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. 

Technology in Teaching

I have to admit that technology and I have not been the best of friends. But… This is quickly changing... As Tom has warned me, ten years from now, I don't want to be the only person standing and saying: "I hate technology." This being said, as language teachers, there could be times when it would in our best interest to have a backup plan (e.g.: if we are working in less fortunate countries such as Nepal, Sri Lanka, Laos, Indonesia, etc.).

I found three neat tech tools, 100% free, which we could use while keeping the age of our students as well our goals (what do we wish to achieve with a tech tool?) in mind.  Unfortunately, some tech tools I stumbled across seemed free at first glance until I took a closer look...

First tool I would like to bring to everyone’s attention is PrimaryWall. This is a web-based sticky note tool to be used in schools with the ultimate goal of allowing teachers and students to work together in real-time. 

Why would we need to use such a tool? Well… It is a great way of sharing ideas, collaborating with other students, posting information while working in pairs/groups. How many of you carry sticky notes in your backpacks, have them on your office desk or at home? Moreover, PrimaryWall is fun, fast and easy to use. It is operated by a UK-based company called Primary Technology©. Hence, one is bound to come across the word “pupils” instead of “students” while navigating the website. Further information is available at: http://primarywall.com/whats-primarywall/

I would like to give an example to how this tool could be used. In this example, I have used it as a means of checking comprehension of my students with regards to the lesson topic presented. 

We covered movie vocabulary and adjectives to describe movies yesterday. They were provided with a worksheet where they had to match some related vocabulary with the definitions provided. I had also given them another handout containing a list of select adjectives, which could be used to describe movies in a positive as well as in a negative way. As you would see in the screenshot below, I asked students to create a sentence each with six of the words we studied. They would then create a sticky note signed by their name. In my example, you could see that Ben responded to my request posting his sticky note. However, one of the words was left out. I created another sticky note to let him know and he responded back that he would post later that day after school. I chose a different color when I replied back to him so that it would be easier for him to notice. 

I could also use this tool to ask students to post questions they may have from a lesson (whereby I could answer on the wall or in the classroom) or I could post some questions for the students (whereby they could take note of as main points to extract or as questions to think about before the next class). 

I am always racing against time. I always wish I had more time to do more with them. I want to have more time to review what we had studied the week before (recycling TLC), check their comprehension, be able to ask them to create with what I have presented, etc. I believe that tools such as PrimaryWall could allow me to do just this. In a way, it serves as an alternative to chat rooms. However, it provides a more fun, informal environment for me to interact with my students. Through this interaction, I would also have an opportunity to "force" them to create in L2 outside the classroom.

Second tool I found worth mentioning is NoteStar, which has been designed to assist with research paper preparation. Teachers and students sign up separately at this website:  http://notestar.4teachers.org/ Voila!! Lots of useful features at teachers’ and students’ fingertips!! 

NoteStar can help students create topics and sub-topics (there is a Think Tank tool to help with this), assign topics/sub-topics to other members of the group, take and organize notes, and keep track of source information (once you have found material you would like to use for your paper and subsequently cite, all you have to do is click on the NoteCard button to allow this source to be automatically captured). Teachers, on the other hand, can use this tool to create/edit/view class rosters, create projects/groups as well as track their progress, send and receive messages from students, and check out the sources cited by the students (credibility, etc.).

Casa Notes is the third tech tool I would like to highlight in this post. This tool allows teachers to create and customize notes easily and quickly, which then can be sent home to students’ parents or handed to students in class. Let’s face it!! We are not all born with the “art genes” J. The best part of this tool is that notes can be created in English or Spanish (sí mi amigo!!!). This would probably be very useful for those planning to go back to the US one day.

There are different templates available based on the note type desired. One is able to pick a color scheme, customize parts of the content or add a graphic. The following note types are available to choose from: field trip permission, student progress report, homework, “Well done!”, student contract, outstanding performance, student citizen award, “Thank you!”, “On target!”, parent-teacher conferences, medication and self-medication. Below please find a sample “Well done!” note in English and Spanish. More information can be obtained at: http://casanotes.4teachers.org/#

In Pursuit of Authenticity..

