a) Taking into consideration the macro and micro strategies that are offered within the strategic framework for the L2 teaching in the post-method era (See Kumaravadivelu, 1994), please comment on which of these strategies do you think your previous EFL teachers put into practice? Also comment on to what extent and how effectively they implemented them.
b) How do you think of integrating the macro and microstrategies suggested by Kumaravadivelu (1994) into your own teaching as a prospective EFL teacher? Where would these strategies stand in your own teaching philosophy?
What are the possible challenges and obstacles concerning the integration of the macro and micro strategies in the EFL context?
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B)In my opinion, the most important macrostrategies which should be applied into the classroom environment are "facilitate negotiated interaction" and "contextualize linguistic input".Also in my teaching philosophy, these two elements will be the leading principles.
ReplyDeleteBecause of the fact that we are experienced learners, we are aware of the mistakes that our previous teachers had made.I think, two strategies that I mentioned above are the most ignored ones.So, as prospective teachers, we should know the best ways of integrating them in order to make our students more acknowledged.
For example, in high schools teachers never create an negatiation environment.Learner-learner or learner-teacher interaction is kept minimally which is the easiest way.Some microstrategies such as group activities,asking open-ended questions are ignored maybe because of limited-time or recklessness.However, in my opinion, negatiation is one of the best ways to contextualize linguistic input.
If I were a teacher,I would follow this patch: after I provide some grammatical input, I would ask a controversial issue and make students talk about it.Students would use linguistic input to negotiate. Thus, I would kill two birds with one stone. Of course, only using in speech doesn't work. I would provide some reading passages,simulations or gaming role plays.
I know that, levels of students and classroom atmosphere are important but this is the most beneficial way for both teachers and students.
My previous teachers used "promote learner autonomy". He not only played his part and went but he also directed our individual learning. He first focused on us as individuals and helped us to regulate our own learning strategies, which was really hard and took a lot of time, but it was really successful.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion "contextualize linguistic input" and "integrate language skills" are the most important macrostrategies. Teaching linguistic input -especially vocabulary- in context is usefull because depending on my own learning experience, when learners encounter a word that they've learnt they firstly remember its context rather than its meaning. So I think it is reallt useful to contextualize vocabulary items.
Integrating language skills are also important when we look at the products of grammar-oriented system. Language teaching is not teaching some grammer rules, but combining them with listening reading speaking and writing activities.
In my teaching I will try to implement these two macrostrategies as I think they are the most important ones.
As Şeyma said,my previous teacher used "Promote learner Autonomy".Thanks to him,I realised that every student has different learning styles and methods.He helped us make our own handy strategies to learn.I also want to this method, because this gives the learners awareness about their learning styles.
ReplyDeleteHowever,the less used strategy as far as I see is "Raise Cultural Consciousness".The teachers are only focusing on the curriculum subjects and grammar rules without the culture of the language which they are supposed to teach although the language and the culture are related to each other very closely.I will also give importance to this.
Teaching a language doesn't mean that teaching only the grammar rules of it.It also includes integration of listening,speaking,reading and writing.Firstly,I will make emphasis on active skills(speaking,writing)and passive skills(listening and reading)then productive and receptive skills.So "integrating Language Skills "is also one of the most important one in my opinion.
Among the macro and micro strategies put forward to teach L2 in post-method era, my previous teachers usually gave importance to raising cultural consciousness and integrating language skills. That is to say, they tried to provide us activities including all writing, reading, listening and speaking skills and gave information about the culture of the language which was thought. Especially in the year when I was preparing for the university entrance exam, our teachers used to say that we were making mistakes because we didn't have the understanding of the native speakers' perspective. For that reason, they used to give us some cultural information explaining the usage of some vocabularies or phrasal verbs, which helps us to understand the reason behind their usages. Apart from these post-method era strategies, as a prospective fle teacher, I believe contextualizing linguistic input is also very important. I would try to create a context for everything I teach because it prevents the inputs from staying up in the air.
ReplyDeletea)One of my previous teacher was implementing Raise Cultural Consciousness. While teaching English, she was also talking about English people and their culture. Thanks to her, I know how they live, what they eat and how they call what they eat or how is it like to live there etc. Raising cultural consciousness is so important because language and culture cannot be seperated. If you don't know anything about the culture of the language that you're going to learn, I can assure that you can't learn it. In addition; learning about the culture creates an empathy toward native speaker's world and we can see "the language" from their perspectives. The second macrostrategy that one of my teacher used was Facilitate Negotiated Interaction. He did such a great job that everybody in the class were participating in the lesson and taking turn. We used to form groups and led discussions. We weren't afraid of making a mistake, and he always encouraged us to speak in the target language.
ReplyDeleteb)Integration of macro and micro strategies is an indispensable need for us. We, as prospective teachers, should know how to theorize, analyze and how to put them into practice. To me, the most important macrostrategies are to facilitate negotiated interaction and to contextualize linguistic input. These two are really vital for a teacher because if we don't implement the first one, students don't want to participate in or they become passive learners all the time. And if we don't implement the second one, everything that we -think to- teach becomes futile. Students memorize and forget just like we do for most of the class. We should contextualize and connect the linguistic input. Microstrategies like problem solving, role playing can be used to put this macrostrategy into practice.
As for the obstacles, the classroom population could be a challange or students' level can be an obstacle for using some microstrategies, but it's alright. I mean, we should find a solution and learn to choose the best way to teach English.
In high school we used books which has intensive amount of cultural elements. So we mostly dealt with the culture of the countries where English is spoken. our teachers were kind of trying to "raise culture awareness". I don't think it is that much important to learn culture when learning a second language. I think being unaware of the culture is not obstacle; however, learning culture can have a positive effect.
