Week 9- Reflection

Week 9 Reflection- Developing Listening Materials

Before completing the tutorial task for week 9, we need to choose 1 chapter in English KBSM textbook in order to complete and answer all the questions given. We had chosen the KBSM Form 2 English textbook, chapter 10 of “Food for Health” (pg. 135). The section of listening in that chapter is “Let’s Tune In”.

After completing the task, I found that the task given in the textbook was authentic and relevant to be used to teach the students. The most crucial was that the activities in the chapter mentioned were presented in different levels of difficulty. So, this can actually suits the students’ performances since the beginning. Listening activity in the textbook enables them to listen for gist and specific information to be extract from the speaker.

The knowledge that I received from this task was that, as a pre-service teacher, it is important to know the level of proficiency of our students as all the activity that we conducted will always need to be created based on our student’s interest and ability to receive and understand certain topics. Meaning that, here we must being considerate enough to fulfil our students’ preferences. This week’s tutorial task also helps me to be more creative in generating ideas to create other interesting activities in the future.

Week 9- Developing Listening Materials

Week 9- Developing Listening Materials by ElsaPriscilla

Week 7- Reflection

Week 7 Reflection- Digital Language Learning Materials

In tutorial task week 7, we are asked to sketch out a digital language learning material interface. After discussing with all the group members, we were agreed to choose Instagram as a language learning material as our topic for the tutorial task. As DLLM has become the norm in current education landscape, it was now started to be used by the teachers to create and develop new learning platform in a way to fully utilised the technology. In our case, we had chosen Instagram as the learning platform to deliver and enable the knowledge to spread between the students. The activity that we are focuses on which involve when using of instagram were reading skill and also vocabulary. The learning process takes place when the students started to post any pictures related to their topic, giving comments and also feedback within their peers. Instagram enables them to gives comment on their personal opinion. This is a good way of learning as the students need to find out the suitable and appropriate vocabulary to be used when they gives comment.

As a pre-service teacher, this had given me more or less regarding how DLLM can be used as a language learning tools. The uses of such tools are important as it can arouse students’ interest in learning. However, the DLLM should reflect authenticity and as a teacher, we need to analyse whether it is applicable to be use or not. In the future, I will be able to generate the ideas on how to deliver the knowledge through any language learning tools to ensure the students can learn in an interesting way.

Week 7 Digital Language Learning Materials

Digital Language Learning Materials by ElsaPriscilla

Week 3 Reflection

Week 3 Reflection- Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)

Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) is generally known as an approach rather than a method as CLT has no specific method. It has been further refined into few components namely, a) linguistic competence b) discourse competence c) pragmatic competence d) strategic competence. CLT stressed on the comprehension and message production rather than teaching the accuracy of language form.

After I go through the articles of CLT, I had understands what CLT was all about and what is the main roles in education. In a communicative-based classroom, the activities are designed to promote language production that is creative, unpredictable and purposeful. However, in a traditional classroom, the focus is only on mastering linguistic items.

The knowledge which I extract from the principles of CLT provides me with lots of important information which will then apply in teaching methodology. For example, the principle of adopting a learner-centered attitude states that the teacher should regard students as their partner. As a pre-service teacher, that kind of knowledge will helps in order to know when and where a teacher should change their roles in language teaching as we are new in that field.

Week 3 tutorial- Communicative Language Teaching

Week 3: Tutorial

 
a) Identify the theory behind communicative language teaching (CLT).

·         Spada & Savignon’s article

 

CLT is defined as a meaning-based, learner-centered approach to L2 teaching where fluency is given priority over accuracy which emphasizing comprehension and production of messages, not the teaching or correction of language form. In contrast to that, CLT is also said as an approach to L2 instruction which is primarily meaning-based and encompasses attention to both fluency and accuracy. Thus, the presence or absence of attention to language form is the main difference between the two definitions of CLT.

Spada’s article mentioned that CLT is influenced by Hymes' theory of communicative competence.  He believes that knowing a language includes more than a knowledge of the rules of grammar (i.e. linguistic competence) but also a knowledge of the rules of language use (i.e. communicative competence). This communicative competence theory is to broaden the current conceptualizations of language which is proposed by Chomsky (1957) on linguistic competence theory. Communicative competence theory will focus on the accurate use of grammatical forms in L2 teaching because knowledge of a language (first or second) includes knowing how to use forms appropriately in different contexts. Based on the linguistic theories of Firth (1957), Austin (1962), Searle (1969), and Halliday (1973), consistently involved formal and semantic features within their conceptualization of language and language teaching. The investigations on two related hypotheses of SLA which are the comprehensible input hypothesis (Krashen, 1984b) and the interactionist hypothesis (Long, 1983, 1996) also enhance our understanding about CLT. Both concentrate on the central role of meaningful communication in language acquisition.