Last class, we co-taught an activity from Harmer. Since then I have been thinking about how to make my teaching more authentic. We specifically talked about providing authentic reading activities as well as posing authentic questions. I tried to apply what I have learnt in my class and tried to ask authentic questions such as “Everybody’s clear?,” “Here comes the second number!!” etc. One thing remains very clear. I need to continue to put more time and thought into my lesson planning to work towards establish authenticity…

Last Sunday, as an ice-breaker, I started a short discussion about summer vacation and asked students to tell me what they have planned/what they wished to do during upcoming summer vacation. I am aware that as Korean school systems are highly competitive, parents often push their children in extreme ways which cause them to get very stressed.  Summer vacations are no exceptions either. Having knowledge of this beforehand, I prepared a simple handout providing some suggestions for fun yet educational things they could do with their friends and/or family. Some suggestions included going camping with family, visiting local art/science centers or museums with friends or family, going to a play or concert as well as picking up a new hobby. I also provided information on a nearby woodworking studio where they could take classes at a reasonable price to learn how to make simple things. They were all quite surprised to see that there was such a studio located so near. Personally, I feel that, as their teacher, I should care about their mental well-being and that I could make a positive contribution no matter how small in this regard. I suppose this thought for an ice-breaker was fueled by our reading about Stephen Krashen’s theory on SLA and one of his key hypotheses, which he refers to as the Affective Filter Hypothesis. Simply put, this hypothesis argues that emotional states, attitudes, motivation, and needs all play a big role in SLA and can inhibit (by acting as an “affective filter”, sort of like an “imaginary barrier”) or encourage a students’ learning of the target language.

As far as the lesson topic, we talked about big numbers. I had discovered a few weeks back that they had problems with reading big numbers. To go about doing so, I had planned two activities. First was bingo in an attempt to get my points across in a fun, interactive way. Students had to pick and write down nine numbers from a list of 25 I had provided. Then I called numbers randomly and read once or twice (upon their request) until someone called bingo. Subsequently, whoever called bingo had to read back all his nine numbers for my confirmation. However, my underlying aim with this was to get that particular student to practice reading numbers. They enjoyed bingo so much that they asked to play once more. I had absolutely no problem with this. I do want to allow them to self-select as much as possible a la Responsive-Collaborative Discourse in hopes of maximizing student-student interaction as well as students’ L2 use. We went ahead and played bingo one more time. Therefore, I decided to do the second activity I had prepared for them this coming Sunday instead and, this way, it will also serve to recycle TLC.

One interesting thing while playing bingo was that my reticent student was the dark horse. Rest of the students was surprised when he had called out “bingo!” first time we had played the game. They were more surprised to see me reward him (the winner) with a small bag of cookies. The race was on!! I could “see” their competitive side emerge even more. To “exploit” this golden opportunity to get this reticent student to talk, I asked him to come up and call numbers with me. I gradually stepped back and he was calling the numbers all by himself with the exception of stepping in a few times to model how to stress the second syllable when pronouncing numbers such as “sixteen” and “sixty” so the rest of the students could tell clearly what number was called. Afterwards, I summarized the lesson topic in the following way: 1) order of large numbers is thousand, million, billion, trillion {they did know up to billion; I stopped after trillion as it is highly unlikely that they will encounter larger numbers), 2} use commas to separate thousands, millions, etc., 3) use “and” before the last number.  Lastly, we practiced reading 123,042, 83214 and 1,256,721 to finish off. Another thing I realized during bingo was that most of the time they are not using complete sentences when they ask me a question or answer me (“one more time”, “cross?” were a few I noticed when I watched the video). I need to remind them again to use complete sentences when asking questions or answering me.

