Week 4: Reflection

 This week I have some great assignments to improve my ability in teaching. It is so hard for me to create it. Finally I can finish it in time. 

 

Reading, writing, and vocabulary skills

First, I am going to say welcome to week four. I wish we are happy in this week.

The first of my journeys was:

http://fog.ccsf.edu/~lfried/ then I found

http://fog.ccsf.cc.ca.us/~lfried/writing/interview2f09.html

Through out this URL, I can see the student writing especially for grade 7 and 8 Fall 2009. I clicked on interview I and Interview 2 then I saw student writing about his/her partners.

In my perception, Writing is applicable for all levels. However, this is suitable with my class condition for the consideration that writing is hard activity in my institution. The students seldom write directly because they have habitual to adopt someone's writing. It is a kind of plagiarism in my district. So that's why writing like describe about student's partners are going to work at my institution at undergraduate students.

The ABCD outcome for this site might be:
After reading this page site, students should be able to write short paragraph at least 150 words dealing with his/her partners.

The second, I went to the second URL namely;

http://fog.ccsf.edu/~lfried/ then I found
http://fog.ccsf.edu/~lfried/stories/stories.html

This page site is about reading activity.
I found some of reading topic and I tried to open the links one by one. I think it is very good example reading for the students at any levels. It seems the vocabulary used is not complicated but, it is understandable especially for student at intermediate level. In my class can be used at first and second semester.

The ABCD outcome for this site might be:
After reading this site, students should be able to comprehend the reading by answering the questions dealing with the passages.

The last URL was;

http://a4esl.org/

actually, this site is very helpful and useful for all levels to increase their vocabulary. It is medium for the learner to provide themselves to have a lot of vocabularies. Or in the other word is a kind of vocabulary enrichment. I have experience about it when I teach Vocabulary I at first semester in my institution. I applied puzzle and quiz to measure or to know the vocabulary mastery and it works. They are really helped by having or answering the puzzle or quiz dealing with vocabulary and grammar application. Of course this site is very important for them as the EFL especially for basic learners.

The ABCD outcome for this site might be:
After reading this site, students should be able to complete well the puzzle/quiz dealing with grammar and vocabulary enrichment.

The last but not the least, I think this site is very helpful and useful for all learners in my institution. The level can be condition-able with the words usage. Try to modify as good as we can!

Class problem

I am going to let you know about the issue of my students. I teach at 10 classes for teaching media class and the students consist of 40 up to 50 students in each class. They are coming from different background and different level/knowledge/comprehension in oral and written communication. They use English as the foreign language and some of them use Bahasa Indonesia and Sasak Language as their first and second language.

The first problem is the class very crowded, overwhelming, and noisy. It is not a normal number for good class, but it must be done because that is policy from my Rector. To make them listen to my explanation, I have to speak loudly. However, it is hard because they are speaking when I am speaking. Then I have no energy afterward. I cannot control my students in teaching them each week.

The second is time management; I cannot manage the time because the time allocation is not enough with the student's number. When I explain the material, suddenly my students say that the time was over. Therefore, I have to end the class soon. It seems they are bore with the class condition as well. And the class meeting consists of 12 meetings. It is included middle test and assignment. I cannot do more for teaching with huge class.

The third is assignment; I don't know how to give them score because the assignments of most students are same. The tasks come from the one student and she/he share with the classmate. They do plagiarism in doing the tasks.

The fourth is Language; some of my students come from small village and some of them come from small town. They have been learning English for many years; nevertheless they cannot speak English well yet. Therefore, I have to teach them in Indonesian language and in English (Bilingual).

The fifth is motivation; it seems parent's motivation not student's motivation. I say that because they take English department, but they don't realize it well even they seldom attend the class. After graduating from the collage, they are going to be English teachers. The case, they are going to teach an English class at elementary school, junior and senior high school, but most of them cannot speak English well/fluently in both oral and written.

The sixth is classroom discussion by having single presentation; the students don't want to do it at early meeting. They just wait the last minutes of class meeting. It seems that they just want to do it in hurry time with short duration. If I do it in group presentation, only one become spokesman meanwhile the other are silent since the presentation begin.

The seventh is project; the project is writing the paper dealing with the subject. However, I don't believe that they do by their selves because I can see from the student's activity inside the class. For instance, they never speak but the language use in their project is very good. It seems that they ask other people to do it.

The eighth is scoring; they don't worry if they will get C score. That is good score for passive students and in addition there is a kind of "score reparation" after the semester and luckily the will get better score then.

The ninth is financial; it is necessary for them to buy some books as their references but the financial doesn't support them. They just go to small library with its limitation if they have to do some assignments.

The last is final examination; they sit very close with other classmate. Therefore, they usually see their friends answer even they look up their books with their own tricks. And finally the supervisor cannot control it well.

Lesson Plan with Technology

Class (name, type of student):

Class                : The class is called Vocabulary Enrichment. 

Students          :  There are 45 students in the class. The students are between the ages of 18 and 19 years old.   The students in the class are level 2 and 3 English Language Learners, demonstrating high beginner level competency.  

Duration: 1 hour and 30 minutes

Materials

Vocabulary Pyramid Word Document

Mobile lab (laptops)

Thesaurus/dictionary

Note: actually I really want to use Blog and email through internet connection however I can’t because of bad connection in my place.

Introduction

During the previous class students learned the meaning of 10 new vocabulary words related to “giving directions”.  They also learned the meaning of “synonym” and “antonym”

Objectives of this lesson (tell students about them):

The students will be able create a word pyramid on the computer using the word pyramid documents for all 10 new words.

Procedure

Presentation (teacher or student), including key vocabulary

1.      The lecturer gives brief explanation dealing with the advantage of learning vocabulary (it is a kind of motivation).

2.      The lecturer gives description about some new vocabularies learning

3.      The lecturer gives the way of working with the “Vocabulary Pyramid Word Document”

4.      The lecturer gives the simulation before asking them to work through their own computer

The format is:

WORD

SYNONYM               SYNONYM               SYNONYM

ADJECTIVE              ADJECTIVE              ADJECTIVE              ADJECTIVE                         

SENTENCE

The key:

Handsome

Attractive                    Good looking              Fine-looking

Kind                Friendly           Rude               Polite               Bad                 Terrible             

I do not like the handsome man if he has bad character

Activity (student)

1.      The students pay attention to the lecturer’s explanation

2.      The students think/find out the synonym of the word as many as they can

3.      The students think/find out the adjective of the word

4.      The students try to make sentence(s) dealing with the word that they have written on their computers

Learning styles addressed:

Visual learners, tactile learners,

Technology alternative (in case things don't work as planned):

I am going to use printed paper if the technology doesn’t work properly.

Review before the end of the class session:

By having the word pyramid you will have a lot of vocabularies. It is a kind of vocabulary enrichment that makes you easier to understand your interlocutors. Try to remember the word that you’ve created.

Homework:

1.      Make the assignment by creating ten words vocabularies and do as the sample.

2.      Look at your classmate’s works and share yours if you did different things.

Best 

Muhamad Suhaili