ELT Activity - Reflective blog

 

Welcome Readers,

We have a course called ELT – English Language Teaching in our Masters where we the students- practice for becoming future teachers and study various approaches and methods for teaching English to the second language learners. To develop practical knowledge and enhance ideas for teaching creatively to the second language learners as well as to build up deep engagement and involvement in the classroom, our professor Ms Vaidehi Hariyani often assigns us some innovative activities to perform in class and increase our practical knowledge and understand variations among English language teaching approaches, methods and techniques and design our own unique technique as well as to appreciate the challenges.

So, in this blog post, I have mentioned a brief summary of all the activities assigned by our madam.

 

Activity 1 (Translation of sentences)   In this activity, our teacher gave us certain sentences or proverbs more specifically certain cultural/ folk verses and couplets from popular Bollywood film lyrics and we have to translate them in English. As such, these sentences fail to convey the proper meaning when it gets translated in the English language, the very sense and idea get lost in the literal translation. So, the very objective of this activity was to face the challenge as a teacher and to observe that when a teacher tries to apply the bilingual or trilingual approach, some sentences will always fail to carry the very meaning of the original sentence. Well, in some cases we may have witnessed that students have benefitted a lot when the teacher tried to explain some concepts briefly in the native language. But in this activity, I observed the horrors of translation.  I am of a belief that a teacher who teaches English to the second language learners shall try to speak in English only which can help in increasing the listening ability of the learners resulting in boosting up their confidence in speaking the second language/ acquired language.

Activity 2 (Introducing Vocabulary)   The second fun learning activity which assigned to us was to obtain a proper method to introduce a new word to the second language learners. The task was like as a teacher, we have to introduce a word from which the learners are totally unaware. For example, if the teacher introduces the word ‘bottle’ he/she can give them hints or show the picture. So, the task was to develop two methods to introduce a word which the learners don’t know the meaning. So, in this activity, I tried to introduce the word by framing it in a sentence and then addressed the learners. I narrated an episode of my school days and served the learners a relatable experience so that they can find themselves curious to understand the meaning of the word in a given sentence with inquisitiveness and try to look for the context in which the meaning can be grasped easily. After explaining briefly, the word, I showed the image of the word and then demonstrate the various ways in which the given word can find its relevance. When the learners study the second language, the teacher must keep in mind that any word in English can have more than one meaning which varies according to the context of the sentence. So, it becomes better if the teacher tries to demonstrate the usage of the vocabularies and demonstrate with certain kind of description. Or to check the compensability of the learners, the teacher can ask questions like how the word can be used, the way I tried to establish a connection with the students, similarly some personal narratives can be effective if used properly and consciously. Moreover, introducing synonyms can also work. One thing I found appealing is that playing an audio clip or a song in which the word gets repeated time and again can really increase the students’ capacity of remembering language with the help of music.

Activity 3 (Introducing Vocabulary related to the profession Based on register and sub-register)   This activity was assigned to us as a referential understanding of R. S. Sharma’s essay title ‘Teaching of EST in Indian conditions’ wherein a teacher teaches English as a language to the learners from different areas then the vocabulary varies from field to field and so there arise two types of teaching language- English for General Academic purpose and English for Special Academic Purpose. So, in this activity, we were asked to come with different professions and find at least 10 words or things which is used in that profession. The aim, I guess, for that activity was to increase the familiarity with different occupations and the words which are commonly associated with that profession which helps an English teacher find an ease association to engineering students, management students, business students, etc. In short, each course has a different vocabulary, language associated with it which is called register and sub-register.

Activity 4 (Overview of lesson Plan and frame objectives)   For example- Teaching Tenses to Kids from 4 to 6 std.  Plan- I will introduce the tenses. Give examples and give them a practice exercise. Also ask them to visit a park and share the experience with the class to make them aware of the past tense. Ask questions regarding future and try to make them aware of the future tense. Ask them to describe the classroom and what everyone is doing around them.  Objectives-  1) Recognize the tenses in the texts  2)Use present, past, and future tenses in appropriate way.  3) Enable them to understand how tenses are connected with day to day.  4) Use tenses with increasing accuracy My response to the activity-  Teaching Non-verbal Communication to 1st-year college students Plan- I will enter the class in a normal manner and instead of introducing the topic, I will sit lazily in the chair in (an unusual) comfortable manner. (Of course, I will maintain the decorum of the classroom). I will let my students interpret my body language when they will be eager to ask what actually happened, then I will suggest them through actions by movements of hands and through gestures. If they will be able to understand what I am conveying then I will introduce the title of the topic. After delivering somewhat information, I will again make them play a damsharas game, where I will give a student one movie name and the rest of the class will guess with the help of the student's gestures. And will further continue the explanation. One more thing I can do is to distribute cheats to the students and ask them to interpret the message one after another line by line so that I can come to know whether the learners are comprehending or not. Suppose I will write on the cheat as ‘the phone is ringing’ so how they will do that, another thing is that I will demonstrate each and everyone’s message with proper explanation. I will bring innovate slides through which the students can learn. After they became aware of communicating non-verbally, I will explain the use along with verbal communication and how the message can be effectively conveyed with verbal and non-verbal communication parallelly. I will further suggest the importance and will also highlight the drawbacks.  Objective- 1) The students will be able to apply their understanding of the gestures 2) Read the body language 3) Exposition of Facial Expressions 4) Posture and gesture understanding 5) How to send the message and how to receive the message in a more understandable manner with the help of gestures. This activity had been my most favourite to work with till now, I came across many new and effective ways of implementing certain methods in a class with less preparation or when a teacher has very less time to prepare for the lesson. By considering two main aspects while preparing – ‘Plan’ in a way that results in ‘objectives’ or rather desired objectives. Within no time, a teacher can make himself/herself acquainted with the learners’ abilities that will help him/her in planning the lesson and to achieve the objectives seamlessly.

 

 

To conclude, I would like to say that all these activities were extremely helpful in understanding the depth of all the theories and it provided a kind of initial experience as a teacher to me. As a teacher, we have to provide our best to the learners which will almost require a certain amount of preparation and one has to look for certain methods which can be beneficial to the learners in acquiring the language very smoothly and in a comfortable way.

Thank you.