Monday, March 19, 2012

I Spy - Week 3B

Today, for the first time in a long time, I went outside my teaching comfort zone.  After reading the transcriptions of last week’s classes, I realized that I need to start using some of the teaching strategies we’ve been learning in Methodology in order to get my students to speak more often and in more complete sentences. 
With my second grade students (grade 11) I decided to implement the ‘students asking students questions’ technique for comprehension in order to practice simple sentences.  In my three morning classes I was pleased with the result.  All of the students did their best to follow my instructions, and although it was a teaching style they were not used, they slowly began to understand what I wanted and with each turn, less cueing was needed.  The activity at the end was successful too.
However, my single afternoon class was not as successful.  The students in that particular class are lower in ability and motivation in comparison to the other classes.  In fact, the students had so much trouble grasping the Ss ask Ss concept that we had to forego the activity for more Q and A practice.  I thought that rather than rush into the activity it might be better for the future if we practice until we get it.  To be honest, by the end of class it still wasn’t flowing smoothly.   Obviously it will be harder to implement real conversation inducing techniques with that class but I’m not going to give up on them…………Even if they hate me for it.

2 comments:

  1. I too implemented the S-S Q technique just recently. It's a great time burner, and fills the class dialogue with heavy S-speak. You're absolutely right that it takes time for them to adjust to an activity that requires virtually no T-S dialogue. Says something about how drastically T-centered Korean education is, right?

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  2. Definitely. Even though it was confusing for the students I told them to remember this for next time because I'm going to continue to use it. I expect it will go smoother next week.

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