two ways of approach

Today we learned about two approaches for teaching vocabulary: the Teach and Learn Approach and the Learning through Input Approach. You can see a PowerPoint presentation of the approaches here. I would like to tell you about the strengths and weaknesses of each approach as well as the approach I would use as a Junior High School English teacher.


1. Present approaches
STRENGTH; It can be according to textbook, so we can take a continuous input in class. And for the immidiate explanation in Japanese, students can get an idea about the word soon.

WEAKNESS;Communication can sometimes one-sided(from teacher to students) and they may get bored because it can be passive. And the words they learn are not in reality because of a one-sided explanation.


2.Teaching through input approaches
STRENGTH;For guess the meaning from a context or situation, student can be motivated and it can't be only a transmission of meaning. And to give a topic at first, students can guess somewhat what the word means.

WEAKNESS; Students have to think what it means in the context, so it can be hardship for the people who hate English.


If I teach in the junior high school class, I'd like to approch the late ones. For example if the new words are coming up, I want to make them guess what the word means to read a textbook first. Or to use another teaching materials(just like JH's Spanish lesson!). And I want to make them the guessing ability from sentence gradually.

Review of the last class

Today, I am going to review two of the "typical Japanese junior high school"communicative activities presented in ETM 3. The activities I am going to review are Information gap and Questionnaire. You can view them here

1.Information gap
It is a typical way of communicative activities. In this activity we often use a card in pairs and fill　in the blanks which we don't know each other. It is a good way but it sometimes can be bored because it can lead only writing information that we hear.
To prevent this, I think it is a good idea to do using movement in doing this. If we do so, we can guess what the other is want to tell and it is understandable accorging to connect speaking and moving.

2.Questionnaire
In this activity, we make pairs and question each other what is written on a card. It is effective to practice how to ask a question but sometimes it is boring. It's because it can lead one-sided communication.
To solving this, we have to prepare the answers to the queastion to make a conversation more effective.

My precious

I love my friends.
When I'm down, they hear my story about what I did no matter how trivial it is. And it's really raise me up.
Or if I want to play somewhere or go for a drink, they come with me to play. And they raise me up more.
Many kind of friend, many kind of memories. Many kind of mistakes. And a lot of precious time. It makes me really really happy. And that is really precious for me.
I'm happy to be here with many friends.
And I become happy to think about the future that is full of many unencountered people.

thanks,

My experience

When I was in secondary school, the class of English was boring, to tell the truth. Though my memories were a little bit poor, but most of the time I spent the time on my desk, I remeber.But when I was in high school, the ALT has come from USA ( Actually, she was ver cute!) . And sometimes we sang some songs, did a BINGO game, and so on. That is to say, we did an activity in using English and communicated with other people. And I felt more happpy to study English than ever.In contrary, the class which we had to study some compulsory( for examle, the class only aimed for college entering exaination) was not enjoyable to me.That is because my English was getting better actually, but I couldn't communicate with my classmates.So my valuable experience of English class was when I was a high school student. In my opinion, not only teacher should tell the theory or compotion, but he should give some situation to students to comunicate each other. In the BINGO game, we could remember some new words unconsciously, and we had a situation to speak to everyone in English.When teacher forced us to memorize the new words or sentences, we often didn't motivated andwe couldn't memorized so much, I remember.The most worst thing is teacher forces us to study.To be honest, my experience of English was not so riped, I think.( But in this univercity, I enjoy studing English.) And my attitude for English was also not so good. That was because I studied English for entering a high school and a college. Under such kind of feeling, we couldn' t improve our English and we couldn' t have fun in studying.So if I had chances to teach class, I wanted to give students some activities. It means we did some games(communication) , group work, reading some great novelist, and so on. If we give chances to study, and if it can be so interesting, they come to think English fun. And they will study it natually. The time we speak English is very little and it is limited. In the limited time, we should touch more raw English and activities.

SELF-INTRODUCTION

I want to improve my English.