Week Ten: curriculum & syllabus design, & lesson planning

This week's readings were very informative. For those who have not worked on making a curriculum, or have not made a syllabus yet, these discriptions in the books are very useful introductions to curriculum & syllabus. I liked some of the distinctions made between goals and objectives and the classifications of needs as objective and subjective and their importance in making a curriculum. As it was declared in the books, it is also important to know and make clear distinction between goals a objectives. Afterall, the author points out that even after having carefully made the curriculum, the producers of it may fine a number of flaws when applying it. However, he mentions that a curriculum may not reach perfection unless it is used once.

There was also nice information about different types of syllabuses which was very eye-opening (is this an English expression?) about syllabus designing. I liked the diffintion of the syllabus by the writer in the conclusion of MCM which says "I suggest that syllabus design is that part of curriculum development which is concerned with selecting, grading, intergrating, and justifying the contenct of the crriculum." (p. 63). In addition his suggestion about the integrated syllabus designing seems more logical because it contains most key pionts from all types of the syllabuses.

In the lesson planning part, something which attracted me was gaging the difficulty and individual differences. I think these two points are critical in making the lesson successful.

Week 9 Class Reflection

In this class beside other things, the idea of teachable moment ,which is a new concept for me, draw my attention. I think it is a very good technique to teach a student(s) what they cannot normally notice or learn in a regular situation. I think first, it requires a highly skillful teacher who should be able to recognize those specific critical situations where a student(s) can be taught something that they wouldnt normally notice or learn. Second, I think that how to teach in that moment and how to relate it to the current situation of the class so that other students can also benifit from that point is very important too. Third, the teacher should also make a judgement if that matter is worth to spend the time that he/she alotted for the main lesson. Overall, I really liked the idea of "Teachable Moments" and I think having considered the above conditions, a teacher can use this opportunity to teach students very critical things.

Week 9 Reading Reflection

This weeks reading content was very infromative, from which I learned many things. Although all of them can not be remembered, most of the pionts that touch my past and current experiences can be remembered better than others.

I like the idea that the teacher should make dicisions based on experience and intuition than knowledge. Mostof the science and knowledge that we have in the world, the milions of books that has been written on thousands of topics are written based on experience then they came to write them and then publish them and today they are called science or knowledge. The point is that dicision making by a teacher can be more effective if it is based on the experience than knowledge as the book indicates. Nevertheless, both complement each other if they are related to each other and used authenticly. I think this is very challenging stage in teaching for novice teachers, who have no experience of teaching in order to make dicisions for most of the things about teaching, but each day is a new experience that makes better the next day lesson.

Once In my country I wanted to make an eight month program of English for Business, I started cullecting some matterials, but I did not know from where to start what should be our curricula, besed on what criteria should I choose and arrange the matterials. After reading this book, I thaught that if I had access to these kind of books I would have been successful in making the program of English for Business. Finally, me and my brother who is an english teacher too made an eight month program as general English language course which my brother is using still in his language center in Kabul. This program is successful but has a lot of gaps and short comings. As soon as go back with all the knowledge, I will make it professionally effective program.

Week Eight, Class reflection

I learned from last class and enjoyed it.
Beside learnning other things, one of the things which realy cought my interest was the video clip of the Vietnami man who was speaking in Amercan accent. He was amazing as he said he learned English through watching American movies.

I wondered how he could learn a language only by watching movies. Later on, I said to my self "Wait !" "Hove you not learned Urdu in this way?" The answer is "yes!". I learned Urdu to that extent that I can almost fully understand, and can talk it to some extent, and even I can read it.

Part of the reason behind this kind of learning is exposure to that language whether willingly or unwillingly, and part of the reason is Motivation. Which means if one is really interested in a language or he/she is exposed to that language, he/she will learn it but in a very long run.

In my case, my father was interested in watching Hindi movies and listening to Hindi songs which was a kind of exposure to this language for me. Then when I was young enough, I was also interested in watching this movies and listening to their songs.

I learned form this that it is really important and effective for ESL esp. for EFL learners who do not have exposure to pragmatics and native communication to watch movies and listen to songs and anything of this kind to improve their oral and aural communicative skills.

Week Eight: Socio-cultural, political, and institutional contexts & When the Teacher is a Non-Native Speaker

Socio-cultural, political, and institutional contexts
One point which was really important in the reading or this week is the importance of culture in learning and teaching. For sure, it is of great importance that students must get acquainted with the culture of the target language in order to understand and be understood in a natural way. This is really important for the students who are immigrants as well as students like me who comes to an English speaking country for higher education. If particular attention is not paid to the culture of the target language, misunderstanding is much likely to happen in communications between NS and NNS.

Similarly, this is significant for NESTs to learn to know about the culture of their students to some extent in order to make the teaching effective and avoid misunderstandings. Furthermore, I think this especially important for NNESTs in EFL contexts to learn about the culture of the English speaking countries in order to be able to understand and teach English effectively to the EFL learners who do not have access to cultural understanding of the target language.

