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Zed
Joined: 20 Jan 2003
Location: Shakedown Street
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 Posted: Sat Jul 10, 2004 5:04 am Post subject: Teaching How to Teach |
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I have to teach a group of 18 Korean English teachers how to teach next week. They go to teach the students in their homes (usually) one on one lessons. I have 5 one hour sessions with them. It seems that they want a particular focus on phonics and conversational skills, especially the phonics.
Has anyone else done something similar?
Do you have any tips or strategies for me? |
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ajuma
Joined: 18 Feb 2003
Location: Anywere but Seoul!!
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| Posted: Sat Jul 10, 2004 6:15 am Post subject: |
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| The absolute best book I've ever seen for teaching phonics is "Alpha-Phonics". It doesn't go the "A is for apple" route. It teaches in a straightforward way: "c" "kkkkk" "t" ttttt. Add "a" and you have cat!. The kids don't have to know what the words mean...just how to sound out words. Suggest that after drilling the students, have them play Bingo using the sounds not the letters. And, as boring as teachng phonics can be, it's SO important! With older kids, I could always tell which students had phonics and which ones learned by sight. Phonics rules!! |
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the saint
Joined: 09 Dec 2003
Location: not there yet...
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| Posted: Sat Jul 10, 2004 6:37 am Post subject: Re: Teaching How to Teach |
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| Zed wrote: |
I have to teach a group of 18 Korean English teachers how to teach next week. They go to teach the students in their homes (usually) one on one lessons. I have 5 one hour sessions with them. It seems that they want a particular focus on phonics and conversational skills, especially the phonics.
Has anyone else done something similar?
Do you have any tips or strategies for me? |
Do you really mean phonics.... or phonetics. Phonics and conversational skills seems a strange combination but then again... |
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prosodic
Joined: 21 Jun 2004
Location: ����
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| Posted: Sat Jul 10, 2004 12:54 pm Post subject: Re: Teaching How to Teach |
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| Zed wrote: |
I have to teach a group of 18 Korean English teachers how to teach next week. They go to teach the students in their homes (usually) one on one lessons. I have 5 one hour sessions with them. It seems that they want a particular focus on phonics and conversational skills, especially the phonics.
Has anyone else done something similar?
Do you have any tips or strategies for me? |
I'm jealous. This sounds like a lot of fun and I wish I were doing it instead of you. Here's what I would do.
Class 1:
Ask them to discuss their classroom experiences learning English phonics and conversation. Ask them about specific techniques that their teachers tried. List all the different ones on the board. Group them into techniques that they found effective and techniques that they found less effective. Lead a discussion about why those techniques were or weren't effective. If there's time, ask them about their experiences teaching and what has or hasn't worked for them.
Time management: Introductions and distribution of syllabus, 5 minutes; discussion of their experiences learning phonics, 20-25 minutes; discussion of their experiences learning conversation, 20-25 minutes; Review of the day's discussion and brief discussion of next class, 5 minutes.
Class 2:
Discussion of teaching philosophy. Focus on the differences between a teacher-centered classroom environment and a learner-centered classroom environment. Ask them, which do you think works better, a lesson where the teacher lectures and the students listen, or a lesson where the teacher facilitates the students as they explore language. Allow for the possibility that a teacher-centered environment may be better for some situations and a learner-centered environment may be better for different situations. Lead a discussion of how each of those two learning environments can be created. This leads naturally into a discussion of classroom management and how to plan and prepare a lesson plan.
Give assignment for next class: create two lesson plans, one for phonics and one for conversation, one that is teacher-centered and one that is learner-centered.
Time management: Review of first class , five minutes; discussion of teaching philosophy, 15 minutes; discussion of learning environments, 20 minutes; discussion of classroom management and how to create a lesson plan, 15 minutes; review of class, explanation of assignment, and description of next class, 5 minutes.
Class 3:
Review of second class. Large group discussion of a model lesson plan that you bring in. Small group workshopping of lesson plans that the student teachers prepared. Bring the class back together into one large group and have them share what they discussed in the small groups. Time allowing, have a few students role play one part of their lesson plans and have the class critique the role play.