We have just read about extensive/listening in Chapter 18, Harmer. I really loved the idea of playing music in the background while students are working on activities. I already know that majority of them like listening to music (I had asked them a few weeks back to write down three things they like). This coming Sunday, I am planning to ask them if they would be ok with listening to music while working on activities. I will be suggesting easy listening music such as Michael Bublé, Frank Sinatra, Laura Fygi and alike. This would make the class more relaxed and fun. Furthermore, music should contribute to the development of their listening skills, improve their concentration and even motivate them further. If they are ok with my suggestion, perhaps down the road I could try using different types of music as well as incorporating music to beyond activity time.

2-in-1..

I would like to start my blog by putting my thoughts about my microteaching on paper.

I felt that it went better than I had expected. However, my classmates could not exactly portray my students’ proficiency levels. They were very participating and long-answering, which in reality my students are not. Their participation is increasing. However, they are not able to produce long or complex utterances at this time.

As I had already taught this preview in class and in fact I was re-teaching to my classmates, it was nice to have a second chance. I was able to correct some problems I had experienced. For example, I had practiced greeting in pairs instead of choral repetition, which had originally taken place. in addition, when I first taught the preview in class, although I had asked students to nominate others to follow, I had not asked them to pose the question, which after the fact I had realized and changed for re-teaching last Saturday.

After watching the video, I realized that I took a real long time with the greeting. The reason why I had to explain why there was a need to greet at the beginning of class and why “Good afternoon” was an appropriate greeting was that until teaching my preview I had not officially practiced this in my class and hence, on that day, I had made a point to explain to students thoroughly why this change suddenly after four weeks. For re-teaching then, I kept this part intact, which made me feel afterwards that perhaps my classmates thought I was a little strange.

Lastly, I would have loved to see myself smile more. I will be watching out for this very closely.

Now, I would like to talk about my class yesterday…

Upon realizing that greeting in pairs would depict a more real-life situation, we started with that followed by an ice-breaker. I had planned to talk about K-pop Star as it is nearing to an end and is a very popular show among Koreans. I did not know and did not anticipate, however, that my students had no time to watch this show (or any TV for that matter) lately. I had printed out pictures of the top 3 contestants, whom they did know. Luckily, they had watched this show at least once and they knew what it was about, the judges, etc. I kept it short and sweet, and moved on to assign their homework. However, I was able to bring up the difference between who one thinks will win versus who one wishes to see win a competition.

With the homework I assigned, I will be able to recycle the Target Language Content from last week’s class (preview) as it will enable them to keep working with the newly-learnt vocabulary as well as obtain information online by using Google. I was initially planning to have them individually work on it. However, I changed it to a group activity instead and they will be completing it in a group of three. I am realizing that they need more pair and group work activities to develop skills, which will be important for them later in the professional world. Given that they do not know how to work in pairs and groups, I believe that they do not get to do much of these at school or private institutes. Group work offers additional benefits to students compared to working individually including having an opportunity to discuss and explain concepts/words/phrases to one another, which would help to refine their understanding as well as helping to break assignments/tasks into steps, which would help to complete more complex tasks than they could on their own. Moreover, I changed the due date for this assignment to April 20^th as they will be having exams all week this week and I did not want to add more stress to this very stressful week already. They will be preparing a country profile for Korea similar to that for France, which we went through in class. I instructed them to include basic information on Korea’s climate, cuisine including staple foods, currency, official language, sub-division of land (provinces, etc.), surface area, population, capital city and other major cities, neighboring countries and surrounding bodies of water. They can include other information above and beyond these categories. On April 20^th, the two groups will be sharing what they have prepared in class. I will ask both groups questions as well as allow students from the other group to ask the presenting group questions for comprehension check. I emailed them France’s country profile to keep as a reference and I will be available to answer any questions they may have via email or text messaging.

Next I did a warm-up for the lesson topic to activate their schemata in preparation for learning new information. The topic was imperatives. It was self-selected by the students (I had suggested three topics to them via email to choose from). For my warm-up, I asked two students to volunteer to come up to the front. After much encouragement, one of my high-level students half raised his hand. I took that as a yes... He then persuaded (or shall we say forced??) to bring the student who was sitting next to him along. I gave them two to three imperatives each to follow (e.g.: sit down on the floor, touch your chin, take off your glasses, etc.). Then I invited the other students to give them some imperatives as well. They took this opportunity to even ask one student to dance lightly. They had a ball with it. Little did they know that I would be next asking them to come up to the front. This time, after me, the other two students gave some imperatives and it was revenge time (two of my students could not attend the class yesterday hence there was a total of four students). The student who had been asked to dance asked back to this student to sing a song. Boy, we had a good time!!     

