Class Reflection: March 17

One thing which I usually notice whenever I teach here is that although my content of the teaching might be rich and comprehensive, it does not seem to be fan for my audience. There might be several factors behind it. One factor might be that I do not have the skill of creating fanny environment while teaching. Second, it might be becuase my audience are not the real audience who need what I offer them as a lesson. This means they know what I know about teaching and probably even more than me. The third reason might be that I may not give myself enough time to plan before I teach. This means I may not prepare as much as others do. Nevertheless, over all, I have seen a very much progress in my knowlege of teaching, and a saticefactory change in my practice of teaching so far. I would say teaching is more of an art and experience than knowledge or theory.

Reading Reflection: March 16

This weekend and monday was so stressful for me for I had for the presentation of 90 pages of reading and finish UnitPlan. On the one hand, the work was too much. On the other hand, I procrastinated it, so I was over loaded with the work. However, I did it finally. Here I would like to post the outline of the readings that Lillian and I prepared.

Principles for teaching reading skills
1. don’t overlook a specific focus on reading skills
2. use techniques that are intrinsically motivating
3. balance authenticity and readability in choosing texts
4. encourage the development of reading strategies
5. include both bottom-up and top-down techniques
6. follow the SQ3R sequence
7. plan on pre-reading, during-reading, and after-reading phases
8. build an assessment aspect into your techniques


Content Reading and Writing: Pre-reading, During-reading, and Post-reading
Effects of text structure on comprehension and memory/ what is the effect of text structure on comprehension and memory?
1. Cohesive Ties/Signal Words
2. Headings and Subheadings
3. Teaching Text Structure
Strategies to promote reading comprehension
Pre-reading strategies: developing motivation, purpose, and background knowledge/ How to develop motivation for the target reading? What is the role of having a purpose for reading? How can you activate or create background knowledge of students about the topic?
1. Making purposes clear
2. Field trips and films
3. Simulation games
4. Experiments
5. Developing vocabulary before students read a text
6. Structured overviews
7. Preview guides
8. Anticipation guides
During-reading strategies: monitoring comprehension/ How can students monitor their comprehension during reading?
1. Using heading and subheadings
2. Directed reading-thinking activity
3. Vocabulary strategies during reading
4. Using clustering to develop vocabulary in context
5. Jigsaw procedure
6. Learning logs
Post-reading strategies:/ What strategies demonstrate students’ comprehension of a text and what will reinforce the information they have received after the reading?
1. Completing a graphic organizer (e.g., table)
2. Expanding or changing a semantic map created earlier
3. Listening to a lecture and comparing information from the text and the lecture
4. Ranking the importance of information in the text based on a set of sentence providedAnswering questions that demonstrate comprehension of the text, require the application of text material, demand a critical stance on text information, or oblige students to connect text information to personal experience and opinions.

Class Reflection March 2

In today's class, we exchanged some opinions about what should be focused on first, accuracy or fluency. As I also said in class both should be considered in everyday plannings as the students need to receive the target language through modeling and analysing and then imitate it, produce it, and make it second nature through drilling in order to get to the level of fluency.

Also, the peer-review of the final portfolio artifacts was good. It helped me see how I did preparing my first artifact for the assignment. On top of that, I learned about others works which broadens my insight of reviewing and critically reading others works as a teacher. That is all what I could say for this class reflection, sorry if it is short

Reading Reflection March 2

In the H. D. B. (p.324) the author makes and excellent point clear to the readers. It talks about the affect of losing face in uttering something nonsense or incomprehensible in class which is one of the most significant hindrances that learners face. It gives two equivalent quotations of an old poem in my language which says " In the nature of the wise people selling one's self is not a condition. Either say something wise or else keep silence." This and what the book quotes are giving the same message. However, it is not applicable to learning environment at all as the author also implies so. In fact, any learning environment, especially language classrooms are the places where mistakes and errors must be welcomed by the whole class. If a learner do not expose his/her language here, I guarantee that he will never learn a second or foreign language. A process which takes people over a decade to reach to be able to communicate. As there was an English Speaking program where in its introduction it was talking about three principles of learning a language one of which was that learners of a language must swallow their pride in order to succeed in learning the language.

This book also emphasizes that "Our job as teachers is to provide the kind of warm embracing climate that encourage students to speak, however halting or broken their attempts may be." Unfortunately, some emotionally sensitive teachers might not be able to take this point into considerations. Some may say how about advanced level learners or student-teachers like us. I would say it is highly possible that even NN teachers make mistakes or lack some communication shortcomings let a lone those whose learning is in progress.

In regards to children and adult learning differences, it is of great importance to know that children of more kinesthetic than adults are. Children are more dependant on the motivation that are created for them to learn, but adults are self motivated in learning. Children learn things when it makes authentically and practically sense to them whereas adults can learn even through theories. Children do not seek logic behind learning a language, but adults refuse to do so and etc.

Class Reflection Feb 23

In this class, scoring of the NNS was a good practicing of determining the proficiency level of a student based on a holistic rubric.

Moreover, since I have never thought children, whatever see about how to teach young children interests me. So, I liked the idea of using those dolls and pupits for teaching children. It is an authentic and meaningful way of teaching English to children as they are very kinesthitic, and active group of learners.

I am sure it is fun to teach children, but for teachers who are not very much patient it might be very difficult job than to teach adults.