TESOL at Queensland
University of Technology:
The Program and School Visits
Introduction
A Dream Came True
When I became a
husband and a father of two, I started to think that studying abroad would be
just a dream. I never wanted to be an irresponsible man who could abandon his
family and leave his job in order to satisfy his personal desire. Things have
changed when I learned that the Ministry of Education was going to subsidize
English teachers to study in Australia for five weeks. I felt the door to
complete my “unfinished business” finally opened and I tried so hard to be
admitted. I was jealous of my colleagues who pursued their master’s degree in
the United Kingdom but not until I was with the other amazing English teachers
from Taiwan to study TESOL in Brisbane, Australia.
Two Wonderful Roommates
The honeymoon
period was undoubtedly enjoyable during the first days of my stay in Brisbane.
I had two wonderful roommates. We shared a quite small room but their
friendliness created a warm atmosphere inside. We would go to school together,
shop together and cook our own food together. Just like any kind of adventure,
our beginning was never easy. We had to learn how to get economical during our
stay in Brisbane. It was all shared effort and through that we managed to save
up to seven dollars every day. We got on a free ferry and inter-campus shuttle
after a few days of trial and error.
The Beauty of Brisbane
For many times,
I missed home. However, the beauty of Brisbane has caused me some distractions as
its breathtaking tourist spots around the city would entice me to move around.
With the variety of gourmet food I could try at the Sunday Riverside markets
and South Bank markets on Saturday night, I felt like roaming around Taiwan's
night market. Other captivating sights can be seen at the Gallery of Modern
Art, the State Library of Queensland, the Queensland Art Gallery, and the
Queensland Museum in South Bank. Even I who was not so enthusiastic about art
could not easily get my eyes away from what they had inside. By taking a trip
on the City Cat ferry, that could carry commuters and visitors up and down the
Brisbane River, which winds its way through the City and suburbs, my classmates
and I would just add more convenience.
The Orientation
The most
important part of my trip to Brisbane started in 3 days. In that training
program, participants were expected to gain a new perspective and some
innovative skills on English teaching. The first week was more like an
orientation. We applied for our ID card, got the username and password, and
learned to use it to have access to the library of the Queensland University of
Technology or QUT. Moreover, they shared a brief introduction to
Australia—their culture, family life, land territory, and about the
aboriginals. Classes were conducted in a more student-centered way, mainly with
group discussion and even some hands-on activities wherein participants of this
program must actively engage in sharing their ideas with the group in English.
I thought of it as a great opportunity for us to refine our communication
skills. By the end of the whole program, we had to submit our project report.
They introduced us the basics of the Independent Study that all participants
should apply in deciding on a specific topic related to an actual problem
encountered in the classroom and they gave us a tour of the library to know how
we could efficiently make use of it while working on our report. The project
was the reflection of what we learned and they hoped our new ideas and
developed or improved skills would benefit students in Taiwan.
Using Authentic Materials
In our first
class aptly named Using Authentic Materials, we were assigned to use “realia”,
mainly authentic advertisements like brochures, pamphlets, flyers, etc, to
design our own learning materials and activities in a group of three. Given an
ad for auto parts and accessories, we had to come up with some innovative ideas
of utilizing it as a good supplement. First, we had a warm-up
activity and suggested some interesting questions to arouse students’ interests
of learning by relating them to their dream cars and what they would buy in the
shop to customize them. Then, we focused our grammatical structure on the verb,
"spend". After providing many real-life sentences, we hoped students
would learn how to use this verb inductively. After that, we divided students
into groups and instructed them to give each other real-life questions, e.g.,
“How much did you spend on buying that watch?” Henceforth, proper answers were
observed. Following was still a group activity which tasked students to discuss
“in English” the content of certain brochure. In addition, students had to
imagine they had two hundred dollars and talked about
the items they chose to spend the money for. While doing this talk, they would
be standing in front of the whole class in which the teacher and the others
could state their feedback. Finally, we gave students the chance to interview
other teachers or their parents with the same topic, “spending money on cars”
as homework.
