This week, one of my objectives was ASK MORE OPEN REFERENTIAL QUESTIONS---even with kindergartners!  And I've succeeded- to some extent. By beginning class with "talk time", something that a few of my kiddos still find intimidating, I've managed to allow them to discuss topics of interest dear to their six- and seven-year-old souls while still directing them toward productivity. Usually, one of the students will set the bar and tone by wanting to tell me something about his/her weekend or activities from the previous day or class period. We direct the rest of class' attention to the idea and allow raised-hand discussion on the topic. Sure, rabbit trails are often followed, and I do little error correction, but all of the students have now participated at least once in sharing information and I can see an increase in the confidence level and eagerness to talk from one or two more quiet class members.

"C", the quiet student I mentioned last week in ICC reading questions, had a bit of a meltdown yesterday  when she didn't want to participate in a rotating speaking exercise, but she responded well toward clearly stated expectations for interaction and being allowed to take time to gather her confidence before joining the game. Letting go of time deadlines when it relates to individuals' speaking participation may be something I need to do more often. It begs thought...

Lucy's interview was perplexing. My biggest problem was in getting her to talk. Most of her own difficulty lay in the confidence to express herself AT ALL; so mistakes were limited, as were opporuntities to make them. Like most of her class peers and those of her ability level, she struggles in use of auxilary verbs as well as verb tense, which results in   -s  omissions

In the wake of report cards and some relatively horrific classroom behavioral problems, I found myself both aware of making some of my my lessons too teacher-centric and making some strides in allowing constructive SILENCES. Pausing at appropriate moments allowed me to not only let my students have the opportunity to formulate speech but allowed me to gather my energies.

Looking at my classroom transcripts, practicing more active scaffolding and less direct error correction, and requiring more S-->S questions gave me a move well-rounded and less discouraged view of my own efforts.

This week has felt like a barrage of information. Somehow I must process, organize, and prioritize these thoughts and ideas. Otherwise, I'm afraid a lot of applicable information will be lost by the wayside in piles of wasted stress.

Second Language Acquisition class' readings about phonetics, phonology, and morphology and how it affects language acquisition have made me more sensitive to the way I encourage students' usage of vocabulary. My students currently seem to see English words as disconnected units of meaning. How much of that is due to age (my students are mostly under age 11) and how much is due to a somewhat rigid curriculum that teaches language mostly through themed units which don't give much extra time for expanding conversationally on material? I'm not sure how to encourage morphemic connection-making in students whose primary environment is not English. Even the kindergartners spend less than 20 hours a week in a mostly-English environment and don't read much English outside of school.

Our Methodology readings about constructive versus obstructive teaching practices offered a lot of food for thought. But such food --like kimchi -- is an acquired taste and a bit bitter on the offset. While reading, and especially while listening to myself on video and paying attention to my classroom style, I've noticed that my teacher talking time is MUCH higher than I previously thought. Now, I'm aware that as a kindergarten teacher, I will often have a teacher-dominated classroom, even in conversation class. But ----do I really love to hear myself talk THAT MUCH?


My classes tend to feature a lot of monologic discourse, which stems from kindergarten students' lack of ability to interact very dialogically in English ---but I noticed that even among my slightly older classes, there was a strong sense of manipulation running through the discourse. I'm so sensitive to TIME! Even my error-correction, while it tends to be more student-focused than error focused, tends to come too quickly without giving students time to think and self-correct. Teacher interruptions were high -  probably from my fears of "wasted" time.  Incongruent to this is a practice which shocked me in its frequency when I analyzed my teacher transcripts: I echo ALMOST EVERY CORRECT ANSWER. How much time does this waste per lesson, on average?  I'd venture to say much more than is wasted waiting for students to formulate answers or pay attention. Minimizing this could put me on the road to much better efficiency and increased opportunities for my students to SPEAK.

As I begin my reflective teaching blog, I do so with trepidation. Microteaching! Seeing myself on video! Hearing my voice, which somehow transforms into what I later hear as strident and pendantic, conveying messages that assume I have something to say which might possibly be useful for a room full of intellectual beings. Facing my own errors. And yet, in the last week I've already learned more about what I WANT to be as a teacher than in many months before, combined. 

On to face the terror. 

This week, after several mishaps and a schedule upset by standardized testing and the resulting numerous lesson changes, I managed to video a practice exercise for PN Class, a mid-beginners-level hagwon class of students Korean- aged 9-11. In this exercise, we reviewed descriptions of appearances, using the target question/answer "What does___________ look like?" "He/she has___________ hair and ___________ [eyes, clothing, etc.]" My students learned this material one week ago and have been reviewing a bit each day until standardized testing interrupted them. Their eagerness to converse and lively personalities often get in the way of careful speech and recalling grammar patterns previously learned. 

We accomplished the goal of practicing the sentences, but we found ourselves limited by the fact that students' hair and eye color were so similar and their additional vocabulary for physical description is still limited. 

As I reviewed the video, I noticed a number of things that bothered me in my own teaching style (besides my "teacher voice" which is hopefully less annoying to everyone else than to myself):

*Although I tried to encourage an environment of relaxed fun for the game, we were pressed for time and I found myself rushing the students' responses as we discussed the instructions. 

* While I did comprehension checks for CONTENT, I noticed that comprehension checks for DIRECTIONS were not there. This was evidenced later, as I realized that students didn't know TO WHOM they were supposed to be asking questions - the person beside them, or across from them!!
I should have allowed students to paraphrase instructions - as well as target grammar - in their own words. 

*Although allowing students to ASK QUESTIONS is a big personal push for me right now ( as it's been pointed out that English as a foreign language speakers are not encouraged to formulate questions until far after beginner stages) the question being asked in this exercise had little variation. The answer, however, had too few guidelines for beginner students. I noticed many of them creeping into error. 

* I noticed that cueing students' correct answers is sometimes less effective, even at that age, than chunking. I'm usually concerned about demeaning older students by breaking things down in a way that may seem juvenile, but I noticed in the video that the student James, for example, needed mechanisms for practicing grammar structure. 

**This video called to my attention again the need for variation in error correction. I'm beginning to learn more toward encouraging self-correction as I think it re-enforces learning patterns...but how to do this with limited time? Time management is never my strong suit...