TPR

TPR should create an easy learning environment and the target of the teaching is the beginning learner. The goal of the TPR teaching method is to let the learners learning L2 in the way they learned their native language, just like an infant acquires its native language.

Q1: What are the goals of teachers who use TPR?

TPR was developed in order to reduce the stress people feel when studying foreign languages and thereby encourage students to persist in their study beyond a beginning level of proficiency.

Q2: What is the role of the teacher？ What is the role of the students?

The teacher is the director of all students’ behavior and the students are imitators of her nonverbal model.

Q3: What are some characteristics of the teaching/ learning process?

The first phase of the lesson is the teacher making modeling, and the second part of the lesson is that these same students demonstrate that they can understand the commands by performing them alone and teacher could repeat his or her oral command for several times and let the students be familiar with the vocabularies and then naturally speak them out.

Q4: What is the nature of student-teacher interaction? What is the nature of student-student interaction?

First the teacher interacts with the whole group verbally and with individual students, and the students respond nonverbally. Later on the students become more verbal and the teacher responds nonverbally.

Q5: How are the feeling of the students dealt with?

One of the primary ways this is accomplished is to allow learners to speak when they are ready and teachers should avoid pushing the students to speak and make the language learning as enjoyable as possible.

Q6: How is language viewed? How is culture viewed?

Just like the way the acquisition of the native language, the oral modality is primary. Culture is the lifestyle of people who speak the language natively.

Q7: What areas of language are emphasized? What language skills are emphasized?

Vocabulary and grammatical structures are emphasized over other language areas and they should be embedded within imperatives.

Q8: What is the role of the students’ native language?

TPR is usually introduced in the student’s native language.

Q9: How is evaluation accomplished?

Teacher could accomplish their evaluation to the students immediately through watching how the students react to the commands and could clearly see if the students had master the vocabularies and sentences.

Q10: How does the teacher respond to student errors?

It is normal that students made errors when they first begin speaking. Teachers should be tolerant of them and only correct major errors.

Voice Thread

The Voice Thread provides a forum for teachers and students to communicate and interact with each other  in a dynamic and interesting method. The teacher can provide students with various topics along with interesting pictures, and students could comment and learn from this topic and picture. Also the teacher could record his or her teaching directions orally and it provides students with an opportunity to learn both visually and aurally.

I commented on Wenjing's Voice Thread and Ye's Voice Thread. By commenting on Wenjing's Voice Thread, I commented my point of view to teach with or by music and I like her Voice Thread because she  utilizes the Voice Thread as a discussion forum. Ye's Voice Thread is very interesting and inspiring. She raises a discussion about different teaching styles in 21st century.

My Voice Thread is to provide the learners with two interesting cartoon pictures and I would like my students to choose one of the picture to comment by using as many as possible adjectives. I intend to practice Students' adjectives using by using the Voice Thread.

ePals: collaborate globally

I think ePals help teachers to create authentic opportunities for our students to talk, share, learn and collaborate with their classmates and other students around the world. And also I think ePals could help our students to get a glance at other countries’ culture and give them a chance to practice their English skills in authentic, natural and spontaneous ways.

EPals is like a window that could lead students to the more authentic language context and actually “touch” the language or really know someone who is at the other corner of the world using the language everyday!

On the ePals webpage you can have a lot of opportunities like search by projects and then find some interesting topic you would like to engage to. Or you can collaborate with a classroom by searching by country or searching by project. If you are a teacher, you can find a lot of useful resources such as you can see various teachers’ work in various topics. One can even search by families and get to know what other culture’s families look like.

All in all, ePals is a wonderful forum that can allow teachers and students all over the world to collaborate together.

photo by: mtsofan

Photo stories and comic strips

Photo stories : A street cat.




Comic strips:

I would incorporate the Animoto into my future teaching more often. Because it can grab students attention and make the lesson more interesting!

Comic strips is also interesting but it is not very practical in teaching.

