This activity was literally planning a trip like a planner in travel agency.
So 5 people was made into two groups and I was a member of a group with 3 people.
We had to pick a continent first and then, we could make plan for travel using many countries as we like. So we picked Europe and we made a plan to go Germany and France which were the countries that all three people wanted to go. So we had to make a theme of a trip in order to settle what activities to include. What I thought was to see historical places or famous places where we could learn and feel interesting things that could be done only in outside of Korea. However, two members wanted to settle a theme as a healing and resting trip which I thought inadequate with unique feature of those country. However, I tried to participate in an activity and we were able to make plan and present in front of everyone.
I thought this activity would help me interact freely with group members to negotiate while making a plan for a trip. While we ask others opinions about a place you want to visit and things that you want to eat and answering, participants could practice specific form of sentence. Also, since there arent any regulations about the format, it was a good chance to practice various types of sentence.
Never have I ever Game!
I was a host of this activity called Never have I ever, Game! I tried to make atmosphere of an activity since it was our last day of doing material hosting. So I came up with this activity which I learned famous for ice breaking. The rule of the game is that each member in a group announces something that the have never done and rest of the people who have done something have to put down a finger.
I picked this activity since I thought it would be fun and it would be a great opportunity for everyone to practice a sentence form of Never have I ever which I thought is bit unfamiliar to students. Also, by thinking what they havent done throughout their lives, they could think grammatical function of present perfect which indicates all the way from the past to the present.
However, as a host, there were some parts that I felt unsatisfying. Though I thought it would take much time for everyone to fold all of their fingers, actually it took shorter than I expected. Also, since everyone had to think of things that they havent done but everyone except her may have done, I felt some members felt headache thinking about it.
So I changed the rule later. For example, instead of making sentence using Never have I ever, I allowed them to use I have never ~ later. In addition, instead of announcing what they have never done, I changed the rules into announcing what they have done. At last, we change into making sentence about the present situation instead of the past.
Though it was confusing, group members were so kind in that they understood the rules well and joined the activities well together.
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Anonymous
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RE: Teaching Listening and Speaking (Spring 2019) - Week 13 Reflections for Amazing
This week, at the first turn, Seo-young was the host of the material named Never have I ever Game! The game was done by each person saying something they had never done before with beginning the sentence as a phrase Never have I ever or I have never. Then, all the relevant persons should drop a finger according to each statement, and a person who drops her all fingers would be a loser. Also, the game kept going by that person starting again.
The material had very useful sides in practices of using the present perfect tense. We could use a variety of inflectional forms of present perfect tense repetitively. For example, we could come up with lots of situations like experiences or results where we could use the present perfect tense. For her instruction, it was quite clear, but I was kind of confused with which form we had to use, have never p.p, or have p.p. However, it was not a very big problem because we could grasp what was right in the procedure. Also, I was very happy with my performance in the material. It was because I wasnt a loser at all. For this, I had to think of seriously what only I would have never done. Through this time, I could improve my skillfulness to use the very tense far more freely than before. I think I could get a sense for the tense.
I also suggest this was devised for the pedagogical goal. In common life, we usually dont have time to do this game as long as we intend to do it. Her pedagogical purpose was very successful because it was focused on the drill & rote training for those who dont get properly used to the perfect tenses in English.
2. Planning a Trip
In the second turn of the day, Yu-jeong was the host of the material named Planning a trip! Firstly, we divided into 2 groups. Next, we selected which country we would take a trip, and plan it perfectly. Lastly, after planning, we had time to introduce each traveling plan to each other.
The hosting generated very useful practices not only in the communication area but also in the researching area. It was because, so as to plan the trip, we should make simple research for flights, accommodation, tourist attractions, food, and so on. The task instruction was very clear because there was a separate paper for us to write our plan concretely, besides the instruction paper. Also, I was so pleased to make my own trip plan. I always had had a wish to go traveling to Germany, so I suggested it to be put into our group plan. As Id had a wish to go there, so I already had lots of information for traveling to Germany. Thus, we put the café tour in Berlin into the plan, and I was very satisfied with it. This material addressed speaking strategies like a convincing skill for doing planning in each group and chronological storytelling, which we used in the time to introduce our plan to each other. Hence, I could practice and improve my communicative skill in those areas, which I had thought of myself not to be good enough at.
I think this hosting was designed surely for real-world goal because, in daily life, weve had lots of time so far to plan our trip, and were going to have this in the not too distant future. Additionally, as I told our group members, again, before I graduate from this university, I really wish to realize this plan in the future.
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Anonymous
Date:
RE: Teaching Listening and Speaking (Spring 2019) - Week 13 Reflections for Amazing
This week, I prepared a new speaking activity which was developed than the first material hosting, discussion and presentation activities. At first, I tried to make a more difficult activity like debate, but since we had two debate activities last week, I decided to make an activity with relatively easy informal discussion and presentation activity. However, discussion and presentation require more advanced level of English skills than last activity I prepared, so I targeted the students who can freely express their opinion and explain their plan to other people.
