Taking control of my career..

My career in ELT is yet to start... Moving to Korea was definitely the biggest turning point in my personal and professional life. Up until moving here about three years ago, I worked at public and private hospitals as a clinical dietitian. One of my main responsibilities was provision of nutrition education to patients and their families. I was involved in nutrition classes for kids, expectant mothers and patients in the psychiatric wards (not just those with mental illness but teenagers struggling with eating disorders as well). Even though on the surface, all this had nothing to do with ELT, in fact, it taught me a great deal in terms of how to devise the right strategies to get through to different individuals with different personalities as well as cultural competence having to counsel people of different races, ethnicities, and religions.

Once I moved to Korea, I struggled for a while trying to find where my skills would be the best match. I also wanted to get personal satisfaction from what I did for living as I was not able to continue my career as a clinical dietitian (at least not until I pass the national test administered in Korean). I have been working in my current position with the Ministry of Health and Welfare for a little over two and a half years. Pretty much from day one, I have been doing what Koreans refer to as “language exchange” with my colleagues. Although we are supposed to be splitting time between English and Korean, and helping each other out, I am pretty much helping my colleagues with their conversational and, to some extent, writing skills in English. I have realized how much I enjoy sharing my knowledge with others and take pride in helping them to move forward with their language skills. I shared how I felt with my family and friends. I then started looking into how I could teach in Korea. I knew that I did not have enough experience nor did I have the right educational background. But I knew I had to start somewhere. It did not take me long to come across SMU TESOL Program’s website and the rest is history.

As a side note, I do have something to share about my interview for SMU STG Program. I remember vividly how after the interview I called my husband and told him that I wouldn’t get in. I felt that I didn’t manage to really show my whole heart and sincerity during the interview when I was asked why I wanted to teach. I am very privileged to be a part of such a great group of classmates who all bring different experiences and points of view to the table.

I look forward to our classes on Saturdays and teaching on Sundays. Once the class is over, I am planning to teach more. However, I feel that I am a better fit for children in elementary school and above for the time being. My ultimate goal is not only to teach English but also food & nutrition, hospitality management or public health to put to use not only my teaching skills but my medical knowledge as well. I have never really been driven by money. What I value the most is waking up in the morning and wanting to go to work (as opposed to thinking “oh gosh, it is another Monday!!"). 

I value professional development and having a sense of purpose in what I am doing. Right now, I am a part of many health care projects between Korea and other countries. But I fail to see the “big picture.” I seem to be constantly working on some kind of internal report to present information to the higher executives or gathering market data to put together a report, again, for the higher executives. I don’t seem to see the “point” in all this anymore really. I have lost my enthusiasm over the years. I am surrounded by many people at work and outside (family friends, acquaintances, etc.) who have shared similar stories with me or with others who have told me. Why don’t they do something about it? Are they scared of taking any risks? How can they go on with their lives doing something that doesn’t give them personal satisfaction? We spend more time at work than anywhere else, if we add it all up. I am not a big risk taker. However, I do not see any problems with taking calculated risks. I would like to quote Albert Einstein by saying: “A ship is always safe at the shore - but that is not what it is built for.”

I have been questioned by several colleagues, friends, and family on several occasions. They all tried to encourage (some force!!) me to teach English. Even after I would tell them that I didn’t have the formal educational background or any appropriate teaching certificate, they would still stick to their guns working under the assumption that “if you can speak the language, you can teach it.” I have also heard of many native speakers doing so without any proper credentials. I would have never considered going down this path, as I don’t believe that it should be just about making money. How could I live with myself if I ever..?

Once I start teaching as part of an establishment whether it is a public school or a hagwon, I need to prepare myself for the fact that I may be marginalized. I will need to persevere, keep up-to-date through professional development, share my knowledge and grow with others in the field and have a ball teaching. :)

  

~ICC Microteaching Reflection~

I was quite excited to do my 3^rd microteaching on table manners. I have a personal interest in anything related to food and nutrition. :)

Where to start? How to put my thoughts about my microteaching on paper?

Well… I felt that it was better than I had expected. I felt that my text was well received as we all can relate to dining, dining etiquette… Students were amused by the fact that it contained words such as “belch” and “pass gas” contrary to their expectations I guess. This was one of the main reasons why I had picked this piece of authentic text among a zillion available out there…

That being said, after watching my video, I had much to reflect on.

I found it much easier to imagine and treat my native-speaker classmates as my students this time around. However, I still had that feeling, to some extent, as if I was racing against myself to get to the “better” parts of my presentation stage. I had really hoped to have the opportunity to go through my first activity at the very least but my time was up...

