Microteaching Reflection Tiffany
Before I started to design my lesson plan, I had no idea about what to teach and how to teach. It was really a big deal for me to select teaching materials. Fortunately, the upcoming Christmas Day gave me some inspiration. At first, I would like to use my materials to teach junior high school students because I would like to teach them after I graduated from NCU. However, I found out my lesson might be too difficult for junior high school students so I changed my mind to set my target students level in my lesson plan as senior high. I thought about it for several days and I then decided to use the topic of Christmas to teach reading for senior high school students.
Actually, while I was doing my microteaching, students just interacted well with the teacher, me, and answered questions most of the time. However, I knew that when I become a study teacher, what the situation or responses of students I encounter in real teaching might not be so active. Thus, I think there seems to be still a long way to go and a lot of things to learn to cope with any kind of situations out of my expectation which I might come across in the future even though I still expect that there are some students who are voluntary and willing to respond me. If students are silent when I am teaching in the future, I will look for many possible ways to encourage my students to answer.
All in all, I think I really learn a lot in this practical microteaching and receiving peer comments. In real teaching on the stage, I could realize my good points as well as weakness and try to improve my actual teaching in the future.
Peer Evaluation & Teacher Comments
Most of my classmates mentioned that it’s good for me to provide a clear, detailed, and complete lesson plan, covered with listening, speaking, reading, and writing areas. Besides, I’m glad to hear from most of them that they were interested in my lesson content and gave high praises on my attractive and well-prepared materials. I also think it’s a good idea to combine holidays and English learning, as the teacher commented. Most of the classmates said that my speech and explanations were clear and fluent as well to help them to learn about the topic and useful reading strategies. They also mentioned that to play the songs with music, and to use multimedia resource (the movie trailers) indeed made the lesson more interesting. All in all, I really appreciate their positive comments.
Changes I will make
However, there was also something that I should improve in my teaching. First, I thought I will try to add more eye-contact and smile when I teach next time. Many of them just mentioned that my facile expression was calm but suggested that giving more eye-contact or interaction can help me show more confidence and get student’s attention. I will also try to add more interaction with the classmates in my lesson. I think maybe I can ask students more questions about what they do to celebrate Christmas first before starting the reading main text first to make them feel more interested in the Christmas tradition. Besides, I have to pay more attention on the time limit next time. I will try to give a better control to my teaching time in my future teaching. In addition, I will try to use English definitions to explain the words next time, trying to make the vocabulary part more challenging for my students.
Methods, approaches and techniques
In my microteaching, I used “Grammar Translation” in the explanations of the lyric cloze and “cooperative learning” in reading part by asking them to discuss with group members. In the part of teaching vocabulary, I just explain the vocabulary and grammar in Chinese. Next time I will try to use English to explain the word definitions and try to make the vocabulary part more challenging and interesting for my students. I will try to use some techniques such as objects, collocations, or analyzing vocabulary to help them to memorize the words. I will also encourage them to learn new words in the context and encourage them to guess or applying other reading strategies. In designing this micro teaching, I asked them pre-questions to recall the learners’ central background knowledge related to the topic before reading. Besides, in my teaching, I tried to encourage the students to combine ‘bottom-up” processes (decoding and understanding words, phrases, sentences in the text) and “top-down” ones (our expectations, previous knowledge constructs or schemata of the text content. I discussed the topic of the text first before reading and tried to arouse their expectations as well as to elicit connections between references in the texts and situations known to the learners. I also teach them to use reading strategies like skimming, scanning, and guessing from the context to help them read.
I think this micro teaching is really a good experience for me to make me to understand more clearly about my teaching advantages and weakness. Thanks for all comments from everyone to let me know how my teaching is and learn a lot from them. Maybe my first microteaching still has room for improvements, but everyone's opinions and teacher's advices all help me to know how to improve. And most importantly, I think practices will make perfect in the long run.
2007年12月26日 星期三
Literaure 5
Keep Those Words Alive
Judy Stephenson, judystep@midsouth.rr.com
At the beginning of each 90-minute class for my third to fifth graders, I write a question and two or three vocabulary words on the board. The question focuses on what I want them to learn that day. The vocabulary words may be new or simply presented in a new context during this lesson. I save the last 15 minutes of each class for journal writing. Students use the question and vocabulary words to write a short paragraph entitled “What I Learned Today.” Before they leave the classroom, I check their paragraphs and they correct the mistakes. This strategy has been successful because students
o know exactly what I expect them to learn each day;
o learn new vocabulary and uses within the context of the lesson;
o practice writing sentences organizing their writing; and
o have a visual reminder of the important points to study for tests.
This process has served me well as a teacher. Even better, it keeps the students focused on what skills and content I address each day. Checking their journal entries tells me very quickly and clearly what needs to be retaught.
Jail Time
While students write in class, I seem to be constantly repeating, “No, that word can't be spelled by the rules. It's a rule-breaker.” To help the students visualize this idea, I asked a first-grade student to make a “jail” on a poster board. Every time we run into a word that can't be spelled phonetically, we glue it in the jail. In addition, whenever students are writing and need to spell a word that is a rule-breaker, they can use the jail as a resource. Now we have so many words the students have alphabetized them—another skill they learned through this exercise. Although this began as a first-grade project, I now use the jail for all my classes.
Judy Stephenson is an ESL teacher at Oak Forest Elementary, Memphis City Schools, Memphis, Tennessee.
Reference:EEIS News September 1, 2005 Volume 27 Number 2: Table of Contents
Annotation
I think the author provides a good activity to teach vocabulary in “ Keeps Those Words Alive” because he can make sure what the students really learn form each new lesson as well as know what exactly the problems might be for the students in the class by checking each students’ assignments and helping them to improve. Besides, I think to write a question and two or three vocabulary words on the board as the author did on his class is a good way to call student’s attention and can indeed help them to learn. Since the question focuses on what the teacher wants them to learn that day, the students can consistently see it on the board and keep asking themselves about the answers. It provides a goal for learners to focus, challenge, and pursue. In addition, since the vocabulary words may be new or simply presented in a new context during this lesson, the students can either learn something new and interesting or just know more ways to use a word that they already learn about with one usage but unable to know another usage about it. I think this is a good way for students to learn by building new knowledge based on their existing experience. Furthermore, the author also did a good job on saving the last 15 minutes of each class for journal writing. In this way, students use the question and vocabulary words to write a short paragraph entitled “What I Learned Today” before leaving the classroom, and give the teacher a chance to check what they learn from the lesson taught and give them corrections or feedback. I think that is really a successful strategy because students know exactly what they are expected to learn each day and thus have a target each lesson without feeling lost. When I was making the first meeting with my tutoring students, three of them just told me that “I didn’t understand what exactly the goals of each lesson. I just easily got lost.” One of them told me that “I know that every lesson might all contain four skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing, but after each lesson I just cannot really get a clear picture of what I learned today.” Because I cannot know what the exact lesson is, I just told them that “maybe making a preview before the class can help you to get into the lesson more easily.”
Besides, using the strategy the author can help the students to learn new vocabulary and uses within the context of the lesson, practice writing sentences organizing their writing, and have a visual reminder of the important points to study for tests. I think it’s a good way to learn within a context because the students can get a whole picture of how to use a vocabulary appropriately. And I think it’s also beneficial for the students to practice to use the new vocabulary each lesson since it’s a good way to check if they can successfully convert their input into correct output after the lesson. This process also keeps the students focused on what skills and content the teacher want to address each day without giving students senses of lost and insecurity. And I think checking their journal entries serves a practical advantage to help the teacher know very quickly and clearly what needs to be retaught as well.
Judy Stephenson, judystep@midsouth.rr.com
At the beginning of each 90-minute class for my third to fifth graders, I write a question and two or three vocabulary words on the board. The question focuses on what I want them to learn that day. The vocabulary words may be new or simply presented in a new context during this lesson. I save the last 15 minutes of each class for journal writing. Students use the question and vocabulary words to write a short paragraph entitled “What I Learned Today.” Before they leave the classroom, I check their paragraphs and they correct the mistakes. This strategy has been successful because students
o know exactly what I expect them to learn each day;
o learn new vocabulary and uses within the context of the lesson;
o practice writing sentences organizing their writing; and
o have a visual reminder of the important points to study for tests.
This process has served me well as a teacher. Even better, it keeps the students focused on what skills and content I address each day. Checking their journal entries tells me very quickly and clearly what needs to be retaught.
Jail Time
While students write in class, I seem to be constantly repeating, “No, that word can't be spelled by the rules. It's a rule-breaker.” To help the students visualize this idea, I asked a first-grade student to make a “jail” on a poster board. Every time we run into a word that can't be spelled phonetically, we glue it in the jail. In addition, whenever students are writing and need to spell a word that is a rule-breaker, they can use the jail as a resource. Now we have so many words the students have alphabetized them—another skill they learned through this exercise. Although this began as a first-grade project, I now use the jail for all my classes.
Judy Stephenson is an ESL teacher at Oak Forest Elementary, Memphis City Schools, Memphis, Tennessee.
Reference:EEIS News September 1, 2005 Volume 27 Number 2: Table of Contents
Annotation
I think the author provides a good activity to teach vocabulary in “ Keeps Those Words Alive” because he can make sure what the students really learn form each new lesson as well as know what exactly the problems might be for the students in the class by checking each students’ assignments and helping them to improve. Besides, I think to write a question and two or three vocabulary words on the board as the author did on his class is a good way to call student’s attention and can indeed help them to learn. Since the question focuses on what the teacher wants them to learn that day, the students can consistently see it on the board and keep asking themselves about the answers. It provides a goal for learners to focus, challenge, and pursue. In addition, since the vocabulary words may be new or simply presented in a new context during this lesson, the students can either learn something new and interesting or just know more ways to use a word that they already learn about with one usage but unable to know another usage about it. I think this is a good way for students to learn by building new knowledge based on their existing experience. Furthermore, the author also did a good job on saving the last 15 minutes of each class for journal writing. In this way, students use the question and vocabulary words to write a short paragraph entitled “What I Learned Today” before leaving the classroom, and give the teacher a chance to check what they learn from the lesson taught and give them corrections or feedback. I think that is really a successful strategy because students know exactly what they are expected to learn each day and thus have a target each lesson without feeling lost. When I was making the first meeting with my tutoring students, three of them just told me that “I didn’t understand what exactly the goals of each lesson. I just easily got lost.” One of them told me that “I know that every lesson might all contain four skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing, but after each lesson I just cannot really get a clear picture of what I learned today.” Because I cannot know what the exact lesson is, I just told them that “maybe making a preview before the class can help you to get into the lesson more easily.”
Besides, using the strategy the author can help the students to learn new vocabulary and uses within the context of the lesson, practice writing sentences organizing their writing, and have a visual reminder of the important points to study for tests. I think it’s a good way to learn within a context because the students can get a whole picture of how to use a vocabulary appropriately. And I think it’s also beneficial for the students to practice to use the new vocabulary each lesson since it’s a good way to check if they can successfully convert their input into correct output after the lesson. This process also keeps the students focused on what skills and content the teacher want to address each day without giving students senses of lost and insecurity. And I think checking their journal entries serves a practical advantage to help the teacher know very quickly and clearly what needs to be retaught as well.
Literaure 4
For Young Learners Songs Can Mean Business
Reference: TESOL Quarterly
Home : Publications : Essential Teacher(M) : ET Volume 1 : ET 1.3
Print this page E-mail this page
Posted June 2004: Abdulvahit Çakir designs song-based activities around play, the most important part of small children's lives. See Michael Carroll's article, 'Japanese Students Can't Think Critically. Or Can They?,' Essential Teacher, Summer 2004 (pp. 54-56).
I remember one of my English teachers saying repeatedly that knowing is something, but doing is quite something else. What he meant was that knowing words and structures is useless unless you are able to use them to do something in real life.
Play constitutes the most important part of small children's lives. Some play is accompanied by songs, and many songs are accompanied by actions. When children play and sing, they mean business. To them, success in play is success in life. If they need language or songs to win the game they are playing, they will indeed need them.
Have Song, Will Teach
Besides being enjoyable and motivating, songs are also useful in language teaching because they
model English sounds, rhythm, and stress and intonation patterns
often repeat high-frequency words and expressions
can reinforce structures and vocabulary
are much easier to imitate and remember than language that is not set to music (Çakir, 1999)
You can use songs to teach almost any aspect of the target language: counting up and down; structures such as there is/there are; prepositions of place; and language functions such as accepting or refusing, asking for information, and greeting, to mention a few.
"There's a Hole …"
A case in point is the U.S. folk song "There's a Hole" (see Gelineau, 1999):
1. There's a hole in the bottom of the sea.There's a hole in the bottom of the sea.There's a hole, there's a hole, there's a hole in the bottom of the sea.
