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.