Final Project (W9)
by Richard Guozhen Li on Friday,
June 8, 2012 at 11:48am ·
Building
Teaching Skills Through the Interactive Web
Project
Report
Name:
Richard G.
Li
Country: Taiwan
I.
Background
- Who are the learners?
There are
about thirty eighth graders participating in this class as their extra
curricular activity, and they come from different classes with mixed English
levels. Before signing up for this class, they are supposed to read the terms
of application that they are highly motivated to learn English and have at
least an intermediate level of English listening comprehension. This class is
conducted only ONCE a week, so they should have plenty of time to prepare for
the tasks.
- What is the setting?
I decide to
use English as the medium of instruction because I could not only expose the
students to a lot of listening input but also grow professionally in terms of
English communicative competence. Every time I speak English in regular
classes, I can immediately see their typical facial expressions telling me they
have trouble understanding what I said, and eventually I’ve learned not to
speak for too long. In this class, on the contrary, I am totally free to
decide how I want to teach English without worrying about the curriculum or the
Indicators of Competence. So, I think this is really a great opportunity for me
to try something new and see whether it works.
Also, I love
watching English-speaking videos on Youtube because they are authentic and fun
to watch. In contrast, English textbooks are carefully designed to
systematically introduce vocabulary and grammar rules in order to equip
students with enough knowledge to get good grades on written tests, and they
are usually not interesting enough to arouse students’ interest. As a result, I
want to show them that there are many other ways to learn English other than
textbooks, and watching these intriguing videos is a very good tip to improve
their vocabulary and listening ability.
The
following are my teaching procedures:
1. State the
theme of the week.
2. Give a
simple introduction before watching the video.
3. Present
the video.
4. While
watching the video, constantly pause and pick up some useful expressions to
elaborate.
5. Replay
the video and encourage the students to capture the main idea.
6. Get
students to talk by asking questions, starting from easy yes/no to wh-
questions
- What are the course goals?
My goals for
this class can be divided into three categories. First, I want to create an all
English environment where students are exposed to a lot of language input.
English teachers in Taiwan
don’t need to speak any English to teach, and students mainly rely on the
Chinese translation of the learning materials provided by their teachers. All
they need to know for tests can be taught in their mother tongue.
Second, I
want the students to pick up useful and interesting expressions that they’ll
never learn from textbooks. For example, they can pick up some basketball terms
by watching Jeremy Lin’s highlights, or they can also learn some useful phrases
about make-ups with a real demonstration by a Chinese girl on Youtube.
Third, after
several classes, I will begin to ask simple yes/no questions to create a need
to speak simple English after watching a video. Then, week by week, they can
learn to talk more by participating in group discussions about the videos they
just watched. Eventually, at the end of the semester, they are going to
introduce one video that they like most in English at a minimum of one and a
half minutes.
- What are the student needs?
First of
all, students in this class need to use their listening comprehension to
understand the teacher’s introduction and elaboration on the videos that they
are about to watch. They are encouraged to guess the meaning from various
clues. Then, after watching a video twice or three times, they are required to
answer the teacher’s question and participate in the group discussion. The
purpose of these questions is to make sure that most of them can get the main
idea. Finally, they need to learn to introduce one video in English, which is
going to be their final project. This was not included in the original lesson
plan, and it was added in the middle of this semester after I read the
suggested articles about Project-Based Learning.
To improve
their listening and basic speaking skills, students are also required to do
several hands-on tasks. For example, they need to finish worksheets that can
help them have a better understanding of what a video is about. Also, class
participation is important so that they need to answer questions and contribute
to group discussions.
- Describe anything else that is significant or relevant about the course that related to your project
Please note
that English is mostly studied in the classroom, not used in real life
situations. The rote memorization of vocabulary and grammar rules is a common
practice here in Taiwan.
Students are usually overwhelmed by loads of tests and homework prescribed by
their teachers to ensure that don’t do too poorly on pencil-paper tests. So,
after many years of learning, students only acquire a huge amount of language
knowledge, not real application of it. What’s worse, most of them are getting
less motivated to learn under the circumstances.