This activity was to plan their travel package products and then persuade others to sell the package. Two or three people in a group did this activity, and they can discuss through the process of planning their travel packages, and they can make presentation through introducing and explaining the travel products they plan. In order to reduce the amount of time students agonized over, I prepared several pieces of paper with names of continents and had them randomly selected. I gave a travel plan form, which became a guide for students to discuss effectively and wrote down the result of discussions with friends in that form. In the form of planning a trip, there were various detailed contents which are where to travel, what to eat, where to accommodate, the reason why the group choose that country and those tourist attractions, and estimated cost.
The reason why I planned this activity was to encourage students to participate in the activity using familiar and interesting theme, travel. The purpose of this activity was to make a natural speaking exercise through discussing, planning, and presenting in English with friends. Therefore, I needed to check the students use English well or not. In addition, one group chose Europe countries such as Germany, and France, and the other group chose Asia countries such as Vietnam and Thailand, which were really well planned and detailed in a short time. Also they were enough to explain their travel package.
In the course of the activity, I was able to find a point to improve. One group divide the parts when making the presentation, and the other group made presentation by one person. I wished I had added a rule to divide the parts when making presentation because I wanted to make them tell something when making presentation. Overall, I think the goal was clear and meaningful, and the output was also meaningful. Also, the students played the activity interestingly than I expected.
Never have I ever Game!
Seo Young introduced a new speaking activity with interesting title of the activity. The title of the activity is never have I ever game, which can be inferred that we will use the phrase never have I ever~ to make a full sentence. As expected, we needed to create a complete sentence using the phrases never have I ever and I have never. Also, if anyone experience the statement of the speaker, we should drop a figure. It was similar to a game played with friends in Korea, so it was not difficult to understand the rules. She also gave instructions and various examples of negative present perfect.
This activity had a pedagogical purpose in that certain forms of grammar (present perfect experience usage) could be used repeatedly. I remember this activity was proper to learn grammar and speaking naturally, with less pressure because students could really enjoy this game. I participated in the game quite well, making complete sentence by using never have I ever. At first, I used never have I ever phrase, but it was difficult to pronounce fast, so I used it in a different phrase I have never
Through this game, I tried to find something only I had not experienced, but it was really hard. I made sentences such as Never have I ever pierced my ears. At first or second round, it was easy to tell something only I had not experienced, but I had to keep looking for something else because the game went on until a students ten fingers were folded. In this regard, there is something that needs to be improved on this activity. Students felt that it was not easy to find more than three things that I was not the only one to experience, and it was difficult to continue several rounds because one round ended earlier than we thought. Therefore, host changed the rules to a game in the middle of playing about what I have only experience, and it also made students be able to practice I have p.p.~. Sadly, we have some time left to play this way and we played another game. I said Korean students usually enjoy this game, so we played origin version of the game, which describes the appearance or characteristics of a certain person who have her finger folded.
Overall, this activity was an interesting and exciting activity with clear goals. I did not think that the game we usually play could be applied to English speaking activities. As students knew the rules of the game, we were able to participated in the game more actively and practice the similar phrase repeatedly, so I felt confident when I use the phrase in the future. Although there were a slight lack related to time management and problem which was students needed to play the same game for 30 minutes using only one phrase under the initial rule, I think that this activity was proper speaking activity to educate grammar for intermediate students.
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Anonymoussssssss
Date:
RE: Teaching Listening and Speaking (Spring 2019) - Week 13 Reflections for Amazing
What we had for a first activity was planning a trip hosted by Youjung. This activity was simply planning a whole trip from flight and accommodation to food and tour. We had to choose the actual region and landscape, so searching an internet was allowed. Harin and I paired up in one team and we had to choose more than one country in Asia to travel. As we were planning by two of us, cooperation interaction was essential. There was no trouble in choosing the country Thailand and Vietnam. We looked up for the internet for most of the information since both of us had never been to those countries. During the whole activity, the interaction and consultation was needed between me and Harin. Also, writing and talking about reasons for every section, such as the reason why you choose the countries, foods and landscapes were more challenging. If that thing was not specified in the instruction, we might have been neglected that part and just planned the trip without obvious purpose. Thinking about the reasons made our plan trip more meaningful and our communication more productive. For about 20 minutes straight, we kept talking about the trip plan and it wasnt tough at all for me because just even planning to travel even if it is fake is such a happy thing to do. I enjoyed planning our trip together. We had no conflicts, but I just hoped that more time was given because comparing to Thailand we had less information for Vietnam, so the proportion of the information was not that equal. We couldve looked up for more info if more time was given. We divided our part for the presentation and told other teammates our successful trip planning. This activity truly made our communication skills improved.