On the bright side, I realized that I did interact more with the students as they were doing pair work. This was something I had reflected upon before and has been trying to improve.

Furthermore, I tried my best to manage the class. There is the natural tendency for the “students” to start giggling, talking (signs of losing focus) after the first few microteachings. Therefore, when I called on one of them when not paying attention, it was met with humor and a few commented that “I had eyes in the back.” Well, I wish… :)

I had planned to do more comprehension checks by asking a student to report back what he/she was supposed to be doing before they proceeded with the task at hand. However, in the heat of the moment, it sadly escaped me...

It was good practice having an opportunity to tackle vocabulary questions come up prematurely. In fact, this had never happened to me in my classroom. I meant to just tell John to be a little patient and that we would talk about all unknown words from the text in just a little while. Then, somehow, I decided to write his name and the word he had asked about on the WB. In fact, my initial thought was that this would be sort of like a promise, a contract, if you will, I had made with John in this regard. Literally, it was too late by the time I had written his name on the WB with the word “fart” next to it. I know that everyone was amused by that. However, after the fact it made me think… Could this have possibly offended anyone with a different group of students? {Thank you in advance for your feedback. :)}

Overall, I thought that I did make better use of MICs (WB, gestures, repetition – with directions and verbal repetition of what I had written on the WB while underlining the words “five” and “eight” as an additional MIC– and giving examples) throughout. As for CIs, I mainly utilized T-S-S-T (I made sure that students used the question I had modeled, which was also written on the WB), pair work as well as asking students to summarize and report what they have read in the text.

When I watched the video, I witnessed something funny. In an attempt to use simpler and more authentic language, I asked the students: “Any questions about the questions?” It would have been better if I had instead said: “Anyone got any questions?”

Lastly, as my last BU processing task, I asked students to circle all adjectives (recycled TLC) found in the first paragraph. I did check to see if they had remembered what we had covered last class on adjectives. However, I only asked Jeff and David to give me an example of an adjective. It occurred to me while I was watching the video: “How about the rest of the students?” I had no way of knowing because I hadn’t checked with them. It would have been much more effective if I had asked the whole class to write down a sentence and circle the adjective in that sentence. I could have then randomly nominated a few to share their sentences or used T-S-S-T.

Although I believe that this microteaching was better than my last, surely there are areas I need and want to work on… Till next time!! :)

Teaching pronunciation is fun!!

Unfortunately, I ran into technical problems last Sunday. Hence, I am not able to upload a video with this reflective blog (could it be the unlucky 13 effect?).

Overall, I had a good class where I noticed an increase in my students’ participation overall…

We started out with an ice-breaker where I asked them to write down four things they do daily, their daily habits. I gave them a handout to help out, which contained some suggestions (not in complete sentences) to get their creative juices flowing. This ice-breaker not only helped to smoothly transition us into prepositions, which I had intended to cover as the main topic, but it also created an opportunity to go over the differences between wake up/get up and go to bed/fall asleep. I also made a point to highlight the fact that 12pm can also be referred to as “noon” and 12am as “midnight.”

We talked about prepositions “on”, “in” and “at”. To help them to grasp when we use which one of these prepositions, I made use of the “Prepositions of Time Pyramid” Adam had recommended to us on G+ a while back {please see below and visit: http://englishtips.davidharbinson.com/at-on-in-for-time/ for further information}. This was followed by two activities. First one was a mechanical, controlled, fill-in-the-blanks type activity; whereas the second activity was a more contextualized one I had found online.

I would like to tell you all more about this second activity as it was very well received by my students. I asked them to work in pairs. Each pair was presented with the identical copies of an image of a room containing a conference table with chairs around it, three windows, and a shelf on the left side. This meant that the image had plenty of “empty spaces.” I gave them a total of five sentences (due to time constraints); such as “there is a vase on the table”, “there is a frame on the wall between the first two windows from the left,” etc. After hearing a sentence, they had to draw the objects described in the places stated in the sentence. The pair with the highest number of correct items was rewarded with a small box of cookies. Through this activity, they gained new vocabulary (ceiling and vase) and got to practice prepositions whereas I got to witness their artistic sides. We all had fun with it…

Next, we worked on pronunciation. This was my first time to integrate teaching pronunciation into my lessons. Two days before class, I had emailed and asked them to bring a list of words they had problems pronouncing. Their list included words such as “enthusiastic,” “souvenir,” ”available” and “opportunity” among others. We practiced breaking words down to syllables, pronouncing individual syllables first before putting them together. I asked them to repeat chorally and individually after me until their pronunciation was at the accepted accurate level. Being a French word in origin, “souvenir” was the hardest one of all. Moving forward, I encouraged them to keep a log of words/phrases throughout the week and bring this list with them to class every Sunday to go through and practice pronunciation.

