TASK : WEEK 3

TASK : WEEK 3

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

Based on the article of Communicative Language Teaching by Nina Spada, CLT is an approach to L2 teaching where it is a meaning-based and learner-centered approach. Here, the fluency is being emphasized more compared to the accuracy of the language or in other words, it is mainly focus on the ability of the students to understand and produce messages and not the teaching or correction of language form. Other than that, there is also other view that purpose CLT as primarily meaning-based which includes both the fluency and accuracy aspect.

The audio-lingual method is an oral-based approach which is based on the behavioral psychology (Skinner). In addition, it is used in the language learning where it gives attention on the inductive learning of grammar. The learning is conducted through the activities that involve the students to do repetition, practice and memorization. This method will drill the students in the use of grammatical sentence patterns. For example, dialogue activities which can be carried out by the students in form of imitation and repetition. By conducting this activity, the students will be able to use the target language communicatively.

Furthermore, according to Hymes’ theory the knowledge of the rules of grammar (linguistic competence) and the knowledge of the rules of language use (communicative competence) gives obvious impact on CLT. According to Hymes’, the focus in L2 teaching is through the accurate use of grammatical forms. Besides that, there are also several components of abilities that the learners need to require which is (1) linguistic competence; (2) sociolinguistic competence; (3) discourse competence; and (4) Strategic competence.

·         Linguistic competence: the knowledge of grammar and vocabulary.

·         Sociolinguistic competence: the ability to say the appropriate thing in a certain social situation.

·         Discourse competence: the ability to start, enter, contribute to, and end a conversation, and the ability to do this in a consistent and coherent manner.

·         Strategic competence: the ability to communicative effectively and repair problems caused by communication breakdown.

    

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

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

Aim of KBSM English Language Curriculum:

The syllabus aims to extend learners’ English language proficiency in order to meet their needs to use English in certain situations in everyday life, for knowledge acquisition, and for future workplace needs.

By referring to the KBSM English Language Curriculum, there are several objectives that support the CLT that are:-

By the end of their secondary school education, learners should be able to:

·         form and maintain relationships through conversations and correspondence; take part in social interaction; and interact to obtain goods and services;

·         obtain, process and use information from various audio-visual and print sources, and present the information in spoken and written form;

·         listen to, view, read and respond to different texts, and express ideas, opinions, thoughts and feelings imaginatively and creatively in spoken and written form;

Principles that support CLT:-

(1)   form and maintain relationships through conversations and correspondence; take part in social interaction; and interact to obtain goods and services:

·         1 principle: promotes cooperative and collaborative learning

Through the activities that involves conversation; the students will eventually interact with each other and give opinions on the topic that is being talk about. Here, the students not only able to express their idea on certain things but they also will learn on how to give a right response. For example, in the role-playing activities where students can ask each other questions regarding certain topic (e.g. family or friend) where during this process, they will ask questions and respond politely. Moreover, through this activity the students also practice the sociolinguistic competence. In addition, the students also will collaborate with each other in order to make the process of communication of the target language can be carry out successfully. Thus, teacher needs to be the facilitator during the learning activities and promotes communication among students.

·         2 principal: practice of using the language

-          As the students get involves in the interaction process obtaining the goods and services, they will be exposed to discourse competence. Here, they will learn to start, contribute to, and end the conversation on the topic being talk about. The students will start to learn this in a consistent and coherent manner as they will take turn in order to participate in the conversation. Moreover, they also will be taught on how to ask questions and responds in a polite manner whenever they want to make enquiries.

-          Apart from that, the students also will learn the linguistic competence as they get involves in activities such as writing simple instruction or simple invitation. Here, the students usually will participate collaboratively and at the same time they will learn on how to use the simple grammar and vocabulary.

·         3 principal: focus on form

-      It is an approach to explicit grammar teaching, emphasizes a form-meaning connection and teaches grammar within the contexts and through communicative task. Thus, it is very important for the teacher to find activities that is related to their real life situation so that they will understand the context more easily. Here, teacher should encourage the students to express their idea by making the students get involve in interaction and focus more on the meaning and allow the learners to figure out the rule themselves naturally as they having a conversation with each other. During the activity, the students eventually will communicate by negotiation of meaning and gives feedback as well.