2. There's a log in the hole in the bottom of the sea ...
3. There's a branch on the log in the hole in the bottom of the sea ...
4. There's a bump on the branch on the log in the hole ...
5. There's a frog on the bump on the branch...
6. There's a tail on the frog on the bump...
7. There's a speck on the tail on the frog …
8. There's a fleck on the speck on the tail ...
The song describes several objects in a hole and on top of one another, repeating the prepositions over and over. To use this song to teach or reinforce these prepositions,
1. Have half the children in the class represent a large hole while others act as the log, the bump, the frog, and the other words mentioned in the song. You might have the children hold pictures of these things (labeled or unlabeled).
2. As you play the song, have the children play their roles. For example, in the verse "There's a hole in the bottom of the sea," have the children form a large ring. When they sing "There's a log in the hole," have the child playing the log put the picture of the log in the ring. As you play the next verse, have the child representing the bump place the picture of the bump on the log.
3. Continue until all the objects are placed.
You could also create simple verses modeled on the ones in the song. For instance,
There's a chair in the room ...There's a book on the chair in the room ...There's a radio on the book in the chair in the room ...There's a ruler on the radio on the book on the chair in the room ...
Give each of the children one of the objects, and ask them to sing the song and put the objects in their places as they are mentioned.
Endless Possibilities
You could practice the use of the articles a (used when the object is first mentioned) and the (used for subsequent mentions), or make up simple play for this purpose.
References
Çakir, A. (1999, November). Musical activities for young learners of EFL. The Internet TESL Journal, 6(11). Retrieved March 12, 2004, from http://iteslj.org/Lessons/Cakir-MusicalActivities.html
Gelineau, R. P. (1988). Songs in action. New York: Parker.
Abdulvahit Çakir (abdulcakir@yahoo.com) is the director of research and application at the Center for Instruction of Foreign Languages, Gazi University, in Ankara, Turkey.
Home : Publications : Essential Teacher(M) : ET Volume 1 : ET 1.3
Annotation
I agree with the author about the idea that it’s a good way to use songs to teach. As the author’s English teachers mentioned, knowing is something, but doing is quite something else, applying the knowlede you learn to real life is what you really learn. What the author stressed in the artcle was that knowing words and structures is useless unless you are able to use them to do something in real life. Thus, the author believes that teaching songs is a useful way for children to use their knowlede in real life since play constitutes the most important part of small children's lives and much play is accompanied by songs, and many songs are accompanied by actions. When children play and sing, they are doing something meaningful. It’s really important for them to success in play because it’s just like success in life. If they need language or songs to win the game they are playing, they will indeed need them. Besides being enjoyable and motivating, songs are also useful in language teaching because they model English sounds, rhythm, and stress and intonation patterns. They often repeat high-frequency words and expressions as well. Songs can also reinforce some common structures and vocabulary used in real life. Furthermore, they are much easier to imitate and remember than language that is not set to music (Çakir, 1999).
I remembered that when I was tutoring my freshman students for the first time, they just told me that they want something more interesting and different to learn. One of them told me that, “ Actually, I think adding something interesting besides using the textbook as the only material is a good way to call our attention and motivation to learn. The contents in the textbook sometimes just cannot really make me interested in. ” The other student also mentioned that “Maybe adding something novel or much closer to life would arouse our motivation to a greater extent. I think listening to music or watch movies can also be fun. More extensive readings like novels or dramas would be good for us because they can really call up our imagination. ” It seems that thay want to learn something interesting closer to their real life instead of studying the texts on the book only. They like songs, movies, novels beyod the textbook and try to use their knowlede in understanding the contents of these materials much closer to their daily life. From their opoinons and my personal experiences, I think it’s really a good idea to teach English by using songs or any other authentic materials. Because I think not only children or stdents, but also most of adults like to learn something really closer to life and want to understand or apply the knowlede we learn in the real world. That’s also a reson why I chose to use an authentic song in my micro- teaching lesson about Christmas. Some of my classmates just mentioned it’s a good idea to use mutimedia resources to teach as well. And I believe that authentic mterials like songs and movies can really arouse students’s motivations to learn, too. By learning to sing songs or watcing movies with chances to practice speaking and litening, I think students can learn from them a lot and get knowledge from these authentic mterials in their real life. Thus, I believe that it’s indeed a good way to use interesting songs or really useful materials to teach.
Reference: TESOL Quarterly
Home : Publications : Essential Teacher(M) : ET Volume 1 : ET 1.3
Print this page E-mail this page
Posted June 2004: Abdulvahit Çakir designs song-based activities around play, the most important part of small children's lives. See Michael Carroll's article, 'Japanese Students Can't Think Critically. Or Can They?,' Essential Teacher, Summer 2004 (pp. 54-56).
I remember one of my English teachers saying repeatedly that knowing is something, but doing is quite something else. What he meant was that knowing words and structures is useless unless you are able to use them to do something in real life.
Play constitutes the most important part of small children's lives. Some play is accompanied by songs, and many songs are accompanied by actions. When children play and sing, they mean business. To them, success in play is success in life. If they need language or songs to win the game they are playing, they will indeed need them.
Have Song, Will Teach
Besides being enjoyable and motivating, songs are also useful in language teaching because they
model English sounds, rhythm, and stress and intonation patterns
often repeat high-frequency words and expressions
can reinforce structures and vocabulary
are much easier to imitate and remember than language that is not set to music (Çakir, 1999)
You can use songs to teach almost any aspect of the target language: counting up and down; structures such as there is/there are; prepositions of place; and language functions such as accepting or refusing, asking for information, and greeting, to mention a few.
"There's a Hole …"
A case in point is the U.S. folk song "There's a Hole" (see Gelineau, 1999):
1. There's a hole in the bottom of the sea.There's a hole in the bottom of the sea.There's a hole, there's a hole, there's a hole in the bottom of the sea.
2. There's a log in the hole in the bottom of the sea ...
3. There's a branch on the log in the hole in the bottom of the sea ...
4. There's a bump on the branch on the log in the hole ...
5. There's a frog on the bump on the branch...
6. There's a tail on the frog on the bump...
7. There's a speck on the tail on the frog …
8. There's a fleck on the speck on the tail ...
The song describes several objects in a hole and on top of one another, repeating the prepositions over and over. To use this song to teach or reinforce these prepositions,
1. Have half the children in the class represent a large hole while others act as the log, the bump, the frog, and the other words mentioned in the song. You might have the children hold pictures of these things (labeled or unlabeled).
2. As you play the song, have the children play their roles. For example, in the verse "There's a hole in the bottom of the sea," have the children form a large ring. When they sing "There's a log in the hole," have the child playing the log put the picture of the log in the ring. As you play the next verse, have the child representing the bump place the picture of the bump on the log.
3. Continue until all the objects are placed.
You could also create simple verses modeled on the ones in the song. For instance,
There's a chair in the room ...There's a book on the chair in the room ...There's a radio on the book in the chair in the room ...There's a ruler on the radio on the book on the chair in the room ...
Give each of the children one of the objects, and ask them to sing the song and put the objects in their places as they are mentioned.
Endless Possibilities
You could practice the use of the articles a (used when the object is first mentioned) and the (used for subsequent mentions), or make up simple play for this purpose.
References
Çakir, A. (1999, November). Musical activities for young learners of EFL. The Internet TESL Journal, 6(11). Retrieved March 12, 2004, from http://iteslj.org/Lessons/Cakir-MusicalActivities.html
Gelineau, R. P. (1988). Songs in action. New York: Parker.
Abdulvahit Çakir (abdulcakir@yahoo.com) is the director of research and application at the Center for Instruction of Foreign Languages, Gazi University, in Ankara, Turkey.
Home : Publications : Essential Teacher(M) : ET Volume 1 : ET 1.3
Annotation
I agree with the author about the idea that it’s a good way to use songs to teach. As the author’s English teachers mentioned, knowing is something, but doing is quite something else, applying the knowlede you learn to real life is what you really learn. What the author stressed in the artcle was that knowing words and structures is useless unless you are able to use them to do something in real life. Thus, the author believes that teaching songs is a useful way for children to use their knowlede in real life since play constitutes the most important part of small children's lives and much play is accompanied by songs, and many songs are accompanied by actions. When children play and sing, they are doing something meaningful. It’s really important for them to success in play because it’s just like success in life. If they need language or songs to win the game they are playing, they will indeed need them. Besides being enjoyable and motivating, songs are also useful in language teaching because they model English sounds, rhythm, and stress and intonation patterns. They often repeat high-frequency words and expressions as well. Songs can also reinforce some common structures and vocabulary used in real life. Furthermore, they are much easier to imitate and remember than language that is not set to music (Çakir, 1999).
I remembered that when I was tutoring my freshman students for the first time, they just told me that they want something more interesting and different to learn. One of them told me that, “ Actually, I think adding something interesting besides using the textbook as the only material is a good way to call our attention and motivation to learn. The contents in the textbook sometimes just cannot really make me interested in. ” The other student also mentioned that “Maybe adding something novel or much closer to life would arouse our motivation to a greater extent. I think listening to music or watch movies can also be fun. More extensive readings like novels or dramas would be good for us because they can really call up our imagination. ” It seems that thay want to learn something interesting closer to their real life instead of studying the texts on the book only. They like songs, movies, novels beyod the textbook and try to use their knowlede in understanding the contents of these materials much closer to their daily life. From their opoinons and my personal experiences, I think it’s really a good idea to teach English by using songs or any other authentic materials. Because I think not only children or stdents, but also most of adults like to learn something really closer to life and want to understand or apply the knowlede we learn in the real world. That’s also a reson why I chose to use an authentic song in my micro- teaching lesson about Christmas. Some of my classmates just mentioned it’s a good idea to use mutimedia resources to teach as well. And I believe that authentic mterials like songs and movies can really arouse students’s motivations to learn, too. By learning to sing songs or watcing movies with chances to practice speaking and litening, I think students can learn from them a lot and get knowledge from these authentic mterials in their real life. Thus, I believe that it’s indeed a good way to use interesting songs or really useful materials to teach.
Literaure 3
Reducing Learning Burden in Academic Vocabulary Development
References TESOL Quarterly
Ayþegül Daloðlu, Middle East Technical University, Faculty of Education, Ankara, Turkey, e-mail: daloglu@metu.edu.tr, and Meltem Tarhan, Bilkent University, School of English Language, Ankara, Turkey, e-mail: tarhan@bilkent.edu.tr
Teaching vocabulary, especially academic vocabulary in EFL settings, is one of the main challenges in English language teaching. As English language teachers who believe in the importance of developing students’ academic language skills, we have emphasized vocabulary development as one of the main components in our courses.
Academic vocabulary can be defined as the most frequently occurring words in spoken and written discourse that students encounter during their academic studies in English-medium universities. Improving students’ academic vocabulary knowledge is crucial to ensure students’ academic progress but, at the same time, difficult as students have limited exposure to the English language outside class.
The learning burden of a word is “the amount of effort required to learn it” (Nation, 2001, p. 23). Different words impose different learning burdens for learners with different language backgrounds. In addition to this, the way the learner uses the new vocabulary item can contribute to its learning burden.
The general principle about learning burden is that if the word represents patterns and knowledge the learner is already familiar with, it is easier to learn that word. Therefore, the burden is lighter. Learners can obtain the patterns and knowledge from their experiences with their native language, another foreign language, or English. Teachers can help reduce the learning burden of words by drawing attention to systematic patterns and analogies within the second language and by pointing out connections between the second language and the first.
The distinction between receptive and productive vocabulary also contributes to the learning burden of a word. Receptive vocabulary use involves perceiving the form of a word while listening or reading and retrieving its meaning. Productive vocabulary, on the other hand, involves wanting to express a meaning through speaking or writing, and retrieving and producing the appropriate spoken or written word form.
Knowing a word involves form, meaning, and use. From the point of view of receptive knowledge, therefore, knowing a word involves
recognizing it when it is heard
being familiar with its written form so that it is recognized when seen in written form
recognizing that it is composed of written forms (how affixation influences the usage and meaning of the word)
knowing the particular meaning of the word in the given context
knowing words that are related to the given word (lexical set)
being able to recognize if the word has been correctly used in the given context
knowing the collocations of the given word
The main aim of vocabulary teaching is to lead to learner-focused vocabulary learning. Although recognition-level learning is easier to achieve at most levels of language proficiency, production of the learned item is more difficult to achieve because students experience problems in forming chunks.
