" A Chat with My Friend"

Last wednesday, me and my friend went to mall for windows shopping.while we were waiting for our menu to come, we were talking about our academic result. She told me so many things about her college life. One thing that made me feel upset was when she told me about her lecturers at her campus. The lecturer did not really care about his/her students progress. The way he/she taught is not interesting, eventhough they already used ICT in her/his classroom. They just teach and teach all the time. My friend said " the lecturer is just like a robot. They came to the class, lecturing with no pauses, then gave us the assignment and i'm sick of it". I think this kind of situation happened almost in all university in Indonesia. The important thing for the lecturer is, they delivered the material to the student, they got the score from the assignment, then it's done.  This sort of problem made my friend thought that the most important thing in studying a subject is the score not the knowledge. Hearing this statement, I felt shock. I suggested her to be more dilligent in order to get the knowledge. The score is nothing. The most important thing is the knowledge. What is the use of score if you don't get the knowledge? As the next generation of teacher, i will try to solve this issue. I will teach and monitor my students progress as well. Teaching will happen if there is a change in our students.

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TLL Week 8 Report

Using chalk and board are still dominant in Theresia School. When I did an interview with the teacher, I asked them what type of media that the teacher used the most in language learning. They said that printed material, black board and chalk are the most used media for teaching and learning. They felt more comfortable using those media rather than using a powerpoint slide. The reason was simple. They thought that white/blackboard is easier to use because you just need to write and explain the material. Let the students copy and you can erase it. If they used powerpoint, it will take more time for preparing it. Printed material such as exercise papar was being used all the time. According to the teacher, using printed material is more interactive. She can discuss the exercise with all the students directly, and it works. The teacher and the students gain their goal. The test result was good.

chalk and blackboard

In listening section, the teacher used a CD, a personal computer (PC) and a speaker. She will play the CD and give each of the student a listening book. They have to answer based on what they had heard. Actually, at each table, there is a headphones which is used for listening. The teacher did not use it because the headphones did not link to the same spot. If the teacher use the headphone , I think it will be better for the students, because they can listen more clearly. When I interviewed the teacher about the students scored for listening, the teacher said that the result was quite good. Sometimes the teacher trained the students with songs and it showed a good improvement for listening score. Bringing the students to language lab is an effective method to teach their skill in listening.

language lab

When I was observing the classroom, I imagined myself as the teacher. I would use a laptop with a modem and a LCD projector. I want them to explore more by using the internet. There are many resources for grammar. I can show them many creative question about grammar, so that they not only learn from me as a teacher but also from the world about grammar. When I have to teach them in the classroom about gerund, my team teaching provided a powerpoint game slide. They all are very enthusiastic. They felt that this is a good way to teach grammar. They not only get the knowledge but also fun. If I have to teach listening, I would like to use podcast. The pronounciation and the content of podcast is very good for learning English. For senior high school students, it is good for them if a teacher give them an intermediate level material for listening. They can gain more knowledge and practice their pronounciation based on what they heard. It is good for them in order to prepare the students to the real world of English.

Fresh teacher :)

My School Experience

This week’s experience was very interesting. My teaching team has to do a real teaching for 45 minutes. At first, we were very nervous and confused. We felt like we were not ready to deal with this kind of situation. Luckily, our master teacher helped us a lot. They gave us the guideline so we can develop our lesson plan in a proper way.
When I entered the class, WOW….. I felt awesome. I tried to be calm. The master teacher said that we have to relax. We started the class with a greeting and we tried to elicit their attention. In the first 5 minutes, they don’t show any enthusiasm, but we tried to encourage them to talk. I said to them, “It’s OK to make mistakes, the most important thing is to try.” After they heard what I said, each one of them began to try to speak out. I thought to myself,” WOW…. It actually worked!” Most of the times, students are timid, so we need to encourage them to express themselves.

my team teaching

The next step, we gave them a short passage about Jakarta. My friend Arsy asked them to read together. Then we gave them some time to think about the main idea of that passage. Each of them came up with different ideas.
After discussing the passage, we got to the main subject, gerund. Arsy tried to explain on the blackboard. He delivered it smoothly, slowly and systematically, because teaching grammar isn’t easy.
In the last ten minutes, we wanted to know whether our teaching method gave a good impact or not. We tested them with a quiz. Septo divided the class into 4 groups. Each group will compete for the highest score. They are very excited in participating in this quiz. The students tried to answer each question as fast as possible. The questions are based on gerund. We wanted to know whether they understood what we taught them or not.

Quiz Time

We got a good result from this quiz. They were able to make proper sentences using gerund. Our teaching method works! After the class, we asked for a feedback from the students. They said that we could deliver the lesson in an interesting way. They understood what we were talking about. Then I asked them, “Is this type of teaching is quite effective for you to learn about gerund?” The students replied, “Yes, loved the way you teach, it’s new for us, giving a passage before you enter to the real topic, it’s very effective to elicit our attention.”
In conclusion, our teaching method works like wonders. Getting their attention through games makes learning English more effective. Giving them motivation also makes them feel glad and increase their self esteem and motivation.

We are the next generation

humble teacher :)

My Classroom Observation Week 1

For this week classroom observation, I don’t “really” get the thing that is effective or ineffective in the classroom, because for this week I only observed two classes and one of them is having a listening examination.

For the grammar class, what is effective enough based on what I observed is the teacher let the students to understand the concept of active and passive sentence by themselves. The teacher just asked them and encourage them to recall their understanding about that lesson. All the students showed their enthusiastic in giving the answer. Then the teacher give the student exercise. The teacher asked the answer of the question to the student. One number for one student. After the teacher got the answer from the student, she discussed it and asked why the students gave her those kind of answer. It required an analytical skill to explained the answer. If the students did not give the right answer , teacher will ask them to analyze the characteristic of the sentence. With this method, students will learn from their mistake and hopefully they will not repeat the sama mistake in the future. According to my observation, actually I still wondering is drilling method (teacher give the concept and lots of worksheets) is effective enough to make the students familiar to the concept? Besides teaching a lesson, the teacher also taught the students to behave. There is one student who is quite naughty and when he wanted to do silly things, the teacher always remind hi to behave. Discipline and classroom rules is very important. Without these two things, I think that effective learning will not happen.

If I have to teach them, maybe i will give them a warming up games because the teacher just go directly to the course and it makes the classroom monotonous. Sometimes as a teacher  we are too theoretical and forget that our students also need some jokes or games ro refresh their mind and soul. As a teacher, discipline is number one. It does not mean that you have to scream or get angry all the time. What is more important is you always stick to classroom rules and agreement and try to understand the class and students condition.