Class on Monday night went well and it began with Charlie and Kizuna presenting about the subject of oral communication. They went over some of the problems that students may have when learning a second language such as rhythm, stress, and intonation. I liked hearing Kizuna's personal experience with the above areas of difficulty. We then discussed if a non-native speaker and a near native had the same oral speech. I think some non-native speakers are at an advantage, especially at the academic level because some do not have bad habits that native speakers do. We then got into groups and discussed a prompt that we were given. I was with Lillian and Chao and we discovered that we did not care a whole lot about the gowns that were worn at the Oscars (or was it the Academy Awards). We then talked about what we did over the weekend and what Lilian was going to do the upcoming weekend. Chao then said she has never flown and we got to talking about the word 'flown'. It is interesting how conversations begin. Charlie asked if we thought there were some differences in the way men and women communicate and I had never thought about it before but there were some very valid points brought up. I thought Kizuna and Charlie did a good job and with the time constraint they were in they actually handled it very well. I think I would have been a little stressed if I knew I only had 5 minutes to cram all that material in.
We then went to the G.L.L. and were going to watch a movie clip and analyze the speech of E.L.L. students but for the majority of the class the video did not work. We had the opportunity to go to the stacks in the back of the library and seek out materials that could be used in the classroom. We were suppose to think of activities that could get the students to speak. Mariya, Chao and I picked a ton of materials and I think I made Mariya go crazy with all the materials I kept picking up and wanting to use. We finally ended up with some really good materials, especially the organ suit that I wanted to keep!
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I really like the organ suit that you wore that day and thought it was a great realia to teach students about body parts. As a student i have always enjoyed the real objects that my teachers bring to class, and i think many students do, too. Therefore, in my opinion, as language teachers we should make good use of these powerful teaching aids whenever possible.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the presentation comments Stephanie! I think the time constraint (or well the fact that Kizuna and I didn't have a watch) affected our last activity greatly, but it got people talking and that was our first objective. I agree w/ Mai about the suit. It was really one of the only props that I thought would be effective.
ReplyDeleteYeah,I agree with you. Aaron and Kizuna's presentation were very well done. It was very enjoyable to me because I was able to relate to the topic. The difficulties of ELL students are what I hope that many other students are aware of.
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