The following are some difficulties associated with vocabulary learning:
limited encounters with the new vocabulary item
limited student experience in language learning
low teaching emphasis on word environment
lack of sensitivity to word forms
low awareness of sentence structure of target language
interference of the native language sentence and lexical aspects
Therefore, we believe that presenting the language in chunks together with the word environment, not as isolated words, helps academic vocabulary development in EFL settings. To improve both receptive and productive vocabulary learning, the teacher can follow five key principles:
1. Presenting and practicing vocabulary with its collocations
When introducing new lexical items, we should make an effort to present them with the words or types of words that commonly occur with the given word. For example, when presenting the verb to lose, we need to also present the nouns it collocates with: to lose your way, to lose your temper, to lose your purse, to lose your mind, and so on.
2. Presenting and practicing vocabulary with its grammatical environment
When introducing new lexical items, we should make learners aware of different patterns the word occurs with and the patterns we must use the word in. When presenting an item, we should make the learners aware of the changes in the grammatical structure of the sentence. For example, they need to differentiate between an adjective and a verb such as in “to apply for something” and “to be afraid of (doing) something.” When emphasizing the grammatical environment, draw learners’ attention to aspects such as using a noun after dependent prepositions, as is emphasized by something in the above examples.
3. Vocabulary with emphasis on register
When introducing new lexical items, we should emphasize the content of the message conveyed, its sender and receiver, its situation and purpose, and how it is communicated, which means we should also stress where, when, and with whom this word is used. For example, drawing learners’ attention to level of formality and social distance among speakers makes them aware of the register.
4. Vocabulary with emphasis on word form
When introducing new lexical items, we should emphasize what meaning this word form signals and what relationship exists between meaning and form. Learners should be aware of the functions of prefixes and suffixes. For instance, they need to know that prefixes change the meaning of the word whereas suffixes change the word form. With this awareness, they should be able to comprehend and produce appropriate word forms as required by the context.
5. Vocabulary with emphasis on connotation
When introducing new lexical items, we should emphasize what kind of effects connotations have when transferring lexical meaning from the native language. On this basis, we can identify the problem causing lexical items for the learners. One way to achieve this is to encourage the learners to use monolingual dictionaries. If learners do not have adjectives that correspond to the meaning differences among annoyed, disappointed, and frustrated in their native language, the monolingual dictionary will make them aware of the connotation of each.
In conclusion, we think that vocabulary learning in the EFL context is enhanced if attention is paid to the five principles above when presenting and practicing lexical items. We hope that these guiding principles encourage learners to transfer their knowledge to production of these items rather than only recognize them when they encounter them.
References
Nation, I.S. P. (2001). Learning vocabulary in another language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
EFLIS News March 2005 Volume 5 Number 1: Table of Contents
Annotation of “Reducing Learning Burden in Academic Vocabulary Development”
We all know that teaching vocabulary, especially academic vocabulary in EFL settings, is challenging for English teachers. Since students often encounter academic vocabulary frequently in spoken and written discourse during their academic studies in English-medium universities, improving students’ academic vocabulary knowledge becomes crucial to ensure students’ academic progress. However, as students have limited exposure to the English language outside class, vocabulary teaching is not an easy case.
In “Reducing Learning Burden in Academic Vocabulary Development,” the author defines the learning burden of a word as “the amount of effort required to learn it”. Learners’ different language backgrounds and the way they use new vocabulary can both cause learning burdens. Since words representing knowledge the learner is already familiar with are easier to learn, teachers can use systematic patterns and analogies within the second language or point out connections between the second language and the first to recall information from their experiences and thus reduce the vocabulary learning burden. Moreover, he asserts that presenting the language in chunks together with the word environment, not as isolated words, helps academic vocabulary development in EFL settings. In addition, the author also declares five principles to improve vocabulary learning – presenting and practicing vocabulary with its collocations; presenting and practicing vocabulary with its grammatical environment; vocabulary with emphasis on register; vocabulary with emphasis on word form; vocabulary with emphasis on connotation. He hopes that these guiding principles encourage learners to transfer their knowledge to production of these items rather than only recognize them when they encounter them.
Among all the above principles, I view the fifth one most helpful. By teaching vocabulary with emphasis on connotation, students are able to understand the original meaning of a word instead of memorizing it with translation in their native language which might cause misunderstanding. When I made interviews with my tutoring freshman students, I just offered them an advice of looking up a monolingual dictionary. It was not out of my expectation to find out that they were used to looking up bilingual dictionaries to learn a new word with translation in their mother tongue. However, they just told me that “after getting poor grades in the vocabulary part from the prior two tests, they just changed their learning way into looking up monolingual dictionaries.” I, as well as my tutoring students, all found out that it was inefficient to learn a new vocabulary by memorizing its Chinese literal meaning. I realized that to learn a new word effectively lies in understanding its existent connotation. Since any word might very possibly have its implications or associations, it’s essential to teach vocabulary with emphasize on its connotation. Just as what I heard from one of my tutoring students (Yu-Chun Lo), “In the filling blank of the vocabulary part of the test, I tried to guess the meaning of a missing word from its context and associated possible words with similar meaning that seems relevant with the contexts. I just hesitated in choosing the words I think relevant to the sentences but still unable to judge which might be the correct answer in the blank.” I told her that every world has its various meanings as well as connotations. Besides, I also advised her to use monolingual dictionary to learn the definition and connotations of a word in English since it’s the only way to get the most closed meaning of words and enable one to distinguish one word with minor difference with another word.
Furthermore, the author in this article also mentioned a principle to improve vocabulary learning is presenting and practicing vocabulary with its grammatical environment. When introducing new lexical items, I also agree with him about making learners aware of different patterns the word occurs with and the patterns we must use the word in. I see making associations between a word and the relevant words it often occurs with as important as well. I believe that teaching vocabulary in meaningful chunks with appropriate grammatical structure of the sentence rather than teaching words one by one in an isolated form will indeed help memorization. For example, in my interviews with my tutoring students, I taught them to learn a new word by memorizing it in chunks. I taught them to learn the word “furious“by remembering the preposition “at” in the chunk of “being furious at someone” and to apply the word “confidence” by recognizing the prepossession “in” in the chunk of “having confidence in somebody” when I taught them about their second exam. They also agreed with me that it was much easier to associate the correct word with the chunks relevant to grammatical environment of the vocabulary.
In addition, the author suggests presenting and practicing vocabulary with its collocations as a principle to improve vocabulary learning as well. I consent to his idea of introducing new lexical items by presenting them with the words that commonly occur with the given word. For example, I taught my tutoring freshman students to learn the chunks “ domestic violence” and “ malicious telephone calls” together instead of leaning the new vocabulary word by word. I think this way of remembering collocations with chunks will help them learn the words more easily and apply the correct answers in the blanks. The more familiar with the collocations, the bigger the chances they can have in getting the right answers and learning more relevant words in a given time.
References TESOL Quarterly
Ayþegül Daloðlu, Middle East Technical University, Faculty of Education, Ankara, Turkey, e-mail: daloglu@metu.edu.tr, and Meltem Tarhan, Bilkent University, School of English Language, Ankara, Turkey, e-mail: tarhan@bilkent.edu.tr
Teaching vocabulary, especially academic vocabulary in EFL settings, is one of the main challenges in English language teaching. As English language teachers who believe in the importance of developing students’ academic language skills, we have emphasized vocabulary development as one of the main components in our courses.
Academic vocabulary can be defined as the most frequently occurring words in spoken and written discourse that students encounter during their academic studies in English-medium universities. Improving students’ academic vocabulary knowledge is crucial to ensure students’ academic progress but, at the same time, difficult as students have limited exposure to the English language outside class.
The learning burden of a word is “the amount of effort required to learn it” (Nation, 2001, p. 23). Different words impose different learning burdens for learners with different language backgrounds. In addition to this, the way the learner uses the new vocabulary item can contribute to its learning burden.
The general principle about learning burden is that if the word represents patterns and knowledge the learner is already familiar with, it is easier to learn that word. Therefore, the burden is lighter. Learners can obtain the patterns and knowledge from their experiences with their native language, another foreign language, or English. Teachers can help reduce the learning burden of words by drawing attention to systematic patterns and analogies within the second language and by pointing out connections between the second language and the first.
The distinction between receptive and productive vocabulary also contributes to the learning burden of a word. Receptive vocabulary use involves perceiving the form of a word while listening or reading and retrieving its meaning. Productive vocabulary, on the other hand, involves wanting to express a meaning through speaking or writing, and retrieving and producing the appropriate spoken or written word form.
Knowing a word involves form, meaning, and use. From the point of view of receptive knowledge, therefore, knowing a word involves
recognizing it when it is heard
being familiar with its written form so that it is recognized when seen in written form
recognizing that it is composed of written forms (how affixation influences the usage and meaning of the word)
knowing the particular meaning of the word in the given context
knowing words that are related to the given word (lexical set)
being able to recognize if the word has been correctly used in the given context
knowing the collocations of the given word
The main aim of vocabulary teaching is to lead to learner-focused vocabulary learning. Although recognition-level learning is easier to achieve at most levels of language proficiency, production of the learned item is more difficult to achieve because students experience problems in forming chunks.
The following are some difficulties associated with vocabulary learning:
limited encounters with the new vocabulary item
limited student experience in language learning
low teaching emphasis on word environment
lack of sensitivity to word forms
low awareness of sentence structure of target language
interference of the native language sentence and lexical aspects
Therefore, we believe that presenting the language in chunks together with the word environment, not as isolated words, helps academic vocabulary development in EFL settings. To improve both receptive and productive vocabulary learning, the teacher can follow five key principles:
1. Presenting and practicing vocabulary with its collocations
When introducing new lexical items, we should make an effort to present them with the words or types of words that commonly occur with the given word. For example, when presenting the verb to lose, we need to also present the nouns it collocates with: to lose your way, to lose your temper, to lose your purse, to lose your mind, and so on.
2. Presenting and practicing vocabulary with its grammatical environment
When introducing new lexical items, we should make learners aware of different patterns the word occurs with and the patterns we must use the word in. When presenting an item, we should make the learners aware of the changes in the grammatical structure of the sentence. For example, they need to differentiate between an adjective and a verb such as in “to apply for something” and “to be afraid of (doing) something.” When emphasizing the grammatical environment, draw learners’ attention to aspects such as using a noun after dependent prepositions, as is emphasized by something in the above examples.
3. Vocabulary with emphasis on register
When introducing new lexical items, we should emphasize the content of the message conveyed, its sender and receiver, its situation and purpose, and how it is communicated, which means we should also stress where, when, and with whom this word is used. For example, drawing learners’ attention to level of formality and social distance among speakers makes them aware of the register.
4. Vocabulary with emphasis on word form
When introducing new lexical items, we should emphasize what meaning this word form signals and what relationship exists between meaning and form. Learners should be aware of the functions of prefixes and suffixes. For instance, they need to know that prefixes change the meaning of the word whereas suffixes change the word form. With this awareness, they should be able to comprehend and produce appropriate word forms as required by the context.
5. Vocabulary with emphasis on connotation
When introducing new lexical items, we should emphasize what kind of effects connotations have when transferring lexical meaning from the native language. On this basis, we can identify the problem causing lexical items for the learners. One way to achieve this is to encourage the learners to use monolingual dictionaries. If learners do not have adjectives that correspond to the meaning differences among annoyed, disappointed, and frustrated in their native language, the monolingual dictionary will make them aware of the connotation of each.
In conclusion, we think that vocabulary learning in the EFL context is enhanced if attention is paid to the five principles above when presenting and practicing lexical items. We hope that these guiding principles encourage learners to transfer their knowledge to production of these items rather than only recognize them when they encounter them.
References
Nation, I.S. P. (2001). Learning vocabulary in another language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
EFLIS News March 2005 Volume 5 Number 1: Table of Contents
Annotation of “Reducing Learning Burden in Academic Vocabulary Development”
We all know that teaching vocabulary, especially academic vocabulary in EFL settings, is challenging for English teachers. Since students often encounter academic vocabulary frequently in spoken and written discourse during their academic studies in English-medium universities, improving students’ academic vocabulary knowledge becomes crucial to ensure students’ academic progress. However, as students have limited exposure to the English language outside class, vocabulary teaching is not an easy case.
In “Reducing Learning Burden in Academic Vocabulary Development,” the author defines the learning burden of a word as “the amount of effort required to learn it”. Learners’ different language backgrounds and the way they use new vocabulary can both cause learning burdens. Since words representing knowledge the learner is already familiar with are easier to learn, teachers can use systematic patterns and analogies within the second language or point out connections between the second language and the first to recall information from their experiences and thus reduce the vocabulary learning burden. Moreover, he asserts that presenting the language in chunks together with the word environment, not as isolated words, helps academic vocabulary development in EFL settings. In addition, the author also declares five principles to improve vocabulary learning – presenting and practicing vocabulary with its collocations; presenting and practicing vocabulary with its grammatical environment; vocabulary with emphasis on register; vocabulary with emphasis on word form; vocabulary with emphasis on connotation. He hopes that these guiding principles encourage learners to transfer their knowledge to production of these items rather than only recognize them when they encounter them.
