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.

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.

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.

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.

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I'm Tiffany!
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