Lastly, I introduced “Ed and Ted Pronunciation Help” activity, which Laura had recommended in her Meth reading post last week. Although after the fact I felt that I could have explained it a lot better, they had got my message. We practiced using several verbs such as “played”, “wanted”, “watched”, etc. Pronunciation will be integrated into the class again this coming Sunday. I am planning to review “Ed and Ted” activity and practice some more with several other verbs before going through their list of words/phrases. Overall, I thought teaching pronunciation was more fun than I had expected.    

"Prepositions of Time Pyramid” by Dr. Keith Folse:

At is the smallest part of the pyramid at the top and represents the smallest unit of time typically used (the hour). On is the second smallest part of the pyramid and is placed in the middle. It represents the second smallest unit of time used (the day). The bottom of the pyramid is the largest and we have in here. This part represents the largest units of time used (months, seasons, years, decades, centuries).

Reunited... Back to teaching!!

It was great to meet my students once again and be back to teaching. For the ice-breaker, we talked about Children’s Day, which was on May 5^th. I asked them each to write down three things they did that day. It did not come easy to them but they all managed it with some help from me. I got them to tell each other in pairs first before sharing with the whole class. However, this time, I asked them to pair up with the person sitting behind them instead. They always end up sitting in the same seats. Hence, every time we do a pair activity, they end up working with the same person. I wanted to see how they would interact with different partners instead.

When I went around to see how they were doing, right away I noticed that they were not writing in complete sentences. So, I reminded them to do so. Something else interesting happened during the ice-breaker activity. I had told them up front to raise their hand if they needed help with any words. So, I noticed that one of the students had that face. That face that definitely signaled signs of a problem. So, I asked him to describe to me what word he was trying to say in English. In fact, after all said and done, I realized that I did know that word in L1. However, my student didn’t know that and being a kind of fish he was trying to say, he didn’t know how to describe it to me either. Therefore, he used the dictionary function of his mobile phone to find out that the word he was looking for was “eel.” It was so cute when even after that he looked up at me to see if this was really correct… When it was time to share with the whole class, I instead asked them to report the three things the person sitting next to them (not the person whom they were partnered with) had done on Children’s Day. Immediately, the first student started with “I…” So, I said “I..?” Then he immediately rephrased his sentence replacing “I” appropriately with the name of his partner. I also suggested them to use sentence connectors such as “and”, “next” and “then.” The very next student to speak uttered the word “finally” while he was sharing. It was great to see that he had searched his lexicon and dug out yet another perfect word for this purpose. I took the opportunity to bring this word to others’ attention and made sure they knew what it meant.  

Next, we worked on recycling TLC. Last class, we had talked about describing movies and feeling words (positive and negative). This time, I presented them with the posters of three different genres of movies: Legally Blonde, The Green Mile and Alien vs. Predator. They were to try to describe what type of movie they had thought each was by using clues from the posters. Again, while they were working on this activity, I did my “rounds” to see how everything was going. Interestingly, I realized that they were mainly focused on linguistic clues. However, there was much they could have derived from the objects visible and colors in the posters. I guided them to try to use these clues as well. I guess they will never stop surprising me!! Once they were finished I wrote down all their contributions and brought up some other feeling words, which we had covered to see if they would remember what they meant. They could not remember two of them: “gripping” and “moving.” So I made use of suffix clues to explain as well as gestures and the whiteboard as additional MIC techniques. Later on, the word “distrust” came up as well. This time, I used prefix clues to explain the meaning of the word. I will continue to work towards teaching them how to breakdown the components of a word to guess the meaning as I believe that they could benefit much from it.

On the downside, during this activity, I could have gotten them to practice higher levels of cognitive thinking (Apply, Analyze, Evaluate and Create) go past Remember and Understand levels as defined by Bloom’s Taxonomy. I could have gone one step further during my comprehension checks and asked them to create a sentence of their own using the particular words at hand… But I didn’t… This is definitely something I need to work on.