After the warm-up, to get them to work with the concept, I passed out two worksheets that I had put together. After working through the worksheets in pairs, we went over them altogether where I offered corrective feedback as necessary and suggested alternative ways to answer, where appropriate. Afterwards, I summarized the uses of imperatives with one or two quick examples (to give a direct order, to give instructions, etc.). I mentioned how we could be more polite while still giving orders by using the magic word “please”. In fact, one of my high-level students had guessed it before I had told them, which made me very happy. Lastly, we talked about positive and negative forms of imperatives. During these activities, I was surprised to see them use certain words, which I had no idea that they knew. For example, in one of the worksheets, they were provided with some signs (like public signs) and they had to write down what wording would go with each sign. There was one which meant to indicate that pets were not allowed. It was a picture of a dog on the sign and yet they knew the words “pet” and “allow”. I had expected their answers to be something like no dogs, don’t bring dogs, etc.  

While they were working on the worksheets, for the first time, two students asked me questions. This was one of the highlights of the class. One student asked what bin meant and another student (one of my quiet students) asked me to tell him the meaning of cheat as well as the correct spelling for “quiet”.

I wish to end my blog by mentioning something rather surprising. I found out yesterday that they did not really know what it meant to work on a worksheet in pairs. Even after I had clearly matched each with another student, I realized that they started writing answers on their own worksheet from the get-go and there was absolutely no discussion happening. So, I intervened smoothly and explained to them that they should work on the worksheet together and, if they wished, they could just write the answers together on the same piece of paper. Although they improved afterwards, I have to keep guiding them to really work in pairs in the true sense. I guess we never really know what we may end up teaching in our language classrooms…

More pouring right out of me...

Here comes the sequel for my blog from late last night…

I had so much to reflect on this time that I jotted my ideas down pretty much anywhere as it came to me (my mobile phone, class notebook, posted notes at work {yes, I am often reflecting on how I taught that week, about assignments due, etc. at the office}).

After the preview activity, I passed out a handout, which was a basic country profile of France pre-divided into six sections (as there are six of them). I nominated the first student to read the first section. Afterwards, they took turns alternatively to nominate others to go next… We went over any unfamiliar words section by section and I tried to make sure that all had understood the overall meaning. I wrote any discussed words or others which I had introduced building on these words on the whiteboard (for example: when we were talking about the cuisine of France, I brought up the phrase “staple food”, etc.)

If students did not verbally express any difficulty with regards to the section read, I tried to anticipate which words could have been unfamiliar, posed them questions about these words and about the meaning of a sentence/section for comprehension check. I tried to point out to them how they could use clues from the context to assign meaning to words at times (we tried this with the word “vast” which had appeared in this sentence: “France is one of the world’s great wine-producing countries, and a country with a vast range of wines”).

I realized through this activity that most of them had problems reading numbers in English. Therefore, I decided to address this problem in an upcoming class. When I was trying to explain the difference between how numbers are read in Korean versus English, I used L1 to make my point clear. I only uttered the word “manwon” (meaning 10,000 in Korean) a few times and “sip” (10 in Korean), “baeg” (100 in Korean) and “cheon” (1000 in Korean) each once during this process. They were all nodding to mean “I got it!” but I will see it for myself when I revisit this topic down the line.

  

I was not at all surprised that they had problems reading numbers. I was in fact kind of expecting it. Honestly, I have not yet met any Korean who did not have problems with this. I know from myself that I had and still have many problems when I trying to read numbers or when I am dealing with money in Korean...