Thus, with
this class, I think I can get them to know that learning a language is all
about being able to communicate with that language, not just getting good
grades. In addition, compared with the textbooks or traditional lecturing, I
also want to show them there are many other interesting ways of learning
English. I strongly believe that students will definitely learn much better and
more effectively if they can also feel the joy of learning by completing
interesting tasks with what they can actually DO with the language.
II. Issue or
problem that started your project
Only after
two or three weeks of teaching, I immediately realized that there were two
major difficulties that I encountered in this class. First, the lack of
motivation for discussion. Though they seemed to quite enjoy watching the
videos I presented, they were just so reluctant to answer questions or have any
forms of interaction in class. They appeared so used to sitting quietly in
class, and I had to wait a long time for a response. Gradually, I found myself
answering the questions for them, and sometimes I even just didn’t want to ask
any questions.
Second,
teaching a large class with mixed abilities is really not easy. Some of them
are quite confident in their English listening comprehension because they look
forward to my introduction to the video and they feel happy when they can
understand the videos totally with their own listening skills. But, there are
also quite a few whose English level is too low to engage themselves in this
class. Since this class is conducted totally in English, and I guess students
will get bored if they can’t comprehend anything at all.
III. Initial
solution and expected response
With two
specific problems in mind, I decided to do something different with the help of
technology. I used to begin the class simply by stating the topic of the week
and giving them a simple introduction to what they are about to watch. To
foster students motivation and learner autonomy, I let them play some hands-on
language games instead, hoping they can feel more relaxed or confident in the
upcoming activities. For example, we played action listening games like “Who’s
got what?” from http://www.etseverywhere.com/category/action-listening-games.
Since then, I tried to conduct similar activities from those online resources
to motivate them before I began teaching.
To help
those slow learners with their listening ability, I tried to get the whole
class to do listening quizzes from http://www.esl-lab.com/, starting from easier level. To
reward them, I also added bonus points to their Conduct Card, a popular
rewarding system in Taiwan.
These quizzes are interesting and authentic so most of the students can perform
well and feel confident about themselves.
IV. Response
and reflection
After a few
weeks, students were used to these new changes before we actually began the
class. For those who already have a good English level, they seemed to quite
enjoy all the activities and quizzes. But when it came to expressing their
ideas in English, most of them were still reluctant to do so. Meanwhile, for
those who were falling behind, the listening quizzes seemed not to help a lot,
and they even didn’t want to try to listen hard to the audio files at all.
These
changes made many of them more willing to participate in the listening tasks,
but they still didn’t want to try to speak some simple English in this class. I
tried to challenge higher level students only, but it usually took a very long
time before they said anything. Then, to avoid this awkward situation, I had to
answer my own questions again.
I didn’t or
couldn’t blame them for being so passive at all. Students in Taiwan are so
used to staying quiet in class. They always expect their teachers to prepare
everything for what they have to learn, and all they have to do is listen and
take notes. Besides, this is not a regular English class, so they are under no
pressure to make a change at all.
As for
getting them to speak, well, it’s also a very difficult change to do. Though
they have studied English for at least seven years, they don’t have to anything
to work on their spoken English because it’s not on the tests. What’s more,
they are too afraid of making mistakes and getting laughed at, and the easiest
way for them to get out of this embarrassing situation is to keep remaining
silent or just say “I don’t know”. Therefore, I began to wonder if there’s
anything I can do to make a change after all these failing attempts.
V. Changes
made
Since it’s
only a few weeks away from the end of this semester, I plan to divide them into
groups and do a show and tell activity for a change. The main idea is that they
choose an English-speaking video they like and try to introduce it in English.
So, in a “One Computer Classroom”, I told my students that the computer would
be used as a presentational tool, and they had to prepare an oral presentation
sharing what they like most about the video in English.
Based on the
idea of Project-Based Learning, I hope I can arouse their interest by offering
them an opportunity to do something they like in English. Then, this Monday, I
demonstrated what they really have to do in about two weeks. I chose a topic,
Superheroes, and introduced two videos about the Avengers http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPoHPNeU9fc and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0jBF912xYY.
With these
two video clips, I told the students about a simple history of Marvel, Stan
Lee, etc. Then, I picked up useful words like computer generated, hopelessly
outgunned, persuade, volatile, self-possessed and so on. Finally, I shared why
I chose this topic and what superpower I would like to have. In the end of the
class, most of them were intrigued by my demonstration. So, I asked them to
follow my example and start to think about what they want to introduce in two
weeks.
