So far in the previous 2 weeks, we have been talking about things related to computer or technology, such as blog, adobe photoshop, sky-drive, moyea etc. I am sure all these things are very useful and extremely beneficial to learn, but somehow I felt the "fresh breeze of air" in this week's class. In the 3rd class, we finally did something that we have been accustomed to doing for the past 4 years - group work / presentation!!
Yes, I know that some people will say group work or presentation is boring because we only get to hear people talk and talk and talk. All talk but no hands-on. For me, I will just say that there is a time for everything; meaning to say there is a time for hands-on as well as group presentation.
Anyway, this week, we kicked off with the 1st chapter of our textbook - Working With Young Language Learners. As usual in every group work, we formed 6 groups whereby each group is supposed to take one subtopic and do a presentation on it.
For my group, we did a presentation on the subtopic "Children's Ability to Grasp Meaning". What I understood from it is children are truly unique creatures because they are able to understand what is being said to them even if they may not understand the meaning of individual words. It is like the child will understand if you're angry because of your tone of voice or action, but he/she may not necessarily know why you are angry. Isn't that special?? I find it amazing how children are able to do so even though they don't understand the meaning of words. Therefore, I as the future teacher need to be very "demonstrative" and full of gestures so that my pupils will be able to grasp the meaning better. Also, I believe that they will remember what they have learnt even better when the new knowledge is accompanied with something concrete.
Chin's group did a presentation on "Children's Capacity for Indirect Learning". I find this extremely true because from my own experience, children have very inquisitive nature. Whatever that catches their eyes, their heads will just turn and their attention is deviated from the teacher. But that is where indirect learning takes place. Children have a great talent in internalising learning on their own. I personally feel that the more you force them to learn something, the harder it will be for that knowledge to sink in because children love to find out things on their own and experiment with it. That is why games are a very good way to get pupils to learn meaningfully. Here, learning meaningfully means they acquire something new yet enjoying themselves at the same time. My role in the future would be to provide different situations for my pupils for real language use. This can include playing language games with them, for instance Simon Says or Charade.
Lastly, Dhachaini's group did a presentation on "The Instinct for Interaction and Talk". Basically, children need to talk. They need to be given the chance to talk in authentic situations. Yes, it is true that when pupils are very talkative, it gets too noisy and becomes uncontrollable (I have experienced a "fishmonger" classroom before). However, that should never limit the children from talking. Especially for language subjects, it is very essential for any learner to use the language. There is no point if a child has a lot of head knowledge about a language but is unable to utilise all the knowledge in a communication.
Since we were short of time, we only managed to have 2 group presentations (Mine was done halfway.) That's all for this week's class. Hopefully I'll learn something more when the other groups have presented. See ya!
No comments:
Post a Comment