Thinking About English Before Bede

This is just a little reflection of the week's lessons and how my intentions at the beginning of the week succeeded or failed. This week was a bit of an awkward one in that Mon/Tues I covered a couple classes for a co-teacher, then Wed I started a new afternoon job teaching business English to adults. I must say, after Monday, teaching my old students for one class was outstanding! Unfortunately I didn't think to record the class until it was about finished. I didn't have a lessons plan as I was just filling in, but I had one of the best sessions with the university students I have ever had. It helped that they were actually excited to have me back in the classroom, and they were really great, despite their proficiency level, about helping me to talk very little. That made me feel a lot better after the morning class was a bit of a nightmare. Tuesday was all around better in that I kept my morning class pretty motivated to speak up, and they did a fairly decent job at discussing the reading material and footage for the week. The next evening class was not as great as monday, I think b/c there were more students in the class, but still a pretty solid discussion. Uni on Wed/Thurs was smooth enough, although some students kept coming in late, but the challenge of the week has been learning the new business classes.Speaking class is straightforward enough, except I feel the book for class is bland, and the class is only 50 minutes, so not really enough time for 14 students to discuss a lot in depth. The real challenge for that class will be how i set up lessons, and incorporating enough useful material and activity to keep them interested. Writing will be simple. Today was solid b/c I we talked about some introduction questions, then they interviewed each other in English for a writing assignment. It is refreshing to give group or pair work and actually hear them speaking L2 to each other. So as long as my brain doesn't fall apart from commuting to COEX  everyday, these classes will help a lot in evaluating my teaching in multiple environments.

............ post REFLECTIONS on your BLOG... that's what it is here for..........

Weekly Objective .... CI style

Part of my goal this week will be to incorporate a little more group response and collaboration into class discussions this week. My hope is that students will communicate with each other in L2 while I am able to connect with individual groups for a few moments. I have already had my Monday morning class, and it wasn't very successful. There were some issues before class, so I wasn't able to begin class until later than I had hoped, so I had to rush through some of the material to keep on schedule. I ended up with half the time for group communication than I wanted, but most groups seemed to participate fairly well in English. Hopefully the rest of the week will go a little more smoothly, and I can incorporate a little more time into nurturing my student's ability to communicate with each other. Another goal  is limiting CD questions only to comprehension checks, and even at that, I want to make sure I am following up on any of those with some kind of referential question where possible. I think as far as steering students to what information they need for the mid-term project, I need to make sure I cover points I should, but have them responding with their own thoughts or interpretation as much as possible...

Paper Reflection

Immediately after the lessons from Saturday, and examining my transcripts I felt overwhelmed by what I consider to be a lack of effective teaching on my part. So being approached to complete an essay on some aspect of research involving my teaching, I wanted to see if altering my lessons in the following week by incorporating more variety in initiation and feedback, I could help bring about more open communication from my students. Breaking habits ain't all that easy. After recording a few days worth of lessons, I have been able to change a few things about my feedback that helps keep student input at the forefront of the classroom. But there is always room for improvement, and I feel like I have an empty warehouse to fill in with things I could incorporate. Now comes the tedious process of transcribing all the necessary bits I want to use to compare my teaching style. I think seeing it on paper will give me a clearer sense of how to narrow my topic, and quickly build some support around with I can start building a paper.

Radio Program of English Language

Regional Linguistics

This is a short clip from a program called "Journeys in English". Anyone who wants a copy can talk to me on  Saturdays. Forgive the looping ocean waves, as I had to make a video long enough to hear all of the track sample.   I will post more in the near future.

Waking to thoughts of teaching practice

Yesterday evening I had the opportunity to fill in for a friend at an elementary academy. It is the first time I have taught young kids since I started reading all of this material and I woke up this morning thinking about a couple ways that I teach different audiences. I think with kids, I am a much kinder instructor than with older students. My feedback is hardly ever explicit error correction, and I am always trying to coax answers from them in as positive a way as possible.With my university students, I am a bit harsh. I say no way more and am more forward in correcting their mistakes. I think this is because my own preferences in learning or doing some activity. I much prefer someone get to the point and tell me I am screwing up when I make a mistake. If i immediately understand my error, I am much more prone to think about how to solve it, and it sticks with me longer. Next month I start some extra business classes with adults. I am curious how my initial method of handling them will be different from young learners and university students, especially after hopefully gaining some knowledge from our material.

