this activity, students could how to deduce the answer from some clues they had obtained from the questions. Also, they practiced making interrogative sentences to find clues to the answer. In this respect, if the goal of this activity was to an attempt to make students accustomed to making interrogative sentences and asking questions to others, this activity was perfect to practice these goals.
However, there are some points to improve. First, it would be better that there is a big topic or theme on word cards such as sports, animal, and food. Actually, it was difficult to deduce what was written on the paper without any given topic, so I was confused as to what question I should ask. Second, some answer words were exposed. Because the paper was thin, I could see the word through the back. To solve this problem, I think it would be better to use a thicker paper card or write the words on a small piece of paper so that it can be covered in person Bs hands. Finally, as the rules were modified in the middle of the activity, the person B needs to be able to answer some short words, not simply Yes or No.
Although, there were some points to improve, Minju explained the instructions well and it was easy to understand because she handed out the printed instruction paper. Therefore, I think it was meaning-focused input in that it made students be interested in this activity.
Harin Lees activity
Harin introduced a meaningful speaking activity with some pictures. She showed us pictures and let us make a story with these pictures. She explained to us the time background that we went on a reward vacation for three days, and now its a second day.
Then, she wanted the students to select five pictures and make sentences to explain what happened yesterday, what is happening now, and what will happen tomorrow. It was good that she presented a novel time background and prepared a variety of pictures that could be the contents of the story.Thanks to the instructors preparation, all of students created an interesting story. In this respect, it was meaning-focused input so it also makes meaning-focused output, too.
However, there are some points to improve. First, it would be better that there is a printed paper about instruction because written instructions can make students understand faster and more accurately. In addition, if she had given an example about how to make the story of yesterday, today, and tomorrow, instruction would have been more detailed and well understood. Second, if students had chosen five pictures randomly and made a story, I think it would have been more fun and creative activity. For advanced students or older students, selecting pictures randomly seems to be a way to increase the difficulty of the activity.
Although there were some points to improve, Harin planned the activity that well served her purpose. After activity, she said that the goal of this activity was comparing the sentences of past, present, and future tense. The students naturally created a story using past, present, present progressive, future tense. Therefore, the goal of this activity was clear.
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Anonymous
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RE: teaching Listening and Speaking (Spring 2019) - Week 3 Reflections for Amazing
Unlike the previous classes, two members from each group had to prepare for today's class. As for our group, we did two main activities: twenty questions and storytelling. Twenty questions was the first activity hosted by one of my group members. Our group of six members, except for the host, were divided into three and two people each through doing rock-paper-scissors. The host then gave each group a number of cards with one word written on each. Within a group, we had to take turns being the person asking questions and being the one who tells yes or no with respect to the word(s) on the cards.
I personally believe this activity really helped us be an active listener and speaker at the same time. Due to the characteristic of the activity, every member had to take turns speaking back and forth; no one was continuously speaking or listening. If a student asked whether it was a food, for example, the other one had to tell either yes or no; sometimes, the one with the answer would elaborate slightly more as for giving some hints. No one was waiting for the other or the others to finish speaking, and I could see that our host worked hard to make sure that both groups were engaging in well.
Though I was highly satisfied with the activity, it may have been better if we had allocated about five to ten minutes to engage in as a whole group. What I mean by this is that it may have been a bit more exciting if the host had one answer just to herself and let all the others to take turn and ask her questions, thereby playing the game as a whole group. Still, I could see that the host had put in a lot of effort, and I really enjoyed it!
Storytelling_ Three-day Vacation
After the wonderful activity prepared by the first host, it was my turn to introduce the group with the second activity: storytelling. Each person was given a three-day trip to any country of her interest, and now is her second day of the trip. After choosing five of the picture cards on the middle of our desks, she had to tell the reason behind choosing the country and make up a story of what she did on her first day, what she is currently doing, and what she is willing to do tomorrow based on the cards she had chosen.
