February at Last

February.....

Since I last posted here I've been playing with techonology - I've been able to use the MP3 player to record students during classes. I've used this to set up listening activities afterwards to allow Ss to listen to themselves and I've been able to post the recordings on to the Moodle VLE. This way the students are free to listen to themselves whenever they want.

Other practical uses that I've found for recording Students is in carrying out diagnostic tests and in exploring task-based learning.

That's been my BIG THING this term... task-based learning. One of the criticisms of an early lesson which I was observed teaching was that there was not a strong enough theoretical basis to my teaching. After reading a number of books I decided that Jane Willis' interpretation of Task based learning was practical. I first tried it out on a very "easy to teach" E2 group and then I tried it on a more 'difficult' E1 group. It seemed to go well - and I was observed in the E1 lesson I think this should help inform my teaching from now on.......

The most important thing that I'vew got to remember is to let the students use the language that they already know before I start trying to work on form - this gives the Students a chance to feel confident in what they know and a chance to contextualise their language. The form exercises then help them take it that bit further.

I've seen the opposite this weekend - I've just started studying on a language course and it has so far shown me the importance of the teacher being confident in what they do and allowing the students to dictate the pace of the lesson. Having been introduced to grammar grids straight after "learning" how to say "bonjour" didn't really help me. I feel that I would have felt much more comfortable seeing the grammar work after a good practice session. Oh well.... see how it goes from here.

The next thing that I've got to get my head round are diagnostics and schemes of work. I'm going to read "teaching and Learning in the Language Classroom" by Trisha Hedge to see if that gives me any clues