Among all the above principles, I view the fifth one most helpful. By teaching vocabulary with emphasis on connotation, students are able to understand the original meaning of a word instead of memorizing it with translation in their native language which might cause misunderstanding. When I made interviews with my tutoring freshman students, I just offered them an advice of looking up a monolingual dictionary. It was not out of my expectation to find out that they were used to looking up bilingual dictionaries to learn a new word with translation in their mother tongue. However, they just told me that “after getting poor grades in the vocabulary part from the prior two tests, they just changed their learning way into looking up monolingual dictionaries.” I, as well as my tutoring students, all found out that it was inefficient to learn a new vocabulary by memorizing its Chinese literal meaning. I realized that to learn a new word effectively lies in understanding its existent connotation. Since any word might very possibly have its implications or associations, it’s essential to teach vocabulary with emphasize on its connotation. Just as what I heard from one of my tutoring students (Yu-Chun Lo), “In the filling blank of the vocabulary part of the test, I tried to guess the meaning of a missing word from its context and associated possible words with similar meaning that seems relevant with the contexts. I just hesitated in choosing the words I think relevant to the sentences but still unable to judge which might be the correct answer in the blank.” I told her that every world has its various meanings as well as connotations. Besides, I also advised her to use monolingual dictionary to learn the definition and connotations of a word in English since it’s the only way to get the most closed meaning of words and enable one to distinguish one word with minor difference with another word.
Furthermore, the author in this article also mentioned a principle to improve vocabulary learning is presenting and practicing vocabulary with its grammatical environment. When introducing new lexical items, I also agree with him about making learners aware of different patterns the word occurs with and the patterns we must use the word in. I see making associations between a word and the relevant words it often occurs with as important as well. I believe that teaching vocabulary in meaningful chunks with appropriate grammatical structure of the sentence rather than teaching words one by one in an isolated form will indeed help memorization. For example, in my interviews with my tutoring students, I taught them to learn a new word by memorizing it in chunks. I taught them to learn the word “furious“by remembering the preposition “at” in the chunk of “being furious at someone” and to apply the word “confidence” by recognizing the prepossession “in” in the chunk of “having confidence in somebody” when I taught them about their second exam. They also agreed with me that it was much easier to associate the correct word with the chunks relevant to grammatical environment of the vocabulary.
In addition, the author suggests presenting and practicing vocabulary with its collocations as a principle to improve vocabulary learning as well. I consent to his idea of introducing new lexical items by presenting them with the words that commonly occur with the given word. For example, I taught my tutoring freshman students to learn the chunks “ domestic violence” and “ malicious telephone calls” together instead of leaning the new vocabulary word by word. I think this way of remembering collocations with chunks will help them learn the words more easily and apply the correct answers in the blanks. The more familiar with the collocations, the bigger the chances they can have in getting the right answers and learning more relevant words in a given time.
2007年12月19日 星期三
Literature 2
Vocabulary Development
References TESOL Quarterly
Home : ELL Tapestry : Sets : Vocabulary
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Our goal is that children who are English language learners develop a foundation of oral and written English proficiency that is necessary to become independent readers of English. Vocabulary development is essential for achieving this proficiency and for developing the background knowledge that they need to understand both stories and academic texts.
All children need opportunities to develop their natural love of words and to grow in their understanding of the intricacies and subtleties of the English language in an environment rich in literature and language experiences.
As English language learners strive to achieve the vocabulary knowledge they need to comprehend independently, teachers must provide them with the instructional support, the scaffolding that they need. The research in this Set examines how children develop their English proficiency and includes instructional guidance that teachers can use in their classroom.
English language learners face the following hurdles in their vocabulary learning:
Children have not had time to develop an adequate English vocabulary before they must read English texts in school. The lack of an adequate vocabulary is one of the largest obstacles to their reading comprehension that is essential for their success in school.
Children who have become proficient in conversational, social English may still struggle with the vocabulary required for academic reading.
English language learners also have a smaller initial vocabulary than many native speakers do.
Research has shown, as children mature, the achievement gap widens between those who have achieved higher levels of initial vocabulary and those who have not. They need the assistance of teachers to develop their vocabulary and close the gap.
Children who are English language learners also bring to their learning of English the background knowledge and reading strategies that they know in their first language. As much as possible we need to provide children with the opportunities to use their first language to access that knowledge to help them better understand a topic, text, and instructional directions.
In this Set we examine the following questions:
What is the role of vocabulary development in academic achievement?
What does the research tell us about the role of oral English proficiency and the role of the first language in English reading comprehension?
What does research tell us about teaching vocabulary strategies explicitly to second language learners in the classroom?
Why do English language learners need explicit teaching strategies for developing their vocabulary?
What research studies and teaching materials are available to assist teachers in developing the vocabulary of their English language learners?
What is the role of vocabulary development in academic achievement?
This classic study, using observation and interviews with children, parents and teachers, provides an in-depth and comprehensive look at how children adapt and learn English both socially and academically.
Value
1. The study documents how children learn English, achieve or falter in academic reading, communicate socially and play without a common language. In the study are transcripts of dialogues between children and examples of their problem solving that teachers can use to understand their own English language learners.
Design
2. The study looks at 19 children in grades 2-6 who began the school year not knowing English; they spoke seven different languages including both alphabetic and non-alphabetic scripts. The study focuses on the children and includes examples of their ways of learning and playing.
3. In doing the study, the researchers videotaped ESL classes during the unsupervised time before class and during instruction.
4. Children were interviewed at the end of the year and evaluated for the content and grammatical correctness of their conversation.
5. Interviews with parents and teachers provided information on home language and personality factors. Academic achievement was measured by the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills (CTBS).
Findings: Academic achievement
6. Children need to develop their vocabulary knowledge; it is the single most important aspect of oral English proficiency for academic reading.
7. Children did not need to achieve mastery of English grammatical structure or grammatical accuracy for immediate success in their academic reading.
8. Children who have the opportunity to discuss academic concepts in their first language (L1), achieve greater success academically in their second language (L2).
9. Skill at social communication was not sufficient for academic achievement. For example:
The highest achiever was not socially talkative. Instead, she daily translated Japanese sentences into English using a bilingual dictionary. She studied the differences in word order of English and Japanese and excelled in reading Japanese.
Findings: Social communication
10. Children can and do participate in a great deal of social activity with little or no common language including the use of pantomime to tell a joke.
11. Additional strategies included exchanging non-linguistic vocalizations, pointing, nodding, and pantomime.
12. English-speaking children taught games to non-English speakers by demonstrating what to do and by correcting mistakes with a simple “no” or with a physical intervention.
Limitations
13. The study is ethnographic; therefore, it is representative of these children at the time of the research. Generalizing to other English language learners, other places, and other times needs to be done cautiously.
See reference for the researchWhat really matters in second language learning for academic achievement?
See additional references ethnographic research on understanding and learning the culture of the classroom The ethnography of communicationWays with words
See Tapestry Set: Academic Reading
See Tapestry Set: Story ComprehensionWhat does the research tell us about an example of culturally aligned curriculum?
What does the research tell us about the role of oral English proficiency and role of the first language in English reading comprehension?
Study 1: Examining the role of oral language proficiency in the second language
In Korea, researchers examined the relationship between achievement of English oral language proficiency and English reading comprehension for evidence of threshold hypothesis with 809 middle school English language learners.
According to the threshold hypothesis, second language learners need to develop a threshold of oral language proficiency in their second language (L2) before they can apply the skills and strategies, prior knowledge and language experiences of reading their first language (L1) to the reading of their second language.
Design
1. The students showed a wide range of achievement in English oral proficiency and in their Korean and English reading.
2. Oral proficiency was defined by written vocabulary measures (synonyms, definitions, and analogies) and by written measures of grammar (e.g. verb usage, plurals, pronouns, questions, and negations).
Findings
3. The researchers found support for the threshold hypothesis. Learners who had achieved high scores of English oral proficiency also achieved higher scores in their reading comprehension.
4. In their initial analysis, oral proficiency was twice as helpful as L1 reading ability for the learners’ L2 reading comprehension skills and strategies.
Limitations
5. The study’s usefulness for teachers is limited. Although it provides evidence supporting the importance of L2 oral proficiency and a general definition of English oral proficiency, classroom guidelines are not included. The study uses a written measure of oral proficiency.
6. Replication would need to include a verbal measure of oral proficiency. Research needs to determine if there is one threshold or if the threshold varies according to child, each child’s language status, the text, and the task.
Teaching implications
7. For teachers who want to work with their students on their L2 oral proficiency, we have included resources for teaching practice in the Bibliography of this Set.
See the reference of the study for a discussion of the threshold hypothesisThe relative contribution of L2 language proficiency and L1 reading ability to L2 reading performance: A test of the threshold hypothesis in an EFL context
See references for research-based teaching practiceBringing words to life: Robust Vocabulary InstructionNew ways in teaching vocabulary
See in Tapestry Set Foundations of Emerging Literacy What does the research tell us about phonological awareness? (Study 1 and Study2)
Study 2: Examining the role of oral language proficiency in the second language
In the United States with 6 fifth-grade English language learners whose first language was Spanish, researchers found that children who are able to read English independently also scored high on measures of oral language proficiency.
Design of the study
1. This study provides a comprehensive definition of oral proficiency that includes fluency (number of words), semantic content (number of subject-verb clauses), grammatical complexity (length of statements, use of relative and subordinate clauses), and well-formedness (grammatical correctness).
2. As measures of their oral proficiency, each child told a story in Spanish and English about a set of pictures. The study includes samples of their responses.
Findings
3. Results showed that children who scored low on English oral proficiency also scored low in English comprehension. Their difficulties included limited vocabulary knowledge and lack of sensitivity to syntax. Their scores for Spanish comprehension were high, giving evidence that they were able to comprehend written texts.
4. Children also did a line-by-line reading of the texts to measure their comprehension. Although children’s comprehension improved during the line-by-line reading, the study does not provide information on how to do the reading.
Limitations
5. Replication of the study would need to include larger samples representative of English language learners. Research needs to define and measure oral proficiency.
6. Research needs to determine if there is one threshold or if the threshold varies according to each child and his or her language status, the text, and the task.
Teaching implications
7. For teachers who want to work with their students on their L2 oral proficiency, we have included resources for teaching practice in the Bibliography of this Set.
See reference for the research study for criteria for measuring oral language proficiency
Relationships between second language oral proficiency and reading comprehension of bilingual fifth grade students
See in this Tapestry SetWhat does the research tell us about teaching vocabulary strategies explicitly to English language learners?
For studies on the impact of oral proficiency on text comprehension (Study 1 and Study2), see Tapestry Set Foundations of Emerging Literacy What does the research tell us about phonological awareness?
See in Tapestry Set Story ComprehensionWhat does the research tell us about vocabulary acquisition from storybook reading?
What does the research tell us about teaching vocabulary strategies explicitlyto second language learners in the classroom?
The major goal of this study was to measure the effectiveness of explicitly teaching word-learning strategies.
Value of the study
1. The study recognized the role of the English language learners’ first language in learning the subject and in text comprehension.
2. The study provides an instructional model for teaching word-knowing strategies that improves the comprehension of English language learners and English-only learners.
Design
3. The children were 142 fifth graders and included both English only speakers and English language learners whose first language was Spanish. The children attended schools in California, Massachusetts, and Virginia.
Curriculum materials
4. The curriculum was culturally aligned to support the English language learners in the following ways:
a. The children studied “Immigration”. Most of the English language learners were immigrants and it was thought they would find the topic intrinsically interesting.
b. Teaching materials were given to Spanish speakers before the lesson so children would be able to access the background knowledge they brought to the topic in their first language;
c. Spanish-speaking learners had opportunities to teach, e.g. how to recognize root words found in both Spanish and English.
5. Curriculum materials were taken from newspaper articles, diaries, personal accounts of the immigrant experience, literature, and historical accounts. Examples of the curriculum materials are included in the Appendices of the research study.
6. The instruction focused on teaching word-knowing strategies. Research has shown that it is more effective to teach strategies than large numbers of words directly. Teaching resources used to develop the strategies are included in the Bibliography.
7. Teaching word-knowing strategies used the following principles:
a. Introduce words in context of interesting text;
b. Design activities that encourage the analysis and manipulation of words;
c. Give children practice in writing and spelling the target words several times;
d. Use words repetitively throughout the learning unit;
e. Teach children strategies for inferring the meaning of unfamiliar words.
