Today, especially for the active listening skill, our tasks were; drawing a suspect profile from a witness description, hot-seat where we asked our classmates Wh- questions about them and listened to their answers, retelling a story in our own words and lastly listening to advertisements from certain group presentations. All of these tasks would be applicable in classrooms as none of them poses the time, crowdedness or money problems. My absolute favorite, and the one I would use was the drawing of the suspect task because I think it is applicable to any age group and any level, for it is so much fun to scribble as we listen along! However, it must be said that the description/the text must be adjusted to the learners’ levels. Also, the context for such listening text must be given before listening.

 

 

Going over the pre, while and post activities were an essential reminder as planning the task is the first focus of the teacher. Second sub-topic that I believe is essential is giving context about the listening text that’s about to be studied on. However small this section might seem, it’s where the learner’s attention can be captivated. The context clues could be about the speakers, the time era, the place etc. This is crucial, as students will prepare themselves for the setting before doing the active listening part.

      First problem to cross my mind is the fact that for most of my students English happens to be their 2^nd foreign language. They grow up speaking Zaza, later they learn Turkish in schools and also try to keep up with English Grammar Rules. Indeed, it’s the hardest to learn when there’s no one speaking the language around you.

      Today we learnt about motivating our students to speak aloud in TL, use realistic situations, give feedback and prepare different tasks for different skill levels as well as using pre, while and post stages in said task/activities. These ideas indeed would help with the problem I stated above. For students to break their shells, we bring planning, understanding and improving into our lessons. We give them linguistic support that helps with the use of accurate grammar in their speech, preparation time that gives them time to formulate a flowing dialogue and perhaps a demonstration that they can observe ahead of speaking themselves. In addition, another thing I’ve certainly set in my mind of doing more is pair and group activities to encourage peer work and correction.

      One idea us teachers keep forgetting is, just because students know reading strategies in L1 doesn’t mean that they will be able to use them in the TL. We need to create tasks that involve some of these strategies such as skimming or scanning. Throwing our learners into the text of the day before letting them get a whiff of it is, can only be a good way if we want to lose their enthusiasm as they will find it difficult to face the later, detail wanting tasks head on.

 
Another problem teachers face in teaching reading is trying to teach every unknown word thus receiving the confused and DISCOURAGED student reactions. If we plan to maybe talk about or create a task for the blocking words for our students I believe we’ll find it easier to carry on with encouraged and willing learners.

       I personally often forgo creating pairs or groups for writing activities. I feel it should always be individual work which can be challenging for our weak learners but today I've decided against this idea. In addition, we tend to focus on the product however, especially for writing one must consider process tasks or creating a portfolio for each student to be reviewed at the end of the school year. In the portfolio the tasks will start from the easy, from snack tasks, to detailed paragraphs so the teacher can assess the learner’s writing skill accordingly.

       I think, they’d be interested in exploring more different ways of collaborative writing and differentiating. On top of that, teaching writing strategies is a must. For example, one mustn’t start writing an essay without writing a draft first. Or writing should go from general to specific examples or vice versa. However, this part maybe taken out for weaker learners as they will require us to give them key words, phrases or sentences with blanks to write anything, so learning about modelling could be an idea as well.

       Trying to have a student centered classroom includes keeping students to continue thinking on their own. For this, they have to be encouraged. So I’ll definitely use the guided task and activities more than freer or controlled activities. Because I think freer activities are hard for them and the controlled ones don’t really make them think as much as I’d like them to. 

 

2.    What issues grammar instruction do you think your colleagues would want to discuss in a PCD meeting? Which one do you think should be prioritized and why?

 
       I believe us teachers know the difference between deductive and inductive teaching only in theory. In addition, today I had a hard time coming up with asking guided discovery questions as I mostly use deductive methods. Therefore, to understand and plan inductive teaching correctly, we need to practice asking these questions in our PCD meeting.

 

3.    What do you think the most effective vocabulary teaching suggestion in today’s session for language classrooms in your area? Why?

I have realized that I give way too many unknown words to my students (varying from 12 to 18) and that I should give 7-8 unknown words maximum. In addition, one shouldn’t only focus on teaching the meaning but also the form and the pronunciation of the new word quite extensively and repeatedly.