Unit-3 Reflection

After reading all the Unit 3 readings, the reading which I found the most interesting was 'How to Teach Listening' by J.J Wilson. Specially the paragraph on 'while listening in class, students shouldn't try to understand every word' my thoughts on this were slightly different, I think that students should always pay attention to everything (or most of the things) if possible. I think listening comes in handy when learning really anything, it is a very good skill to have and people who don't have this skill should for sure look into it.

But again everyone is different and has different ways to learn which works for them, people who are good with listening skills would for sure benefit from listening to the words/phrases carefully. People who are not good at this particular listening skill thing they can try to listen to the phrases carefully by keeping all the distractions away (phone, laptops etc) which would for sure benefit them.

References and useful links

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCNjahCAMOU
• https://www.eslgamesplus.com/classroom-games/
• Wilson, J. J. (2008). How to teach listening (pp. 21-24). Harlow, Essex: Pearson Education Ltd.

'aha' moments

Unit 1 

I thought how to teach speaking by Thornbury.S was a very intertesing reading as whole. But the 'aha' moment for me was the speech condition. We often don't realize but speech condition can make a huge difference in one's performance. If you are giving a speech between the known people of yours I think you can do much better (in terms of fear factor) and I would feel more comfortable as well around that particular group than giving speech between unknown group of people which can make you nervous or uncomfortable in such kinds of settings. Any other thoughts on that??

Unit 2

In Harmer.J's reading my 'aha' moment was the passage about 'working with stress' because stress is important is words, phrases or sentences. It can be surprising, how focusing on the "stress - timed" quality of English helps students improve their pronunciation skills. I think one way to improve ESL students word stress problem would be - 

By taking a look at certain sentences and then clicking on the audio symbol to listen to the examples showing the difference between the sentences spoken. First listen to the words/sentences and than try pronouncing it. This way they can improve their pronunciation as well.

Unit-2 corrective feedback

R- /r/
teacher- today we will learn how to make the /r/ sounds. So lets get started, try to repeat after me (showing the mouth expressions) To make the r sound you only use your tongue and lips, tongue has to be in the middle of the mouth and tip should not touch anything.

student- am I doing it right (trilled r sound)

teacher- not quite you are still touching the tip of your tongue. Demonstrate the r sound again.

student- is it better now

teacher- yes much better. Now lets try it out with some easy words. Run so tip of the tongue should not touch anything and it should sound like one.

student- repeats (sounds like one).

teacher- awesome you have got the hang of it.

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Unit 2 reflection

Self-Monitoring and Correcting Pronunciation

By reading chapter 2 I've came to a conclusion that learning an language and specially English is not always a piece of cake for everyone. Because English language is a very complex language to learn and specially if that person has no prior knowledge about it at all. For  most of the ESL students their main goal is to speak English fluently and understanding the language. Now I think for that to happen self-monitoring and correcting are two of the most important factors which come in play.

Pronunciation is a big factor when leaning any language in this case English, but everyone is different and they have different needs and teachers are restricted to do only so much because they can't give attention to every single student in detail and find out there weak and strong points. So I think teachers should prepare all the students well enough that they are able to recognize there own mistakes and able to solve them (and if they need any help in this process then teachers can help them out). By doing this not only they would understand and learn the language effectively but also remember it longer as well. And students can also take help or suggestions from there peers as well, which would make their communication skills better and they would get to know one another. So I think teachers should pay more attention towards developing students self-monitoring skills and also the correcting skills. 

                                                        

TESL 0120: Unit 2 Pronunciation Activity

What you can learn: It’s important to know the right pronunciation of a word, but just knowing how to make the different vowel sounds can help you speak correctly.

This pronunciation activity (vowel sounds) is based on the speaking sample A. 

Things needed- children songs or youtube videos.

There are a number of children’s songs that help teach different vowels. Listen to and try to sing along with songs. These songs, and others like them, change the vowel sounds in words. This results in many nonsense words, like “benene” instead of “banana.” This is an effective method to learn vowel sounds because the rest of the word doesn’t change—so you can focus on the vowel sounds instead. First only listen to the song and then try to repeat the words or the vowels with the song.

Learning vowel sounds and pronunciations will make it easier for you to learn new English words. Take some time to practice and learn with these exercises and you’ll be having fun and learning at the same time.

TESL 0120 unit 1

Speaking activity 

Speaking activity for intermidiate and advanced level.

Class time:30 mins

No of people- groups of 2

Activity- Teaching a class is a fun way for ESL students to learn. In this activity, assign each pair a grammar, vocab or culture point that they’ll have to teach to the class. The pair works together to prepare activities and lesson plans and teaches the point to the class.
Best way to learn something is to tell or teach it to others. Which works in this case.
When the pair teaches the class, the teacher can play the role of a student, but you must pay a close attention and correct them afterwards.

Verbal coorective feedback
TESL 0120
Unit 1

Echoing
Teacher- so tell me how many times do you go to the in a week?
Student- I like to go park 2 times a week.
Teacher- 2 times a week or couple times a week?
Student-couple times a week.
Teacher- very well done.

Statement and question
Teacher- so tell me how many times do you go to the park in a week?
Student- I like to go park 2 times a week.
Teacher- are you sure about that?
Student- twice a week I meant.
Teacher- good.

Reformulation
Teacher- so tell me how many times do you go to the in a week?
Student- I like to go park twice a week.
Teacher- very well done.