wanda

Teaching oral communication

2005-08-24T10:18:00.000-07:00

Three teaching techniques are adopted to help develop students’ speaking abilities, which are tongue twisters, short short story, and guided role play. The teaching goal is to enhance students’ creative skills and to encourage students to use their critical thinking skills as well.

A. Teaching Tongue Twisters
Student Level: 6th-8th graders
Teaching Procedure:
1. Start with some well-known tongue twisters and have students repeat after the teacher first slowly and then faster and faster.
2. The teacher asks some volunteers to read the tongue twisters really fast.
3. Then, give students some time to work with one partner. Students with their partner practice the tongue twisters together. Fast speed and clear pronunciation are required.
4. After that, the teacher calls names to read the tongue twisters.
5. Then challenge the students to write their own tongue twisters. The teacher provides a model to get them start.
* Nouns - use at least one (Betty)
* Verbs - use at least one (bought)
* Adjectives - use several (brainy, billion, big, Buicks, black)
* Adverbs - use at least one (busily)
* Prepositional Phrases - use at least one (by the bay)
Brainy Betty busily bought a billion, big, black Buicks by the bay.
6. Have students write several and let them go through the peer editing process.

Tongue twisters help to facilitate students’ pronunciation and articulation. They provide phonics reinforcement through repetition of consonants, consonant blends, vowel sounds and digraphs. They also exercise physical articulation and auditory and visual discrimination, stringing together words that are nearly alike (Maffett & Wagner). Students, creating their own tongue twisters, not only have fun with this creative writing activity, but they also review several parts of speech.

B. Short Short Story
Student level: High School
Teaching Procedures:
1. The teacher gives students a story. Students read individually, selecting their responses, and then are moved into small groups and check their answers.
2. Students share their reasons why they select the answers.
3. Next, move students to new groups. Students share their answers and reasons but don’t have to agree at this point.
4. Then, students are asked to return to the original groups where they must share their answers and each group must come to an agreement.
5. Finally, the groups place all the answers on the broad and then the teacher and the students go over each group’s reason and discuss the correct answers.

In order for real communication to take place, language activities should allow for a certain amount of choice and openness. The student-centered activity increases group discussion and negotiation. The negotiation and discussion process help students to focus on the meaning instead of the form. When students pay greater attention on understanding and communication than grammatical correctness, their oral fluency and creative abilities are thus stimulated.

C. Guided Role Play
Student level: High School
Teaching Procedures:
1. The teacher suggests a conversational situation involving two people.
2. The teacher provides the students some guides which direct students to
communicate through the suggestions. The guide is constructed by using
“Say that…”, “Ask if”, etc.
Example:
Situation:
‘B’ promised to lend ‘A’ a textbook yesterday.
‘A’ plans to study it this evening.

1

A:Ask if B has remembered the textbook.
B:Say you have forgotten. Apologize and say you didn’t forget deliberately,
2
A:Show you are not very happy. Explain that you need the book to do homework.
B:Explain why you forgot.
3
A:Say you won’t ask B again!
B:Say you think A is being unreasonable.
4
A:Agree. Apologize.
B:Suggest A asks someone else for the book.

3. Students do the role play with their partner. They have to take the roles the other way round the second time.
4. Then, volunteers are asked to perform the conversation.
5. More pairs take turns to perform for the class.
6. The teacher comments on the students’ performances.

Role-playing provides a purpose for learners to use their oral language and develop crucial thought process. Petty and Jensen (1980) maintain that “creative dramatics fosters creativity in language, thinking, uses of the voice, and body movement.” (p. 308) Besides, working with “the real thing” encourages and motivates learners, shows the relevance of what they are learning, and prepares them for real language use outside the classroom. Role-playing allows learners to develop the ability to use language and creatively and see the meaningfulness of learning the language.

All the three activities help to promote students’ participation and cooperation, to reduce stress and individual anxiety and to focus on the students’ creative abilities.

Reference
Moffet, J. & Wagner, B. J. (1983) Student-centered language arts and reading, K-13 : a handbook for teachers. Boston : Houghton Mifflin.
Petty, W. T., & Jenson, J. M. (1980) Developing children’s language. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Feedback of Interactive Drama

2005-08-03T09:20:00.000-07:00

Though this is my second time to play in the interactive drama, I still have great time involving myself to the role just as I did last summer.

In Developing Children’s Language, Petty and Jensen maintain that “ creative dramatics fosters creativity in language, thinking, uses of the voice, and body movement” (p. 308) Drama allows learners to develop the ability to use language independently and creatively. Interactive drama is an effective teaching method to create an artificial situation and provide a purpose for learners to use their oral language and develop crucial thought process. On the other hand, interactive drama also helps us EFL teachers to rethink that role play is not just an activity for students to memorize lines and act it out on the stage; it could be communicative, negotiable and interactive.

