Creating a Learner-Centred Approach

1. Students review what they did in the previous class.
   
2. Discussion on learning strategies.
   
3. Journal writing
   
4. Students do a short presentation on a topic of their choice.
   
5. SRA Reading Lab
   
6. How to choose a listening activity.
   
7. How to choose books from the library. One for English grammar, vocabulary, and one for pleasure.
   
8. Students use their Japanese cultural knowledge to explain about things in English.
   
9. Get students to teach some vocabulary or grammar.
   
10. Use the IRF for conversations.
    
11. Limited use of course books.
    

Above are some of the ideas that I do in my class to make the student more responsible for their own learning. I think that the saying is; you can give a fish to a person and give them food for a day, but if you teach them how to fish then they have food for a lifetime.

 

If I teach the students English then they might be alright in maybe one situation, but if I teach them how to teach themselves then the students will be learning for their whole lives and in many situations (or something like this).

 

Another TOEIC link

Hi everyone, you may be interested in this web site that explains, with practical examples, the format of the TOEIC test. Of course all of the students are worried about the test, so anything to try to minimise this would be good. I find that talking about it and just saying that it's only a practise helps to some extent.

http://www.englishclub.com/esl-exams/ets-toeic-practice.htm

(I don't know why, but for some reason, I can't seem to add in hypertext - hence the URL!)

Google Translate

On the top right side of this blog you will see "Google Translate." This is a really useful function. (It is set at the default of Spanish into English, but just click on the arrows and move it to what languages you want.) If you have any Japanese or English that you would like translated then copy and paste into it and click "translate." It gives a rough translation, but gets the message across. Maybe if you are really trying to explain something to your student and you can't seem to get your message across, then this might help.

TOEIC Listening Part

Next Wednesday, the students are going to be sitting a TOEIC test from 1-3pm.

I talked a little about the content of the TOEIC test before, but to give you more of an idea, here is a short video explaining just the listening part. When you finish the video you'll see that you will get prompts to watch other related videos. These will probably also give you an idea of what the test is about.

A Lovely Photo

More photos of the Cultural Food Festival

Recent Classes, TOEIC

The students have been busy doing some TESOL classes. The students have been coming into the class to see how to teach English. They usually come in on Wednesdays to teach the students for a couple of hours, but for the last couple of days the students have been going to the university to sit and talk to people interested in teaching English.

The students are going to be sitting a TOEIC exam soon. The TOEIC exam stands for Teaching Of English for International Communication. This exam is a multiple choice exam and only tests reading and listening. It is an important exam in Japan. the maximum score is 990, or 495 for reading and 495 for listening. The exam lasts for two hours. The academic vocabulary for the test is quite high, so some students will feel the strain. This is only a practise exam. I plan to do about eight with the students and they will then sit the real exam when they return to Japan.

For information on the TOEIC test, go to google and type in TOEIC or click Test of English for International Communication.

Cultural Food Festival (continued)

Cultural Food Festival

Today, the students made Japanese rice balls from 9-10am. It was really fun making the "onigiri." There was dried fish egg, dried vegetable, tuna and mayonaise, and pork mince, seaweed and carrot flavours.
The students carried their food over to the student cafeteria and served it with lots of other international food. The weather was great, so everybody ate outside.

Books from the library

I am trying to teach the students what to look for in choosing books appropriate to their level. I've noticed that most of the students go to the library and choose a book without really knowing why they have chosen it. Sometimes, a student would come back with a very difficult book of about 300 pages when their level is very low.It would usually take the student one day to get through just one page. This book is inappropriate to the student's actual reading level, but the student doesn't realise this. So, today, I taught the students about some of the things to look for in choosing a book. For example, we looked at the grammar, vocabulary and number of pages. We also looked at how the pictures help in giving more understanding of the text. We discussed the books that the students got out from the library yesterday, and then went to the library again today to get another book, but this time based on the things I had taught the students to look for. The students are beginning to understand why they are choosing a book. They are deciding how the book will help them to improve their English. This skill is getting the students to assess books for their own level in a more realistic way.
We also looked at the length of the book. If the book is over 200 pages, then I don't expect the student to read the book many times. However, if the book is only about 10-20 pages then the student should be reading the book two or three times. I explained how repetition in reading can be very beneficial for learning new vocabulary or grammar, as well as improving reading fluency.

I also gave the students three different vocabulary books and got them to choose which one was the most suitable for them and why. The students came up with some good ideas as to why they chose only one of the books. This exercise made the students assess whether or not the books that they get to study English are appropriate to them. Hopefully, the students will choose books that are more suitable to their level and have more of a purpose when searching for reading material.

After the students had given a brief summary to their group of why they had chosen their book, I made a connection to the books that they had chosen and the S.R.A (reading box that is in class). The students could see that if they chose a book from the library then it should match the level that they are at from the reading box. Again, I am getting the students to evaluate their decisions about choosing books.