Split myself in two

Well,  just finished picking through my transcripts for CI features and watching my video recording for the 20th time. I honestly don't know what to think. I found that I certainly repeat and a lot, which according to Xie's article is the most common approach, but I sound like a broken record. I do rephrase quite a bit as well in hopes that students will understand different ways to express meaning. Oddly enough, I don't realize that I am doing those things when I do them. It is interesting to find out that the things I do and say in class have been categorized and studied, but after reading those articles, I am a little confused about what works best. There seemed to be a rebuttal for every success study for each of the techniques. So for now, seeing as how I have a new kind of class, and my students have never taken a literature class before, I am going to have to do a lot of trial and error experimentation in class. I want to still focus on major themes in these novels, but I also want to get the students leading the discussion as much as possible. I want to try to incorporate as many of the questioning techniques as possible just to see which ones work well for my particular group of students. Feedback is actually another area I should certainly be more consistent about. I find myself using more explicit correction with students who are less like to participate and more clarification requests with students I know will talk. I think I have this completely backwards and am probably hindering the learning capabilities of the former student.I think when students start to discuss themes from the novel, instead of right or wrong answers, this will be a bot easier to mend.

This is a link to my recorded lesson from earlier in the week. I have had the chance now to edit it a bit, work out my transcript, and do some evaluation with both Richards & Lockhart, and the Xie and Wals articles. I thought I could pick it apart pretty well on my own, but these articles just helped me destroy my teaching.....doomed.

http://youtu.be/RTbcs9HNMP8

Transcript....
well nevermind. I have to go back to my office computer and re-save it as a doc file.  thanks bill gates for making life easier!

Microteach 1 - Preview

http://youtu.be/kBazhcG2v_4

Finally got the video to load!!!

After having taught the warm up lesson four times this week, there are two major things I Have to think about. First is the nature of my teaching, and approaching the class discussions. When I recorded the lessons, I sat down and made a list of some things I felt I needed to improve. I feel like I can be a little harsh with my students. I think because there are twenty of them, and it is difficult at times to keep them from chatting among themselves in Korean, i have to be a bit authoritative at times. I am the only man in a room full of young women, trying to get them to think creatively to expand their mind both individually and collectively, but still maintain some power over them. I know the ones that are friendly with me outside of the classroom are always more likely to talk, and I try to build upon that notion with all of them, but I don't want it to become something they abuse as if I am their equal. So i need to figure out a better way to incorporate their ability to promote discussion, and allow myself to be far enough removed to still keep it relatively centered on the main lesson.I was very happy with most of their participation, and it seems to be overall much better than before.
 Second, I need to create some creative techniques for group work, and dividing the students into feasible group for the occasional class. The real challenge is that there are a number of cliques and getting them to work with someone outside of is is a challenge. But if I leave them in their circle of friends for class, they will revert back to using Korean too easily. I may incorporate some class leader positions and have preset groups divided in order to make a balance mix of students with different proficiency levels.This way, their group leader with greater skills can help keep groups focused on using English while i am surveying the entire class. Another thing I might consider is some kind of point/reward system. I have used this with kids on several occasions, but i wonder if the process would be demeaning at all to university level students.I do know though that if I work on more positive feedback, or at least lead them into thinking deeper with better questions, I can manage the classe more successfully.

Warm-up Lesson 1 Reflection

The initial idea for the warm up is to introduce the students to the life of a writer and how her personal background and environment might shape her work. Most of my students, 22 year old females in a beauty arts program, have had little or no exposure to literature in English but we are trying to broaden their scope with a project class centered on classic literature and try to find themes that might relate to their own existence. For this first exercise, I created a fairly simple reading of 5 paragraphs that focus on Jane Austen's life and social norms from her time. I have been incorporating vocabulary from TOEIC lessons as much as possible, as they are studying it in their other classes during the semester. This will be a pretty straightforward reading and comprehension review. I assume my function will be asking various types of questions to help the students understand the material. I feel most of them will have few problems, but I want to focus on four or five key details of Austen's life and times that will play a heavy role in her novel. These themes will be the focus of several class discussion, and featured in their midterm exam as well.The only area I am concerned with this lesson is the student's willingness to participate in a fairly simple question and answer session. I had the same group in a grammar class two semesters ago, and certain classes were a nightmare. I have to admit, it was a real challenge keeping them in participation mode in many of the classes.

Warm up Lesson 1

An Introduction to Jane Austen

Open: Pre-Read - Student receive hand-out to read for 10 minutes while I add students to chat 

group.Have students note any words they are unfamiliar with or not sure of.

Intro: Group Read - Call on student to read first paragraph, have student choose next reader.

Clarify: Vocabulary Check - Cover any words in the 3 paragraphs student may not know.

Comprehension: Ask questions to review the material for the reading. Try to have students make connections with questions.

            Main Ideas: Austen's writing, marital status, era, economic status, means of survival

Evaluation: Quiz - Administer 10 question quiz to check students ability to grasp information.