I expect
them to put their efforts into this project, and most important of all, they
can feel what it’s like to be able to do something enjoyable and learn English
as well. To achieve this goal, I gave them a brief introduction to PBL and
showed them the WebQuest (http://zunal.com/webquest.php?w=150989) I created for this
course. Also, before they actually began their work, I showed them how their
performances would be assessed based on the rubrics that I created at http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php?screen=ShowRubric&module=Rubistar&rubric_id=2192050&.
Though I
won’t be able to see their presentations until next Monday, I can already
picture the scene. They may just read their scripts, their voice might not be
loud enough or they could get their tongue tied and so on, but I think that’s
O.K. As long as they can learn to realize that learning English can also be fun
other than textbooks, homework, tests and so on, it will be worth all the
effort and heavy workload. In short, hopefully this class can serve as a start
or a glimpse for students to feel what it is like to do a presentation in
English, and someday they can remember this project and do a bigger project
with what they learned from this class.
VI.
Conclusion
In regular
English classes, my way of teaching is nothing different from most other
teachers. I adopt the Grammar-Translation Approach and give authoritarian
lectures to students. Through repetitive drills, students learn to master all
the necessary grammatical structures required by the Ministry of Education.
Thus, the only concern for me is how to help my students get good grades on the
English Competence Test in order to have a better chance to go to a better
senior high school. Under the circumstances, I felt like what I did everyday
was pretty much the same, and job satisfaction is becoming a luxury I no longer
have.
So, I won’t
hesitate to seize the chance to do something different, and being able to use
English as the medium of instruction is already a major change in teaching. By
doing so, I hope I can serve as a good model to make the students aware of the
importance of speaking competence. Also, students are exposed to a lot of
language input from their teacher, which is a chance they normally won’t have
in their regular English classes. Most important of all, I am also working hard
to improve my English presentation skills when I have to introduce a
variety of topics and figure out how to make them understand at the same time.
Compared
with regular classes, I have to do so much more for this special class, like
finding suitable videos, creating worksheets, using online resources, conducting
interactive activities and so on. Without the constraints of textbooks and
midterms, I can just put new things that I learned from workshops or this
online course into action in this special class. After all the hard work, most
students are still very shy and not very willing to try to participate in the
discussion or student interaction, but at least I am sure I really enjoy
showing the students that there are still so many interesting ways of learning
English other than the memorization of vocabulary and grammar rules.
But, when I
read articles about Project-Based Learning a few weeks ago, I began to think
about what else I can do to engage the students more. What if I can come up
with something interesting enough, something they need to Do with what they
have learned? Then, according to PBL, learners will have a much stronger
motivation to learn the required knowledge and skills because they feel they
have the power to demonstrate their skills by doing a project like this. Though
I won’t be able to see their performances until two weeks later, I feel a sense
of achievement already.
For those
who are interested in this project and also hope to do something similarly, it
would be my honor to offer some suggestions. First, when choosing the videos you
want to present, decide on one theme first because you don’t want to randomly
play disparate videos even though they are interesting. Second, download these
videos beforehand because you can’t always trust the Internet connection.
Third, give clear and specific instructions about what they have to do in this
class, and it’ll be better if the teacher can divide the task into several
steps so that students can complete one at a time.
VII.
Resources
l
Articles that helped you come up with this plan, or that support your ideas
l
Resources that you used, such as websites, audio and video recordings, etc.
Final Feedback from Robert
by Richard Guozhen Li on Monday,
June 18, 2012 at 10:26am ·
Webskills
98.2%
P Robert Elliott email files
Spring
Missing
assignments: 0
Richard: Final Grade: Pass
Final: it
was truly a pleasure to have you in class. You stood out to me as one of the
most enthusiastic and eager participants. You kept trying new tools and finding
wonderful applications for them. You were prolific in the discussion boards and
in the blogs, always with helpful and supportive thing to say to your peers.
You did strong and steady work throughout the term. Your blog posts and design
kept getting better throughout the term. Excellent final project. Best of luck
to you in your future technology adventures. I will very much miss working with
you!
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