Great inspirations!

Wednesday 25 June 2008.

Another day with Nora, I assisted her in running classroom activities and exercises. Today we had three hours of Integrated Skills, an hour of Reading & Writing, and an hour of SAC (Self Access Centre). We introduced the students a new grammar point-possessive "'s" in those three hours of Integrated Skills. Students were confused with instructions given by the teacher about what they did since the grammatical point was challenging to the students.

What we should have done differently is to write down instructions or examples on the board for them or prepare more exercises. Then, we should have drilled the grammar point by generating communicative activities.

In the afternoon, I had a meeting with Dr. Maria Dobrenov-Major (called as Dr. Maya) about the exchange program. Dr. Maya is a Program Convener for Graduate Certificate in Applied Linguistics, School of Education and Professional Studies, and she has made collaborations with three Vietnamese universities for her program. In the program, her graduate students need to fulfil the course requirement in practical teaching. Instead of having her students complete it in the country, she endeavours to have her students practice teaching abroad. With the needs to improve their students' English competency, three Vietnamese universities are willing to host those graduates. They offer them free accommodation and food as well as English classes for them to teach with the exchange of free teaching. Those students will pay for their own airfares and other expenses with some support from Griffith University. I could not help but thought that it would be ideal with our students if we could involve collaboration with Dr.Maya's program.

Dr. Maya and I chatted for at least two hours about other things and, of course, about Applied Linguistics. I was so much inspired by her to be able to speak many languages. She herself speaks about eight languages fluently since she is European. Beside, I was inspired by her to become a good teacher with endless energy and great spirit!

Prepare grammar lesson and activities

Monday 23 and Tuesday 24 June 2008

Today in the classroom with Nora, we started the class with Integrated Skills. The week's theme was Age, which concentrated on numbers, family, pronouns and possessive "s". Today, we only introduced them to numbers and pronunciation. Students did not have any major problems with the subject matters; however, they seemed to get confused at times with the instructions we provided. As I could see from their facial responses and the body language, they had difficulties understanding some words conveyed in the teacher's utterances. After checking the students' exercises, the teacher assigned more exercises to the students since they had a problem with spelling numbers. Some materials that were suggested in the course outline and given out to the students were a bit easy for them. Consequently, the teacher had to think on her feet and came up with an exercise for the writing skills in order to fill time.

In retrospect, what we would have done differently is to prepare extra exercises and attempt to provide clear instructions as well as adequate examples to them. In addition, we could have emphasised more on pronunciation or have them interact with one another after they had finished each exercise.

On Tuesday, I was given the opportunity to explain a grammar point on pronouns-it and they. After spending some time thinking and preparing for the task, I thought we rarely started our lesson with a warm-up activity. I therefore decided to run a game called "Pick Pocket" which I had learned from the PD session with Aaron at Sripatum University. I attempted to synchronize numbers, vocabulary and the grammar point in to the game. As the result, I thought I managed to run the task satisfactorily. Despite the ambiguous instructions that I delivered at the beginning, the students understood and tried very hard to compete with other teams. They had fun and leaned new vocabulary words. After we had the wining team, then, I had them say the name of each item, with me correcting their pronunciation. Simultaneously, I converted the items' names to the pronouns-"it" and "they"; for example, These are sunglasses; they are new. We did exercises on the pronouns in the textbook together after the warm-up activity ended. After that the teacher explained the grammar point. I thought the warm-up activity helped ease the theoretical explanation of the grammar point successfully.The activity generated great classroom communication and dynamic.

Nevertheless, what I would do a bit differently for the next time is to write down the names of the items as well as their pronouns on the board. I would also check the spelling with them one-on-one.

In the afternoon on the same day, I had a meeting with Camilla about the exchange program. We talked about our wishes and plans for collaboration. As for my wishes, I wish to see some Australian students volunteer to help teach some English courses and run activities for Liberal Arts. This way our students might become more motivated to better their English and become exposed to native speakers from different countries. So far, we have American and Japanese students volunteer to help teach in our faculty yearly; students have had great times learning English, making new friends and exploring different cultures. Many of them just loved it! Another wish, I would love to see our students are given an opportunity to study and travel in another country-let say during a summer semester. I am certain that it would be a great intensive to those students who want to improve their English skills.