Dear Colleagues,
Here is my self-reflection on the new assignment for the third week.
The topic given is "Building Aural-Oral Skills", which I think is very much useful to my learners.
My learners are from the vernacular medium schools and they have less exposure to Spoken English as used by the native speakers of the UK, USA or other English-speaking nations.
My students are MA students in English, but they do most of their routine communications in Gujarati, that is the regional language of the state.They are not comfortable to use English for oral or written conversation.
They largely depend on their teachers for comprehension of prescribed lessons/texts of literature.
Once the classroom activity is over and writing answers for passing in the examinations is managed, they do not feel like having a spontaneous natural conversation in English as English professionals or scholars.
That is why I thought of the methods for improving their aural and oral skills using technology.
I suggested them to use the BBC programs on Pronunciation, Grammar and vocabulary based on quizzes, activities, exercises, and a lot of downloadable materials. They try to use them for self-learning in computer lab where internet facility has been provided for limited use. Some students are good learners and they have immediately adopted the strategies to improve their pronunciation but a large number of them are lagging behind till now. I think the situation will change after a few months once they regularly use various tools and skills for improving their presentation skills.
I will try to provide them some freely available materials to read and comprehend. Then they will be helped to complete exercises based on the given materials.Hope they will learn gradually the role of pronunciation in their future if they become English teachers.
I would request some co-participants to go through my reflection and give their comments.
Best wishes.
Sincerely,
Mahesh
Here is my self-reflection on the new assignment for the third week.
The topic given is "Building Aural-Oral Skills", which I think is very much useful to my learners.
My learners are from the vernacular medium schools and they have less exposure to Spoken English as used by the native speakers of the UK, USA or other English-speaking nations.
My students are MA students in English, but they do most of their routine communications in Gujarati, that is the regional language of the state.They are not comfortable to use English for oral or written conversation.
They largely depend on their teachers for comprehension of prescribed lessons/texts of literature.
Once the classroom activity is over and writing answers for passing in the examinations is managed, they do not feel like having a spontaneous natural conversation in English as English professionals or scholars.
That is why I thought of the methods for improving their aural and oral skills using technology.
I suggested them to use the BBC programs on Pronunciation, Grammar and vocabulary based on quizzes, activities, exercises, and a lot of downloadable materials. They try to use them for self-learning in computer lab where internet facility has been provided for limited use. Some students are good learners and they have immediately adopted the strategies to improve their pronunciation but a large number of them are lagging behind till now. I think the situation will change after a few months once they regularly use various tools and skills for improving their presentation skills.
I will try to provide them some freely available materials to read and comprehend. Then they will be helped to complete exercises based on the given materials.Hope they will learn gradually the role of pronunciation in their future if they become English teachers.
I would request some co-participants to go through my reflection and give their comments.
Best wishes.
Sincerely,
Mahesh
6 comments:
Hi!
I think that you have a good plan and that you have managed to conclude what would br the best system for you students. Good work!
Ivana
Hello,
I agree with Ivana that you have a good plan to help your students develop their skills further.
Concerning exposing them to authentic language, I would like to share one of my favourite sites with you: TEDTalks You might know about it too. I often use the talks as classroom or homework activities.
Best,
Nino
Dear Ivana and Nino,
Thanks for your comments.Yes,I have gone through some TEDTalk presentations earlier on relevant topics.But I have never used them in my classroom activities as materials.Thanks for giving this insight and I will definitely use them in my future language activities.
Sincerely,
Mahesh
Mahesh, Nino's recommendation for using TedTalks is an excellent one.
Ted Talks offers a wide variety of "talks" on different topics, which can be used for listening activities that lead to a springboard for discussions. Students may even begin to recognize the value of this readily available source of authentic English language and begin listening for themselves. You could even assign an extensive listening assignment where you require that they listen to 30 minutes to an hour outside of class and then have them share what they have listened to either in a discussion board, in a recording, or in small groups in the class.
My hope is that this course introduces you to all kinds of ideas and resources that both you and your students will benefit from.
Best,
Courtney
Dear Courtney,
Thanks for your suggestion regarding the use of http://www.ted.com/talks?duration=3&tag=25 for listening activity.Definitely I confess that I am exposed to a number of resources and ideas to implement in my future classroom teaching and even research on the area.
Best wishes.Bye.
Hi M.K Dey,
While going through your Reflections for the 3rd week,I came to know that your students didn't practice aural and oral skills.
In my situation our teachers themselves feel shy to use the code of English depriving the students of the comprehensible input that Stephen Krashen speaks of in his Input Hypothesis on Second Language Acquisition.
In an EFL situation,learners are not much exposed to the target language (English) namely they are not immersed in the target language as they are in an ESL situation. However, Krashen speaks of Second Language Acquisition through immersion process. If we teachers start giving our students roughly tuned and finely tuned input in aural/oral skills ,our students will soon acquire these skills.
You have very candidly shared your problems on the blog. Here is a link to my blog
Rustam's Blog. Please visit and leave your kind comments.
Thanks
Regards
Rustam
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