8. Words selected were academic words of medium frequency and used frequently through study.
a. Words selected provided opportunities for teaching children about the English language, e.g. inferring from context, root words, affixes, spelling and pronunciation, and the multiple meanings of words.
b. Examples of words taught in the study include “humanity”, “reformer”, and “congregate”.
Findings
9. The results showed that for both monolingual speakers and English language learners, the explicit instruction of word-learning strategies was effective in learning new words and in improving reading comprehension.
Limitations
10. Not all classroom teachers have the resources for bringing the child’s first language into instruction. Although teachers can use the word-knowing strategies and curriculum resources, it cannot be generalized from the research that the intervention is effective in classrooms in which learners do not have the instructional support of their first language.
See reference for the research study that includes examples of teaching materials
Closing the gap: Addressing the vocabulary needs of English-language learners in bilingual and mainstream classroomsSee reference for additional research Percentage of unknown vocabulary words in text as function of the relative function of the relative difficulty of the text: Implications for instruction
See research-based teaching practices used to develop the curriculum materials in the study
Bringing word to life, robust vocabulary instructionThree principles of effective vocabulary instruction
See additional teaching practice resources
New ways in teaching vocabulary
Why do English language learners need explicit teaching strategies for developing their vocabulary?
What research studies and teaching materials are available to assist teachersin developing the vocabulary of their English language learners?
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF TAPESTRY OF VOCABULARY DEVELOPMENT
What is the role of vocabulary development in academic achievement?
Saville-Troke, M. (1984). What really matters in second language learning for academic achievement? TESOL Quarterly, 18(2), 199 – 219.
Saville-Troke, M. (2003). The ethnography of communication: An introduction. United Kingdom: Blackwell Publishing.
Heath, S. B. (1984). Ways with words: Language, life and work in communities and classrooms. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press.
What does the research tell us about the role of oral English proficiency and of the role of the first language in English reading comprehension in the classroom?
Lee, J. & Schallert, D. L. (1997). The relative contribution of L1 language proficiency and L1 reading ability to L2 reading performance: A test of the threshold hypothesis in an EFL context. TESOL Quarterly, 31(4), 713 – 739.
Peregoy, S. (1989). Relationships between second language proficiency and reading comprehension of bilingual fifth grade students. NABE Journal, 13(3), 217-234.
Nation, P., Ed. (1994). New ways in teaching vocabulary. Alexandria, VA: Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages.
Beck, I., McKeown, M. G., & Kucan, L. (2002). Bringing word to life, robust vocabulary instruction. New York: Guilford.
What does research tell us about teaching vocabulary strategies explicitly to second language learners?
Carlo, M. S., August, D., McLaughlin, B., Snow, C. E., Dressler, C., Lippman, D. N., Lively, T.J., & White, C. E. (2004). Closing the gap: Addressing the vocabulary needs of English-language learners in bilingual and mainstream classrooms. Reading Research Quarterly, 39(2), 188 - 215.
Beck, I., McKeown, M. G., & Kucan, L. (2002). Bringing word to life, robust vocabulary instruction. New York: Guilford.
Carver, R.P. (1994). Percentage of unknown vocabulary words in the text as a function of the relative difficulty of the text: Implications for instruction. Journal of Reading Behavior. 26, 413 – 437.
Stahl, S. A. (1986). Three principles of effective vocabulary instruction. Journal of Reading Behavior. 29, 662 – 668.
Nation, P., Ed. (1994). New ways in teaching vocabulary. Alexandria, VA: Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages.
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Annotation
In “Vocabulary Development” , the author declares that to help children, English language learners, to become independent readers of English, vocabulary development is essential for achieving oral and written English proficiency and for developing the background knowledge that they need to understand both stories and academic texts. As English language learners strive to achieve the vocabulary knowledge they need to comprehend independently, teachers must provide them with the instructional support, the scaffolding that they need. The research examines how children develop their English proficiency and includes instructional guidance that teachers can use in their classroom. Research has shown, as children mature, the achievement gap widens between those who have achieved higher levels of initial vocabulary and those who have not. They need the assistance of teachers to develop their vocabulary and close the gap. Children who are English language learners also bring to their learning of English the background knowledge and reading strategies that they know in their first language. In this Set five questions are examined: 1 What is the role of vocabulary development in academic achievement? 2 What does the research tell us about the role of oral English proficiency and the role of the first language in English reading comprehension? 3 What does research tell us about teaching vocabulary strategies explicitly to second language learners in the classroom? 4 Why do English language learners need explicit teaching strategies for developing their vocabulary? 5 What research studies and teaching materials are available to assist teachers in developing the vocabulary of their English language learners?
I will focus in the third studies in the following.
Annotation of “What does the research tell us about teaching vocabulary strategies explicitlyto second language learners in the classroom?”
The major goal of this study was to measure the effectiveness of explicitly teaching word-learning strategies. And the Value of the study lies in the role of the English language learners’ first language and the improvement of English learning with instruction of word-knowing strategies. Both English-speaking and Spanish-speaking children learning English were included in the curriculum which was culturally aligned to support the English language learners.
I found something in the research interested for me: Firstly, I think the intrinsically interesting topic is an important factor for the learners to get involved in the study since the children studied “Immigration” and most of them were immigrants. Secondly, teaching materials were given to Spanish speakers before the lesson so children would be able to access the background knowledge they brought to the topic in their first language. I think teaching should be based on leaners’ current level and teachers can add additional challenging work on it to facilitate them to learn. Even though nowadays more and more peple emphasize the importance of foreign language asserting whole- English learning condition, wiping off the postive function of native language, I still consent with the findinds of the research that sometimes first language work addictively for beginning learners and provide thwm with enough backgroud knowledge. Thirdly, the Spanish-speaking learners had opportunities to teach, e.g. how to recognize root words found in both Spanish and English. Moreover, the urriculum materials were taken from newspaper articles, diaries, personal accounts of the immigrant experience, literature, and historical accounts. Form the examples of the curriculum materials, I assume that using authentic materials relevent to their lives woulb be also a factor in helping successful learning.
Most interedted to me is that research has shown that it is more effective to teach strategies than large numbers of words directly. So I will learn to apply the principles of the instruction in teaching word-knowing strategies: I will tey to introduce words in context of interesting text, and use relevent materials associated with learners’ lives to make learning more meaningful and make students intrinsically motivated; Secondly, I will try to design activities that encourage the analysis and manipulation of words and, thirdly to give children more practices in writing and spelling the target words several times. Thus the students can work on their own and learn to think or solve a problem by themselves using creativity; Fourthly, I will also try to use words repetitively throughout the learning unit to emphasize their impression and aid their memory in learning vocabulary; Finally, I will alos teach children strategies for inferring the meaning of unfamiliar words from the contexts. I will encourage them to find clues in the surronding environment to guess wisely the meanings of unfamiliar words. Furthermore, I think that the acdemic words selected with medium frequency and used frequently through study will help leaners to become familiar with it. Since the words selected provided opportunities for teaching children about the English language, e.g. inferring from context, root words, affixes, spelling and pronunciation, and the multiple meanings of words, they learn the words sucessfully in the end. This research provides the results that for both monolingual speakers and English language learners, the explicit instruction of word-learning strategies was effective in learning new words and in improving reading comprehension. And I also agree with this point of view that providing these helpful strategies will be useful in aiding vacabulary learning.
References TESOL Quarterly
Home : ELL Tapestry : Sets : Vocabulary
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Our goal is that children who are English language learners develop a foundation of oral and written English proficiency that is necessary to become independent readers of English. Vocabulary development is essential for achieving this proficiency and for developing the background knowledge that they need to understand both stories and academic texts.
All children need opportunities to develop their natural love of words and to grow in their understanding of the intricacies and subtleties of the English language in an environment rich in literature and language experiences.
As English language learners strive to achieve the vocabulary knowledge they need to comprehend independently, teachers must provide them with the instructional support, the scaffolding that they need. The research in this Set examines how children develop their English proficiency and includes instructional guidance that teachers can use in their classroom.
English language learners face the following hurdles in their vocabulary learning:
Children have not had time to develop an adequate English vocabulary before they must read English texts in school. The lack of an adequate vocabulary is one of the largest obstacles to their reading comprehension that is essential for their success in school.
Children who have become proficient in conversational, social English may still struggle with the vocabulary required for academic reading.
English language learners also have a smaller initial vocabulary than many native speakers do.
Research has shown, as children mature, the achievement gap widens between those who have achieved higher levels of initial vocabulary and those who have not. They need the assistance of teachers to develop their vocabulary and close the gap.
Children who are English language learners also bring to their learning of English the background knowledge and reading strategies that they know in their first language. As much as possible we need to provide children with the opportunities to use their first language to access that knowledge to help them better understand a topic, text, and instructional directions.
In this Set we examine the following questions:
What is the role of vocabulary development in academic achievement?
What does the research tell us about the role of oral English proficiency and the role of the first language in English reading comprehension?
What does research tell us about teaching vocabulary strategies explicitly to second language learners in the classroom?
Why do English language learners need explicit teaching strategies for developing their vocabulary?
What research studies and teaching materials are available to assist teachers in developing the vocabulary of their English language learners?
What is the role of vocabulary development in academic achievement?
This classic study, using observation and interviews with children, parents and teachers, provides an in-depth and comprehensive look at how children adapt and learn English both socially and academically.
Value
1. The study documents how children learn English, achieve or falter in academic reading, communicate socially and play without a common language. In the study are transcripts of dialogues between children and examples of their problem solving that teachers can use to understand their own English language learners.
Design
2. The study looks at 19 children in grades 2-6 who began the school year not knowing English; they spoke seven different languages including both alphabetic and non-alphabetic scripts. The study focuses on the children and includes examples of their ways of learning and playing.
3. In doing the study, the researchers videotaped ESL classes during the unsupervised time before class and during instruction.
4. Children were interviewed at the end of the year and evaluated for the content and grammatical correctness of their conversation.
5. Interviews with parents and teachers provided information on home language and personality factors. Academic achievement was measured by the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills (CTBS).
Findings: Academic achievement
6. Children need to develop their vocabulary knowledge; it is the single most important aspect of oral English proficiency for academic reading.
7. Children did not need to achieve mastery of English grammatical structure or grammatical accuracy for immediate success in their academic reading.
8. Children who have the opportunity to discuss academic concepts in their first language (L1), achieve greater success academically in their second language (L2).
9. Skill at social communication was not sufficient for academic achievement. For example:
The highest achiever was not socially talkative. Instead, she daily translated Japanese sentences into English using a bilingual dictionary. She studied the differences in word order of English and Japanese and excelled in reading Japanese.
Findings: Social communication
10. Children can and do participate in a great deal of social activity with little or no common language including the use of pantomime to tell a joke.
11. Additional strategies included exchanging non-linguistic vocalizations, pointing, nodding, and pantomime.
12. English-speaking children taught games to non-English speakers by demonstrating what to do and by correcting mistakes with a simple “no” or with a physical intervention.
Limitations
13. The study is ethnographic; therefore, it is representative of these children at the time of the research. Generalizing to other English language learners, other places, and other times needs to be done cautiously.
See reference for the researchWhat really matters in second language learning for academic achievement?
See additional references ethnographic research on understanding and learning the culture of the classroom The ethnography of communicationWays with words
See Tapestry Set: Academic Reading
See Tapestry Set: Story ComprehensionWhat does the research tell us about an example of culturally aligned curriculum?
What does the research tell us about the role of oral English proficiency and role of the first language in English reading comprehension?
Study 1: Examining the role of oral language proficiency in the second language
In Korea, researchers examined the relationship between achievement of English oral language proficiency and English reading comprehension for evidence of threshold hypothesis with 809 middle school English language learners.
According to the threshold hypothesis, second language learners need to develop a threshold of oral language proficiency in their second language (L2) before they can apply the skills and strategies, prior knowledge and language experiences of reading their first language (L1) to the reading of their second language.
Design
1. The students showed a wide range of achievement in English oral proficiency and in their Korean and English reading.
2. Oral proficiency was defined by written vocabulary measures (synonyms, definitions, and analogies) and by written measures of grammar (e.g. verb usage, plurals, pronouns, questions, and negations).
Findings
3. The researchers found support for the threshold hypothesis. Learners who had achieved high scores of English oral proficiency also achieved higher scores in their reading comprehension.
4. In their initial analysis, oral proficiency was twice as helpful as L1 reading ability for the learners’ L2 reading comprehension skills and strategies.
Limitations
5. The study’s usefulness for teachers is limited. Although it provides evidence supporting the importance of L2 oral proficiency and a general definition of English oral proficiency, classroom guidelines are not included. The study uses a written measure of oral proficiency.