Lastly, we started talking about gerunds and infinitives. I had planned two activities for them to work on. One was controlled mechanical practice in the form of a fill-in-the-blanks type worksheet. They worked on this in pairs. Hence, I gave them only one worksheet per pair to facilitate the process. The second activity was more contextualized. It was a type of bingo. They had to identify the correct gerund/infinitive forms needed to fill in the blanks. This time, they got to hear me say the sentences. As an additional MIC, I wrote these sentences down on the whiteboard. Once they identified the correct form needed, they would then put an “X” on the game board, if they had it. This would go on until one person said “bingo!” So, we had a winner. I had already told them that the winner would receive something small. However, what they didn’t know was that I had prepared a small gift for all for Children’s Day… :)

Next class, I will start incorporating pronunciation in a remedial fashion into the lesson. I have noticed that they all have problems pronouncing “-ed” endings as in “watched.” By using our readings on pronunciation (Kelly and Harmer) as a guide, I will come up with an activity aimed at teaching pronunciation. I have already asked them to bring a list of words they find difficult to pronounce to class next Sunday as well. I am so looking forward to it!! :)

Adding Culture to the "Mix"

Unfortunately, I did not teach at all last week. My class was cancelled upon students’ request due to their school recess. Our class will resume from this coming Sunday.

As a result, I would like to take this opportunity to blog about a class activity I have planned. For the first time, I will officially be introducing cultural content into my classroom. The reason why I say “officially” is because we have briefly talked about some cultural things when came up naturally in class. We had talked very briefly about “Big C” elements such as food, clothing and customs. We have been discussing at length about the importance of culture in language teaching in ICC. Therefore, I thought that it was time to really introduce cultural content in a very “mild” and fun (I hope) way. I will be using the activity I have outlined below in two weeks.

In my classroom, I would say that target culture is US culture. I wanted to design an activity which would incorporate an international target culture as well. I had already decided that I would work with food as this is an area I am very passionate about as a consumer as well as due to my background. Therefore, my enthusiasm naturally comes through when I am talking about food. Next I had to think about which international target culture I would want to feature. It did not take me long to settle on Italy. I have noticed during my time here that Koreans have a strong liking for Italian food. Voila!! I had it!! I had titled my activity “Restaurant Norms in Italy vs. USA.”

As this is my first time to bring cultural content into my classroom, I believe that it will be easier for my students to work with a “Big C” element (food). As we have learned in ICC, “Big C” elements are those which belong to the objective culture; they are visible. Some other examples, besides food, would be clothing, festivals, artifacts, etc. On the other hand, “small c” elements are the values, beliefs and attitudes that define a group of people.   

For the preview stage, I will write these three words on the whiteboard: spaghetti, pizza and garlic bread. I will next ask students what these words remind them of. Once a student utters the phrase “Italian food,” I will ask them to brainstorm and tell me all they can think of about Italian food. I will then write all these contributions on the whiteboard. I am quite confident that it will be rather easy to get one of them to produce this phrase. We have a branch of Sorrento Italian Restaurant in town and being the only Italian restaurant within 20-minute drive, it is very popular, especially among high school students and young couples.

I am in the midst of trying to find authentic reading texts for this activity. I have done some online browsing. I will also be looking into some food magazines I have at home. Besides authenticity, I have other criteria, which need to be satisfied. First and foremost, there should be no stereotypes (gender, race, social class, religion, etc.) and no misrepresentations of any cultures. Texts should also be free from any overgeneralizations. They should not present facts in a way to make the target culture look better than other cultures. The point of having students read about Italy and USA is to let them simply see that there is a difference and provide them with an opportunity to compare and contrast two cultures, and later on go one step further to consider the case in Korea to build their awareness of cultural differences/similarities. Once I have selected the texts, I will go through and determine which words they are bound to be unfamiliar with. I will pick three or four of these words and pre-teach them before the presentation stage. As we have read this week in Harmer, I do not want them to linger on a long list of unknown words and not be able to get a general understanding of the texts. I will be picking key words to serve this purpose then. The rest of the vocabulary will be discussed later on. I will hence be encouraging them not to worry about the rest of the unfamiliar words and read for the general understanding.

Students will be divided in 1/2 pairs. “1”s will read about “restaurant norms in Italy” and “2”s will read “restaurant norms in USA.” This will be my TD processing task. Next, without looking at the text, they will tell their partners what they can remember from their reading. This will give them a chance to practice their speaking skills.

They will then exchange and read their partner’s text to check the facts and share with the class which facts they find interesting or unusual. This will serve as my TD/BU processing task.