ESL in Australia
We got to know
the condition of traumatized refugees from war-torn countries in the Middle
East and Africa who came to Australia to seek asylum and most importantly, to
find security they couldn’t have in their own countries. The Australian
government adopted series of plans to help them adjust to the new environment,
to have a sense of belongingness and the ability to get a job there. Education
has played a very crucial role in achieving these goals and English competence
was undoubtedly the most important one.
We watched a
video of a dedicated teacher. Through that video, we understood refugee
students’ English level. It was amazing to see how the wonderful teacher
managed to engage them with all kinds of hands-on tasks and projects. Since
most of them didn’t have a decent education before, their vocabulary was so
limited that they could not even correct their grammatical
errors using simple sentences. Adding to the burden was their pronunciation and
intonation. That wouldn’t be easy to carry out good talks with unfamiliar sounds. English Immersion Approach
was exactly the answer. Every subject was taught by using English as the medium
of instruction. The teacher cleverly devised a wide range of learning materials
that were related to real-life situations. For example, the students learned to
use the Internet to search information online and did an oral presentation
totally in English about their countries. One practical application of their
learning was asking students to go to a bakery to learn how to bake and be able
to get ready for their job opportunities. They
did it and had a chance to even lend a hand to cancer patients by raising money
through selling their bread and cake. I could not think of any better way in
strengthening one's resolution than this method of education.
Systemic Functional
Linguistics
Definition
Contemporarily,
the most dominant English teaching methodology in Australia is the SFL
developed by Michael Halliday, wherein learners learn to analyze the purpose of
a text. Language features of different text types, or genres, are used to
decide whether the author achieves his purpose. Genres, including Argument,
Procedure, Narrative, Information Report, Recount, Explanation, etc. a
framework for different writing references that learners can follow good models
and then try to create their own.
The Framework of Genres for Analysis
Genres are
influenced by three aspects of context: field, tenor, and mode. Simply put,
field is the subject matter or topic; tenor
refers to the roles and relationships between the writer and the reader that lead
to the “language choice”, and mode is the method of delivery which can be
either written or spoken. In other words, the genre fits the function and the
social purpose and context. My blog article that summarizes my experience
during this TESOL program is an example of the “field”. Other examples of this
are theories and applications provided with language skills. The “tenor” can be
I, myself, and other teachers who follow this blog, so my choice of language,
including verb moods and vocabulary choices can be both formal and informal,
objective and subjective, personal and impersonal. The “mode” is mainly in
written form, complete with photos and videos as can be seen in my blog as
well.
Reflection and Application of SFL
Based on the
Genre Theory, teachers can come up with practical plans to help teach reading
and writing more effectively. When it comes to reading comprehension, we can
help our students identify genres and their systemic structures so that they
can know the context and purpose of the reading passages and quickly locate
important language features, like the way the writer organizes his or her main
ideas, supporting details, transitional words, etc, to pinpoint the required
information and get the correct answers.
When Systemic
Functional Linguistics was taught in our TESOL class, during the first couple
of hours, I could not easily digest the instructional device. I asked my
classmates how they understood the lecture and we were all in the same
condition. We all could hardly grasp what was being taught in the beginning.
But finally, as I started writing about my blog article, piece by piece, I got
the hang of it.
Our instructors
covered 5 subjects mainly focused on teacher’s ability to influence students
practice in using the English language and certain skills were targeted to be
honed.
Teaching Writing
The teacher
today began her class by emphasizing how useful and effective it could be to
teach writing with many interactive group works that create opportunities for
students to work with each other and therefore create a more dynamic class.
Given an essay topic of how the popularity of international traveling has
benefited both countries of destination and travelers, we were again asked to
work in groups and perform several tasks based on the idea of “guided writing”.