(2)   obtain, process and use information from various audio-visual and print sources, and present the information in spoken and written form:

·         1 principal: input needs to be rich

-          The activities that involve the use of authentic materials are very essential to reflect real-life situations and demands. Thus, teacher should design activities that use various audio-visual and print resources for the learning. For example by using audio-visual such as videos, the students not only will listen to the spoken texts but they also can take a look at the visuals presented in the videos. This is very good as teacher can attract the student’s interest. Moreover, teacher plays an important role in maximizing the use of the target language and this can be done through giving an instruction during the learning. Furthermore, teacher should give students greater amount of input so that they will gains greater information on the target language.

·         2 principal: input needs to be meaningful, comprehensible and elaborated.

-          The materials that are used in the activity of the learning should be meaningful and comprehensible to the students so that they can use the language in their real life. Thus, teacher needs to design activity that is authentic. For example, teacher should choose passage that is meaningful and able the students to give view on what the text is all about. Here, the process of learning can be in the form of writing or orally where here the students are encourage to elaborate their thought on what they have learn. That is why; teacher must be able to choose appropriate materials, as the proficiency levels of the students differ.

(3)   listen to, view, read and respond to different texts, and express ideas, opinions, thoughts and feelings imaginatively and creatively in spoken and written form:

·         1 principal: promotes collaborative learning

-          As the students are exposed to different texts, this can enhance their understanding on different usage of the language. The students will get involves in a group activity where they need to collaborate and interact with each other to complete their task. For example, storytelling activities during the discussion which ask the students to use their own words in order to express their ideas. Here, the process of negotiation of meaning can be seen during the discussion process.

·         2 principal: focus on fluency over accuracy

-          As the students express their own ideas, the focus will be on the fluency of the language use. Here, teacher also will emphasize the students with the discourse competence and sociolinguistic competence as the students get involves in the interaction process regarding the topic being discussed.

·         3 principal: learner-centered approach

-          Teacher should encourage the students to participate actively in an activity that use the target language which allow them to work on themselves, for example role-play activity that needs the students to cooperate with each other creatively. Thus, by conducting activity that focus on learner-centered, the students able to express their ideas and opinions freely. Moreover, in order for the learner’s linguistic knowledge to be automatic, students’ needs to be put under the real condition or situation of communication.

·         4 principal: provide error corrective feedback

-          When the students presenting their works, teachers will either give positive or negative feedback to the students. In order for teacher to make correction on the language used by the students, teacher can used direct error corrective which involved teacher’s help such as providing clues or clarification requests. In addition, error corrective and positive feedback is necessary in support of the learning process. Moreover, during the feedback, the students also will be exposed to the strategic competence that allow them to communicative effectively and repair problems caused by communication breakdown.

Materials Development:

Tutorial Week 2- Principles for Materials Development

A) Watch Jeremy Short’s presentation on his take of materials development.

Please take note on the reasons he created the materials and the characteristics of his materials.

Which principles for materials development did Short apply when producing his materials?

Answer:

Jeremy created the materials after he found that his students feel that textbook is boring 

and also expensive. Later, he managed to create interesting, fun and engaging learning 

through visual and audio. Hence, he implements the story telling into narrative which 

known as the graphic novel textbooks. It is important to ensure that the learning 

materials are interesting in a way to attract learner’s interest and understanding.

When producing his materials, Short applies the principle of Materials Development 

which found in Tomlinson’s Principle. Short believes that materials should achieve 

impact in order to attract learner’s curiosity, interest and attention through novelty, 

variety, attractive presentation and appealing content. Materials are created to help 

learners to learn the language with texts and illustration that relates to their own culture.

B) Design and complete the following diagram.

 

The reason why we choose to draw our diagram in this manner is because we believe 

that these aspects are inter-related with each other. Country’s vision is placed on top 

of the diagram because it works as a mover in the society which leads the parents to 

set a goal in their children’s academic performance. Later, curriculum goal and 

objective are created to suit previous relation between parent’s goal and country’s 

vision. Learners are expected to be able to master all the learning skills such as 

listening, speaking, reading, writing, grammar and vocabulary. Then, we can see the 

development of two principles which are the principles of teaching and learning and the 

principles of SLA. In the principles of teaching and learning, the styles of teaching and 

materials play an important role in ensuring the effectiveness of pedagogy and getting 

into effective language learning materials. Teachers can vary the learning materials 

according to curriculum requirements and learners’ interest. It is best to create fun and 

engaging materials such as via flashcards, videos and ICT. Connecting SLA research 

to materials development, there are principles in SLA that affect the designed materials. 