We will next discuss about the remaining unknown words/phrases. I will ask them to circle all unknown words in pairs and I will write down all contributions on the whiteboard for ease of discussion. To check their comprehension, I will nominate students randomly to create a sentence with a particular word/phrase.

They will then take a look at both texts again. They will be asked to do a cross-cultural comparison with the target and international target cultures by determining which points presented in either text are true for Korea. They will further be asked to contribute other points they wish to add for the case of Korea. This will be my BU processing task.

They will next go ahead and compare their ideas with their partner...  

This will bring us to the production stage where students will get to prepare a similar information sheet on restaurant norms in Korea (writing down their ideas as bullet points) in pairs. They will be told that this information sheet will be used by foreign visitors to Korea. This part will be a heterogeneous activity in that students will be able to complete it at different levels. High-level students will have a chance to produce more/more complex utterances whereas low-level students will still be able to produce in L2 and will not end up discouraged (referred to as “success orientation” in our Harmer reading).

As the last part of this activity, students will present what they have prepared in pairs to the rest of the class in a gallery walk manner. Within each pair, one student will be a "walker" and the other a "talker". “Walkers” will walk around listening to other groups’ presentations while the “talkers” will stay by their information sheet and explain to the "walkers". Students will then switch roles. To finish off, everyone will get to vote on their favorite information sheet.

We have discussed in ICC at length about how the use of cultural materials in EFL classrooms is likely to increase our students’ interest towards what is presented in class and improve their motivation for learning English. Moreover, through comparing and contrasting with other cultures, they are bound to learn more about their own culture as well as the language needed to explain their culture to others starting with their language teachers (us). Yes… I am looking forward to doing this activity in class in two weeks and adding culture to the “mix.” :)

"Patience is a virtue."

I overall thought that my second microteaching went better than the first one. That being said, after watching my video, I had much to reflect on.

First off, during microteaching, I found it very hard to imagine and treat my native-speaker classmates as my students. This past Saturday, I caught myself briefly thinking about how bored my classmates might have been when I had asked them to figure out whether the critic had liked the movie or not and worse when I made them nominate and further ask each other the same question. In addition, somehow, I seem to feel as if I am racing against myself to get to the better parts of my lesson plan. For instance, last Saturday, I had hoped to have the opportunity to go through my first worksheet at the least, which was supposed to be a matching activity they would have worked on in pairs.  

On the bright side, I thought that I managed to use simpler, more authentic language compared to before. In addition, I found myself making better use of CIs (TSST, pair work, comprehension check, etc.) and MICs (WB, repetition, giving examples, etc.). I did comprehension checks before they started performing a task twice. However, although I had planned to ask one classmate (“student”) to report back what he was supposed to be doing, after I had provided directions, as comprehension check at the very beginning, I completely forgot about it in the heat of the moment. This was when they had all come to a conclusion that this particular critic hadn’t liked the movie and they were supposed to find proof from the text to support this conclusion.

After watching the video, I thought that I had spent too much time looking at my papers trying to organize my thoughts (especially after the fact that I had forgotten to do a comprehension check). This could have been contributed by several factors. Three of these factors stand out in my mind. Firstly, we are being graded for our microteachings and this creates some pressure. Moreover, this second time around, I was really trying to make sure that all would go down as I had planned it would in my head. Hence, I had put in too much conscious effort rehearsing for it beforehand and during microteaching. Yet another factor, I believe, was that I did not want to disappoint Tom and this was a chance to show him the “new and improved me” live… Instead of spending that much time looking at my papers, I would have loved to see myself instead engaging more with the class while they were looking for proof and feeling words in the text. Luckily, there will be a next time.

Clearly, it would be ideal if Tom or someone Tom appointed observed us with our students in our classrooms. However, this would be very hard to achieve not only due to time constraints with regards to class syllabus and how much time Tom or this appointed individual would need to put into this to make it possible but also due to the fact that many schools and hagwons perhaps would not allow an outside professional to be a guest in their classrooms as a result of own school policies, possible effects this could have on students’ learning and classroom interactions, etc. There are surely some limitations with the microteachings we do in the class. However, in my opinion, potential benefits outweigh these limitations. Once I reach that level of comfort and the ability to “look and be” beyond in front of my hardest critics, perhaps there will be nothing I will not be able to do.