Time management: Review of second class, 5 minutes; discussion of model lesson plan, 10 minutes; small group workshopping, 10 minutes; large group sharing, 10 minutes; role-playing, 20 minutes; review of class and description of next class, 5 minutes.
Class 4:
Discussion of learning styles. Explain that everybody learns best through different means. Ask the students how they learn best, is it through independent reading, through guided exercises, through problem-solving, through observation, through rote memorization, etc. Discuss ways to determine how an individual student learns best and how to adjust an individual tutorial toward that student's learning style. Discuss the role of listening in the job of a teacher, how you have to listen carefully to the students to figure out what they need. Have a few students role-play a lesson and then lead a class critique of the role play.
Class 5:
Discussion of language as a system of approximations. Explain that every individual person has a unique speaking style. Vowels are pronounced ever so slightly differently from one person to the next. Also, explain how conversation is often about approximations. For example, if you can't think of the word belt in the middle of a conversation, you may have to say the thing that keeps your pants up. Stress that students need to be taught the importance of being flexible as a language user. Have a few students role play a lesson and then lead a class critique of the role-play.
That's what I would do and I firmly believe it would work. I'm sorry that I stopped writing the time-management guidelines, but I realized that this is quickly becoming a very long post.
I hope this is helpful.
*edited for typos*
Last edited by prosodic on Sat Jul 10, 2004 5:25 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Zed
Joined: 20 Jan 2003
Location: Shakedown Street
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| Posted: Sat Jul 10, 2004 2:16 pm Post subject: |
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| Thanks! There are a lot of good ideas there that I'm sure I will incorporate into my lessons. One of the problems I see with this is that it is very well designed for people who are teaching groups. These teachers are teaching one-on-one lessons so they may find it difficult to minimize teacher talk and use role playing activities that involve only the students. Of course, there are role playing activities that could be used that included the teacher as a participant. Thanks for the ideas though. That was a great post and very helpful. |
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prosodic
Joined: 21 Jun 2004
Location: ����
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| Posted: Sat Jul 10, 2004 3:29 pm Post subject: |
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| Zed wrote: |
| Thanks! There are a lot of good ideas there that I'm sure I will incorporate into my lessons. One of the problems I see with this is that it is very well designed for people who are teaching groups. These teachers are teaching one-on-one lessons so they may find it difficult to minimize teacher talk and use role playing activities that involve only the students. Of course, there are role playing activities that could be used that included the teacher as a participant. Thanks for the ideas though. That was a great post and very helpful. |
I'm sorry, I should have been clearer. My idea was to have the Korean teachers role-play in the pedagogy class. It could be a lot of fun. Have one of the teachers play the role of "teacher" and another K-teacher play the role of "young student". Tell the one playing the "student" to do his or her best to really act like a little kid and see how the "teacher" deals with teaching in a simulated situation. Then ask the rest of the K-teachers to say what they liked about how the "teacher" handled him or herself in the role-play. Follow it up by asking them what they think could have been done better. It'll wake up the K-teachers who fall asleep during the first half of the class and will lighten up the overall mood to have an adult Korean acting like a 7 or 8 year old kid getting a private class. |
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Zed
Joined: 20 Jan 2003
Location: Shakedown Street
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| Posted: Sat Jul 10, 2004 3:31 pm Post subject: |
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| Ah, right. Good idea. |
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ajuma
Joined: 18 Feb 2003
Location: Anywere but Seoul!!
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| Posted: Sat Jul 10, 2004 4:44 pm Post subject: |
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prosodic:
Wow!!! Absolutely fantastic post!!! Mind if I "steal" it? My uni is always looking for "alternative" type classes for adult students and I think that this would be something they'd be interested in. Were you a teacher in your "past life"? |
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tomato
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: I get so little foreign language experience, I must be in Koreatown, Los Angeles.
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| Posted: Sat Jul 10, 2004 4:48 pm Post subject: |
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Hello, Zed!
One of my long-range dreams is to start a parents' club.
I would ask the parents to list their most common utterances to the child.
Then I would ask them to translate these utterances to English, and I would help them if they need help.
I would also ask them for the children's most common utterances, and then I would repeat the whole operation.
Do you suppose your home teachers could do the same with their students' parents?