Next we proceeded with going over their homework (they were supposed to choose a country they wished to travel to and answer 4 questions {name of the country, which continent the country is in, population of the country and main language spoken in this country} by looking up information using Google). I nominated students one by one to tell me what they had written down. To finish off this activity we listed the names of all seven continents…

Moreover, in an attempt to use Responsive-Collaborative Discourse once again, I emailed students and suggested three potential topics for an upcoming class to choose one from. By allowing them to have a voice in the topic selection, I hope that they will be more interested, participate more and ready to learn more than ever something new… Unlike the first time (I had asked them to get together and suggest one topic to me), I gave them a bit more structure this time by suggesting three topics with examples to make them understand what each entailed to make it easier for them to pick one. They are all supposed to email me back to indicate their preference by tomorrow (this Wednesday). Let’s cross our fingers…  

I had sent this email out on Friday with a text message which followed asking them to check their emails. By the time we had a class on Sunday (two days ago), one of the students had already replied to me. He had also made an effort to ensure there were no grammatical errors. There was a salutation and an ending to his email as well. I was very happy and yet surprised as he is one of the lower-level students in my class. As a positive reinforcement, I gave him a cookie at the end of the class that Sunday. He and the rest of the students were quite surprised by my action. I hope and believe that this could be a drive for them to try harder to participate. I am planning to use such positive stimulus regularly to reward different behaviors (whoever replies first to me in class/over email, whoever answers correctly to a question, whoever participates the most in class, etc.). I will not be using it every class or extremely often though as I would not want it to result in a “praise overload” or reduce the power of the reinforcement. Even if their utterances are not 100% grammatically correct, with more opportunities to create with L2, they will be increasing their chances of improving their English proficiency. As one of my classmates put it when I asked her opinion last Saturday: “quantity quantity then you will get quality.”

At the end of the class I asked them each to write down three things they liked on a piece of paper. This was a suggestion yet from another classmate last Saturday. I plan to use these as discussion topics down the line. By picking topics they are interested in, I hope that I will be able to get them to participate more and be able to produce longer utterances.

When I watched my video recording over for the first time, I was pleasantly surprised to discover a few things. Overall I had less self-answers and I had asked more referential questions. Moreover, I seemed to be nominating students equally (when I compare myself especially to my first two classes with them), and finally when two students were talking to each other in L1 during pair work, I had approached and interrupted them gently in English (thank you Tom for this valuable tip), which had made them switch to using English. All in all, quite a few ups and surely downs to tackle as well…

I am looking forward to Sunday already…

Working my way up!!

This time, I would like to reflect on my experience teaching a warm-up/preview on Sunday, March 30^th.

I planned to start out with a greeting, which I had been doing all along. However, I had not taken the time to familiarize my students with it and really paid attention whether they had greeted me in return or not. After the greeting, there would an ice-breaker followed by my warm-up/preview.

That day, I got to class earlier than usual to prepare physically and mentally. I wrote down “Good afternoon!” on the whiteboard as well as what I had planned on using to revolve the ice-breaker around: “One interesting thing that happened to me last week was…”

Once all six students arrived, I started with making a point of starting class that day and every class with greeting one another. I pointed out to what I had written on the whiteboard for a greeting and explained that this was appropriate as our class was 1-2PM. I modeled by uttering to the whole class: “Good afternoon!”

They sort of mumbled back the same. But to make my point that they should greet loud and clear, I uttered once more, louder than before: “Good afternoon!!” This time they replied back “Good afternoon!” in a manner which was loud and clear.I followed by saying: “How are you all  doing? Is everybody well?” which was met by a unanimous “yes!!”

Greeting took all in all 58 seconds. It was followed by the ice-breaker. This time, I brought their attention to the other sentence I had written prior to the start of the class, which was: “One interesting thing that happened to me last week was…”

I instructed them to take two minutes to discuss with the person sitting next to them (in pairs) and then share with the class what they had all come up with as a response to this open, referential question: “What was one interesting that happened to you last week?”

They looked confused immediately and there was no apparent discussion taking place. Were they not accustomed to such pair work activities in their school and hagwons?