For example, we first brainstormed words related to traveling as many as
possible and categorized them into three types to help form paragraphs. Then,
we decided on the most suitable topic or concluding sentences for each paragraph
with our partners. Finally, each paragraph gradually took form after finishing
the tasks of “cohesion” and “linking words”. An effective way to develop
cohesion in writing is to use similar words for key vocabulary, and linking
words, such as “because” and “however”, are
necessary to connect ideas.
Micro-Teaching
Definition
At the final
week of the program, each participant would have to do a micro-teaching in a
group of three as well as to incorporate new teaching ideas and techniques that
we have learned. The purpose of the activity was for the teachers to have an
opportunity to demonstrate and share their dedicated work of becoming a more
creative teacher with each other. The medium of instruction, of course, has to
be English while presenting the micro-teaching, and apparently, this has caused
some anxiety among teachers probably as most were afraid of making mistakes in
front of other teachers. Nevertheless, it aimed that teachers could break out
of their comfort zone and be confident in their ability to talk regardless of
their English communication skills.
How It Should Be Done
A brief
introduction to micro-teaching was given covering its definition and all the
principles of doing an impressive one in a few weeks. This simulation activity
required teachers to present a part of a lesson using strategies and techniques
appropriate to their target students. Moreover, the use of a textbook, teaching
aids, giving instructions, organizing language practice through group work,
providing feedback to students, etc., were expected to be executed. We were repeatedly reminded of the importance
of making our activities interactive, instead of being authoritarian and doing
too much lecturing again. What’s more, constructive feedback from other
participants was extremely important as well. To complete the circle, we had to
make sure that supportive and non-threatening advice would also be offered by
other observant participants after each micro-teaching so that every teacher
could have a chance to improve their teaching practices.
Classroom Language Skills
Why is it important?
As English
teachers, we were expected to use English in many ways and expose our students
to good models of correct language use. For example, English in the classroom
can be used for daily routines, class rules, administrative tasks, reward
procedures, etc. In my case, I’d like to give a simple explanation first and
then make lots of real-life example sentences and encourage them to guess its
Chinese equivalent, in the hope that they could learn this new word in more
retainable and contextualized way.
Why is it not so easy in Taiwan?
Thinking of my
own lessons, I would use a mixture of Chinese and English in various
activities, but less than ten percent of my time was spent on English. In
reality, there are many factors influencing how much English is used in my
classroom. One thing to take into consideration is students’ level. I cannot
speak English in my class for more than two minutes for the reason that this
gradually resulting in losing their concentration. Or, when I want to chat
about something more casually, which can be irrelevant to the current topic, I
tend to speak much longer. Hence, I do not have to worry about their
understanding to my talk.
How can it be done?
We were
instructed that classroom language could be divided into two categories, the
language of interaction and the language of instruction. The former included
eliciting (e.g. asking questions, modifying a question, providing hints or
clues, encouraging students to ask questions and respond to each other),
responding (e.g. responding to student questions, seeking clarification, giving
confirmation, asking for repetition) and providing feedback (e.g.
acknowledging, evaluating and commenting on student responses). The latter
featured presenting (e.g. explaining something new), giving instructions (e.g.
to assign homework, to manage the classroom) and signaling (e.g. indicating
stages of a lesson).
Teaching Grammar
Monopoly and Running
Dictation
The most
inspiring and exciting thing I experienced during this section was that grammar
can also be taught in a much more interactive and dynamic way than lecturing
and repetitive substitution drills. Lauren began her class by engaging
everybody with some sort of a Monopoly game. Each group was so busy discussing
the correct answers and placing dice to win more cash by deciding on which type
of conditionals fits into the right description. I immediately thought about
modifying it a little bit to help my students clarify all the different usages
of relative clauses for the coming new semester. Then, we were also introduced
to the “Running Dictation” for teaching the passive voice. Students work in
pairs. One has to change the incomplete sentences into right ones and repeat
them to his or her partners, and the other has to jot down every word that has
been said. After that, also with pair discussion, students have to unscramble
the sentences correctly based on how banana chips are made and shipped. While
playing those grammar games, there was laughing, smiling or even shouting at
all times.