Moreover, teacher’s belief and rational should be based on the principles. From many 

perspectives, teachers believe that every student has different learning styles. Teacher 

sees the importance of creating effective materials to cope this problem. The rational is 

that teaching and learning process are influencing each other in a way that the teachers 

should be aware of learners’ proficiency level. The learners should be given tasks 

based on their proficiency level.  

Material Development : Digital Language Learning Material

  Examples of Digital Language Learning Materials
     
  http://knowble.eu/ 
   eslcafe.com
   bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish
   a4esl.org
   tv411.org
   elt.oup.com/learning_resources

Criteria for evaluating digital learning material

Errors

Less serious errors that disturb the work of the user  serious errors that, example, endanger the preservability of the users’ outputs

Efficiency

refer to the experience of the users while operating the application or material after they manage to master using it in term of how well the experience goes.

Learnability

 the time taken for the user to use the system before they carry on to learn essential skills necessary to perform the tasks.

Memorability

The ability of an occasional user who has previously used the system to remember its operational principles. 

Criteria of pedagogical usability

    

     Feedback

           Student should be provided with encouraging and immediate feedback by the learning material will increases learning motivation and helps students to know their strength and weakness

Learning progress cannot be happened without immediate correction

Motivation

          Affects learning and makes people behave the way they do

          Motivation is the way to do things by reference to instincts, desires and reinforcement; support the direction on one’s general behavior. Motivation affects alertness and vigor

     Goal orientation

          When the goals of teacher, students and learning materials are closely aligned, the best results can be obtained. Goals should be clear cut and able to motivate the students to achieve the goals. When the students themselves do not set their goals, their meaningfulness should be justified from the point of view of motivation. Students should pursue their own interests in relation with learning goals

Learner control

           Learner’s memory should be pushed to the limit when learning a new topic. Materials should be broken down to be learned into small meaningful units

     Applicability

          The approach taken in learning material should correspond to the skills that the learner will later need in everyday and working life.The learners should be able to transfer the skills or knowledge to other contexts. Learning something new can be accomplished effectively by relating it to practical tasks. Learning materials should be at appropriate level from the point of view of learner’s learning process

     Added value

          To increase creativity in learners when using digital language learning material. Other kind of added value: adaptability to individual needs, number of flexible options, learning is controlled and initiated by learners, interesting contents, development of communication, active participation of students.

Rough Outline of Our Own DLLM
          
          The teacher will posts several pictures. Each picture will have its own captions that describe the picture. Using the picture the students need to make a diary entry. The students need to use their own imagination in order to come out with a suitable story line that go well with the picture. the students can post their diary entry in their blog so their peers can read it. this activity encourage students to be creative and in the same time peer evaluation can be carry out under teacher's supervision.
   
            Examples of picture :
                  

       

          

SLA theories and principles :

Theories :

• Behaviourist
• Innatist
• Interactionist

Principles :

• Materials should achieve impact
• Materials should help learners to feel at ease
• Materials should help learners to develop confidence
• What is being taught should be perceived by learners as relevant and useful
• Materials should require and facilitate learner self-investment
• Learners must be ready to acquire the points being taught
• Materials should expose the learners to language in authentic use
• The learners’ attention should be drawn to linguistic features of the input.
• Materials should provide the learners with opportunities to use the target language to achieve communicative purposes.
• Materials should take into account that the positive effects of instruction are usually delayed
• Materials should take into account that learners differ in affective attitudes
• Materials should permit a silent period at the beginning of instruction.
• Materials should not rely too much on controlled practice
• Materials should provide opportunities for outcome and feedback
• Materials should help the learner to develop cultural awareness and sensitivity.
• Materials should reflect the reality of language use.
• Materials should help learners to learn in ways similar to the circumstances in which they will have to use the language.
• Materials should help to create readiness to learn.

REFLECTION!