I proceeded right away with a MIC technique. I gave several examples such as: “Did you try a new food item? Did you meet a new person last week?” to explain what they were asked to do. I was surprised to see that they still looked confused and they appeared as if they were having a hard time to come up with an answer.

This time, I broadened the question to include something interesting, surprising, good or bad...

After two minutes, I nominated a student to answer and then I asked this student to pick someone else to go next. Students took turns to alternatively nominate another student to speak, which I had noticed previously that they had enjoyed doing.

During the ice-breaker, based on their answers, I tried to introduce new vocabulary. For example, when one student brought up novels, we talked about the difference between fact and fiction, etc.

I made sure to allow extended wait-time throughout. Hence, when all said and done, the ice-breaker had taken up 10 minutes and 46 seconds. In all honesty, this was the first time I had done a formal ice-breaker with this class. I believe that, in time, we will be able to complete the ice-breaker within a shorter amount of time.

Next up was what I had been waiting for since the beginning of the class: warm-up/preview. This was the first time to use a preview for me; not just with class but ever…

After we discussed about warm-up/preview in the class, I realized that such activities had two main purposes:

1) Creating a positive environment for learning:

When planned and executed well, such activities would help to promote relaxation of students, make them comfortable and focus them on learning. Otherwise, they may be too distracted with all the other things in their heads whether it is lots of homework waiting for them at home or private institutions they have to go later that day or even personal issues. Therefore, I concluded that a fun warm-up/preview activity, which makes students relaxed and comfortable without demanding too much of them is a great place to start.

2) Activating students’ schemata:

A warm-up/preview activity could serve to help students access their background knowledge/experience on the topic at hand so that they would be ready to process teachers’ input much more effectively. In a nut shell, learning would be an active rather than a passive process.

Last class, I had given students homework whereby they had to come up with a country they wished to travel to, search for some specific information on this country by using Google and then answer four questions. 

Building on what they had to do for homework over the week, I showed them three pictures on France, which played the role of the country I wished to travel to. At the same time, I was attempting to recycle the main topic from last class (computers and internet) as well as vocabulary covered at the end of last class presented in an effort to help them with their homework. 

One of these was the picture of Eiffel Tower, the second one was Louvre Museum and the third picture was on cuisine of France, which depicted baguette, different kinds of cheeses and wine. I had selected these pictures as I was quite sure that they would be able to guess France without much difficulty. 

After looking at all three pictures, they each wrote down on a blank piece of paper which country they thought this was. Then, individually, they revealed what they had written down (I called on them one by one so that it would go a little faster). All had gotten it right. They had all written down France with the exception of one student who had written down Paris.

Initially this student had thought that he had gotten it wrong. However, I explained that the two attractions depicted in the pictures were specifically from Paris; whereas the third picture was about the cuisine of France in general. Realizing that his guess was not wrong, his eyes lit up with relief and happiness.

I followed up by passing them a handout I had put together, which was a basic country profile of France. It was about a page and a half in length. I had divided into six sections as there were six students in total. It served as our platform for the reading activity to follow.

Overall, my warm-up/preview was 3 minutes and 11 seconds in length. Although each and every student had had an opportunity to participate and create with L2, the activity was much shorter than I had expected it to be and hoped for. However, when I had looked at the big picture, I had just enough time in the end to go through alI I had intended to for that class. On the other hand, the ice-breaker could have been much shorter and hence I would have had more time for the warm-up/preview. This means that I will be working on managing my time spent on the ice-breaker and warm-up/preview moving forward.

Another thing I realized after the fact was that I could have taken my preview one step further and after establishing the fact that France was the country of interest, I could have asked students to tell me what types of things came to their minds with regards to France, could have written all these contributions down on the whiteboard and started a discussion before passing out the handout on France’s country profile. 

I have no regrets though, zip, nada… This is all part of my professional development as a language teacher in Korea. It serves as yet another challenge for me to work on. I will prepare and execute better warm-up/preview activities in the classes to come!!

I do have much more I wish to reflect on with regards to this class. I will be doing so in my next blog, which I plan to share with you all later this week. Please stay tuned. :)