 

Savignon’s article stated that Hyme’s communicative competence theory is to represent the use of language in social context, which means the observance of sociolinguistic norms of appropriateness. His concern with speech communities and the integration of language, communication, and culture is equal to Halliday’s as his focus is language as social behavior and not language learning. Savignon (1972) used the term communicative competence to distinguish the ability of language learners to interact with other speakers, to make meaning, as distinct from their ability to perform on discrete-point tests of grammatical knowledge. CLT is seen as to be derived from a multidisciplinary perspective that includes, at least, linguistics, psychology, philosophy, sociology, and educational research.
 

 Four components of communicative competence:

a.     Linguistic competence (grammar, phonology, lexis)

b.     Pragmatic competence (cohesion and coherence)

c.     Sociolinguistic (formal and informal)

d.     Strategic competence (compensatory strategies)

 

b) State the implications of communicative language teaching towards materials development.

Since CLT contained different definitions and interpretations of the communicative approach to second language (L2) instruction, this has created in several misconceptions on how it is implemented in the L2 classroom. There is no exact answer on what is communicative language teaching (CLT). It really depends on whom we ask regarding their ideas on what it is all about. Different individuals will come up with many different and supportive opinions. However, most experienced linguists will have the general answers where they are on the opinion that CLT is a meaning-based, learner-centered, and the emphasis is mainly on the comprehension and the production of messages, not the teaching or correcting language structure.

 

The implications of CLT towards the materials development is that it can depicts the authenticity of the materials with the teaching and learning process that happens in the classrooms. Authenticity is one of the important elements as it shows the connections between the real-world situation and in the classrooms where teaching and learning occur. The theories of CLT help to guide in the process of developing the materials. Besides that, it can demotivate the learners as the materials involved might not achieve the level of suitability of the learners. The materials should suit the learner’s proficiency level to ensure the process of delivering the knowledge is successful.

 

c) Locate principles supporting CLT within the KBSM English Language Curriculum and F1 English Language.

The principle which supported the CLT theory in the KBSM English Language Curriculum are 7.o – Preparation for the real world: The curriculum aims to prepare the student to be able to face the real world. This is done by preparing a more authentic material. It claimed that the learner will be able to communicate within their social context. However this is not really what had been achieved as the curriculum seems to be exam-oriented rather than learning-oriented.

d) Identify general categories and specific items to evaluate chapters in a Malaysian English Language textbook

The general categories in evaluation of chapters for a textbook are [1] pre-use evaluation: during this time, we predicts the potential value of the chapters. It would required the teacher to do quick observation of the chapters means that they need to come up with an impression regarding the particular chapters [2] While-use evaluation: This stage measures the value of the chapters while being used or observing it react in teaching and learning context. It would include the effect toward the learners and also the easiness of teaching the chapters. [3] Post-use evaluation: This is the most important yet forgotten stages. In this period, it will allow the actual assessment of the chapters; is it teachable by itself or do it require the integration of other side materials?

The item which may be applied to do evaluation for the Malaysian English Language Textbook would include usage of checklist. Checklist is useful as it suggest the criteria which should be exist in a textbook. It is holistic as it evaluate the chapter based on the objective aspect [systematicness] and also the subjective aspect [impression, feedback] of it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Week 5 -Reflection

Week 5 Reflection- Workbook Evaluation

After conducting the evaluation by using Williams checklist to a book, titled “Natural English” by Ruth Gairns and Stuart Redman, I found that the checklist is appropriate for the teachers, especially the pre-service teachers, as the checklist was very simple and easy to understand. There are two units chosen in the textbook which we have evaluated, which were unit 3 and 7. Even though the checklist was quite simple, but still, we encountered few problems with the terms used by Williams. This problem creating the difficulties of understanding the criteria stated in the sections. On the other hand, most of the criteria included in the checklist fulfilled the contents of the textbook.

In a nutshell, as a pre-service teacher, I can now understand how the sections in the checklist being divided and why each criteria was chosen in the evaluation. Besides that, I can applied the knowledge from what I had learned to teach in the future.

 

Week 4 Tutorial- Reflection

Week 4 Reflection- Developing Criteria for Textbook Evaluation- David Williams

 For this week’s tutorial, we had been given an article of David Williams with the title of “Developing Criteria for Textbook Evaluation”. After I went through the article, I found that the evaluation checklist proposed by Williams was quite simple and easy to be used especially for a pre-service teacher. In the checklist itself, Williams divided the criteria into different section, namely grammar, speech, vocabulary and few more. We can easily evaluate the textbook accordingly by referring to the checklist. On the other hand, it was found that the rating sections were not clearly explained in the article. This had aroused a bit of confusion as the ratings from 1-4 was not being mentioned which is good and which is bad. This was the only problem we encountered when using the checklist.

As a pre-service teacher, doing the evaluation was a new thing for me. However, after I had done with that, I can now come up with the idea on how to modify and develop new teaching materials when necessary.