Review of Modules 1-3

We finished our TKT Coursebook and I can say that I understand every single unit. I had certain points in which I needed some help but we reviewed those problematic areas with our teachers and with each other.

Module 1 is the longest but the easiest. In Module 2 I faced some points that I didn't understand at the beginning but once I asked my teachers and my colleagues everything became very clear. Module 3 is simple I fully understand what it is all about.

I am going to plan a study timetable for me to get full prepared for the real test.

Reviewing Modules 1-3 - Nujeem

For me I think I understand the three modules very well. However units 17,18 and 22 need some revision and reading by me to consolidate the information about assessment and activities further. Other than that, all of the modules and their vocab are clear and understandable.

I hope all the best for me and for my colleagues in the exam.

Correction of Errors

The two websites discuss and highlight crucial aspects of error correction. It provides a considerable amount of information that should help teachers who desire to improve their skills as far as error correction is concerned. Some of the areas which these websites cover are, attitudes to error correction, categorising errors, a model for correcting writing, the role of planning, practical techniques and ideas for correcting writing. All these areas of error correction are discussed with details.

I will refer to these websites whenever I want to get further information about error correction.

Error Correction

Ref: http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/error-correction-1

Error Correction 

In the first article the writer tackled five main points.He talked about attitudes to error correction, categorizing the error, model for correcting writing, the role of planning and practical techniques of correcting writing.

From the article I learned two things, which I acknowledge but rarely do it in my teaching. The first one, the article mentions that when we correct students mistakes we should categorize what we want to correct. in other words, we don't correct everything all the time because it's exhausting for the teacher and it demotivate the learner.for example, if we correct every mistake in a written homework and the students receive a bleeding paper( full of red pen correction) he will feel very bad and also it is going to be very hard for the teacher if he has 50 students. Therefore, if we are looking for coherence then we only correct coherence or if we are checking spelling then we only correct spelling.

The second thing, the article mentioned that one of the errors correction techniques is to let the learner reads his writing for a second time so he can correct him self and recognize his own mistakes before giving feedback to him. such technique is very useful for the teacher and learner. The learner will benefit from raising his noticing awareness and the teacher will have less mistakes to correct because the learner corrected some of his own mistakes. 

MODULE 2, REVIEW, CHAP. 19

21 June 2014

Mohammed Ahmad AlGorib

________________________________________________________________

1:                                   

A-    Main Aim B-    Subsidiary Aim C-    Stage Aim D-   Procedure E-     Aids

 

1-    What do we want learners to learn or to be able to do by the end of the lesson?

2-    What are the tasks and activities for each stage?

3-    What else do learners need to be able to do during the lesson to enable them to achieve the main aim?

4-    What is the purpose of each stage of the lesson?

5-    What action will take to deal with the anticipated problems?

6-    What should we remember to take to the lesson?

 

A-    Sequence B-    Personal Aim

1-    By the end of the lesson, learners will be able to use polite requests to ask for information, is an example of………?

2-    Series of lesson or whole course?

3-    It shows what we would like to improve or focus on in our teaching?

 

 

 

 

2: Finding the odd one out.

 

Choose the letter A,B or C which does NOT complete the statement correctly

1-    We mean by Learners Objectives:

a-     The Result we are excepting form them

b-    The outcomes of the given lesson

c-     The Result of the Choral Drill, we practice daily at class

2-    The Syllabus is……

a-     The course programme

b-    The plan needed to be followed during the course

c-     The method of teaching, that the teacher is gong o use such as, teacher-centred, or other methods   

3: Multiple-choices

(Mark the correct letter A,B or C which would be more appropriate)

1-    Teaching aids means:

a-     The things teacher bring with him every day such as marker and pencil.

b-    The tools that the teacher should bring such as, authentic books, pictures, projector, Internet supportive materials, and etc…

c-     The Things the teacher MUST bring with in every class in every level, because the teacher could not stand alone without them.

2-    Procedures are:

a-     What the teacher and the learners do at each stage of the lesson

b-    What the teacher only do at each lesson

c-     What the learners only do at each lesson

4:  3/4/5 option-matching

( You will need to use some of the option MORE than once)

1:

a-     Timing for the development and the organization of the class

b-    Predicting the content

c-     Scanning for made by the learners

 

1-    Sometimes, it is very because I have only 50 minute to cover up everything

2-     It is really important for the student to let them pre-judging before reading the text fully

3-    This thing is going to let speak about the topic even it is not completely correct, but at least they have guessed the general ideas

4-    The teacher with a certain purpose, he asks the learners to get a specific info.