2.Never have I ever
The second activity was never have I ever game hosted by seoyoung. I was actually familiar with the game because I saw the ad doing this game by Kardashians from Calvin Klein, so extra instruction was not needed. I thought that this activity was really interesting, because the purpose of this game is to be as creative as possible, bringing out our prior experiences. I should keep thinking about what I have done that others might not. However, I thought that we had less opportunities to say because we mostly spoke out about one or two sentences as my turn came around, and that eventually made the game finish too early. Thus, I thought that it would be better to have a short talk for every utterance. For example, if I say, Never have I ever eaten Tiramisu, I could talk about the reason I hate tiramisu, or instead what kinds of food I like the most. These kinds of short talks may make the activity more meaningful and have more chance to improve the speaking skills. Still, I liked that after we finished the game, we continued the game with the different version such as changing negative (never have I ever) to affirmative (I have an experience of blah blah). Overall, I think that it is a suitable game for learners to improve speaking skills, and I really enjoyed it, but it would be better to have more time to speak.
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Anonymous
Date:
RE: Teaching Listening and Speaking (Spring 2019) - Week 13 Reflections for Amazing
The first activity was hosted by Yujeong. Participants were divided into two, and were given a piece of paper to write down the travel plan. In the paper, there were various categories such as the country I want to visit, the reason why, theme of the trip, tourist attraction, etc. After a short discussion, our team got into a conclusion that we should choose Germany and France. The reason why was that all of us havent had any experience of visiting Europe, and just wanted to make a plan as hollow as we can so that we can get vicarious satisfaction in the middle of the exam week. On the process of searching for the tourist attractions and even finding the accomodation on AirBnb, I and my teammates found out ourselves using a totally practical type of English. Even though I am a student in TESL, I actually havent had enough opportunities to use English in my daily life except in major classes. Therefore, even though I was used to academic use of English, the casual and informal English wasnt familiar to me.
Through the activity Planning a trip, it was really meaningful in that students were able to think and discuss the topic totally in a real English. However, I think it would have been better if there were more triggers to encourage students to speak and communicate more. Since we spent most of our time on searching the information on google, we couldnt use our speaking time to the fullest. Therefore, if the host have prepared a briefly summarized travel informations and handed them out to the participants, I think we could have saved our times.
Put your fingers down
The second activity was quite familiar for me in that this was which Korean university students frequently enjoy during their Membership Training day or plenty of other events. All of the participants start with all fingers unfold, and should put down their fingers if they have done the thing that the speaker have never done. For instance, if Seoyeong says Never have I ever eaten hamburger, I should put down one of my fingers since I have eaten it.
The participants were able to practice the expression repeatedly so that they could naturally internalize it into their brain. Even though the expression is one of the most frequently used phrase in our daily life, plenty of L2 learners have difficulties using it since it is quite long and unfamiliar. By putting the essential phrase to learn in the fun activity, students can turn the information into a long-term memory as well as not regarding it as study. (Jang, 2013) According to the research conducted by Jang, participants showed much bigger improvement when it comes to speed quiz game than just memorizing the paper with phrases.
I think it would have been better if the host encouraged students to use various phrases more than one. We could intensely practice one phrase repeatedly, however, it would have been better if we could practice more so that we could broaden our mental lexicon.
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Anonymous
Date:
RE: Teaching Listening and Speaking (Spring 2019) - Week 13 Reflections for Amazing
Continuing the second round of our materials hosting, todays class was the last session. To start with, "Planning a trip" was the first task. Here I am describing the material as a "task" since it leaned more towards attaining real-life goals than simply serving for academic purposes. According to what I remember, our host had brought board games for the two previous sessions. Its true that I really enjoyed both of them, yet they were slightly off from real-world settings since we usually never decide who to speak first or which role(s) to play before talking to anyone. Our host, however, showed improvement as of this respect; she gave us the topic "traveling" which people would generally be interested in and let us have the freedom to choose where to go and what to do. This was very close to what we usually do in the real-world just like when we make hotel reservation or purchase a plane ticket. Great job!
Never have I ever Game
Slightly different from the first task we did today, the second one was more like a goal-oriented, pedagogical activity. There were specific goals which were related to "grammar drills"; we had to either use "never have I ever..." or "I have never...". What I want to compliment is the part where our host asked us to fold our fingers when we have previously done the specific activity told by each speaker. In addition to this, we were to come up with own interesting experiences from the past and make others fold as many of their fingers as possible. These altogether made us become more engaged into the activity; we werent simply telling each other what we did or asking if others have the same experience or not. However, as I mentioned in the beginning of this paragraph, this one was less related to real-world practice since we are generally never required to put "never have I ever" or "I have never" in front of every sentence we speak. Nevertheless, our host created overall pleasant environment for our group members. Nice work!