I wish that I could make all bad habits go away and good habits “poof” and acquired. However, in real life, this is not how things work. When I used to work as a clinical dietitian in the hospitals as recent as three years ago, I counseled many outpatients for weight loss. I used to tell them to be patient, set small, realistic goals and that like everything else weight loss would also take time and effort on their end. Now, I can really put myself in their shoes. This is how I feel with regards to my teaching. I am sometimes unrealistic just like them and I wish to see results very quickly. I guess it is time to realize that this will be a never-ending journey of professional development, fueled mainly from within, paved with many obstacles, hiccups, sacrifices, and certainly BIG rewards…

Overall, I have to say that certainly I have much to improve. However, I should (and we all need to) give myself credit that I have come a long way since March 1^st. It is a privilege to be a part of this class with such a great group of classmates who help to bring the best out of me.  I find myself recently asking myself this question: “What if I had never taken this course?” I believe that the fact that I am able to look at myself reflectively and know to an extent what needs to be done is an improvement in itself. Fighting!!

Iron Man to my rescue..

 I had spent much time planning as I had really wanted to come up with a fun activity for them (just as fun as last week’s Bingo). I had made up my mind to talk about movie vocabulary and feeling words. Then, I eventually decided to use a movie poster for my preview. I wanted to, however, pick a movie which was popular for Korean boys that age to get them interested. I got my husband’s opinion and did some research. Iron Man was my answer!

Throughout the class, I tried to use simpler words to speak and pose authentic questions. Although I am able to use simpler words without much conscious effort now, there remains much work to be done as far as my authentic language use. Every Saturday, I am trying to pay more attention to how Tom talks to us. I wish it would come so easily for me as well. I need to keep on FIGHTING!!

As I had mentioned in my last blog, I did ask my students if they would be ok with listening to music while working on activities at times. I suggested easy listening music and played a little bit of Frank Sinatra’s “Fly Me to the Moon” after describing to them what easy listening music was. They all said they liked the song and they were ok with playing music. However, later on, when they were working on an activity, although I had the opportunity to play some music in the background, I completely forgot about it. I made a big reminder note to myself for this coming Sunday… :)

After showing them Iron Man 3 poster as the preview, I asked them to brainstorm and write down all movie-related words they could think of in pairs. One group had 18 and the other 17 words (two students were missing last Sunday). We were all quite surprised that it was such a close race in the end.

Afterwards, I distributed a handout where they had to match movie vocabulary with definitions on the right (e.g.: character, scene, sequel, genre, chick flick, etc.). As I wanted them to work in pairs, I gave them only one set of worksheet per pair (Tom’s previous suggestion). It really did go much better this way. They needed some guidance and help along the way. I went over regularly to assist them (and hence forgot to play any music).  I gave them cues and described some words for them to guess to help them along (for example: what do we call the type of movie which tells the story of someone’s life?). They did not know how to complete a matching activity either. So, I worked the first question out with them and just said “do the rest in pairs!” We had talked about this in class when Liz had taught the Harmer activity with the car and car vocabulary…  I heard quite a few “ahh”s immediately after and subsequently they did not have any problems completing the worksheet.

Next we looked through a list of positive and negative adjectives (15 each) to describe movies such as hilarious, brilliant and gripping for positive; dull, disgusting and unimpressive for negative. I asked them individually to circle the ones they were not familiar with. Then I asked them to compare their “unknown adjectives” in pairs and try to explain to each other. I had not initially planned to ask them to compare with each other and somehow suddenly on the spot decided to go with it. It was a good exercise. I realized that although one student had not circled “charming’” (meaning that he knew what it meant), he could not explain to his partner. So, he ended up circling this adjective as well.

When I asked the two groups to tell me all the positive and negative adjectives they had circled and I wrote all down on the whiteboard, I noticed that they had almost all the same adjectives circled. Moreover, they had to read their adjectives to me to put on the whiteboard. Therefore, although they had not encountered these words (they were not present in their lexicon) they had to try to pronounce them building on the phonemes they could recognize. These included words such as genre, fascinating, uplifting, etc. For example, in the case of “genre,” they were able to realize that it contained similar phonemes as the word “gender” and they tried to steal strategies to pronounce this word. This impressed me very much. :)

To help to explain the meaning of all these adjectives, I had prepared yet another handout where I had given them an example to a sentence using each of these adjectives. They practiced taking turns to read these sentences and we clarified the meaning of the adjectives. This is also where my gestures and proper intonation came in very handy as additional MIC techniques. Next week to recycle TLC, I will bring in three other movie posters whereby they will use the vocabulary we had studied last week to tell me what type of movie they think is being portrayed in these posters. I will give them an example (modeling) to get them going. They will get to work in pairs/groups and share with the rest of class what they have prepared afterwards.