How to be an effective EFL writing teacher

Writing is a technique that many students are afraid of. As in  a maxim, they say “Writing that can be postponed, will be”. The fact is that some people are very interested in writing. They are not writers but they write very interesting essays. The situations are opposite. Why are they afaid of writing but not speaking or others?

Speaking and writing are quite different. In speaking, students can speak freely and the listeners can understand the more easily because sometimes they do not really need all the grammar points while in writing, they always think of grammar, the culturally situations to expess their thinking. They can speak freely but it is difficult to understand with free writing.

One of the way to change negative attitudes toward writing is to teach students that writing is more a mode of learning than a skill. In fact, this makes someone even more negative because different people have different point of view in writing, so that students always worry that their writing s are not suitable  for their teachers and they do not want to write.

Raimes considers that the teaching of writing should stress the students’ ideas but not grammar. This is in condition for only the beginners. As for the advanced learners, the ideas and the structures come together closely.

Taylor, and Ramies think that organization grows out of ideas. As for beginners, outlines and instructions are very important. They help them believable to write what their teachers ask them to do especially when the teachers give them a goal.

I quite agree with the point that, after each writing lesson, the teacher should correct the students’ writing. When writing they do not know they write in the correct way or not. It will be more effective when the teacher shows out all the mistakes for each student. They may not cause that mistakes again. We all know that but it is very difficult to do so because there are 40 or 50  even more students in one class so that we do not have enough time to do what I want to do. Sometimes, correction of errors did not help the students in writing because they do not pay attention to it or they do not understand what the teacher said. They write as an obligation.

As speaking, reading and listening, writing needs time to develop.

“Imported” communicative language teaching: Implications for local teachers

Comment:

Imported” communicative language teaching (CLT) is a problem which the teachers at schools , universities, colleges, centers have to cope with. What does Pham Hoa Hiep mean when he uses the word “imported”? Most local teachers used grammar structures in teaching English some years ago. They change to CLT recently. The problem here is that, many authors have had arguments about CLT. CLT is seen as an approach (Rechards and Roger, 1986) while almost local teachers consider it as a skill. Therefore, they ask their students to practice speaking during the lessons and think  it is CLT. They do not realize that speaking requires the link of linguistic and sociolinguistic competence (Burns and Joyce, 1997). It does mean that speaking needs grammar controlled and language uses.

In my opinion, CLT is the combination of many teaching fields:

-         Using the grammar structures in the right way.

-         Using the vocabulary, pronunciation, intonation effectively.

-         Using the language in the right context.

         People use the language to express their ideas in different situations so that when this function is broken, language is not always communicative. The goal of CLT is native speaker communication. We can look at the given examples:

-         Do you like bananas?           (Grammar structure – Like or dislike)

Yes, I do /  No, I don’t.      

-         Do you like bananas?           (Invitation – Colloqual language)

No, thanks.                          

-         Would you like bananas?      (Invitation – Colloqual language, formal way)

Yes, Thanks.

           - Bananas?  (Invitation – Colloqual language)- Using a tone for an invitation.

         - Is there a post office near here? (Asking for direction, not asking if there is a post office).

Why do teachers at local schools “import” and some teachers at universities who learn CLT in foreign countries but they still use the grammar structures? Which methods of teaching are used base on the materials – Syllabus designs. The reason is that: Materials at schools  are produced based on grammar structures so as the state exams. The students learn the language to pass the exams first.That is why our materials have the need of a change to be more suitable for the learners’ purposes.

            In short, inorder to make CLT come to its goal,  when teaching a lesson, the teacher has to teach grammar points, vocabulary, pronunciation, intonation and the way  how to use the language in the right context carefully and effectively. They are in one chain which can not be broken out.

 

Assignment for the second day

This is the second day for our course but we haven’t got used to the lesson yet. It is difficult for us to login our blogs or save our materials in Delicious though our teacher helps us much. My teacher asked us to read some websites and I found some interesting articals to read.

I am a teacher of English. I pay much attention to the pronunciation. I find some web pages in which we have many lessons to deal with teaching pronunciation and teaching English:

1. http://www.k-way.home.sonic.net/

Notes on Dr. Olle Kjellin’s Pronunciation Teaching Method

This web site is interesting for teachers who teach the beginner to practice the sounds. It is easy for the beginners because there are steps in practicing. The beginners will find interested in those steps.

2.http://www.paulnoll.com/Books/Clear-Speech/index.html

“American” clear speech sounds

This helps us to learn pronunciation too. We have lessons which tell us the mouth positions when we produce vowel or consonants sounds, the syllable length, English rhythms and many other things interesting.

3..http://www.paulnoll.com/Books/Clear-English/index.html

American English teaching material

In this website, we have all kinds of lessons for the learners to learn pronunciation. All the goals, the differences in English and American sounds. The similarities/ differences exercise which helps the learners to practice the sounds betters.

4.http://www.paulnoll.com/Books/index.html

Books to Help Learning English

This helps us to finds many books which are useful for teachers

Short-term and long-term plans and possibilities for using computer assisted language learning in my teaching environment.

Applying high technology in teaching English is a problem for teachers depending on the conditions for learning of each school. As for my centre, we have computers so that I can do some of the things that change my ways of teaching.

          First, as for the short term plan, I use the comuper to prepare the lesson instead of writing by hand. I try to use the powerpoint to design the lesson, using materials on internet.

  I can use my web site for teaching and connecting with my students (http://moon75364.wordpress.com) or I create one own website for the whole class. I can post my requirements and schedule on it, students look and do what I ask them to do. Each week or month, I give a topic for students to discuss and each student has to  post a comment on that topic. When doing so all of them have to think of something to post and everyone can read the comments. That is one of the way students learn English out their class. When one post on the web site, they will do their tasks or prepare their comments more carefully because they know that many people are going to read their articals. Students themselves can give the topic for the week or the month , the teacher decides at last or chooses which topic  is most suitable or related to the lesson they are learning. Students will be attracted by all the things they post on the web site.

          Second, as for the long term plan, I will try to learn more about computer and design my lessonsusing Hot potatoes for help. I can add audio tape by using audacity or use it to record my students’ voice and play back for them to listen. They could hear their voices and their mistakes so that they can correct the better. Inoder to make the lesson plan more attractive, I use google to find the suitable pictures then copy pictures to paste in the teaching plan by Infanview. As for teachers and students, it doesn’t take much time when we look for our materials when we save the name of the web sites using Firefox. I will try to use them as much as possible and tell my students to use them , too. I am not good at computer yet but I think little by little I will make progress and computer wil be helpful to me.

Moon

VN EFL537 Great thanks to our prof. Jeff Lebow

Course reflection

Ten days  passes while I don’t think the course finish because we are very interested in learning this subject. On the first day of the course, I was very worried about it because I don’t know much about computers. The prof. first gave the instructions but very quickly. We understood the instructions but we couldn’t follow because we had to find where is where. The next day he changed, he showed the instructions, we could read and followed . It was much easier and we could finish all the things he asked us to do. We had to stay in class all days to ask what we did not know yet. We helped each other and tried our best because our professor spent a lot of time for us. We were in Viet Nam and it was the day time while our prof. had to work at midnight. We didn’t want him to waste any of  his time. We – all the students in VN EFL537 give  great thanks to our professor Jeff Lebow. He encouraged us all the time.

Moon.