Do You Need Subtitles While Speaking English?

Week 46 / 47 ( Pronunciation )

What does it mean to know a language? For years, this question has been a great concern for many linguists. Some would argue it is important to know grammar of the language, others would say knowing a language would mean being able to use it. For me, linguistic knowledge is only one side of knowig the language. Reading and writing, and finally speaking are also quite important parst of the language learning.

In the past, what the traditional language teaching methods were missing most was the fact that speaking is equally important in language teaching. In teacher based classrooms, students were learning (we can say memorizing) the grammar of the language perfectly without being able to use it. However, today, it is quite important to let the students use the language in communicative situations. Namely, students are supposed to communicate in the foreign language in the classroom. Then what makes communication effective and what causes break downs in communication? In other words, how could teachers help their students to use the language correctly so that they can communicate with native or non-native speakers of that language without having any problems? Well, there are lots of things to take into consideration but one of the most important points is being comprehensible in the foreign language while speaking.

In order to be comprehensible one should use the language correctly. So it makes the teaching of correct pronunciation, intonation and stress vital for teachers. For a teachers who wants his/her students to use the language corretly it is necessary to teach speaking skills as well as others. For instance, if your students were making the same pronunciation mistake very often, then you should definitely work on it before the mistake is fossilized. It  is also important to teach intonation in the foreign language. English is one of the languages in which there are a lot of variation in intonation. So if the student's native tongue is Danish for instance, then it would be much more vital to teach intonation so that no negative transfer from native language will occur. Moreover it is very easy for the pupils who doesn't have some of the sounds of the foreign language in their native language so they will definitely have difficulty to pronounce those sounds in the foreign language. 

Now, are you aware of the fact that it is equally important to teach speaking skills in the classroom? Are you aware of the fact that speaking a foreign language is not limited to knowing grammar pefectly? Are you comprehensible enough in the foreign language or do you need subtitles while speaking?

For the illustration " To need subtitles while speaking English", here is a funny video about pronunciation and pronunciation mistakes. I hope that you enjoy it :) 

Getting to Know - and Evaluating Teaching Materials

What makes a teaching material good or useful? Who is the one to evaluate the materials used in the classroom? And what kind of materials should we, as teachers, use in the classroom? These are the questions I have been trying to answer these days. Here is the reason why I have been thinking a lot on this issue:

Yesterday, we had a class with Hanna Thomsen from Teachers Resource Center Roskilde. The whole lecture was about English teaching materials and evaluating them. First, Hanna Thomsen started her presentation with some information about  English course books. Then, she presented some of other kinds of teaching materials including story books  ( Read Away ) , and games ( Grandma's Purse - A purse with full of different objects in ) and also some web based materials. After that we chose one of the materials and tried to make a ten minutes presentation about that material. There weren't many people in the classroom  so we could only have a very few presentations. However, we could have a deep look at the materials presented.

Grandma's Purse ( one of the teaching materials presented )

Even though some of the materials were prepared for teaching English in Denmark ( including English - Danish glossary and so-on) , I found some of the materials quite useful, in fact. Some of them were including Teacher's guide book, which is one of the things that should be in a good teaching material for me. Since  it is important to know how to use the material, a good teaching material should definitely have some instructions for the teachers. For instance, in some of the materials, there were some suggestions about  the ages of the learners with whom you can use the material. Of course it is also important to know your own learners and adjust the teaching material accordingly but if there is a guide included in the material, it takes some of the pressure on the teachers and makes it easy for the teachers to use the material effectively.

Also, a useful teaching material is the one which is adjusted through the years. As the teachers uses the materials, they get feedback from their students and then they have an idea whether to use the material in the same way or not. Then, it brings us to the point that it is also important to take our pupil's feedback about the material into consideration.

All in all, choosing the teaching materials is a hard job and there are many points to be taken into consideration so the teachers should think twice before choosing a mterial.

First Snow In Vordingborg...

Finall the snow arrived in Vordingborg...