The following website provides role play activities which are much easier and simpler for junior high school students http://www.englishlearner.com/teachers/speaking.html

Guided Imagery

2005-07-26T05:08:00.000-07:00

Tree of Confidence

Now we’re going to start the Guided Imagery. Let yourself go into a deep level of relaxation, take a nice long breath, fill up your lungs, real good, breathe all the way in, and hold it for a second. And as you breathe out, close your eyes and let a wonderful wave of relaxation flow through your entire body.

Keep your eyes closed and follow your breathing. Take a few deep breaths, releasing any tension that you carry in your body as you breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out and relax. Now give yourself the suggestion that each time you breathe out, your body becomes more and more relaxed. Really let yourself become loose, limp and relaxed.

Now imagine that you’re in a large beautiful garden where is filled with lots of different kinds of trees and flowers. Here a pleasant smell of flowers spreads far and wide. You can see birds singing cheerfully on the trees, bees busily collecting nectar on the flowers and butterflies joyfully dancing in the breeze. Then, a good-looking fairy with a gentle smile shows up in front of you. She gives you a seed, telling you it’s a seed of confidence, and that only care and love can make it grow big and strong. So you plant it somewhere in the garden where lies fertile soil and ample sunlight. Patiently and unweariedly, you take care of it with wholehearted love and care. You see the seed of confidence sprouting and gradually growing bigger and bigger, stronger and stronger into a huge tall tree of confidence. Delightedly you come to the tree whose flourishing leaves cover all the branches, and you put your arms around the trunk while your face presses on it, feeling the warmth of it. You feel in yourself the strength and the energy delivering by the vigorous tree. Now you have three minutes of clock time equal to all of the time you need to feel the dynamic power of the tree of confidence.

(After 3 minutes)

Now it’s time to bring yourself back to full awareness. In a moment I will count to five. At the number five, your eyes open, you are fully awake and aware and feeling great and confident. One, two, three, four and five. Eyes open, feeling wonderfully refreshed.

Wanda's comment of advertisement

2005-07-22T20:20:00.000-07:00

Commercial ad website:
http://www.affiliatejackpot.com/index2.htm

This advertisement about Google Cash is a book that the advertiser wants to promote. The advertisement is a good example of persuasive advertising following the Motivated Sequence developed by Alan Monroe and Douglass Ehninger.

In the beginning when reading the ad, readers’ attention is immediately caught with the line “How to Make MASSIVE Mounds of Money In Record Time on Google”. Moreover, by describing his personal experience through the letter telling that he used to commute one hour, five days a week working in his small office but now he earns more than an entire years in one month, the advertiser successfully captures readers’ interest in keeping reading the ad to learn more about the product. Obviously the readers’ interest in reading the ad is motivated by earning massive money in short time. According to Marslow, physiological needs are our biological needs for food, water, shelter while the role that money plays is that it can absolutely help us to fulfill our need to get this stuff . Besides, owning massive money involves our wanting to be prestigious and powerful over someone, which fits into Marslow’s social needs.

For the visualization step, the advertiser illustrates a picture for readers by telling that if they buy the product Google Cash, which gives the tools they need, they can even make money at home or while they’re traveling with family. The use of questions is another influential technique that the advertiser makes use of in order to persuade the readers. Kevin Hogan claims that questions “are used in the persuasion process to clarify statements, determine values, draw out objections and direct the conversation.” Through questions and answers, the advertiser clarifies the readers’ viewpoint in guiding them believing that working through computer& on-line technique isn’t difficult and that it is a matter anyone can do.

Another important element the advertiser uses is the law of conformity and scarcity. As Kevin Hogan describes “most people tend to agree to proposals, products or service that will be perceive as acceptable by the majority of other people”, the advertiser posts lots of comments written by those who have succeeded in profiting with the help of the product; and “when a person perceives that something he might want is limited in quantity, he believes that the value of what he might want is greater than if it were available in abundance”, while to fit the element of the law of scarcity, the advertiser informs the potential buyers of the price which may not as low as now it is. This technique of scarcity easily motivated them to take the action and buy it now.

After analyzing the advertisement, I’ve realized how amazingly the advertiser knows well the readers’ psychology and is able to persuade them into purchasing his product, and the experience tells me that when next time a salesperson comes and sells something to me, I can rationally make the decision whether to buy it or not.

wanda's personal blog

2005-07-20T21:43:00.000-07:00

hello eveyone
this is wanda's personal blog
i feel so excited to have my own blog and no longer feel out-of-date since it's a fashion trend to have a blog for people living in this global village.