6. Replication would need to include a verbal measure of oral proficiency. Research needs to determine if there is one threshold or if the threshold varies according to child, each child’s language status, the text, and the task.
Teaching implications
7. For teachers who want to work with their students on their L2 oral proficiency, we have included resources for teaching practice in the Bibliography of this Set.
See the reference of the study for a discussion of the threshold hypothesisThe relative contribution of L2 language proficiency and L1 reading ability to L2 reading performance: A test of the threshold hypothesis in an EFL context
See references for research-based teaching practiceBringing words to life: Robust Vocabulary InstructionNew ways in teaching vocabulary
See in Tapestry Set Foundations of Emerging Literacy What does the research tell us about phonological awareness? (Study 1 and Study2)
Study 2: Examining the role of oral language proficiency in the second language
In the United States with 6 fifth-grade English language learners whose first language was Spanish, researchers found that children who are able to read English independently also scored high on measures of oral language proficiency.
Design of the study
1. This study provides a comprehensive definition of oral proficiency that includes fluency (number of words), semantic content (number of subject-verb clauses), grammatical complexity (length of statements, use of relative and subordinate clauses), and well-formedness (grammatical correctness).
2. As measures of their oral proficiency, each child told a story in Spanish and English about a set of pictures. The study includes samples of their responses.
Findings
3. Results showed that children who scored low on English oral proficiency also scored low in English comprehension. Their difficulties included limited vocabulary knowledge and lack of sensitivity to syntax. Their scores for Spanish comprehension were high, giving evidence that they were able to comprehend written texts.
4. Children also did a line-by-line reading of the texts to measure their comprehension. Although children’s comprehension improved during the line-by-line reading, the study does not provide information on how to do the reading.
Limitations
5. Replication of the study would need to include larger samples representative of English language learners. Research needs to define and measure oral proficiency.
6. Research needs to determine if there is one threshold or if the threshold varies according to each child and his or her language status, the text, and the task.
Teaching implications
7. For teachers who want to work with their students on their L2 oral proficiency, we have included resources for teaching practice in the Bibliography of this Set.
See reference for the research study for criteria for measuring oral language proficiency
Relationships between second language oral proficiency and reading comprehension of bilingual fifth grade students
See in this Tapestry SetWhat does the research tell us about teaching vocabulary strategies explicitly to English language learners?
For studies on the impact of oral proficiency on text comprehension (Study 1 and Study2), see Tapestry Set Foundations of Emerging Literacy What does the research tell us about phonological awareness?
See in Tapestry Set Story ComprehensionWhat does the research tell us about vocabulary acquisition from storybook reading?
What does the research tell us about teaching vocabulary strategies explicitlyto second language learners in the classroom?
The major goal of this study was to measure the effectiveness of explicitly teaching word-learning strategies.
Value of the study
1. The study recognized the role of the English language learners’ first language in learning the subject and in text comprehension.
2. The study provides an instructional model for teaching word-knowing strategies that improves the comprehension of English language learners and English-only learners.
Design
3. The children were 142 fifth graders and included both English only speakers and English language learners whose first language was Spanish. The children attended schools in California, Massachusetts, and Virginia.
Curriculum materials
4. The curriculum was culturally aligned to support the English language learners in the following ways:
a. The children studied “Immigration”. Most of the English language learners were immigrants and it was thought they would find the topic intrinsically interesting.
b. Teaching materials were given to Spanish speakers before the lesson so children would be able to access the background knowledge they brought to the topic in their first language;
c. Spanish-speaking learners had opportunities to teach, e.g. how to recognize root words found in both Spanish and English.
5. Curriculum materials were taken from newspaper articles, diaries, personal accounts of the immigrant experience, literature, and historical accounts. Examples of the curriculum materials are included in the Appendices of the research study.
6. The instruction focused on teaching word-knowing strategies. Research has shown that it is more effective to teach strategies than large numbers of words directly. Teaching resources used to develop the strategies are included in the Bibliography.
7. Teaching word-knowing strategies used the following principles:
a. Introduce words in context of interesting text;
b. Design activities that encourage the analysis and manipulation of words;
c. Give children practice in writing and spelling the target words several times;
d. Use words repetitively throughout the learning unit;
e. Teach children strategies for inferring the meaning of unfamiliar words.
8. Words selected were academic words of medium frequency and used frequently through study.
a. Words selected provided opportunities for teaching children about the English language, e.g. inferring from context, root words, affixes, spelling and pronunciation, and the multiple meanings of words.
b. Examples of words taught in the study include “humanity”, “reformer”, and “congregate”.
Findings
9. The results showed that for both monolingual speakers and English language learners, the explicit instruction of word-learning strategies was effective in learning new words and in improving reading comprehension.
Limitations
10. Not all classroom teachers have the resources for bringing the child’s first language into instruction. Although teachers can use the word-knowing strategies and curriculum resources, it cannot be generalized from the research that the intervention is effective in classrooms in which learners do not have the instructional support of their first language.
See reference for the research study that includes examples of teaching materials
Closing the gap: Addressing the vocabulary needs of English-language learners in bilingual and mainstream classroomsSee reference for additional research Percentage of unknown vocabulary words in text as function of the relative function of the relative difficulty of the text: Implications for instruction
See research-based teaching practices used to develop the curriculum materials in the study
Bringing word to life, robust vocabulary instructionThree principles of effective vocabulary instruction
See additional teaching practice resources
New ways in teaching vocabulary
Why do English language learners need explicit teaching strategies for developing their vocabulary?
What research studies and teaching materials are available to assist teachersin developing the vocabulary of their English language learners?
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF TAPESTRY OF VOCABULARY DEVELOPMENT
What is the role of vocabulary development in academic achievement?
Saville-Troke, M. (1984). What really matters in second language learning for academic achievement? TESOL Quarterly, 18(2), 199 – 219.
Saville-Troke, M. (2003). The ethnography of communication: An introduction. United Kingdom: Blackwell Publishing.
Heath, S. B. (1984). Ways with words: Language, life and work in communities and classrooms. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press.
What does the research tell us about the role of oral English proficiency and of the role of the first language in English reading comprehension in the classroom?
Lee, J. & Schallert, D. L. (1997). The relative contribution of L1 language proficiency and L1 reading ability to L2 reading performance: A test of the threshold hypothesis in an EFL context. TESOL Quarterly, 31(4), 713 – 739.
Peregoy, S. (1989). Relationships between second language proficiency and reading comprehension of bilingual fifth grade students. NABE Journal, 13(3), 217-234.
Nation, P., Ed. (1994). New ways in teaching vocabulary. Alexandria, VA: Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages.
Beck, I., McKeown, M. G., & Kucan, L. (2002). Bringing word to life, robust vocabulary instruction. New York: Guilford.
What does research tell us about teaching vocabulary strategies explicitly to second language learners?
Carlo, M. S., August, D., McLaughlin, B., Snow, C. E., Dressler, C., Lippman, D. N., Lively, T.J., & White, C. E. (2004). Closing the gap: Addressing the vocabulary needs of English-language learners in bilingual and mainstream classrooms. Reading Research Quarterly, 39(2), 188 - 215.
Beck, I., McKeown, M. G., & Kucan, L. (2002). Bringing word to life, robust vocabulary instruction. New York: Guilford.
Carver, R.P. (1994). Percentage of unknown vocabulary words in the text as a function of the relative difficulty of the text: Implications for instruction. Journal of Reading Behavior. 26, 413 – 437.
Stahl, S. A. (1986). Three principles of effective vocabulary instruction. Journal of Reading Behavior. 29, 662 – 668.
Nation, P., Ed. (1994). New ways in teaching vocabulary. Alexandria, VA: Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages.
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Why do English language learners need explicit teaching of strategies for developing their vocabulary?
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© Copyright 1996-2007
Annotation
In “Vocabulary Development” , the author declares that to help children, English language learners, to become independent readers of English, vocabulary development is essential for achieving oral and written English proficiency and for developing the background knowledge that they need to understand both stories and academic texts. As English language learners strive to achieve the vocabulary knowledge they need to comprehend independently, teachers must provide them with the instructional support, the scaffolding that they need. The research examines how children develop their English proficiency and includes instructional guidance that teachers can use in their classroom. Research has shown, as children mature, the achievement gap widens between those who have achieved higher levels of initial vocabulary and those who have not. They need the assistance of teachers to develop their vocabulary and close the gap. Children who are English language learners also bring to their learning of English the background knowledge and reading strategies that they know in their first language. In this Set five questions are examined: 1 What is the role of vocabulary development in academic achievement? 2 What does the research tell us about the role of oral English proficiency and the role of the first language in English reading comprehension? 3 What does research tell us about teaching vocabulary strategies explicitly to second language learners in the classroom? 4 Why do English language learners need explicit teaching strategies for developing their vocabulary? 5 What research studies and teaching materials are available to assist teachers in developing the vocabulary of their English language learners?
I will focus in the third studies in the following.
Annotation of “What does the research tell us about teaching vocabulary strategies explicitlyto second language learners in the classroom?”
The major goal of this study was to measure the effectiveness of explicitly teaching word-learning strategies. And the Value of the study lies in the role of the English language learners’ first language and the improvement of English learning with instruction of word-knowing strategies. Both English-speaking and Spanish-speaking children learning English were included in the curriculum which was culturally aligned to support the English language learners.
I found something in the research interested for me: Firstly, I think the intrinsically interesting topic is an important factor for the learners to get involved in the study since the children studied “Immigration” and most of them were immigrants. Secondly, teaching materials were given to Spanish speakers before the lesson so children would be able to access the background knowledge they brought to the topic in their first language. I think teaching should be based on leaners’ current level and teachers can add additional challenging work on it to facilitate them to learn. Even though nowadays more and more peple emphasize the importance of foreign language asserting whole- English learning condition, wiping off the postive function of native language, I still consent with the findinds of the research that sometimes first language work addictively for beginning learners and provide thwm with enough backgroud knowledge. Thirdly, the Spanish-speaking learners had opportunities to teach, e.g. how to recognize root words found in both Spanish and English. Moreover, the urriculum materials were taken from newspaper articles, diaries, personal accounts of the immigrant experience, literature, and historical accounts. Form the examples of the curriculum materials, I assume that using authentic materials relevent to their lives woulb be also a factor in helping successful learning.
Most interedted to me is that research has shown that it is more effective to teach strategies than large numbers of words directly. So I will learn to apply the principles of the instruction in teaching word-knowing strategies: I will tey to introduce words in context of interesting text, and use relevent materials associated with learners’ lives to make learning more meaningful and make students intrinsically motivated; Secondly, I will try to design activities that encourage the analysis and manipulation of words and, thirdly to give children more practices in writing and spelling the target words several times. Thus the students can work on their own and learn to think or solve a problem by themselves using creativity; Fourthly, I will also try to use words repetitively throughout the learning unit to emphasize their impression and aid their memory in learning vocabulary; Finally, I will alos teach children strategies for inferring the meaning of unfamiliar words from the contexts. I will encourage them to find clues in the surronding environment to guess wisely the meanings of unfamiliar words. Furthermore, I think that the acdemic words selected with medium frequency and used frequently through study will help leaners to become familiar with it. Since the words selected provided opportunities for teaching children about the English language, e.g. inferring from context, root words, affixes, spelling and pronunciation, and the multiple meanings of words, they learn the words sucessfully in the end. This research provides the results that for both monolingual speakers and English language learners, the explicit instruction of word-learning strategies was effective in learning new words and in improving reading comprehension. And I also agree with this point of view that providing these helpful strategies will be useful in aiding vacabulary learning.
Literature 1
Why do English language learners need explicit teaching of strategies for developing their vocabulary?
Home : ELL Tapestry : Sets : Vocabulary
1. English language learners need to learn strategies for rapid learning of vocabulary. They particularly need to learn how to identify words that they must recognize in print but will not encounter in conversational language to learn the academic vocabulary of content areas. English language learners can have a gap of 6000 words between them and native speakers. Successful vocabulary development for native speakers in the classroom teaches 300 words in an academic year, which is not sufficient enough for English language learners.
2. English language learners may find using context to learn unknown words unreliable. Because a greater number of words in the text are unknown to them, they have less information to work with in determining meaning.
3. Because English language learners are less able to use context to learn unknown words, learning vocabulary incidentally as they read is not effective. For these children the probability of learning a word incidentally while they read is 15%.
How do children learn incidentally from context while they read?
4. Knowing a word means knowing many things about the word including:
o A word’s literal meaning and its multiple meanings;
o The connotations of a word;
o The various ways a word can work in a sentence; and
o The synonyms, antonyms, homonyms of a word
5. Learning a word from context over many encounters means learning a word’s various meanings. The first time readers see an unfamiliar word they learn general information about the word’s meaning and its use in a sentence.