Here, the story of winter in Denmark begins. We have been expecting snow for over two weeks in Vordingborg because it has got colder and colder. Finally, tonight we had the first snow in Vordingborg.

In fact, it has been quite a lot time since I saw snow for the last time because the only way to see snow in my hometown in Turkey is to go up to the mountains. Anyway, it rarely snows in the sea level in my hometown so I was quite excited about the first snow. When it started snowing tonight, I really wanted to go out to see more snow and to have some snow ball fights with friends. I could hardly convince Rikke, one of our friends from Rex ( the house where I stay )  to come with us because she, in fact, does not like snow at all. We just went by the ruins of the Goose Tower and enjoyed the perfect scene together. We, of course, had some snow ball fights. I also learned the Danish word for the mixture of rain and snow ( slud ) from Rikke as it was snowing like that.

After enjoying the snow, we turned back to home and had some hot tea in our warm kitchen. Now, I am writing in my room thinking how it is going to be in the winter? I hope that it is going to be as enjoyable as it has been tonight in the winter as well.

P.S. : How do we pronounce "slud" by the way? I don't remember at all. OK, I will ask Rikke tomorrow =)

Week 45 - Final Lesson for Educational Studies

Last week, we finished the classes with our Educational Studies Lecturer, Peter. Until now, we read a lot of different texts regarding different topics. We started with ethics of teaching and classrroom management. Then, we read about learning problems in youth. We studied " the risk society"- which was a new term for me as well-, curriculum and aims, problems of the modern world relating to globalization and modernization. Untraditional education and schooling, care ethics, democracy were some of the other themes that we have discussed so far. 

In general, I really liked the courses with Peter this semester. I enjoyed attending the class feeling no pressure, being active all the time and trying to express myself as muh as possible. In fact, this was what Peter was seeking for during the lectures.He wanted us to be active as much as possible. That's why he always had a different task for us. I never felt bored in his classes because we were always dealing with our task in our mixed groups (sometimes it was hard to mix the groups when we were only exchange students ) so that we were in interaction with each other a lot. In our last class, we realized that everyone has been in a group with each person at least once. Moreover when we expressed our opinions in any topic, Peter helped us to be more specific and clear with his questiıons since it is sometimes hard for one to get through others when you are not able to explain what exactly you mean. 

I also would love to give some details of our educational studies courses this semester:

In Turkey, our pedagogy courses are generally in Turkish. Firstly, I should state that it is quite better to read the texts in English. Also, it is a lot more beneficial to get the pedagogy courses in English since one of our aims to be here is to improve our communicative skills in the foreign language..  In this aspect, Peter helped us a lot because we read a lot of texts in English inside and outside the classroom and during the lectures we had a large scale of tasks all of which required a lot of discussion, negotiation and communication. 

As I mentioned above, we have had many different themes and topics in educational studies. Now I can see that they are like the parts of a puzzle and when you put them all together, it completes the picture ( the core in this picture is education) I mean we have looked at education from different perspectives and we have tried to observe, analyse and understand different educational ideas. One of the things that I liked a lot in this aspect is that we did not just leave some topics behind and move on other topics. For instance, while discussing the idea of untraditional education we turned back to the ideas of Thomas Ziehe and talked about it again. In this way, we could establish connections between different topics and ideas.

While Helma is explaining what to do for our evaluation papers at the end of the class

During our educational studies courses, as I mentioned above, we had a lot of different tasks such as Classroom Parliament, class discussions, mind maping and so-on. I learned not only the subject matter of the course ( I mean the content ) but also different techniques to use in the classroom. Completing these tasks, I also realized how much interaction all those tasks required, which is a desired situation in language classes. I will often remember "Center the Circle Task" from educational studies courses (we did it a few times)  and I will probably use it in my classes while teaching. 