You Tube

Recently, I have been using some very informative YouTube videos to teach the students about some interesting topics, but also as a listen and repeat lesson. I firstly, get the students to listen to the topic and then get them to talk about it for 45 seconds to their partners. I then give them a model answer. I go back over the model answer by stopping and starting the video and get the students to repeat the sentences. I pay attention to particular vocabulary and idioms and anything else that I think the students had difficulty understanding.

Here are a few of the Youtube videos that I showed gave to the students. They are all to do with the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) test.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ux2Q0upiD_0

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJg138YlwvA

(If these links don't work then just go into YouTube and write in TOEFL and all of the links come up.)

The students find this difficult, but it certainly does give the more advanced students some great listening and speaking opportunities. Once again, the students can decide to go to the level that they are comfortable with. The students can also replay the clips as many times as they like for extra practise. Since the students are going to be doing the TOEIC test soon, then this is a good starting place.

1000 Basic Vocabulary

Before the end of last term, I gave the students the 1000 most basic words in English. The students have been writing out sentences using these words and I have been correcting them. The students have then been playing vocabulary games in class to familiarise themselves with these words. In fact, now, every day, the students have to take the role of teacher and make up a five minute game to play. The idea is for the teacher to use a lot of instructional English to get the class to perform. It also gives the students an idea of how challenging it is to be a teacher. The students also learn the vocabulary.

When the students have a grasp of these 1000 words, I will go onto the TOEIC vocabulary. The TOEIC (Test of English for International Communication) is a test which the students will take when they return to KTC and is an important test.

It's been a while, ROBOTS!

Well, it's been quite a while since I've blogged. I hope that everything is going alright with all of you.

Just to bring you up with a few things that the students are now doing.

The students are going to be "playing" around with Lego blocks building robots. This Monday the students will be divided up into pairs and assemble the robot.

On Thursday, the students are going to be designing the parts of their robot using Solidworks software on the computer.

The mechanic's class is also using the Lego building kits, but using a different kit that uses levers and other "mechanical" things.

The direction that the students are going in is to move into robotics with the idea of entering into the Robocup held regionally and then nationally next year in August. Robocup is also really big in Japan and KTC always put a team together and do very well in it. The idea is to have a combined Otago Polytechnic and KTC robot.

The first week back

This term I am placing emphasis on vocabulary. I have given all of the students the 1000 most common words in English. They had the task of highlighting any words that they didn't know well and then they wrote it in a sentence. This week we concentrated on only the first 500 words (the first sheet). We also played some vocabularly games. Next week I plan to focus on the second sheet and get the students to recognise how the words are formed and how they can be changed into verbs, adjectives, nouns, etc. I would like the students to be competent at using these words because we will then start to focus on the TOEIC vocabulary as well as some other academic vocabulary.

Fourteen students from the University of Otago TESOL class came last Tuesday to meet the CEE students over morning tea. On Wednesday the TESOL class sat and watched while two teachers each taught for about 40 minutes to the CEE students. The first student was from Palestine and taught about his culture. The second student taught about the weather. This class will continue every Wednesday from 10-12 for the term. It is a good way for the students to interact with people of their own age - with a purpose.

I have finally got a Smartboard in my classroom. A Smartboard is an interactive whiteboard. It means that I can touch the screen and do all sorts of wonderful things - changing sentences around, produce pronunciation activities, etc. It is a valuable tool to have in the classroom and hopefully the students can also see the benefit of its use.

Jaffa Race

Hi everyone,

Here is a link to the Jaffa Race on the 17th of July. Please come along!!

http://www.parentscentre.org.nz/taieri/JaffaRace.asp

olive harvest - 1 degree all day at Tarras

Hoar Frost at - 4 degrees midday in Alexandra.

Telephone calls, Questions about English

This is from: http://japanese.about.com/library/weekly/aa040801a.htm

Even though you start understanding a language better, it is always difficult to talk on the phone in that language. You can't use gestures, which help a lot most of the time. Also, you can't see the other person's facial expressions or reactions. You have to listen very carefully to what the other person says. Talking on the phone in Japanese might be especially harder, since there are some formal phrases customarily used in phone conversations. (The Japanese normally talk very politely on the phone unless talking with a friend.) Let's learn common expressions used on the phone. Don't be intimidated by phone calls. Practice makes perfect!

English ability (some questions)

I know that the students are getting frustrated about their English. It's difficult to know if you are improving in English because unlike the TOEIC test, which gives you a grade, conversational English is difficult to assess for the students. I think that videoing and showing the students what they are like goes some way towards giving them their first assessment. Talking about English, such as the questions below also gives the students to chance to air their frustrations and talk about them IN ENGLISH. Feedback about how well they are doing also helps a great deal. Since the students are soon going to be going on a break I would like them to go away feeling as though they are improving and can improve further by taking responsibility themselves.

Today, I also want to ask you some questions about your English.

1. Do you think that you are getting better at English.

2. What do you think you are getting better at in English, for example, pronunciation, grammar, vocabularly, etc?

3. What are you going to try to improve in for the next week?

4. What frustrates you with learning English?

5. What do you think is the hardest thing about learning English? For example, not understanding fast talk, not having topics to talk about, etc.

Now you think of some questions............let's write them on the board.

