Unit 28, Reviewing glossary

1-Acknowledge :  The teacher acknowledge the assignment for the students.
2-Negotiating :      The manager negotiate the matter with his staff in the meeting and it went well.
3-Explain:              I explain the difficult lesson to my friends.
4-Clarify :              Is the way we make something clear and understood to others by other language.
5-Greet :               The situation when we see somebody and welcome him/her.
6-Textbook:           The content of the lesson or activity we give it in the learning process. 

WARMERS/ICE-BREAKERS

          The introductory activities such as classroom activities and ice-breakers are the most effective techniques that most teachers should follow. The reason is as Nadia Zehni mentioned in her article My favourite EFL classroom warmers, that some students are like zombies and need to capture their interest and involve them from the start. 

             Why did I like her ways of warming the students?  It was because she put three different warmers and within these warmers she involved some ice-breakers. She started the class with True/False warmer and she let the her students mingle between each other asking questions related to their personalities, which of course ice-breakers. 

            There is a Guess the famous person and Where in the world warmers, but for me I did the like the True/False one, and I have tried these on my students, and because it focusses in how they will form the yes/no questions and to answer them on. 

           They can be effectively good to warm lazy kids and at the same time it can break the tension between the students who do not know each other for asking them personal thing, and the teachers might also get involved in this to let them feel thy know something about them, which found it very wonderful. 

 

COURSE BOOK REVIEW

          The listening workshop and the morning discussion that we went through was how we can teach the listening skills to especially military students which was the main purpose of our study. At first we explore the concept of receptive listening and that means to listen more than speak, and how can we make sense of the meaning sounds we hear it, of course by its context and our knowledge of the world.

     
           The second important step was to know the characteristic of the spoken language. It differs from the written language because it has features which can be disappear as it is spoken, fast or slowly, and stresses,  also most important the sentences sometimes are not complete in connected speech. It also has facial expressions etc.

Moreover, there were pre-teaching key words involved through the books we looked at, for an example, there is a banana. This was like repeating task followed by sentences with authentic materials pre- listening tasks, so the students can speak as they pronounced, which was contractions, hesitation, utterance, and interruption.

         I liked the way these books were presenting the listening activities, by giving them some pre- teaching key words in authentic texts, so the the student have the time to process and understand the language, then they followed them by some listening tasks to know what kind of interaction patterns these conversations were taken place. Sometimes they were while- listening task and some of them not in great number in post- listening tasks.

Finally, we mentioned that since we are teaching military students we must concentrate on the most important skill which was listening intensively, because they are not normal students, they must listen carefully according to their jobs.
  


  

Supplementary reading actvities

Reading 

I've read Reading Extra which is multi-level skills activities that are designed for classroom work. These activities are helpful for the teacher and the student in a page of step-by-step instructions. I think this book is very helpful for my colleagues to teach it to their students for two important reasons.

First, it helps student to practice the reading skills, e.g. reading for global, as in scanning TV for specific programme is on, skimming an article etc. Each unit of the book has three activity for different levels: Elementary, intermediate, and upper intermediate. What I like the most about the book is the students here is the centre of the learning process and the teacher is opining a discussion, handouts materials, and giving instructions. So the students must do the reading.

Second reason, the learning should not be silent in these activities, the students must reflect with real world. Therefore, they need to understand and ask some questions about the meaning of some words, sentences, and the best way to that by putting pairs of students and sometimes to let the students to access to the online dictionary. 

Phonology - Pronunciation Games

Pronunciation Games

I have read the book which is written by Mark Hancock called Pronunciation games. First the book has keys to phonetic symbols, glossary of phonological terms,and last lots of games that help enriching learners vocabulary and pronunciation. 

There are three sections in the book each section emphasises on some parts of the phonemes function in the words. In the first section it concentrates on Syllables and stress, which are divided into many games for different levels, .e.g. Making tracks game target is to count the syllables and the level is elementary learners. The way this game is played by dividing the class into pairs and each pairs board and a dice. 

To sum up, I found the book is more useful than the random books, because the variety games that are involved make it easier to understand the difficult way of pronunciation also funny at the same time. 

I will definitely use these type of games in my classes in the future, because it takes the boring of  the learning process.

  

Teaching Knowledge Test (TKT) Preparation Course Lexis

Lexis : 

• Watch this video and write a summary.  Should your colleagues also watch?  Why?  Write a short VIDEO-REVIEW post. 
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0wPfNeBg4E

First, the YouTube video in this website was very helpful and interesting for many reasons. I also advise my colleagues to watch it rather than going and read the TKT booklet. .The reason for that it grasps my attention for the way it shows the meaning of the words in easy and enjoyable pattern. 

Second, this video is not as difficult as the books we have. Of course not to mention the importance of the books and the handouts, but the way videos are played as slides of different terms and lexical words. I think it is much easier, and colourful that it will explain all TKT much better than books. 

Third point, the slides that are shown in the videos have information and reference you might not get it in the book. But I recommend my colleagues not to depends only to this video for their studies, I think it is a useful tool, if you are sick of reading normal books.