Reflection
In Taiwan, most
teachers, including myself, tend to teach grammar deductively, giving clear
rules and explanations followed by many mechanical drills to make sure our
students know how to get good grades on their tests. Under the circumstances,
being student-centered and interactive in the classroom is really difficult,
not to mention teaching grammar communicatively, which has been stressed many
times by the instructor today. Reflecting on this teaching practice, I think
the traditional lecturing and repetitive drills are still necessary for such a
test-oriented setting in Taiwan. However, those interesting games can also be
used as great supplements, scaffolding students in a more fun and communicative
way rather than rote memorization of grammatical rules and structures.
Speaking
We were
introduced to some useful language for discussions, like asking for and giving
opinions, agreeing and disagreeing, interrupting, stalling, conceding a point,
admitting an error, etc. With the given article, Internet Addiction- A Growing
Problem, we were provided with a simple survey and asked to interview each
other about how addicted they were. The instructor also reminded us the
necessary scaffolding, like background information, structured language,
controlled discussion, etc, must be provided in advance before getting students
ready to talk.
Academic Writing
Discourse
markers, Nominalization and Hedging were introduced in this section. First, we
went through purposes of each category of discourse markers in terms of written
and spoken forms. Next, given a sentence, “The environment is an important
issue in today’s world because the scientists and researchers spend a lot of
time about the environment, the problems and how to protect it.”, we learned to
identify nonacademic words, such as “because”, “spend a lot of time”, “about”,
etc. and change them into more academic ones by using the passive voice, higher
lexis and nominalization. As a result, the new sentence could be: One of the
single most important issues in the world today is the environment. Finally,
hedging is to avoid definite statements in a noncommittal, ambiguous way by
using words like “possibly”, “might”, “it has been suggested that”, etc.
For readers of
this blog, maybe you already knew that articles posted on this website were written
in a more casual way because I have never been properly trained with regard to
academic writing. Besides, I also didn’t want them to be so formal or serious,
so you can find my way of writing usually is not that objective as research
papers and oftentimes even very personal. After this class, I think there’s so
much for me to learn if I want my writing to be concise and to the point in
terms of nominalization.
School Experience: St Thomas
More College
Introduction
This catholic
secondary school is located in Sunnybank, with a total of 580 students from
grade 8 to grade 12 and the tuition of 4000 AUD a year. Its curriculum planning
is based on the Brisbane Catholic Education Beliefs, emphasizing the demands of
contemporary learners and the changing and challenging world. Of course,
religious courses are incorporated and governed by its vision and mission
statement, reflected in the motto, God’s Servant First. Math, Science, Social
Studies, English and Religion are the main academic areas, complete with over
thirty functional courses.
English Literature
The most
important aim of this school visit trip is for us to really go into the
classrooms and see how curriculum is actually taught and learned with
first-hand observations. Divided into several groups, we were provided with two
periods of classes, so everyone was quite busy taking notes and photos without
interrupting the teacher. The first class was English literature, and the topic
was Sacred Text. Students were already working in groups of four when we got
there. Each member had to make their contributions with their “Individual
Thinking”, and then they combined those ideas and established the ”Group
Statement” collectively, which each group had to share with the rest of the
class later on. The teacher was busily moving among groups and checked their
participation. After that, one student from each group read aloud their group
statement, and the teacher gave constructive feedback or added more specific
details to their answers. Following that, the teacher showed his PowerPoint
slides about genres of texts, such as legends, myths, poetry, prophecy,
proverbs, etc. to check students’ understanding by asking some questions.
Shortly after that, students were asked to look for definitions of some genres
online with their laptops. In the end, the last activity was to match some
given texts, like Exodus 20, Ecclesiastes 7, Luke 4: 16-21 and so on, and
justify their decisions with evidence from the text. During those tasks, the
teacher kept reminding them of the importance of higher-order thinking skills
and encouraged them constantly even when their answers were incomplete or
incorrect.