I had been thinking that most, if not everyone, would be glad to think about the countries she wants to visit and have a nice vacation. Thus, among all the other situational settings that have popped up in my mind, I picked 'short vacation' as the theme for the activity. Besides the purpose of making everyone freely engage in with a familiar topic, another aim for this activity was to help students once again practice past, present continuous, and future tense. This is the reason why I made the vacation a three-day trip and told them that they are now on their second day.
As in the aspect of being a host, it was really nice to see that all my group members were smiling and looking at each other whenever a single person presented her opinion. Nobody seemed to be isolated; here I am trying to say 'seemed' because some may have had totally different ideas.
Unfortunately, there was one big limitation to my activity. All were very fluent in explaining their creative vacation stories that we had more than fifteen minutes left until the end of the designated time limit. Linking to my previous experience with doing different activities while teaching students, I had sometimes run out of time explaining and making sure no one was sitting behind; however, most of them were young learners and needed more time during each session of the activity prepared. If I had thought more about time management, our group members may have had a chance to talk about different situations with perhaps new, different pictures. Anyway, we spent rest of our time making up a story as a whole group after selecting one picture per person;two people had to talk about the first day (past), the next two about the present (day 2), and the other two about the last day (future). Then, we shared our experience of visiting different countries for either living or traveling abroad. I hope I would be able to perform better next time.
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tube
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RE: teaching Listening and Speaking (Spring 2019) - Week 3 Reflections for Amazing
The first activity we had was Guess what am I. After we paired up with 2 or 3 people, we had to take turn and ask and get what the answer is. But, the questions should all be yes or no questions. In the beginning, instruction by the host was not enough, so we were quite confused. We didnt know was it okay to take turn with 3 people since, there were 5 people, and the method of the activity was not clear in the beginning. However, all the concrete instruction was written in the paper, but I didnt really take care of the paper. If we had a time to read the instruction first, we might have had less difficulty. I was the one who asked the question first. When I got that the word was an animal in the first question, it became easier but when it was an object, it became so difficult since there are countless objects. It was far more difficult than I expected because the category was not designated. For example, for the word guitar, I couldnt even think of asking was it an instrument (the question that would make me much easier to get the answer). I was just asking is it handy or can we see it in daily lives. Also, once I just concluded the word that I thought in my mind, it was hard to narrow it down and often the word turned out to be totally different from what I thought. For example, when the person told me that I can carry it on the back, I could not get rid of the word A-frame inside my mind, so I was keep asking can I carry it to the mountain? Or, Is it Korean traditional one? even though the correct answer was eventually the guitar. In conclusion, I had 0 question correct and I thought 10 questions to ask were not enough. However, I thought it was very helpful activity for me to keep thinking of the answer with the hints.
After combining all the written yes or no answers with the additional hints, I could keep think of what the answers would be, even though it was not correct. Next time, it would be better to set the category to narrow it down easier
The next activity we had was making a story, assuming that I am in the 3 days holiday and I am now in the second day, with using 5 pictures chosen. After telling the story, we all said the reason why we chose the place for the travel. Surprisingly, most of the people chose the place because it was the best traveling place they have been for, and so did I. I chose the pictures based on what I did during the trip and it was not difficult for me to make the story because the reasonable incidents came out in my mind for making the coherent story. Unfortunately, I forgot it was a second day in the period I was telling the story, so I said all the incidents occurred during the travel in past tense. Later, the host told me that I should have said in past tense for the first day, present tense for the second day, and future tense for the last day. So, we decided how about making a new story by using one picture each. Two people first told about what they have done yesterday, and two people including me told what I am doing right now, and the remaining two told us what they are planning to do tomorrow. Since the pictures were so various I was concerned how to connect the story, but it was able to make one orderly coherent story because everyone tried their best to make the story make sense. Associating the story by using limited number of pictures was not that easy but it was helpful to improve my skill to make up the story and speak what I have made up by just looking at the pictures, and practice the past, present and future tense. However, we had still time left after the activity was done, so I thought it would be better to manage the time limit next time.
