Thank you Penny for the great tips and for 4 weeks of information and ideas.
Thank you Penny for the great tips and for 4 weeks of information and ideas. I will be thinking about and implementing much of the advice as I'm sure the other participants will be doing as well.
For me, this week had some interesting ideas about reading and check comprehension. For example, I really enjoyed reading out loud and guessing new words by context when I was a student because it was almost like a game. However, I also have vivid memories of some of my classmates painfully stumbling over words (even though we were all native speakers). I hadn't really thought about those kids before even though I am sure some of them exist in my classes now. While I wouldn't remove it altogether, I will think more carefully about when and how I ask students to read aloud.
As for comprehension questions, I had the same experience when I was studying Japanese in university. I usually get around it with my students by asking them to perform some task based on the reading (usually debate) rather than checking comprehension. Although, I may add some now that I have new ideas for how to check for understanding.
Finally, I appreciate Penny’s focus on using corpus based research to guide language teaching. Being aware of what language is important and appropriate at each level of language teaching helps us to better serve the needs of our students. I have used this information to guide my writing of an in-school textbook because I found that the previous text was inappropriate for the majority of students expected to read it.
For me, this week had some interesting ideas about reading and check comprehension. For example, I really enjoyed reading out loud and guessing new words by context when I was a student because it was almost like a game. However, I also have vivid memories of some of my classmates painfully stumbling over words (even though we were all native speakers). I hadn't really thought about those kids before even though I am sure some of them exist in my classes now. While I wouldn't remove it altogether, I will think more carefully about when and how I ask students to read aloud.
As for comprehension questions, I had the same experience when I was studying Japanese in university. I usually get around it with my students by asking them to perform some task based on the reading (usually debate) rather than checking comprehension. Although, I may add some now that I have new ideas for how to check for understanding.
Finally, I appreciate Penny’s focus on using corpus based research to guide language teaching. Being aware of what language is important and appropriate at each level of language teaching helps us to better serve the needs of our students. I have used this information to guide my writing of an in-school textbook because I found that the previous text was inappropriate for the majority of students expected to read it.
Hi Mikaela! I like your idea about having students complete a task rather than check comprehension. How do you usually find out if they have understood correctly? When I ask if they've understood, they all nod along, so I tend to check (more advanced/confident students) by citing some "fake" information from a text and they tend to react by correcting me, but you'd be surprised how many let it pass them by! We could also get them to do a quiz like Kahoot via their phones then you can check students individual understanding.
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