Thank you for giving me a chance to express my thoughts through blogging.
I am a habitual blogger that only blog my own personal lifes online. My blog were usually invisible to outsiders. You had given me a chance to shout out my opinions and express my feelings publicly where everyone will be free to view and give comments on my thoughts. Thank you.
Thank you for letting me have blogging for 10% assignment.
I am a habitual blogger that only blogs my own personal life online. My blog were usually private where I think the only use of blog online is to keep personal journals, no other than that. You had totally changed my opinion and perspective on blogging, and you have definitely brought up a new horizon in introducing blog in the teaching-learning profession. Thank you.
Thank you for letting me to express my thoughts about the input in class more freely.
I often do not have the guts to raise up my hand and interrupt your lecture. When I have questions I usually resort to internet or my friends, and later come out with our own interpretations. So far our application of those interpretations had not been wronged, but when I know that my personal views will be read by you online, it was an encouragement for me to write more and ask more through blogging. The boundaries in class was demolished as the whole process of blogging was stress-free and easy. Thank you for giving me the chance to ask more questions. Thank you.
Thank you for letting me to reassure my own points and thoughts about some facts.
The process of blogging and commenting was fun but at the same time a serious one. Sometimes when I was expressing my thoughts in my post, my coursemates would have some disagreements with my facts. Blogging had actually help me to learn how to stood hold on my own opinions by convinving them with some solid facts that I possesed. At the same time the process of commenting on my coursemates postings also apply the same effect where I would somehow challenge their thoughts by inserting my own opinions. The process of blogging was a mind-provoking one. Thank you.
Thank you Dr. Edwin for giving all of us a chance to know blog and to further blogging. We'll miss you for every coming semesters. Do take care.
* The Meeting with Mr. Kee Thuan Chye*
I've always admire his work after the short story "A Sense of Home". It was a brilliant piece of writing. The meeting with him was fruiful one as I had gained a lot of new insights on the play "Swordfish, then the Concubine". It was also quite interesting for us to see that he cracked his humour in front of us, but at the same time, inserting some serious national issues in his conversation with us. I had realized my own shallowness in political scenes in Malaysia. But honestly speaking, The main point of meeting Mr. Kee for was not knowing more about current political issues, but making him "alive" for us. Thank you Dr. Edwin again for giving us such a chance to have a signature of him (Maybe can sell money when we are desperate for it =P) and thank you for letting me know Mr. Kee more, and not just merely browsing through his abstract in his literary works. =)
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Overall Experience in Micro-Teaching
Finally it was a sense of relieve that I've longed for the past few weeks. THE MICRO-TEACHING IS OVER !!!! This experience was an un-ordinary one because I believe not many of us can take the stress of doing 3 different micro-teaching in one shot, with different expectations of lecturers and different subjects. Sometimes its just plain confusing because we simply could not make clear between what this micro-teaching requires and what that micro-teaching wants !
However I could say that micro-teaching for this subject is the most less brain-cracking one because we don't really need to worry about the input part. The other micro-teaching require us to think of the input that we should give to our students and think of ways to deliver them, and we have to think of activities to reinforce that input. However, as for this case,the micro-teaching only requires us to brain-storm for activities that are more content-focusedm meaning we have no need to divert our attention to to other language elements in a typical English classroom.
Personally I enjoyed this micro-teaching the most because the process of brain-storming is always the most fun one. I've always need to imagine the situation in classroom when I'm designing certain activities and to anticipate their responses to prevent any boring and monotonous activities. Therefore I'm always having "illusion" when I'm brain-storming, and that had really dragged long my whole preparation for this micro-teaching task.
In this final reflection too I would like to again point out my own strengths and weaknesses. My strengths would be my lanaguage proficiency where I have no problem in giving clear instructions to my students and also my organization of my activities. However, my proficiency level at the same time become my weakness because it would be quite hard for me to lower down my language if my target students are from lower preficiency, making my lesson difficult for them to digest and accept. So from this I had realized that audience awareness is very important in a teaching process because we must always cater the need and proficiency level of our students so that they can receive input from us at the most optimum level.
Therefore, as a conclusion, I would say that this entire micro-teaching process had taught me a lot of new things and I had definitely gained greater insights in how to be a better teacher in the future.
However I could say that micro-teaching for this subject is the most less brain-cracking one because we don't really need to worry about the input part. The other micro-teaching require us to think of the input that we should give to our students and think of ways to deliver them, and we have to think of activities to reinforce that input. However, as for this case,the micro-teaching only requires us to brain-storm for activities that are more content-focusedm meaning we have no need to divert our attention to to other language elements in a typical English classroom.
Personally I enjoyed this micro-teaching the most because the process of brain-storming is always the most fun one. I've always need to imagine the situation in classroom when I'm designing certain activities and to anticipate their responses to prevent any boring and monotonous activities. Therefore I'm always having "illusion" when I'm brain-storming, and that had really dragged long my whole preparation for this micro-teaching task.