For this week activity, we came up with types of digital learning materials existed and went through all the criteria for evaluating digital language learning materials, the criteria of pedagogical usability, the theories and principles of teaching and learning and second language acquisition. All these theories, principles and criteria made me realized that not really anything can be a material. There are few considerations that a teacher needs to take to provide their students. It was like a guideline for the teachers to come up with the materials, especially DLLM. But still, creating DLLM is a good and new way to attract the students more. So our group then came up with a rough outline of our DLLM where we put a lot of pictures, and of course we managed to create it after we went through the theories and principles.

e-Portfolio : A New Form of Encouragement

E-Portfolio: A New Form of Encouragement

by

Nur Fatin Kassiran

            Do we need technology in school? Does technology being a good friend to learners? In my opinion, my answer to both questions is yes. Why did I think so is because technology can be helpful to learners especially nowadays students in school since they are rising up, mostly, with technology. People may think technology will destroy humanities and by implementing technology in learning, or to be specific, in school, world is on the way of producing millions of robots. It is not true at all and why I am agreeing with technology can be friend to learners is because of this one thing called electronic portfolio.

            Electronic portfolio or we called it as e-portfolio is a collection of work that has been devised using different contexts periodically. Recently, e-portfolio is widely used as learning aids for learners for several courses taken by students in university level, in my area of knowledge. It is also a one-way for students to reach information easily, beside of displaying their work compilation to the world. Moreover, the works come in handy with the help of their friend, Mr. Technology where e-portfolio also function as an archive and well-organizer for their works which is accessible for everyone. Though it is still a new way of learning but it is fun and exciting as the learners play with their imagination and technology instead of trapped in between of pen and paper.

            Most people know that playing with technology is also requiring them to play with their imagination, skills and creativity which can enhance one’s thinking skill. For instance, I myself able to develop my thinking skill by the time, every time we were told to submit our tutorial on our blog, which is a new thing to me instead of “submit your assignment by tomorrow at 5!” It cannot be denied that e-portfolio helped me to enhance my thinking skill because of the application provided by a certain websites are really being helpful that made things possible. Normally when students were told to do a task, they hardly are able to present their ideas exactly like what is on their mind. So, with the help of visual aids provided in the web-based tools such as BlogSpot, Tumblr, Wordpress or such can present the picture of students’ mind. Plus, when we as the writers know that the fact that when we published our work online, of course we got bigger audience to handle, thus, giving our best to make it engaging.

            In addition, it is a new kind of assessment of students’ work by the teacher. They don’t simply assess their students’ work by such things like words organization, grammar and all, but also assess their creativity or what I called, the diligent-ness. Besides, e-portfolio is easier to revise, easy to keep and is mobile as long you have the internet connection. So e-portfolio can be called as a new way of encouragement to write for those who lacks of motivation.

            Despite of that, e-portfolio can be a burden for those who did not well-equip with these technology requirement: a computer and an internet connection. Again, in my previous experience, when it is hard to get the internet connection, as the result, I failed to post the tutorial given on time. So there are few things to consider in using e-portfolio in learning. First, like I mentioned earlier, is the equipment: computer and internet connections. Second is the knowledge of using internet. We acknowledged that not everybody knows how to access internet. The third consideration is more to the teachers’ side where they have to consider the total of their students because if they are too many, yes, it is a burdensome to assess the works. Lastly, the interests of the students nevertheless should be considered. Even though there are many of them are technology-friendly, of course a few of them did not. But it is something that can be overcome where the teacher give their best to encourage their students to be friend with Mr. Technology.

            All in all, e-portfolio should be used or implemented in teaching and learning so that it can encourage students to just not write but also put more expression into their writing to make it meaningful. It would not be too much for me to state that e-portfolio is indeed a new form of motivation for students to write more. 

mini test! mini test! (part 2)

This is the second question for the mini test.

You are teaching a form two class on 'Environment'. Suggest one way to integrate the following level of learning objective in your writing lessons.

A)     Analysis

B)     Application

(picture: credit to thermomix)

Instruction : Analyze the picture below. Brainstorm along with your teacher and friends on what your opinion what the picture is all about. Don't forget to list down all the ideas. Next, discuss among your friends, how you all as students should apply those ideas you have brainstormed in your real life. And then create an essay for your opinion. Your essay should not be more than 250 words.

(picture: credit to Pinellas County School)