I really liked the guide lines for EFL context that is mentioned in the book to help the EFL teachers provide an opportunity to EFL learners to get involved with the activities that help them learn English pragmatically outside or inside the classroom. One example of that is “form a language club and schedule regular activities” (HDB p. 135). This because in the EFL context like my country English Learners suffer lack of listening to native speakers and the opportunity to be involved in the communicative activities outside the classroom (even inside the classroom).

When the Teacher is a Non-Native Speaker
I think the answer for the question that “is a more proficient speaker a more efficient teacher as well?” Is “Maybe” I think it depends upon the need of the place where the teacher teaches. NESTs are usually more appreciated in EFL contexts rather than ESL contexts only because he/she is a native speaker of the language, no matter how proficient he/she is in teaching. This is due to the need for natural and pragmatically correct way of communication (esp. spoken English) that is usually absent in EFL contexts like in my country Afghanistan. EFL learners need more for a qualified teacher not for a qualified speaker of English. As in HDB, the writer said that in the EFL settings where there is lack of native communicative access, the teacher can improve the communicative skills of the learners through ingaging them into various activities inside and outside classrooms. For example, movies, news, and language labs and clubs where students can be involved with native-like environment.

Week 7: Class Reflection

I liked idea of dividing the class into two groups and asking them questions regarding the readings and giving them rewards. It created sort of fun game and comptition which I enjoyed. I think as the book discussed, it is not good to creat competition when teaching children and teenagers, but it is good I think to plan some competition activities or games for adult classes because usually there is less humor in adult classes.

We talked about differences between children and adult's langauge learning. I think the most important difference is motivation and the factors that affect motivation of the children and adults. Basically, the teacher can have a role in creating motivating children but for adults the teacher does not have an effective role to motivate them. Adults depend on broad and long term motivations (outside class) while children depend on specific and short term motivation (in class). As I said in class, children are not interested in learning a language and does not care about the span it takes him to learn and they can be motivated by only some small rewards from teacher. However, the factors that motivate adults to learn English is many depending on the community or place where they live. For example, Job, Education, Intertainment, Politics, Society, uncertain future need for English Language, and personal interest.

Week seven: Individual differences in second language learning/Teaching Across Age Levels/ Teaching Across Proficiency Levels

Individual differences in second language learning/Teaching Across Age Levels/ Teaching Across Proficiency Levels
Beside other differences described in the book, the discussion of personality impacts on learning the second language is very interesting. I think this is very true that one who is courageous, or out-going will learn a language more quickly than someone who does not take risks or who is not willing to make mistakes.
As in a software, Learn to speak English, there was a saying that the learner must swallow his pride in order to learn a language. In other words, it was saying that learners should not be afraid of making mistakes. Instead, they should be willing to do so in order for learning to take place. Moreover, I liked the part where it says that all tensions do not have negative impact on learning. I think this correct, as I discussed in my other class, it is more likely for people who have tension about doing something to learn faster and be more than
I had a question in my mind that I should find out what those things that are difficult for children to learn are and what those that are hard for adults to learn are. In other words, which language aspects are appropriate for adults to teach, and which language aspects are appropriate for children to teach. This was explained in chapter six “teaching across age levels” which I liked learning about.
About teaching teens, I would agree with some of the ideas but I would also argue that all teens are not alike and where they are raised can also affect the way they think and behave.
The chapter about Teaching Across Proficiency Levels caught my eyes in two parts. First that it allows teachers to talk in the students’ native language in beginning level classes. But still it should be limited because this opportunity will be miss used and will have a negative impact in the long run. The next point is addressed to teachers of advanced levels. It advices the teacher that they should not give the steering wheel of the class to students at all times and in all activities. Rather, teachers should plan and guide and direct students to activities to avoid time and leaning opportunity misuse.

Week 6 Class Reflection

In the class we did several activities one of which was to write how we could apply each principles in class. Everyone wrote something on how they would apply a principle in a ESL class.
Then we attached the flayers on the board and then everyone read each one and put an asterisk on the one they liked. Then, the one with many asterisks would be the winner. I think this was a good example of rewarding for what we have read. however, I think giving long-term rewards would be more effective beside the short-term rewards in motivating the students.

Week six: Teaching by principles & Intrinsic Motivation

The cognative principles discussed in HDB are all segnificant to know. The one which attracted my attention was meaningful learning. From this princeple I learned the fact that meaningful learning is very important and it can happen only if the teachers teaches learners taking their age, background, level of 2nd language professioncy, motivation, interests, and needs. this is because if the teacher do not know his learners well, I think it is less likely for him or her to make the learning happen meaningfully. Besides, the teacher should definitely use various approaches and different tasks to make the learning meaningful. at this point I think students also play an important role in making the new lessons meaningful to themselves and they should be taught how this can happen.

Having read about the interinsic motivation, I relized the there are two types of motivations: intinsic and extrinsic motivations. However, when we talk about it from the scop of ESL classes, it seems that it is very complex. A teacher should find out the ways to motivate students to learn, but how can he do that seems very hard. It is important to find out who is motivated and who is not because the teacher should not choose one way to motivate students. Rather, he/she should find out to relate the lesson or the subject to what each student is interested in, and beside whole class motivation, he/she should give students personal motivation to students.