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.” :)