As children encounter a word more frequently in context, they learn when there is more than one meaning. They develop knowledge of the depth of a word, its connotations, various uses, is subtleties. Comprehension breakdowns can occur when the reader does not have the knowledge of a word’s depth.
See in Bibliography of Tapestry Set on Vocabulary Development
Closing the gap: Addressing the vocabulary needs of English-language learners in bilingual and mainstream classrooms
Percentage of unknown vocabulary words in text as function of the relative function of the relative difficulty of the text: Implications for instruction.
Annotations of “Why do English language learners need explicit teaching strategies for developing their vocabulary?”
In the article, “Why do English language learners need explicit teaching strategies for developing their vocabulary?” the author attempts to find answers for teaching strategies for learners to develop their vocabulary. He points out five reasons for doing this. Firstly, with possibly a huge gap of 6000 words between them and native speakers, English language learners need to learn strategies for rapid learning of vocabulary. They need to learn how to identify words that they must recognize in print but will not encounter in conversational language to learn the academic vocabulary of content areas. As an EFL student, I find myself and my tutoring stuents as well always experiencing memorizing countless vocabulary during the long English learning Journey. I agree with the author and believe that teaching stretegies for developing words learing is necessary for most students in Taiwan.
Secondly, the author mentioned that using context to learn unknown words might be unreliable for English language learners, given too more words unknown and less information to guess in the text. And, thirdly, for most leaners who are less able to use context to learn unknown words, incidental vocabulary learning is not effective. Under this condition as the author mentions, I agree with him that learning strategies of words need to be explictly taught to help students acquiring vocabulary more efficiently. Knowong the fact that incidental vocabulary learning only occupies 15% of the whole in this article, I realize the importance of intiontional vocabulary learning for students and get the awarness of sharpening my vocabulary teaching skills in order to facilitate others to learn effectively. These two reasons also remind me of suggestting my students to do extensive reading or listening according to their current proficiency level, neither too hard nor too easy. In my interview, I also found out that two of my tutoring freshman really love to do extensive reading and they both won the rewards in the activity of English self-learing held by the Language Center in NCU. I encourage them to do more readings there as I think the materials there can desirably match their language proficiency as well as their intrests. One of them(Ming-Jin Wu) even told me that, “ I just read them for pleasure because reading novels is really interesting and I really learns a lot from it.” Since she is intered in it, I assume that she choose her reading with the sppropriate level to read and get feedback from readinf and learning. In addition, she also mentioned that “ I think that most of the words in the blank of the tests occurs with high frequency in common reading materials or any kind of easily accesible articles. Since I am not familiar with them, I just cannot write them down correctly in the given test time. I guess the exact reason why I cannot get high scores on the filling blank tests of the vocabulary part is because I don’t have plenty access to and familarity with the words which frequently occurs in the contexts. Therfore, I believe doing lots of extracurriculum reading will benefit me to a large degree in learning English vocabulary.” From her words, I think that doing extensive reading might really help a lot in learning English as long as the learner has high motivation in doing so and choosing materials according to the desired prociciency level. She also told me that she goes there for novel reading once or twice a week and one to three hours each time. I can see that she indeed owns very high intrinsic motivation in extensive reading and I believe she will undoutedly benefits from this extensive readinf in learning English.
Moreover, the authors mentions the fourth reason, which indicates that knowing a word includes knowing not only its literal and multiple meanings, but also its connotations, synonyms, antonyms, homonyms, and so on. And finally, the fifth reason reveals that learning a word from context over many encounters means learning a word’s various meanings. I assent to the above two ideas of the author. As to the fourth one, I think a through understanding of a word implies that we have to learn its connotaions, synonym, antonyms, and son on in addtion to its literal meaning. I will thus encourage the learners to use monolingual dictionaries and try to provide words with similar or opposite meaning When introducing new lexical items. To avoid the problem causing misleading meanings by bilingual dictionaries, my tutoring students use monolingual dictionaries now. I also find out that, in the short response writing of one of my tutoring student (Chiung-Yi Hung), she mentioned that she often memorizes “vocabulary and other words associated with it.” When she sees a word, she will “memorize more similar words with the same meaning.” I guess she tries to use the synonyms of a new word to learn it and it’s really a good way to remember a new word because, even after a period of time, the words with similar meanings can be easily retained and retrieved for latter use. As to the fifth reason, I agree with the author that the more frequently readers see an unfamiliar word in the context, the more likely they can know its various meanings and thus able to see its use for different functions or representations. And I think knowing varying meanings of a word in certain specific contexts is crucila when learning vocabulary since context helps us to learn and identifying different meanings of a word in unique situations enable us to get the multiple significance of a word.
Home : ELL Tapestry : Sets : Vocabulary
1. English language learners need to learn strategies for rapid learning of vocabulary. They particularly need to learn how to identify words that they must recognize in print but will not encounter in conversational language to learn the academic vocabulary of content areas. English language learners can have a gap of 6000 words between them and native speakers. Successful vocabulary development for native speakers in the classroom teaches 300 words in an academic year, which is not sufficient enough for English language learners.
2. English language learners may find using context to learn unknown words unreliable. Because a greater number of words in the text are unknown to them, they have less information to work with in determining meaning.
3. Because English language learners are less able to use context to learn unknown words, learning vocabulary incidentally as they read is not effective. For these children the probability of learning a word incidentally while they read is 15%.
How do children learn incidentally from context while they read?
4. Knowing a word means knowing many things about the word including:
o A word’s literal meaning and its multiple meanings;
o The connotations of a word;
o The various ways a word can work in a sentence; and
o The synonyms, antonyms, homonyms of a word
5. Learning a word from context over many encounters means learning a word’s various meanings. The first time readers see an unfamiliar word they learn general information about the word’s meaning and its use in a sentence.
As children encounter a word more frequently in context, they learn when there is more than one meaning. They develop knowledge of the depth of a word, its connotations, various uses, is subtleties. Comprehension breakdowns can occur when the reader does not have the knowledge of a word’s depth.
See in Bibliography of Tapestry Set on Vocabulary Development
Closing the gap: Addressing the vocabulary needs of English-language learners in bilingual and mainstream classrooms
Percentage of unknown vocabulary words in text as function of the relative function of the relative difficulty of the text: Implications for instruction.
Annotations of “Why do English language learners need explicit teaching strategies for developing their vocabulary?”
In the article, “Why do English language learners need explicit teaching strategies for developing their vocabulary?” the author attempts to find answers for teaching strategies for learners to develop their vocabulary. He points out five reasons for doing this. Firstly, with possibly a huge gap of 6000 words between them and native speakers, English language learners need to learn strategies for rapid learning of vocabulary. They need to learn how to identify words that they must recognize in print but will not encounter in conversational language to learn the academic vocabulary of content areas. As an EFL student, I find myself and my tutoring stuents as well always experiencing memorizing countless vocabulary during the long English learning Journey. I agree with the author and believe that teaching stretegies for developing words learing is necessary for most students in Taiwan.
Secondly, the author mentioned that using context to learn unknown words might be unreliable for English language learners, given too more words unknown and less information to guess in the text. And, thirdly, for most leaners who are less able to use context to learn unknown words, incidental vocabulary learning is not effective. Under this condition as the author mentions, I agree with him that learning strategies of words need to be explictly taught to help students acquiring vocabulary more efficiently. Knowong the fact that incidental vocabulary learning only occupies 15% of the whole in this article, I realize the importance of intiontional vocabulary learning for students and get the awarness of sharpening my vocabulary teaching skills in order to facilitate others to learn effectively. These two reasons also remind me of suggestting my students to do extensive reading or listening according to their current proficiency level, neither too hard nor too easy. In my interview, I also found out that two of my tutoring freshman really love to do extensive reading and they both won the rewards in the activity of English self-learing held by the Language Center in NCU. I encourage them to do more readings there as I think the materials there can desirably match their language proficiency as well as their intrests. One of them(Ming-Jin Wu) even told me that, “ I just read them for pleasure because reading novels is really interesting and I really learns a lot from it.” Since she is intered in it, I assume that she choose her reading with the sppropriate level to read and get feedback from readinf and learning. In addition, she also mentioned that “ I think that most of the words in the blank of the tests occurs with high frequency in common reading materials or any kind of easily accesible articles. Since I am not familiar with them, I just cannot write them down correctly in the given test time. I guess the exact reason why I cannot get high scores on the filling blank tests of the vocabulary part is because I don’t have plenty access to and familarity with the words which frequently occurs in the contexts. Therfore, I believe doing lots of extracurriculum reading will benefit me to a large degree in learning English vocabulary.” From her words, I think that doing extensive reading might really help a lot in learning English as long as the learner has high motivation in doing so and choosing materials according to the desired prociciency level. She also told me that she goes there for novel reading once or twice a week and one to three hours each time. I can see that she indeed owns very high intrinsic motivation in extensive reading and I believe she will undoutedly benefits from this extensive readinf in learning English.
Moreover, the authors mentions the fourth reason, which indicates that knowing a word includes knowing not only its literal and multiple meanings, but also its connotations, synonyms, antonyms, homonyms, and so on. And finally, the fifth reason reveals that learning a word from context over many encounters means learning a word’s various meanings. I assent to the above two ideas of the author. As to the fourth one, I think a through understanding of a word implies that we have to learn its connotaions, synonym, antonyms, and son on in addtion to its literal meaning. I will thus encourage the learners to use monolingual dictionaries and try to provide words with similar or opposite meaning When introducing new lexical items. To avoid the problem causing misleading meanings by bilingual dictionaries, my tutoring students use monolingual dictionaries now. I also find out that, in the short response writing of one of my tutoring student (Chiung-Yi Hung), she mentioned that she often memorizes “vocabulary and other words associated with it.” When she sees a word, she will “memorize more similar words with the same meaning.” I guess she tries to use the synonyms of a new word to learn it and it’s really a good way to remember a new word because, even after a period of time, the words with similar meanings can be easily retained and retrieved for latter use. As to the fifth reason, I agree with the author that the more frequently readers see an unfamiliar word in the context, the more likely they can know its various meanings and thus able to see its use for different functions or representations. And I think knowing varying meanings of a word in certain specific contexts is crucila when learning vocabulary since context helps us to learn and identifying different meanings of a word in unique situations enable us to get the multiple significance of a word.
Dialogue Journal 7
In the seventh lesson, I know more about how to make use of techniques, materials, and syllabus design. I also believe that using appropriate teaching skills, interesting materials, and well-designed syllabus will indeed help teachers to teach in a great degree. Indeed, all the above can help students become more concentrate and get involved to learn effectively in a class.
Actually, I have experienced these familiar techniques during my learning process. When I was in junior high school and senior high school, lessons were often taught in a traditional way. The teacher just used lots of controlled techniques to teach and almost everyone in the class just got used to them. The teachers led us to read aloud, practice drills, copy the text, and then gave us lots of tests. At that time, I think most of us just learn by following the teacher’s instructions step by step, doing much homework and preparing for passing the exams only. It seems like we just accustomed to learn in such a passive way instead of trying to explore something novel, fresh, or beyond the text by ourselves. However, when I entered the college, I was a little bit unable to adjust myself and change this kind of passive learning way. I found out that teachers in university are quite different from teachers in high school in the aspect of teaching. I realized that more and more semi-controlled and free techniques like brain-storming, referential question-answer, role-play, problem-solving, discussion, and so on are used to encourage students to think independently and work on our own. They make teaching more interesting, challengeable, creative, and inspiring for us and I also trained to be more active in my own learning process and learn more independently in a subject. I think teachers can measure students’ ability and level to adjust using different kinds of techniques ranging from the easy controlled techniques to semi-controlled and free techniques with more challenges or difficulties to facilitate different student’s learning.
Actually, I have experienced these familiar techniques during my learning process. When I was in junior high school and senior high school, lessons were often taught in a traditional way. The teacher just used lots of controlled techniques to teach and almost everyone in the class just got used to them. The teachers led us to read aloud, practice drills, copy the text, and then gave us lots of tests. At that time, I think most of us just learn by following the teacher’s instructions step by step, doing much homework and preparing for passing the exams only. It seems like we just accustomed to learn in such a passive way instead of trying to explore something novel, fresh, or beyond the text by ourselves. However, when I entered the college, I was a little bit unable to adjust myself and change this kind of passive learning way. I found out that teachers in university are quite different from teachers in high school in the aspect of teaching. I realized that more and more semi-controlled and free techniques like brain-storming, referential question-answer, role-play, problem-solving, discussion, and so on are used to encourage students to think independently and work on our own. They make teaching more interesting, challengeable, creative, and inspiring for us and I also trained to be more active in my own learning process and learn more independently in a subject. I think teachers can measure students’ ability and level to adjust using different kinds of techniques ranging from the easy controlled techniques to semi-controlled and free techniques with more challenges or difficulties to facilitate different student’s learning.
