Listening Skills...whose?

Today ‘s goal was teaching talking about future goals using the new phrase “What do you want to be?” We were reviewing job title vocabulary and learning additional new jobs, as well as practicing listening skills via a listening activity. This proved more challenging for my students than I expected.

For one thing, my pacing for a lesson still leaves a lot to be desired. I tend to rush certain things, packing in too much teacher talk at once, as I did here, especially when giving instructions for the second stage of the listening…or simply pausing and moving too slowly when giving instructions. My MIC techniques are slowly improving (I’ve still modulated my pronunciation and speed perhaps too much, as can be seen here). That being said, I’ve noticed that using more gestures and pausing more often after a word (as I did in the first minute of the video) to allow my students to guess what’s coming gives them confidence and let’s them help construct, if not meaning, the instructions themselves. They seem to have more confidence.

Speaking of confidence, though, I noticed my students’ confidence flagged later on after they didn’t understand part of what I had assumed had been part of their pre-knowledge. In setting up the second part of the listening activity, I had neglected to check their comprehension of “clue” , one of the words they NEEDED to know before using the handout. And, since I loaded my instructions with too much teacher talk and not enough checking of their comprehension (I was hurrying because I hadn’t told them to prepare a pencil), I didn’t understand the extent of their confusion.

One struggle I’m having is with pre-teaching or not pre-teaching words in a listening exercise. In reading, obviously students can derive meaning from context to some extent. But in listening, negotiating meaning is more difficult. Even if students can work together in groupwork or pairwork to scaffold others’ lack of understanding, they often get hung up on one misunderstood or unknown word while listening and that affects the whole of their listening comprehension. With this class ofyoung learners, I feel like I should have pre-taught EVERY WORD they could possibly have missed. What’s ideal?

Overcompensation: Needs and The Novice

This week I've focused more on MIC techniques. Watching myself in class and on video and discussing my teacher talk with my peers has yielded the impression that I need to SPEAK MORE SLOWLY and NOT ASSUME too much on the part of my students' comprehension. In a classroom of multiple levels, this is especially important. One of my students complained to a Korean teacher that he couldn't understand me well. So...in light of these issues, I decided to focus more on overt MIC techniques, particularly  gesture and slowing down my speech.

However, after viewing the video, I'm wondering if this is overkill. I've always feared talking down to my students and while watching this I wondered if I've overbalanced myself yet again. While I felt a small sense of pride in my increased attention to detailed gesture , I sound almost robotic sometimes. Will over-enunciation harm my students' own flow and pronunciation?

One overcompensation result of DETAILING my TT is once again increasing TT itself. I neglected getting closer to the 1:1 Teacher-Student sentence ratio. Notice ahen I give instructions, I try comprehension checks but don't allow the students to construct meaning, something they can do in easily predictable assignments.

One thing I hope to learn in future Methodology classes is classroom management. Throughout the class my student, Sky, who interrupts sometimes if he doesn't comprehend clearly but sometimes just to gain attention, tried disrupting us. My response, direct correction, might have an effect; however, I'm looking for more constructive ways to direct his interest back to the lesson. I noticed during the video that during groupwork/pairwork I skipped several opportunities to interact with him and possibly assist his interest in the material. Honestly, I think I was just avoiding the belligerance I'm often met with when I attempt to reach out to him. It pains me if I feel like I can't "reach" someone...

Hopefully part of my future development as a teacher will include much more constructive classroom management.

What started out as a good idea (perhaps) for whiteboard use trailed off into wasted time…

This week I set out to teach one of my early middle school classes a reading assignment.  My focus was reading for gist and comprehension. Target language included new “chores” vocabulary and recycled simple future tense grammar structures. As often happens in this class of energetic talkers in early evening  if I’m not careful with my lesson plan and every detail of CI , I allowed myself to get tired and we de-railed a bit. We were unable to fully complete comprehension checks for material and do my planned vocabulary activity.

I have been attempting to make use of whiteboard more often and used that for “schema” activation. In fact, we spent too much time on whiteboard because there was some difficulty with vocabulary I hadn’t pre-taught. I allowed students to discuss it a bit but wasted too much time in this area.

 I tried to be more conscious of initiating SàS moves, but in watching the video, still found myself using too much Teacher Talk in explaining/clarifying vocabulary. One noticeable MIC problem I’ve found through this and my previous video is not doing repetition and rephrasing of THE RIGHT THING. Instead of rephrasing student answers (the redundancy and frequency of which action I noticed before) I might rephrase my own instruction or sentence for clarity. Sometimes I move quickly from one idea to the next in an attempt to allow the students in this class to dialogue.

My biggest problems with the lesson so far were not PLANNING transitions well. We got bogged down by my attempts to let EVERYONE who raised his or her hand have dialogue time. Also, I tried to explain and elicit TOO much and both mine and the students’ energy –which was high at the beginning of the lesson—flagged.  Students were challenged by new vocabulary called up during the SCHEMA activation, but lost interest in the reading piece because we over-discussed in the preview.

On a positive note, I think I’m allowing students more time to talk :-p