2:

a-     Deducing the meaning

b-    Encouragement

 

1-    It really a wonderful idea to ask student to get it alone.

2-    This thing is going to build confidence and motivation, it is exactly achieved

3-    It let students feel proud of themselves and it is caused by pushing them up and it remains with them even after graduation.

 

END OF THE QUESTIONS,,,

Lesson planning, key points.

Today I am going to write some points that I find crucial and relevant to my students.

1- planning helps you to be confident in the classroom because you always know your next step.

2- you should specify your goals according to students need. They should be involved in the planning.

3- It is always a good idea to plan for your lesson with another teacher this would be inspiring.

4- you should be ready to change you aims of any lesson according to the circumstances (zero option).

5- It is not always important to stick to the written form of your plans. Students sometimes have other aims that they want to achieve and as teacher you should take that into special consideration.

Best regards,

Yahya.

Mock Exam on Module 1 - Review - Nujeem

We had today our first mock exam on module one of the TKT course, I scored 70 out of 80 and this is a satisfied score for me. The first two questions were easy and clear, after that it got harder.  I think I fully understand units 1 and 2 of module 1, but unit 3 needs a little revision and more understanding because of the differences in the techniques and the approaches. I will complete my reading and studying before and after the classes to get band 4 in all of the modules, but it will take a lot of work and effort.

TED as an Authentic Material

Listening

TED as an Authentic Material 

I think that websites like TED are mainly not helpful for language learners. TED is designed to share knowledge or ideas about many different topics. These topics are usually shared through scholars, scientists…etc. Such people are well educated and usually use language that is very advanced and difficult to relate to daily spoken English. In other words, a learner of English will be more interested in learning the basic vocabulary that helps him to use the language probably.

 So, if I am the teacher I will not use this website for my beginners or intermediate students. While for advanced students I might use it but I would be very careful of the material I am going to choose. The material should not be very difficult and I might introduce some pre activities to prepare the students to understand the gist of the video I am going to give them.

However, the only exception that might conflict my argument is if I am teaching English for specific proposes. That is if I am teaching a class of students who are for example going to attend law college. In this case I will use many materials form Ted to the intermediate and advanced students. Since such students need a lot of exposure to the language that suits their target language content. 

Supplementary Book Review

ESOL ACTIVITES

Practical language activities for living in the UK & Ireland – ENTRY 2

The book I chose is really helpful for beginners and intermediate students. It offers activities for the four main skills. In addition, teachers who will choose this book will not struggle a lot in term of preparing for the class. It covers everything stating from Warmers, different types of activities, audio script for the listening, answers box and extension activates as back up.

The activities in the book are mixture of filling the gapes , matching , multiple choice, writing paragraphs , diaries, open ended questions and true – false question. This diversity allow the teacher to play between activates inside the unit to adapt with the class mood. The teacher for example can use open ended questions if he feels that the students are active and can participate inside the class. On the other hand, if the class is tired the teacher can use the question where they can work individually or listen to an audio tape.

Finally, if I’m going to choose activates from the book for the future I will go with two activates. The first one is the open ended question because I believe in communication in learning a language. Therefore, this type of activities is helpful for the students so they can produce the language and from their production I can give them feedback to enhance their English. The second activity is the diary activities. I prefer this type because by time the students will notes their development in the language. Many learners feel desperate because they cannot see their development in learning the language, although they are truly developing gradually. So, if they see their written diary at the beginning of the semester and compare it with their last work paper at the end they will notice the difference.

Warmer and Ice-breaker Activities

When teaching teenagers or adults, you need some warmer activities to make the class funny and interesting. However, finding these activities is hard, because you need to search trough books and ask some experts to provide some and may be not be enough. But this problem is no longer exists because of this website
http://www.onestopenglish.com/teenagers/skills/warmers/
It has many warmer activities which are useful and helpful for the teacher. I myself used many of the activities there and my students were understanding the lessons easily and they were thankful for it.
Another website that I enjoyed reading is
http://eltnotebook.blogspot.co.uk/2007/01/my-favourite-efl-classroom-warmers.html
It has some useful warmer and ice-breaker exercises which can be applied in the classroom to warm the students up. I found both websites interesting to read and apply. Also both websites are well organized, and recommend all my colleague teachers to visit and try to apply some of the exercises in their classrooms. Please leave your comment and feedback to be reviewed.