Dialogue Journal 6
In the sixth lesson, I gain more insight about strategy-based instruction. I think it’s really important for learners to build up learning strategies and to learn how to learn in the rapid changing world with limitless knowledge or information we need to know to accomplish the goal of life-long learning. Besides, since I plan to focus my microteaching on reading part, I would like to combine teaching reading with some of these strategies as well in my lesson plan. I will teach them by building strategic I techniques that I learned in this lesson. For example, I will use techniques like to lower inhibitions by playing songs and using group work in my microteaching. I will also promote cooperative learning in my teaching by directing them to share their knowledge, play down the role of competition, and do a considerable amount of small-group work. In addition, I will encourage them to use right-brain processing by using movies and playing tapes in class, having them read passages quickly, and do some skimming exercises. As well, I will help them use their intuition by encouraging and praising them to make guesses.Moreover, I did the questionnaire and strategy inventory for language learning in the textbook. I understand more about my learning strategy and realize more clearly about what might be my preferable ways to learn and what my weakness might be. I also assume it as a good way to do some tests to find out one’s learning preference or weak point and then can know what the point should be improved to help learning latter on.
Dialogue Journal 5
In the fifth lesson, I learn more knowledge about form- focused instruction as well as some key principles on how to teach grammar and vocabulary. Since I plan to focus my micro teaching on reading part, I would like to combine these grammar and vocabulary teaching skills in my microteaching. Besides, when I recall my learning process in junior or senior high school, it seems like teaching grammar and vocabulary are both really important things because most of the lesson are taught in Grammar translation method and the tests and exams focus on these language forms most of the time. I estimate the significance of learning forms is undeniable and it will indeed help learners to gain structured input by teaching those forms with explicit treatment of rules or just use grammar teaching as noticing and consciousness-raising techniques to raise learners’ attention on appropriate use.
Besides, during the discussion time in this class, I also realized that almost all of my classmates experienced grammar translation method before in their former learning stage. Undoubtedly, this method was really common and widely used in teaching in Taiwan and most of us just got used to it no matter we liked it or not. However, I still found out that many of them, in fact, had some complaints about using this method in junior high or senior high school. I, as well as most of classmates, thought it was really a traditional and acceptable way to use this method to teach students. But this method will easily make teaching quite boring, unable to raise students’ interests and motivation to learn. There are both positive and negative attitudes toward this method. Actually, this method was really effective in teaching students who wanted to get high scores in traditional pen-and-paper tests. Even though the forms of language like grammar and vocabulary are indeed highly concerned and emphasized in Taiwan, the teaching style we have to learn should be more interesting, challengeable, creative, and inspiring to students.
Besides, during the discussion time in this class, I also realized that almost all of my classmates experienced grammar translation method before in their former learning stage. Undoubtedly, this method was really common and widely used in teaching in Taiwan and most of us just got used to it no matter we liked it or not. However, I still found out that many of them, in fact, had some complaints about using this method in junior high or senior high school. I, as well as most of classmates, thought it was really a traditional and acceptable way to use this method to teach students. But this method will easily make teaching quite boring, unable to raise students’ interests and motivation to learn. There are both positive and negative attitudes toward this method. Actually, this method was really effective in teaching students who wanted to get high scores in traditional pen-and-paper tests. Even though the forms of language like grammar and vocabulary are indeed highly concerned and emphasized in Taiwan, the teaching style we have to learn should be more interesting, challengeable, creative, and inspiring to students.
2007年10月23日 星期二
Dialogue Journal 2
In the second lesson, we were asked whether the concept of “methods” is the central issue in language teaching by the teacher. Some of us agreed while there were also other different voices about leaner’s learning and classroom management in teaching. I thought methods might be indeed important in language teaching, but there are also some values in considering student’s learning process, needs, and affective factors like motivation, personality, and other emotional relatedness, or any other influential factors in the classroom. After hearing the instruction about many influential issues in language teaching, I realized their significance in teaching which is as noteworthy as the methods we learned in last week too.
In this class, the teacher also asked us to perform a short drama which is adapted from the textbook using our own imagination and creativity. I thought this activity was quite appealing and interesting because everyone shared a part in a group and participated actively in the discussion to get a sense of involvement. In such highly-involvement of learning, learners can really get a sense of self achievement, no matter playing the leading roles or minor roles in real practice. Besides, running our imagination wild created stories that made others laugh and made lessons no more boring. I guess applying this strategy in my future teaching is a good way in appealing learner’s attention. However, this strategy needs enough time and few members in a small class.
In this class, the teacher also asked us to perform a short drama which is adapted from the textbook using our own imagination and creativity. I thought this activity was quite appealing and interesting because everyone shared a part in a group and participated actively in the discussion to get a sense of involvement. In such highly-involvement of learning, learners can really get a sense of self achievement, no matter playing the leading roles or minor roles in real practice. Besides, running our imagination wild created stories that made others laugh and made lessons no more boring. I guess applying this strategy in my future teaching is a good way in appealing learner’s attention. However, this strategy needs enough time and few members in a small class.
Dialogue Journal 3
The presentation in third lesson about listening and speaking made me recall lots of memory in learning English before. I remembered my junior and senior English teachers just asked our class to do some small activities on the textbook to practice our listening skills with a recording tape. In this class, I got more understanding of types of spoken language, basic principles in teaching listening, and some academic terms like bottom-up exercise, top-down exercise, and interactive exercise. Some exercises like selecting details, getting the gist of a sentence, and following directions are all activities that I am familiar with. After categorizing different levels of these exercises, I understand how to use them according to students’ language proficiency. And I think applying these exercises in teaching listening will still catch students’ attention in my future teaching because of hearing many of other classmates’ positive attitudes toward these activities. Moreover, the key principles in listening skills like using authentic contexts in beneficial to me for application as well.
Besides, I think the task-based method is also inviting to begging learners in learning a second language. It undoubtedly provide a chance for students to practice the idea of “learning from doing.” I was impressive about the video clip shown in the class because it looked like really close to life and practical. Only by practicing speaking on their own could they have the deepest impression on what was taught and then learned it afterwards. Learning such a useful dialogue can be applied by learners in their daily life. So I might very well apply this method in my future teaching on the condition that I have a small class of beginning level students and enough time.
Besides, I think the task-based method is also inviting to begging learners in learning a second language. It undoubtedly provide a chance for students to practice the idea of “learning from doing.” I was impressive about the video clip shown in the class because it looked like really close to life and practical. Only by practicing speaking on their own could they have the deepest impression on what was taught and then learned it afterwards. Learning such a useful dialogue can be applied by learners in their daily life. So I might very well apply this method in my future teaching on the condition that I have a small class of beginning level students and enough time.
Dialogue Journal 4
In the fourth lesson, I got more ideas about teaching reading and writing. In fact, I had no idea about how to teach reading until today. The presentation informed me some important strategies used in reading and I thought it was indeed helpful to apply these strategies when coming across a long or complex article to read. Skimming and scanning is useful while there was lots of material waiting to be read. Identifying the purpose and getting the main ideas are also beneficial to get a general understanding of a long passage. According to these principles, we can save lots of time and effort instead of looking the contents word by word in a careful way. Remembering all these important guides, reading would be more easily to be done. I thought I would use these key principles both in my self-learning and future teaching.
Moreover, the teacher just mentioned that three of her classmates with teaching experiences in her prior lifetime of study all chose the traditional way to teach reading. Vocabulary, grammar, and translating the meaning of sentences are widely used in their teaching. Nothing innovative was used due to the conventionalized expectations of students. Actually, my teacher taught me in this way such as translation similar to the three mentioned teachers’ teaching methods. I really got used to it until I entered college. As a freshman, I had to spend lots of time doing self-reading and learning without teacher’s translation. The reason why there was no more direct translation used in class might be the purpose to stimulate students to think by themselves and thus to form a habit of making judgments or present their own opinions without any presuppositions from teachers. That’s undoubtedly a good way for advanced learners to benefit from this self-learning. Therefore, I thought I would also encourage my students to think independently and present their own ideas in my future teaching, because it’s a good way to find something fresh and different from the conventionalized thoughts. What’s more, I am also interested in the five writing process that the teacher mentioned. And I came to understand that one’s audience would also have influential effects on the writer himself. I guess that’s why some blog keeper would use different tones, genres, or playing different roles in his writing that is quite dissimilar with his real life. Besides, I also agree with the teacher’s opinion that keeping a blog can easily get lots of information in one’s progressive writing, so I might ask my students to do so for clear observation in the future.
Moreover, the teacher just mentioned that three of her classmates with teaching experiences in her prior lifetime of study all chose the traditional way to teach reading. Vocabulary, grammar, and translating the meaning of sentences are widely used in their teaching. Nothing innovative was used due to the conventionalized expectations of students. Actually, my teacher taught me in this way such as translation similar to the three mentioned teachers’ teaching methods. I really got used to it until I entered college. As a freshman, I had to spend lots of time doing self-reading and learning without teacher’s translation. The reason why there was no more direct translation used in class might be the purpose to stimulate students to think by themselves and thus to form a habit of making judgments or present their own opinions without any presuppositions from teachers. That’s undoubtedly a good way for advanced learners to benefit from this self-learning. Therefore, I thought I would also encourage my students to think independently and present their own ideas in my future teaching, because it’s a good way to find something fresh and different from the conventionalized thoughts. What’s more, I am also interested in the five writing process that the teacher mentioned. And I came to understand that one’s audience would also have influential effects on the writer himself. I guess that’s why some blog keeper would use different tones, genres, or playing different roles in his writing that is quite dissimilar with his real life. Besides, I also agree with the teacher’s opinion that keeping a blog can easily get lots of information in one’s progressive writing, so I might ask my students to do so for clear observation in the future.
Dialogue Journal 1
When I attended the first lesson of topics in English Education 1, the teacher just asked every student why we want to take the class. After thinking for a while, I thought that the main reason was that since I want to be a language teacher in the future, I consider learning something important from the basic theories and practical teaching experience in this course would very possibly help me to improve my own teaching. Actually, I had an experience of e-tutoring a junior high school student and came across some problems like lacking of efficiency and inability of holding student’s attention all the time during my teaching. Thus I supposed learning more relative teaching methodology might benefit me a lot while taking this course.
In the first lessen, the teacher also asked us to work in pairs and talked about the key principles of different teaching methods with comparison with another method. By discussing with my partner and listening to other groups’ report about these methods, I had more clear understanding about them. These methods all exist for different purposes for language teaching and it’s beneficial for teachers to adopt them in a suitable way. Grammar translation method focuses on form like vocabulary and grammar, while TPR emphasizes the understanding of meaning. So I would like to apply the first to teaching texts with difficult sentence structures or unfamiliar words and chose TPR to initiate beginning leaner’s motivation to learn. Additionally, some methods taught in the class suggest teachers to correct students’ errors right away while others not. And I think I would correct their global errors and ignore local errors right after they speak. Besides, some methods use native language while others not. Valuing learner’s needs is also important while chosing a method. And after comparing their differences, I came to realize that there is no standard or perfect teaching method. Teachers can even combine methods in teaching to get more advantages. Therefore, I thought I could use some of the principles in them to improve my teaching skill in my following teaching days or using some methods like TPR which seems really interesting and motivating to beginning learners.
In the first lessen, the teacher also asked us to work in pairs and talked about the key principles of different teaching methods with comparison with another method. By discussing with my partner and listening to other groups’ report about these methods, I had more clear understanding about them. These methods all exist for different purposes for language teaching and it’s beneficial for teachers to adopt them in a suitable way. Grammar translation method focuses on form like vocabulary and grammar, while TPR emphasizes the understanding of meaning. So I would like to apply the first to teaching texts with difficult sentence structures or unfamiliar words and chose TPR to initiate beginning leaner’s motivation to learn. Additionally, some methods taught in the class suggest teachers to correct students’ errors right away while others not. And I think I would correct their global errors and ignore local errors right after they speak. Besides, some methods use native language while others not. Valuing learner’s needs is also important while chosing a method. And after comparing their differences, I came to realize that there is no standard or perfect teaching method. Teachers can even combine methods in teaching to get more advantages. Therefore, I thought I could use some of the principles in them to improve my teaching skill in my following teaching days or using some methods like TPR which seems really interesting and motivating to beginning learners.
2007年10月3日 星期三
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I'm Tiffany!
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I'm Tiffany!
Welcome to my blog, and I hope that we will have a happy semester.
Welcome to leave messages in my blog.
Thanks for your visit.
2007年3月1日 星期四
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