One of my pet peeves about English instruction in Korea is that English is seldom applied. It is good for the student to say "I am going to school" when the page in the book says "I am going to school" or say "I am eating dinner" when the page in the book says "I am eating dinner." However, it would be even better for the student to say "I am going to school" when he or she really is going to school and say "I am eating dinner" when he or she really is eating dinner. |
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prosodic
Joined: 21 Jun 2004
Location: ����
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| Posted: Sat Jul 10, 2004 5:26 pm Post subject: |
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| ajuma wrote: |
prosodic:
Wow!!! Absolutely fantastic post!!! Mind if I "steal" it? My uni is always looking for "alternative" type classes for adult students and I think that this would be something they'd be interested in. Were you a teacher in your "past life"? |
Go right ahead. Just let me know how it goes.
I don't know about a "past life," but I'm a teacher in my current life.  |
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Zed
Joined: 20 Jan 2003
Location: Shakedown Street
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| Posted: Mon Jul 12, 2004 8:22 pm Post subject: |
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| I really appreciated your ideas prosodic, unfortunately, these teachers were completely unwilling to discuss these issues on this level and were much more interested in having me drill them on phonics. I'll keep this in mind for a similar situation where I may be able to apply it better. |
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prosodic
Joined: 21 Jun 2004
Location: ����
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| Posted: Mon Jul 12, 2004 8:27 pm Post subject: |
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| Zed wrote: |
| I really appreciated your ideas prosodic, unfortunately, these teachers were completely unwilling to discuss these issues on this level and were much more interested in having me drill them on phonics. I'll keep this in mind for a similar situation where I may be able to apply it better. |
That's really unfortunate. I saw your thread on teaching adults and thought that it might be this class. It sounds to me like they are less interested in pedagogy and more interested in making sure they don't teach incorrect English.
Just out of curiousity, what do you think of their level? Are they fluent? Is their pronunciation ok? |
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Zed
Joined: 20 Jan 2003
Location: Shakedown Street
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| Posted: Mon Jul 12, 2004 8:37 pm Post subject: |
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| They're rather a mixed bunch really but none of them are completely fluent. Some of them really do need pronunciation work. Others are a bit beyond this but don't seem bored. Their pronunciation/listening skills are good enough that they voluntarily correct each other when they make mistakes. Nonetheless, many of them do speak with that unfortunate pronunciation. ---> "changee" "mariagee" We went over the r/l problem today and almost all of them had a terrible time with "ruler" and "lure" "lurer". Funny. |
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prosodic
Joined: 21 Jun 2004
Location: ����
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| Posted: Mon Jul 12, 2004 8:43 pm Post subject: |
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| Zed wrote: |
| They're rather a mixed bunch really but none of them are completely fluent. Some of them really do need pronunciation work. Others are a bit beyond this but don't seem bored. Their pronunciation/listening skills are good enough that they voluntarily correct each other when they make mistakes. Nonetheless, many of them do speak with that unfortunate pronunciation. ---> "changee" "mariagee" We went over the r/l problem today and almost all of them had a terrible time with "ruler" and "lure" "lurer". Funny. |
The r/l issue is difficult. They're both velars. Try explaining to them that "l" actually touches the soft palate whereas "r" merely gets close to the soft palate. Have you tried teaching the distinction between light "l" and dark "l"?
"changee" and "marriagee" is all about the structures of the Korean language, but I'm sure you understand that. More than anything, that one takes time and practice.
Good luck. |
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ajuma
Joined: 18 Feb 2003
Location: Anywere but Seoul!!
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| Posted: Mon Jul 12, 2004 10:18 pm Post subject: |
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The way I discourage the "changee" "orangee" "busuh" problem, is to throw it back at them in their language. I use ���� as an example. If I say ���� ee, it's obviously wrong. If I say ���� uh, it's also wrong. Well, changee, and orangee are JUST as wrong! If their level is high enough, I'd explain about L1 interference and how it affects their pronunciation.
An unfortunate thing is that most teachers aren't here long enough to realize that this is a SERIOUS problem with pronunciation and if it's caught quickly (say kindy and 1st graders), it can be changed (not changeeed!) much more easily than it can be in adults. At the younger levels, it must be corrected EVERY TIME! |
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