In this final reflection too I would like to again point out my own strengths and weaknesses. My strengths would be my lanaguage proficiency where I have no problem in giving clear instructions to my students and also my organization of my activities. However, my proficiency level at the same time become my weakness because it would be quite hard for me to lower down my language if my target students are from lower preficiency, making my lesson difficult for them to digest and accept. So from this I had realized that audience awareness is very important in a teaching process because we must always cater the need and proficiency level of our students so that they can receive input from us at the most optimum level.
Therefore, as a conclusion, I would say that this entire micro-teaching process had taught me a lot of new things and I had definitely gained greater insights in how to be a better teacher in the future.
Pre-Reading and While-Reading Teaching Experience
As a continuation from the set induction activity for the play "Soul Gone Home" by Langston Hughes, I had prepared both pre-reading and while-reading activities for my micro-teaching session today. Originally we were supposed to seperate these two activities but since we are short of time, our tutor had asked us to combine both of these activities in one session.
This time the experience of preparing pre-reading and while-reading activities was much easier if compared with my experience to prepare for these activities last semester for short story class. I had gained some insights from past experience and the process of designing activities was smoother. However, the challenge this time was to teach a "play". Last semester, although we are new to designing appropriate activities, the short story text were easier for us and target students to digest. As for plays, it was quite hard for us to decide on which part of the text we should choose from since plays are more lenghthy than text like short story.
Therefore my resolution for this problem was to choose a shorter text, which was Langston Hughes's "Soul Gone Home" and I'm glad that few people in my class had decided on this. But at the same time I too discovered that most of us are focusing on the same lements to be focused on, which are themes and characters. I was quite shocked at first because I did not want to have the same presentation as others. That would definitely make my students and also my evaluators to be bored till the core. Fortunately our tutor had gave us the advice that although the elements that we've chosen may be the same, we can still use different approaches to teach that particular text to make your lesson more interesting.
Therefore I had decided to focus on the personality traits of one main character instead of a few to make my lesson more content-focused. I had choose to concentrate on the changes that "the mother" in the play used to address "the son" as my pre-reading activities, and let my students infer the characteristics of "the mother" based on that observation.
After the micro-teaching session I had gained a few feedbacks from my friends. Mostly it was my approach of teaching and again, I had problem in my language because I tend to speak fast and give lengthy instructions which confused the others. However the feedback on my activity was positive because my friends mentioned that the connection between my pre-reading and while-reading activities were well-linked as they can see the necessity to refer back to the result of previous activity for the use of next activity.
This session of micro-teaching had let me see that organization of activities in a lesson is very important as we need to let our students see the need of them doing some activites that will contribute to another activity. The matter of designing appropriate activity for students is not just merely giving them a task sheet, finish that activty, put that task sheet away and start another new activity without any connection. I realized it was auspicious for students to "see the link".
Besides, my same old problem of language used in the classroom has yet to be solved. I really need to adjust my language according to my target audience so that my students will not be confused by my speech.
Hence, I would conclude that this micro-teaching experience was a more fruitful one compared to the one that I did for last semester. It was especially useful in helping me to gain more insight in designing suitable activities for students in classroom.
This time the experience of preparing pre-reading and while-reading activities was much easier if compared with my experience to prepare for these activities last semester for short story class. I had gained some insights from past experience and the process of designing activities was smoother. However, the challenge this time was to teach a "play". Last semester, although we are new to designing appropriate activities, the short story text were easier for us and target students to digest. As for plays, it was quite hard for us to decide on which part of the text we should choose from since plays are more lenghthy than text like short story.
Therefore my resolution for this problem was to choose a shorter text, which was Langston Hughes's "Soul Gone Home" and I'm glad that few people in my class had decided on this. But at the same time I too discovered that most of us are focusing on the same lements to be focused on, which are themes and characters. I was quite shocked at first because I did not want to have the same presentation as others. That would definitely make my students and also my evaluators to be bored till the core. Fortunately our tutor had gave us the advice that although the elements that we've chosen may be the same, we can still use different approaches to teach that particular text to make your lesson more interesting.
Therefore I had decided to focus on the personality traits of one main character instead of a few to make my lesson more content-focused. I had choose to concentrate on the changes that "the mother" in the play used to address "the son" as my pre-reading activities, and let my students infer the characteristics of "the mother" based on that observation.
After the micro-teaching session I had gained a few feedbacks from my friends. Mostly it was my approach of teaching and again, I had problem in my language because I tend to speak fast and give lengthy instructions which confused the others. However the feedback on my activity was positive because my friends mentioned that the connection between my pre-reading and while-reading activities were well-linked as they can see the necessity to refer back to the result of previous activity for the use of next activity.
This session of micro-teaching had let me see that organization of activities in a lesson is very important as we need to let our students see the need of them doing some activites that will contribute to another activity. The matter of designing appropriate activity for students is not just merely giving them a task sheet, finish that activty, put that task sheet away and start another new activity without any connection. I realized it was auspicious for students to "see the link".
Besides, my same old problem of language used in the classroom has yet to be solved. I really need to adjust my language according to my target audience so that my students will not be confused by my speech.
Hence, I would conclude that this micro-teaching experience was a more fruitful one compared to the one that I did for last semester. It was especially useful in helping me to gain more insight in designing suitable activities for students in classroom.
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