Career Development Education
The second class
was Career Development Education, designed to help students to choose their pathways
to potential career perspectives, including future general education,
vocational training, work and alternatives. Students worked in pairs to discuss
and find out the requirement of entry that their teacher had given them as
homework. Taking University of Queensland for example, the teacher also went
through the prerequisites to some given departments. Then, a video directly
related to this topic was shown to elicit the three R’s: Reflect, Research and
Resolve. Again, students worked in pairs to discuss five pros and cons of their
choices, and the teacher helped many of them reflect on their ideas and gave
them some advice as well. In the end, Principal Elmore was so kind to give us a
tour of the school facilities, such as the library, the computer lab, the
culinary room, and the RTP room, etc.
Reflection
It seems that
teachers and students there are pretty used to being observed. We not only went
into the classroom but walked around and talked with some of the students. When
the teacher asked a question, there always would be several students raising
their hands. When told to work in groups, most of them could actively
participate in the discussion. However, to my surprise, one girl virtually lied
on the chair, with her legs holding up high, but the teacher did nothing about
it. Also, one girl was fiddling with another girl’s hair, and another was
throwing folded paper or something. Thus, there is no such a thing as a perfect
education system in the world, I guess.
Teaching Listening
Whispers
Without further
ado, Marg demonstrated a listening activity called Whispers. Outside the
classroom, one participant from each group got an oral message, “I saw Sussie
sitting in the shoe shine shop”, from her and had to come back inside
whispering it quietly to the next one, and so on and so forth. In the end, the
last one had to write that sentence down on the board. Actually, the phrase,
“shoe shine shop”, was not easy to make out, and only one group successfully
got it right. The fun part of this task was each member was not only passively
passing what he or she has heard but also actively interpreting the sentence.
In other words, both top down and bottom up skills are required to comprehend
what we heard efficiently.
Reflection
Then, we
discussed possible listening problems and potential solutions. Causes can
generally be classified into six areas: psychological, lack of familiarity with
phonological features of L2, lack of familiarity with authentic speech, lack of
transfer of L1 listening skills, lack of cultural knowledge and poorly designed
tasks. Next, listening strategies, including building a schema, listening for
the gist, predicting details, etc., can be helpful for teachers to design such
a listening lesson. Take my “Learning English from YouTube” class for example,
I would state the theme of the week first and then give a simple introduction
to the video they were about to watch in order to give them some background
information. Students were also encouraged to grasp the main idea and guess the
meaning from the context, which was designed to amplify the importance of that
earlier introduction.
Pronunciation and Reading
Teaching
Pronunciation with PBL
The lecturer,
Lynette, began this section with a sort of Problem-Based Learning approach. To
elicit categories like intonation, stress, spelling/pronunciation relationship,
consonant clusters, and so on, she posed questions regarding some common issues
which we usually encounter when teaching pronunciation. Lynette emphasized that
we had to move students from the known to the unknown as to be effective
language teachers. For example, one of the participants asked how to help
students distinguish front /l/ and dark /l/, and she said that making front /l/
first and then with your tongue in the same place at the front, raising the
back of the tongue almost to the position /u/. Then, we practiced it several
times and got the hang of it.
Teaching Reading with Stories
By reading
intriguing stories, like Koala Lou, The Wide-mouthed Frog, The Circus and Don’t,
Lynette demonstrated many innovative and practical teaching skills in terms of
teaching word/sentence stress and intonation, and we were all very impressed by
how wonderfully she could read these stories and poems with her voice. We
worked in groups and practiced those skills over and over again until everyone
could confidently read it out loud and gained Lynette’s recognition.
Personally, I really could relate to those skills because of the Readers
Theater Competition last year, which I also incorporated some skills to help my
students bring the characters alive with their voice. So, how to employ those
reading skills in a regular class is a big challenge for each participant of
this program.
Bottom-up vs. Top-down
In the Teaching
Reading session, again, we brainstormed some reading difficulties for both
students and teachers, such as the lack of sufficient vocabulary and background
knowledge, the length of reading passages, and so on, so each potential
solution was discussed. Then, two relevant views regarding reading
comprehension, Bottom-up and Top-down, were elaborated and analyzed with
several examples. Both skills are required to achieve reading comprehension
regardless of the level of the students, so the decision to decide on which
skill to suit the need of the readers and contexts is crucial.