I really enjoyed attending all of the courses this semester. A few times, we had the educational studies class with Danish friends, which I liked very much. However, when we were only international students (eight Turkish and one Deutch student), I felt a little bit isolated. It is nice to be in a kind of multicultural classroom so that there occurs different ideas and we try to see other people's point of view. Otherwise, the main focus is generally Turkey and examples from Turkey, which is a kind of limit in itself. So, I hope next semester we will have many of Danish friends in our classroom as well as exchange students.

Classroom Observation in Copenhagen - Week 44

This week we have been to a school in Copenhagen to observe an English class. Before our trip to Copenhagen I tried to learn about Danish schools and classes as much as possible so that I, at least, had an idea of what I was going to see and I was quite excited about that since it was a kind of  first practice for me. After a one-hour trip to Copenhagen we met Peter in Copenhagen and we went to the school.

My first impression of the school was about the school environment. I was quite surprised by the school which had no entrance policy -we went into the school directly; wtihout being asked who we were and why we were there -Almost all of the schools in Turkey are surrounded by fences and  you're generally asked for the reason of your visit to the school. 

After meeting the English teacher of the school, we observed two classes. All of the students were very kind to us. And we had the chance to observe the students and the classrooms while they were dealing with their tasks. 

The first class that we observed were quite good at English and many of the students were willing to speak in English. They were around 25 students and they were sitting in groups from three to six - which I found quite useful to increase cooperation. 

When we first went into the classroom with the teacher, they just sat down after getting their things. It took around two minutes for them to settle down. They started with a game of describing animals. They were all walking in the classroom to meet their partners and to ask each other about the animals they described -which involved communication. Then, they wrote poems and they read the poems aloud. After that, the teacher  gave feedback for the worksheets they did before. Except for a few moments of giving  feedback, teacher did not explained any grammar point explicitly. When they were talking about the language, the teacher tried to ask yes/no questions to the students so that they were still thinking and finding the right answer. The teacher gave instructions, answered the questions of the students individually, and walked around the class to observe her students while they were on their tasks but still it was a student centered class. All of the students were active all the time since the teacher assigned the students with another task when they finished their first task. In this way, she made the quick learners practise and created a stress-free environment for the other students.

During our observation of both of the classes, the teacher did not state how much time they needed for any of the tasks. When I asked her after the class, she explained that in this way she was not that much time - focused and she had the possibility to see how much time they really needed. 

With the other class we oberved, the teacher was more authoritative compared to her first lecture that we had been. In fact, this is generally what most of the teachers lack in their teaching style because you need different strategies for different classes- even for different students sometimes. Of course the teacher had many things in common in both of the classes relating her teaching style but it was a good example of how to deal with two different classes especially in terms of discipline. 

In both of the classes, students were to obey some basic rules; like asking for permission before speaking, being quite  while others were speaking and  keeping the classroom environment clean. There was a kind of table of rules on the wall. It was quite interesting because the title was "The rules made by the teacher". I guess it would be better if the students felt they made the rules themselves. In this way, I believe that they might obey the rules better. 

Both of the classrooms we observed were quite colourful and stress-free.  Students were wearing their casual clothes - in Turkey students generally wear uniforms- . Some of them were wearing hats during the classes. To my surprise, two of the students took off their shoes in the classroom, which you can never come accross in Turkey. So, the classroom environment had been arranged in a good way so that students could feel comfortable enough to focus on their task and the subject. 

Finally, I want to mention a little bit about the techniques and the methods that the teacher used. As far as I observed, the teacher gives a lot of importance to cooperation and group work. All of the tasks she assigned her students involved a lot of interaction. She benefitted a lot from communicative tasks, and games. She also benefitted very much from translation. When the students needed translation, she tried to use the native language of the students. She either gave the equivalent meaning of the unknown words or asked one of the students to make sure that everyone understood the same thing. 

To conclude, it was very interesting for me and for my friends to observe an English class in Denmark. It was a kind of first step for our teaching practice since we will start observing and doing practice in Turkey next year. It was also the first step for our school experience in Denmark as we will do teaching practice in January and February in one of the public schools in Denmark. Now, I am really looking forward to starting my practice here.