PRESENTATION TECHNIQUES AND INTRODUCTORY ACTIVITIES

      This paper aims to illustrate how you are going to warm up you lesson as a previous step.There are three activities that will wake your students  and let them focusing on the lesson.According to Nadia, she find her experience is valuable and worthy. 

      every teacher find the first ten minutes of any lessons are the most difficult. Simply because it needs a good plan to warm the student up and encourage them to start their lesson actively.This kind of activity( worming up) is effective to wake the students who are sleeping. This approach comes from real experience of teachers who teach teenagers  in secondary  school.

1- True /false.

First you have to be sure that all students know the meaning of true and false. This activity come as the previous step when the teacher pretend to teach a new lesson.For example, ask students to write three questions about themselves and discuss them with their friend as a pair work, then introduce them selves to each other and decide which statements are correct and which is wrong.
This kind of activities will let all students to participate well and be a wake.

2- Guise the famous person.

This activity will also make students active and will develop their speaking skill while they discuss. Pictures might be useful in this activity which let one student sticks on his back one picture for famous persons and move around the class. After that let every students to speak and discuss with others about what they have seen.

3- Where in the world.
 In fact the warmers exercise work better with international group to tell each other about their culture and customs . For instance, teacher will write on the board some words such as, food, cloths, drink, after that give the students an opportunity to discuss and exchange their idea about each other's country. Also they can talk about the stereotypes in their country. The main aims behind this warmer activity to use the students ability more than teacher.

All in all, the warmers should get the students to participate politely with each other and reflect their attitudes positively. If this warmers are successful it will make the lesson interests and active.

English Club

 Grammar

http://www.english.com/grammar/

  

      Grammar is the structure or the system of one language or all the languages in general,usually considered to consist of syntax and morphology. English Club Grammar is a wonderful website for English learners.It is easy and clear to understand.It provides grammar lessons with quizzes to check your understanding.There are many grammar hot links.Moreover,there are videos that can help you with grammar.You can also ask grammar questions in the Help Each Other With English forum or typing (grammar) into the Search Box the learner would also have a chance to exchange ideas and information with other learners.Finally, I hope that you visit this website and enjoy it.  

Class Dojo

MOTIVATION:

Nowadays the technologies are very significant for develop the education for students and improving the teachers’ skills. 

Class Dojo is one of the best sites for motivating and let the learners to do the best to learn. The teacher controls class and edit it easily without big effort. The teacher also can get all reports of the student’s results one by one.

In addition of that, teacher can let the student to access and share their result to give them more motivation. I think there many applications on smart phones or tablets which can take picture for your students and add them and their marks. Teacher can put the marks and divides it to assignments marks and a participate marks. He can use this application for write comments about students and get reports about that.

In general, these websites or an application helps teachers and students to be clearer about the students’ performances. 

Do You Think It's Better To Teach With Technology or With TraditionalBooks

GRAMMER:

I thought that studying through books and do some paper exercises is easier, but I have visited http://www.englishclub.com/grammar/ which contain many useful grammar rules ,and it was a great . This website has helped me clarifying some of my grammatical mistakes which I always do. Also it makes the studying much easier because I can choose directly what rule I want to revise or learn, and while I am reading, I can click on any of an understandable terms that I might face. The website also has various exercises depending on the chosen level and category.

Another helpful website that I have visited and enjoyed is http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/english-grammar/determiners-and-quantifiers because of its simplicity and it well organized. Comparing these websites with books, I can say I prefer study and teach with technology rather than traditional books and materials. In addition, I can visit these websites wherever and whenever I want because of smart phones which everyone has nowadays. Finally, I recommend everyone to visit and try these websites and if you please leave a comment of your opinion.

A review for the BBC English learning website.

• Visit these grammar websites (digital exercises) and spend some time looking at what they offer.  Which one do you prefer?  Why?  Write a REVIEW blog post telling your colleagues which one they should also visit when they have time. 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/language/

many learn English nowadays. they have different ways to learn and to approach resources. And visiting a website is one of them these ways. As long as grammar is concerned, this website I posted above is an excellent and comprehensive resource to learn and practice grammar. it is well-organised and provide several activities and exercises. no only students are taken care of but also teachers as they can find helpful tool and procedures to use with their students.

this website also provides videos to sustain grammar. many videos are found there to deal with different kinds of grammar. pronunciation and vocabulary are also handled in the website. Many videos and audio recordings are given in order to promote and enhance these two skills. whenever something new s learned there are quizzes and tests for implementation and practice.

there are some social life activities as well as news are given there. so, one can enjoy his time and read news too.

 

 I strongly encourage English language students to use this website and get the best of it.