Schema Theory
Next, we also
took a quick glimpse of Schema Theory and came up with schema-building
activities which provide students with what they should’ve known before
actually reading the article, including key words and main ideas. Finally, we
read a given paragraph and tried to determine which might be a suitable first
paragraph, complete with valid reasons. This activity was designed to help
learners use contextual clues to actively construct the first paragraph.
Teaching Speaking &
Listening
The Testing Approach
Two approaches
with regard to listening were introduced and discussed, which served as an
excellent guideline for some listening activities to grab attention throughout
the whole class. The Testing Approach, which the teacher introduces the topic
and some key vocabulary, with the students reading the questions and checking
any unknown words, doesn’t offer that much active engagement because students
only try to get everything right as the tape are played.
The Skill Development Approach
On the contrary,
the Skill Development Approach will get students to talk briefly about the
topic and brainstorm related vocabulary and ideas. Also, students are
encouraged to ask questions about some difficult words or sections. Then, the
teacher plays the tape again and stops at any difficult parts if necessary.
Given a copy of the transcript, students read it through, hear the tape and
then listen again without reading the transcript. In other words, this approach
provides many scaffolding activities, like reading the transcript, for students
to construct the meanings actively. Also, the “Use it or lose it” principle was
emphasized so that teachers should create opportunities to allow students to
produce with the language on their own and retain it longer.
Under the
principle of Skill Development Approach, Judith introduced a total of eleven
activities:
1. Listening and Spelling Practice
Exercise: checking students’ understanding of words with difficult spelling, e.g.,
favourite, fauvourite, fauvorite, favourte; I like, I’d like, I’ll like, I’m
like.
2. Bingo:
distinguishing some confusing consonants, e.g. sheets, she, shore and sack.
3. Word
substitution: practicing synonym use
4. Silent
Dictation: pronunciation and articulation
5. “George is getting married”:
dictation, blank-filling, confidence-building and role-play
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJIQjDtdygA)
6. Listening for
Accuracy: I Heard It Through The Grapevine by Marvin Gaye
7. Ben by
Michael Jackson: the use of transcript to enhance listening comprehension
8. Physical
Exercises: vocabulary of body parts, speaking and listening
9. Taking a Group Photograph:
information gap, speaking and listening comprehension
10. Running
Dictation: listening, speaking, memorization and sentence-sequencing
11. Movie Goofs: a fun way to
practice speaking (http://www.moviemistakes.com/imdb250)
Most important
of all, not only did we go through all the activities in a more interactive and
dynamic way, but we also learned the rationale behind each one of them,
complete with the purpose, the procedures and some potential variations in
those activities. Undoubtedly, this class is by far the most resourceful one,
and Judith was immediately surrounded by all participants asking to take a
selfie.
Teaching Vocabulary
Two kinds of
activities, receptive and productive activities, can help students learn new
words. It takes an average of 15 times for learners to meet unknown words as to
really retain and use on their own. When teaching vocabulary, we should make
sure that the following aspects are included: the form, the pronunciation,
collocations, the meaning and synonyms/antonyms/hynonyms. Then, we were
introduced to an activity, K.I.M., for vocabulary words and new ideas. Write
the term of the key idea (K) in the left column, the information (I) that goes
along with it in the center column, and draw a picture of the idea, a memory
clue (M) in the right column.
School Experience: ST Paul’s
School
The English Class
There were two
classes that I got to observe today. One was an English class that students
were busy working on their drafts, and the other was a Japanese class where
learners were practicing speaking in pairs. First, I was originally grouped and
assigned to watch an English class in which students prepared PowerPoint slides
for their oral presentations on Romeo and Juliet. The teacher called on their
names one by one and gave some advice while the rest were working on their
individual draft. I interviewed some students and tried to have an
understanding of what they were doing, and there was nothing left to watch
because most of the students were chatting. Some even were listening to music
with their earphones, but the teacher seemed to ignore that unless they were
too noisy. So, I was standing there awkwardly without knowing what to do next.
