Monday, July 17, 2006
A Night of (Even More) Planning
This week is really the first week of class, so tonight we spent quite a bit of time putting together a syllabus, daily schedule, and lesson plans. Originally, we thought that this course was to focus on teacher education; however, we were told last week that because of lack of enrollment, the course will be a more general conversation course. Because of this, we were able to use a syllabus from an ALP listening and speaking course as a template. We used the results from the needs analysis we distributed in class last Friday to provide content. In regards to the themes, we decided to teach one every one or two days, depending on how much we get done in class.
One frustration we're encountering with the course design is not really feeling prepared to teach a general conversation course. It seemed in our discussions last night that we're recreating the wheel in many ways. We do have Internet access, which can be used as the primary source of materials.
Another frustration is trying not to overlap in our teaching. There are three groups of students, with about 15 students per group. Classes meet Monday to Friday for four hours. Each teacher meets with each group of students every day. With this set-up and limited materials, it seems that there's a great chance for overlap, which could be good for the lower level class. There seemed to be overlap last Friday, because by the time I got to the last group of students and had them introduce themselves, they just rolled their eyes at me as if to say, "Not again! We've already done this three times!" So overlap was an issue, but it could have been because of the topic. It probably would have been better to have all the students meet together with the four teachers. This issue came up in our discussion last night when we were trying to come up with sub-themes. With one of the themes this seemed difficult to do because of the overlap within the theme itself.
Something interesting about this teaching situation is that we don't have our own group of students. This allows for us to have more insight into their language learning progress as we share our observations and assessments of the students.
One frustration we're encountering with the course design is not really feeling prepared to teach a general conversation course. It seemed in our discussions last night that we're recreating the wheel in many ways. We do have Internet access, which can be used as the primary source of materials.
Another frustration is trying not to overlap in our teaching. There are three groups of students, with about 15 students per group. Classes meet Monday to Friday for four hours. Each teacher meets with each group of students every day. With this set-up and limited materials, it seems that there's a great chance for overlap, which could be good for the lower level class. There seemed to be overlap last Friday, because by the time I got to the last group of students and had them introduce themselves, they just rolled their eyes at me as if to say, "Not again! We've already done this three times!" So overlap was an issue, but it could have been because of the topic. It probably would have been better to have all the students meet together with the four teachers. This issue came up in our discussion last night when we were trying to come up with sub-themes. With one of the themes this seemed difficult to do because of the overlap within the theme itself.
Something interesting about this teaching situation is that we don't have our own group of students. This allows for us to have more insight into their language learning progress as we share our observations and assessments of the students.
# posted by About Me @ 4:59 PM 
Comments:
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*This is an e-mail my advisor sent on 7/19/06 in response to this posting.
Hi Everyone,
Well, you've been there a week now, and it seems a lot has
happened. Some not so good and I hope a lot that is good. I know there have been some frustrations, but I hope the good is far outweighing the bad.
The general impressions I'm getting are that you like Korea, are pleased
with where you're staying, and have generally enjoyed the students. Am I
correct?
How is the food situation working out? Are you eating lots of
Korean food? How about cooking in your apartment? How are you managing
that?
I'm sorry to hear that the student population is not what you
expected. This does complicate the teaching somewhat. I think the
theme-based approach can still be a good one, but with some adjustments. For instance, you might extend a theme over a few or even several class sessions by breaking it down into various components. Technology, for example, has all sorts of interesting possibilities, from internet dating to whether younger people (e.g. high school students) should participate in
something like MySpace to the effects of the Internet on
communication patterns to computer-based teaching, etc. etc. Some of the themes may lead
to a lot of division that could sustain the theme over several class sessions. Also, you can have the students prepare to engage the themes in class. For instance, each student could be required to bring in a certain number of questions related to the theme--language specific questions (e.g.
vocabulary) and content-based questions. And remember some things we talked about before you left, such as role play situations, story-telling (extended over a period of time), addressing a topic or challenge (like my dog exercise machine for dogs activity), and so forth. To get the students
talking more (and asking language-related questions), you may need to put them in scenarios that require use of language, such as
customs/passport officials at the airport having to deal with troublesome foreign passengers. My guess is that the more the students have to perform certain roles and certain tasks, the more they have to use language and ask questions about how to use it. You want to create teaching moments through the scenarios and role playing and other activities so the students can see
that they're learning new language for particular situations.
Well, those are a few quick comments.I'll try to send more
soon.
Dr. H
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Hi Everyone,
Well, you've been there a week now, and it seems a lot has
happened. Some not so good and I hope a lot that is good. I know there have been some frustrations, but I hope the good is far outweighing the bad.
The general impressions I'm getting are that you like Korea, are pleased
with where you're staying, and have generally enjoyed the students. Am I
correct?
How is the food situation working out? Are you eating lots of
Korean food? How about cooking in your apartment? How are you managing
that?
I'm sorry to hear that the student population is not what you
expected. This does complicate the teaching somewhat. I think the
theme-based approach can still be a good one, but with some adjustments. For instance, you might extend a theme over a few or even several class sessions by breaking it down into various components. Technology, for example, has all sorts of interesting possibilities, from internet dating to whether younger people (e.g. high school students) should participate in
something like MySpace to the effects of the Internet on
communication patterns to computer-based teaching, etc. etc. Some of the themes may lead
to a lot of division that could sustain the theme over several class sessions. Also, you can have the students prepare to engage the themes in class. For instance, each student could be required to bring in a certain number of questions related to the theme--language specific questions (e.g.
vocabulary) and content-based questions. And remember some things we talked about before you left, such as role play situations, story-telling (extended over a period of time), addressing a topic or challenge (like my dog exercise machine for dogs activity), and so forth. To get the students
talking more (and asking language-related questions), you may need to put them in scenarios that require use of language, such as
customs/passport officials at the airport having to deal with troublesome foreign passengers. My guess is that the more the students have to perform certain roles and certain tasks, the more they have to use language and ask questions about how to use it. You want to create teaching moments through the scenarios and role playing and other activities so the students can see
that they're learning new language for particular situations.
Well, those are a few quick comments.I'll try to send more
soon.
Dr. H
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