Digital storytelling

  Digital storytelling is the practice of combining narrative with digital content, including images, sound and video, to create a short movie, typically with a strong emotional component. Just like the Bookr we have made, the Bookr is a kind of digital storytelling that could allow the students to see it online with picture explanation and text. I think because storytelling involves a lot plots and by digital storytelling the teacher could give the students a deep understanding of what the teacher is talking about and provide them with visual aid at the same time. Nowadays, many schools expose the instructors and students to storytelling and this method really facilitate various learning styles.


  In the future, I would incorporate storytelling into my teaching but not too much, I mean I will not give the students everyday or every week homework in digital storytelling method. But I will use digital storytelling occasionally, in order to give my students a new taste of the learning method and make them get interested in my teaching material! Also I will hold a group work by letting the students make an overall digital storytelling book. Just like the 7 things you should know about digital storytelling "Digital stories let students express themselves not only with their own words but also in their own voices, fostering a sense of individuality and of owing their creations".

typicaltourist

Description of class situation:

  The teacher used the target language in the classroom appropriately and effectively. Because these students are primary English learners, so the teacher did not exert some complicated or hard to understand words, instead her use of English was appropriate to students needs. Especially her illustration words, like demonstrate a grammar, are easy and suitable for the elementary learners.

  Because these are adult learners, the teacher encouraged her students to use their own life experience in the learning process. For example, she asked the students to put plus sign or minus sign to the activities he or her used to do. The teacher modified her teaching methods to suit her students. She diminished the fear of failure by offering activities that are achievable and by paying special attention to the level of challenge presented by exercises. Such as she put forward the easy question to the students to encourage them to take part into the on-class activity and she encouraged them to talk with each other.

  Also I think the activities chosen to achieve the objectives were effective. The time allotted for activities was appropriate. The amount of teacher talk and students talk was appropriate.

  Grammar is a little abstract to primary learners, but the teacher vividly put the easy but inspiring activity into her teaching process and made everyone participating in it and thinking actively. The teacher divided her attention among students appropriately. Also the teacher was well prepared and she made a good interaction with students. Also she is flexible, for example, when talked about that everyone eats ice creams in the winter she quickly change her question to another items. She integrated cultural instruction into class activities. For example, after talking about the snowman she told students something(which I cannot hear clearly)

  But I think she could better improve her teaching method. For example, a little use of audio-visual technical materials would be better for learners’ understanding.

Classroom atmosphere

  Students’ participation was active and lively. The class atmosphere was warm, open and accepting. The teacher was sensitive to students’ difficulties and abilities.

Q2: The learning aims did not made clear to the students at the beginning of the class.

Q3: The aim of instructing students to understand the grammar is the preponderance aim. There are many aims during the teaching process, including aim of let all the class students participate in the activity and make an easy environment of language learning, and aim of let every students speaking in the class to make them familiar with each other and practice oral speaking on the class. But the preponderance aim is still the grammar, to let the students acknowledge the grammar.

Q4: The teacher gradually communicated and clarified the aims to the students, by holding an activity that let all the students participate in.

Q5: I think that she won’t tell me about the specific aims, only the general one. The specific aims are changing during the process of teaching according to the feedback of the students. For instance, in the video the teacher asked students do they eat ice-cream in the winter and all of the students replied yes, but the teacher suppose that maybe one or two students may reply no so that she could make a negative sentence according to the answer. Then she quickly changed her aim and made other sentences. That is a tiny example of the on-changing specific aims. As a teacher, she probably won’t tell me the plans she had.

Q6: Teachers should let the students know the general aim of the class not the specific one but in the general. In this way, the students could have some expectations of the class and adjust their minds to the coming knowledge. I don’t think this is level-dependent. Teachers should give students hope or expectation of their learning. For example, in the long run, a student can achieve some certain improvement after having several times of class. A teacher should let the students know the general picture of the class, and schedule the specific procedure of the instruction.

Q7: I think the students need to know where the teacher is going in a general direction but the students should not know how the teacher intends to illustrate the knowledge. Because let the students be curious about the teaching procedure is a way to prevent them for getting bored from the class and let them always interested in the class. 

P1030967

P1030967, a photo by T100Timlen on Flickr.