After a few minutes, we decided to leave and see if we could observe another
one.
The Japanese Class
Luckily, the
teacher from next class was very friendly and immediately invited us to watch
her lesson. It was a Japanese class, and students were busy practicing the
sentence pattern, “How do you go to plus place?” in the target language. One
thing really surprised me was that the pronunciation and intonation of hers
were quite amazing, and she kept demonstrating how to say it correctly and
fluently for the students, with half of her instructions delivered in Japanese.
The overall atmosphere was quite relaxed, and the students were so willingly to
participate in the activity. Judging from their active participation, I would
say this was such a successful class that most of the students enjoyed taking
this optional foreign language course. After class, I particularly asked the
teacher how she would get those learners to practice speaking Japanese outside
of the classroom. She said that there were many international students in this
school, and she could arrange some Japanese students to talk to hers one on one
in Japanese.
Reflection
Reflecting on
what I have learned from this school visit, I
realized making the class student-centered and interactive was the most
distinguished feature compared with the teaching practices in Taiwan. Teachers
here sometimes also do lecturing, but they tend to make it short and efficient.
Then, students are given relatively much more time to explore with group work,
and they’re all pretty used to sharing their ideas with the whole class. As for
teachers’ feedback, it is usually warm and kind so that students are not afraid
of making mistakes even though their answers are not necessarily correct every
time. Thirdly, teachers here give individual guidance, regardless of the noise
from the other students. There are about twenty-five students in the class, and
of course, some students will chat and even misbehave when they are left
unattended, but they can usually get back on track as soon as the teacher
signals them to be quiet.
So, can we just
copy all the good things we’ve observed and implement every one of them in
Taiwan? Well, the following are some restraints that I think we need to bear in
mind before embracing those good practices. The first one is students’ level of
English. Activities, like paraphrasing or summarizing, or anything that
requires students to organize their thoughts and express themselves in English
usually won’t work as well because they are not given enough opportunities to
practice from something easier or related to their everyday life. The second
one is students’ lack of motivation. Students in Taiwan are quite used to sit
quietly in class, waiting for their teachers to give them the correct answers
so that they can copy onto their textbooks. They are just too afraid of making
mistakes and getting laughed at by their classmates. The third one is teachers’
lack of freedom to decide what to teach. For example, not only do I have to
cover the textbook, but I also have to teach loads of supplements of outside
reading, which leaves me a little time to do activities in class. And the last
one is the class size and the seating. There are thirty-five students packed in
a relatively small classroom. Unfortunately, almost every interactive activity
here demands larger space to put students into groups, so that can be a problem
before adopting any of those techniques in our own classrooms. However, please
note that any of these should not be an excuse for not trying something new and
fun compared with the usual mundane lecturing. It is our job to at least
provide an opportunity for our students to experience what it feels like to
really use the language in the classroom.
Reading
Brainstorming
When introducing
a new reading passage to our students, “Brainstorming” is a very useful
technique in many practical ways. It can not only get them mentally ready but
provide scaffolding to help them understand the material better, such as
eliciting vocabulary, predicting what might be mentioned based on the title or
illustrations and giving some important background knowledge. All these
activities are designed to engage learners to actively participate in learning,
rather than wait to be told what to do passively.
Jigsaw Reading
Also, reading is
not necessarily all about learners’ processing the text individually. There are
also some very interactive activities to engage students so that reading
becomes more interesting and dynamic. For example, the “Jigsaw” activity is
quite suitable for students to work together and actively construct the meaning
as a group with everybody’s contributions. We were divided into three groups of
ten and had to thoroughly understand one of the three given parts of the
reading material, including the new words or phrases. Then, the lecturer,
Terrie, gave us some guided tasks, like wh-questions about each of our own part
to make sure we can all get the gist of the divided article. Next, all the
three parts of the article were put together, and everyone could get the whole
picture. Each member of the new group had to orally share what he or she could
elaborate on the designated part and then went through all the reading
compression questions assigned by Terrie altogether. When each of the three new
group members successfully finished the task, the jigsaw puzzle was solved as
well.
