15 5月 2014

Teaching rant

ポストした日: 22日4月2014年

    I was reading this and it got me thinking about some of the things I am reading for my class. In the readings, they are actually quite long and take forever to get to the point but it did have some interesting stuff. This one reading was trying to figure out a way to figure out how to raise communicative competence in second-language (aka L2) learners, and just arguing about what does this even mean, how can we measure it, and then finally how can we implement it in ESL classes.

    But I was thinking that some of this stuff also depends on what language is being learned and where you teach it. Another reading was talking about a lesson plan where students are instructed to tell stories from their own cultures, share it with a classmate, and then share it with the class (in hopes of figuring out their own cultural identities and how it differs from other people), but then I thought while I really like this plan, it doesn't really work with a group of students that come from the same culture. I mean, you might have like 5 students talking about momotarou.

    So what does this have to do with what I read? That now I really really really want to work in a private place rather than public school (of course with experience), cuz then we don't have to always follow not-so-useful-japanese-teachers and can focus more on students who are motivated and want more communication rather than learning what the hell is a relative clause.

    Like I talk with my JP classmates (classmates of my JP language class) and also students who took spanish classes, I always say it's totally useless to learn linguistic terms like "transitive and intransitive", "progressive" etc. Yea it's nice to tell the kids what these "things" are, but not to focus on that; focus more on its function and use. Face it. No native learner knows all the grammatical rules of their own language. It's good only for organizing grammar in a textbook and just to let students know what it's called, and that's it. Focus more on what it means and how to use it. :P

    Just a small rant for today.
    Otherwise I'm still super nervous about my interview on saturday. Need to practice my demo lesson. So far I'm thinking of two options I want to do.


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