November 6, 2011

Reflection on Communicative Language Teaching

Since one the most obvious characteristics of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) is that almost everything is done with a communicative content, games are not only enjoyable but also good tools to practice this approach. Therefore, for this week, we did two different games related CLT in class.
The first game we played was to do a role-play, in which the students were divided into pairs and took turns learning how to “say no nicely” in a set up social situation. And the game seemed to go pretty well in each group. But in the later discussion with some classmates, it turned out that we all had the same question that if the game was played in the most proper way in terms of practicing CLT. Although authentic materials were used as a technique, we were hesitant about the pieces of paper given in each pair on which several “saying no nicely” replies were there. We thought those sentences had limited the possibility for the students to have choices of what to say and how to say. Everyone who was to take the role to reply all said something in one way, they weren’t given the chance to think nor to provide their own answers, and thus the exercise was not exactly communicative.   
To have more practice of CLT, we also did the scrambled-sentences game. Again, the students were separated into small groups of about ten, and each group was asked to together unscramble the sentences that were originally in a certain order of a short story. Through the process, the students learned to communicate with their group members in order to work with one another. Also, when trying to unify those sentences into a correct order, the students at the same time learned how sentences are bound together cohesively and coherently in the target language. And thus, the students were able to think with the logic of the target language instead of their habitual ways to think with the logic of their mother language when communicating.


October 28, 2011

Reflection on Total Physical Response (TPR)

Among the few groups divided, I was in the Taiwanese group where there were other five “students” and the “teacher”. And through the activity of acting as a student learning several words and sentences in Taiwanese from the teacher, I found that the learning would be more effective and it would be easier for students to understand the commands given by the teacher if those commands are action sequences, particularly when they are given in the order of events happening in a specific situation. For instance, our group learned in the first fifteen minutes of actions like “rolling up the sleeves”, “tying the shoelaces”, and “wearing glasses”, while in the following fifteen minutes the teacher first set a situation as “a car accident”, and the students were given an action sequence in the order of “inserting the key”, “starting the engine”, “speeding up”, and “falling down from the scooter”. And it’s obvious that the students understood the latter commands better than the former ones that were a series of irrelevant actions.

Also, it’s interesting that because most of the “students” in our group, though not being fluent, had certain understanding and familiarity with Taiwanese, therefore the students tended to repeat what the teacher was saying while acting out the teacher’s commands. In comparison, when it was my turn to be the teacher and I tried to teach the other group members some Thai words I came up with, the students this time turned out to pay more attention on understanding and following the commands and nearly spoke. However, it was a really fun experience practicing Total Physical Response in class this week.

Finally, I’d like to compare TPR with The Silent Way, one of the methods we’ve learned earlier. Both of the methods involve more physical phases, but in The Silent Way, students are expected to speak out with the teacher’s instructions while TPR allows students just to mimic and choose to speak when they feel ready to do so. Thus, as one of the conclusions for our group discussion, we think that students who are taught with TPR are given more security in the learning process, and the atmosphere of TPR is also to lessen students’ anxiety.


October 22, 2011

Reflection on the Community Language Learning

In response to the question asked by the professor in class, I personally think that although the Community Language Learning Method seems not able to build a firm grammatical basis on the target language, it is, however, a method that creates a learning environment in which students are given greater security and thus their fear of learning a new language can be reduced.
And as what I’ve mentioned in the group discussion, this method enables the teacher to provide sentences what his/her students want to learn in the target language only; that is, it offers limited knowledge of the target language. Therefore, those students, like us, Chinese students, for instance, who used to begin their learning a new language from the steps of grammar and vocabulary, would possibly find themselves not accustomed to this way of learning, for during the learning process they are not sure if they really “understand” the language they are learning.
Yet I do appreciate that in the Community Language Learning Method, teachers play the role of counselors. Presently as a student, it is understandable that students see their teachers on the stage as a symbol of power and authority. Consequently, when their teachers walk down the stage, stand beside them (maybe in the same height as them, or their teachers bend down a little bit), and listen and understand what they say, the warm manners by the teachers do give their students a sense of security, and it also encourages the students to be involved in the learning and thus speak more.



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