Reflection
There are many
advantages for teachers to adopt this technique in the classroom. First,
interaction among students really creates more opportunities to engage them in
the process of constructing the text meaning. Traditionally, teachers tend to
explain everything in detail, including all the new words, phrases, and structures,
in the hope that our students can get everything right on the tests. As a
result, students are deprived of chances to develop important reading skills
because they are used to relying on their teachers to do all the work. Second,
this activity combines both reading and speaking skills. For example, more
advanced learners can be encouraged to summarize the whole reading passage and
do an oral report with their own words. Third, and of course, less lecturing
from teachers also means students get to participate more, and they also become
more motivated when completing the assigned tasks collectively.
Conclusion
Language skills,
teaching strategies, and school visits constitute this five-week TESOL program.
Immersed in a speaking environment like this, participants got to practice
their language skills and finished all the hands-on tasks regarding English
speaking skills mainly. Then, by coming up with simple lesson plans
collaboratively, we also tried to apply those ideas and techniques in a very
test-driven setting back in Taiwan, which was really challenging because of
students’ mixed abilities in a relatively big class. Last but not least, with
class participation, school visits did provide great opportunities to
experience Australian school life and how a foreign language, Japanese, was
taught in class.
Three years ago,
I embarked on this great journey of gradually reinventing my ways of teaching
with ideas and techniques that I learned from Cooperative Learning, Task Based
Learning, lesson planning with ABCD objectives, to name just a few. I kept on
trying out new strategies in my own class and then shared what I learned with
teachers through microteaching and teaching demonstrations. Looking back on
this great experience at QUT, I was really lucky to be admitted to this program
and began enjoying applying all the activities in my class.
Taiwan has been
experiencing major education reform over the past decade, moving towards a more
student-centered paradigm. Cooperative learning, collaborative lesson planning,
differentiated teaching and even flipped classroom have dominated in-service
training workshops these years, emphasizing a variety of innovative teaching
strategies can really help motivate students' interest in learning. However,
this trend of "flipped classroom" also raised some doubts about its
effectiveness compared to good old traditional lecturing. Some argued that we
can’t just “copy and paste” those originated in the West directly to Taiwan
without seriously thinking over the differences between the two totally
different settings.
With real
application of what I learned at QUT, it has been a long trial-and-error
process to see whether those techniques actually work in my class. Lecturing on
vocabulary and grammar is still a must, so is tests and loads of homework
because of the entrance exam. Furthermore, before adopting this more
student-centered approach in our classroom, we have to take students’ diverse
learning styles and mixed abilities in a big class into consideration. With
sufficient scaffolding and intriguing learning tasks that help create more
opportunities to USE the language, I found students would be significantly more
motivated to work with their partners and actively get engaged in hands-on
activities for English learning. That, without a shadow of a doubt, is the most
valuable lesson that I learned from the TESOL program and school visits at QUT.
References
Al Azri, R. H., & Al-Rashdi, M.
H. (2014). The effect of using authentic materials in teaching. International
journal of scientific & technology research, 3(10),
249-254.
Christie, F. (1999). Genre theory and
ESL teaching: A systemic-functional perspective. TESOL Quarterly 33(4),
759-763.
Gibbons, P. (2002). Scaffolding
language, scaffolding learning: Teaching second language learners in the
mainstream classroom. New Hampshire: Heinemann.
Kagan, S. (1995). We Can Talk:
Cooperative Learning in the Elementary ESL Classroom. ERIC Digest.
Richard-Amato, P. A. (1988). Making
It Happen: Interaction in the Second Language Classroom, From Theory to
Practice. Longman Inc., 95 Church St., White Plains, NY 10601-1505..
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