Involving families in plans - conversations

Tomorrow in class, we are going to do a task on student's communicating their plans to their homestay parents. These are simple plans that the students probably decide to do on the spur of the moment, but I think that the students need to understand that it is considerate to communicate their plans, so that they don't interfere with family arrangements. I would like to teach the process of how plans need to be thought through, so that everybody understands what is going to happen, when, where, and who with.

Stage 1
I plan to introduce the topic of "planning" by writing it on the board and then write up one example, such as, "you want to go to town." I will then pass the markers to the students and get them to elicit some of their own personal topics. If there are not many topics forthcoming then I'll add a few from the list below. I will then choose one of the topics and get the students to sub-topic what they should do in order to make their plan succeed. For example, if the topic was "you want to go to town," then the sub-topics would be: arrange the time - there and back, check the bus timetable for there and back, make sure that you tell your host family.

Stage 2
Complications arise if the time that the students arrange falls over dinner time, or some other time which disturbs some set family routine or plan for that day. Therefore, more sub-topics need to be organised for the plan to succeed. Obviously, if the student's arrangements are over dinner time, then the students need to have a further sub-topic (or routine) to explain to their host families what they plan to do. For example, a sub-topic might be added to the above list, like, "explain to host family that I plan to have dinner in town," "decide what restaurant to eat at," "check that I have enough money," etc.

Stage 3
Students now need to be taught the language associated with stages one through three.I will do this by getting students to elicit what they think they should say. One student will write this up on the board with the class's assistance.

Stage 4
Role plays can now be written individually by the students using the above topics, sub-topics and language expressions.

Stage 5
Role plays will be checked by me and then practised by the students.

Stage 6
I plan to video record the students doing the role plays for listening practise and use it as a class discussion/evaluation/class check later.

Topics to plan
You want to go to town.

You want to go to the movies.

You want to buy a pack of cards.

You want to go to your friend's house.

You have been invited to stay the night at your friend's house.

You have been invited for dinner at your friend's house.

Telephone conversations - Listening and pronunciation practise

Today, I rang the students from my colleagues phone. Each student had to go into my office and answer the phone. I gave each student a message to perform. They had to use strategies (if they needed to) to correctly understand my message. They returned to class and carried out the messsage, eg. could you please tell Soma that I will meet him at four o'clock at the Bill Robertson Library, etc.

The students then checked with me that their message was correct. I then got the students to write down the conversation in their books. I checked the conversations and then the students recorded them on a cassette tape. Once all the students had done this, I got different pairs to listen to one conversation and write the conversation down in their books. The students had to listen very carefully to all of the details. I then got the students to write the conversations on the blog. I intend to now go through the written conversations and put them up on the whiteboard (through the data projector) and put on the tonal shifts and highlight some pronunciation on one of the conversations. I will then get the students to look at the conversations that they wrote in their books and write in the tonal shifts using arrows and marks to show emphasis, etc.

The Task:

1. Telephone conversation with me.
2. Wrote down the message.
3. Told the message to the other students.
4. Wrote down the whole conversation.
5. Recorded the conversation.
6. Wrote the conversation out neatly.
7. Listen to a different conversation and write it out neatly.
8. Checked the conversation for correctness.
9. Pronunciation practise.

The aim of the task is to practise listening to phone messages, give information (transactional), and practise pronunciation.

The next task is to get students to make up their own phone conversations and practise them using the same process as above.

One of the students had to cancel their hair appointment using the phone. Here is the conversation that we used, below.

HD: Welcome to [hairdresser's name], you're speaking with Susie,

S: Oh, hi, this is [student's name],

HD: Oh, hi, what can I do for you?

S: um, I was wanting to cancel my appointment.

HD: Sure, when was your appointment?

S: um, this Wednesday at four forty five.

HD: Ok, what was your name?

S: Um, [student's name]

HD: Sorry could you spell that please.

S: Sure, it's [........]

HD: Sure, ok, that's fine, no problem.

S: Ok, sorry about that, thank you, bye.

HD: Ok, see you later.

Greetings - role plays

Thank you for responding to the feedback callout. It's been really helpful.

Today in class we did greetings:

S: Hi, _______ I'm home

HP: Oh, hi ________ did you have a good day?

S: Yeah, it was ok, just the usual, but yeah, nothing really special. How was your day?

HP: Oh, yeah, not bad, just the usual.

S: ok, hey, um, I'm just going to change my clothes, so I'll talk to you later.

HP: Ok, see you soon.

S: yeah, see you soon.

We went through these conversations in role plays. I video taped all of the role plays and then we had a discussion about what was good and needed to be improved. A lot of the time, the students were too slow to respond, so we then had to look again at the safety strategies, for example, "Oh, um, sorry I'm a bit nervous, but um, anyway I'' be back soon, just a minute," or words to that effect.

I also got the students to write a conversation like the one above. I will go through these conversations with all of the students in class.

I will also teach the students about how to write and format texts, explaining when they will be home, where they are, etc. I did this with the students a long time ago, so hopefully, this will only be review, but still good for extensions.

Thanks again for the feedback - already it has changed and given me fresh ideas for what to teach.