ReplyDeleteThey put emphasis on "contextualizing Linguistic İnput" as the teacher used the new vocabulary items in sentences and then as homework we were wanted to form sentences similar to what we did in the class. When I become a teacher, this macro strategy may have first priority for two reasons. First, as we all know a word can have different meanings and different usages in sentences. Second, I believe that isolated Linguistic items are not so memorable as those in centext. I don't see any obstacle to this macro strategy.
I would also give importance to activating intuative heuristics because it is better to give grammatical rules not directly but with the help of examples, texts etc. so that learner will have less problem memorizing grammal rules and using them while speaking. this could require much time but I'm quite sure that the results will worth it.
a)One of my previous English teacher put emphasis on negotiated interaction. He kept us actively involved in the lesson. In other words, he didn't just lecture us, but he encouraged us to talk and respond to the lesson. While teaching, he was asking many questions related to the topic and making us guess or comment before explaining the whole topic. I think, participating to lesson and involving actively in it helped us learn much more easily.
ReplyDeleteAnother teacher of mine used to integrate language skills as much as possible. She was combining listening activities with vocabulary or reading with writing etc. In my opinion, putting this macrostrategy into practice is really challenging (due to the various topics that may not be suitable to integrate all skills) but very significant because learning a language requires to internalize all the skills relating to it. Being good at just writing or grammar etc is not enough to be proficient in that language.
b)In my teaching philosophy, implementing every single one of the macrostrategies is important as I believe they all have a beneficial part for students to master a language easily. However, apart from the macrostrategies I've already mentioned, I believe that raising cultural consciousness and contextualizing linguistic input are among the most important ones. Teachers always say that we shouldn't perceive the rationale of English as we do in Turkish, but we should think as the native speakers. I totally agree with them as one of the obstacles of learning a second language is culture. If learners don't know about the foreign culture, they don't understand certain situations, certain vocabulary items etc which leads to misunderstanding among the speakers. Another strategy I will put emphasis on is teaching language not as separate components but as a whole. I mean, instead of teaching grammar structures, vocabulary meaning or spelling separately, I will try to integrate them in context to increase comprehension and facilitate learning in an easier way.
a)When I was in High School, in preparation class, my English teacher used to tell me to use newly-learned vocabulary in sentences so that I can understand and remember their meanings more easily. That is, maybe a small part of the macro strategy called “contextualized linguistic input”. This method helped me a lot while memorizing new vocabulary. Also, my teacher always used to say to me “Someone learns a new language alone, teacher just shows you the rules but you acquire language with your own effort. “ That can be the macro strategy called “promote learner autonomy.” That method made me study on my own and learn many things without a teacher’s explaining. However, as I remember, there weren’t any more macro strategies used by my teachers.
ReplyDeleteb)I think; the macros strategy “ensure social relevance” and “promote learner autonomy” are important strategies that have a priority in use. That is because the teacher first should know about the socio-economic and educational environment of his/her students. After having enough information on these subjects, then s/he can determine his/her aims of teaching according to students’ needs. The second important macro strategy says that every learner has his/her own learning style and so they should first decide on their learning aims. While a learner wants to speak English fluently, another one may want to study on literature so their according to their aims, the technique changes. However in Turkey, all students who learn English have just one aim in common that is, to pass the exams and at this point all the techniques fail; and the teacher has to teach just grammar. If teacher wants to teach something other than grammar, s/he faces the objections of both the students and parents.
a)when I was in high school we when we learned a nev vocabulary firstly we were trying to make a sentence which contains this word. our teacher was also giving us homework to write a brief essay or story which contains the words that we have already learned. This technique can be seen as the macrostrategy 'contextualized linguistic input' according to me. When I had to form a sentence or a story including the newly learned words,I was thinking that that was a useless method as it was difficult for us to make a sentence with a word that we didn't know exactly how and where it is used. However, noow I think that the words that I easyly remember are generally these words and I think this strategy is usefull for second language learners to use the words already learned in a contextualized form.
ReplyDeleteb)As a second languge teachers we should use macro and microstrategies in classes,of course.according to me one of the most important macrostrategies iz 'integrate language skills' because it is not really enough only trying to teach some rules of language but we should also do some activities like reading,listening,writing etc...As I mentioned above in my previous experiences in high school I saw that 'contextualized linguistic input' is a useful macrostrategy for learning, so when I become a teacher I will focus on these macrostrategies mostly...
a)ın high school, my teacher attemp to behave acoording to 'activate intuitive heuristics' macrostrategy. She thinks that only giving the rules of grammar is not suitable for learning. she brought different kinds of text and materials which related to our grammatical topic and wanted us to be creative. For example she brought some texts which include some situations about conditionals and we found a solution to every problematic situation and acted out in classroom. while we enjoyed the lesson, we learn about the conditionals at the same time.) We learnt the rules not directly but indirectly through examples. It can also be related to Contextualize linguistic input strategy.
ReplyDeleteın my opinion, all the strategies are important bu the most important is to ensure social relevance. because nowadays with the hep of technology people learn everything from the internet and language for communication become more and more important. So only learning grammar is not enough for using language skills. Our students must learn about societal,political, economic and educational environment of L2.
ın the future, when I will be a teacher, I want to use some up to date information in my classroom to teach not only language but also social lifesytle of L2 people.
a)Although it is difficult to reach every student in the class, via using macro and micro strategies teachers can manage this. When I think about my previous ELT teacher, one of my prep class teachers in high school was using the macrostrategy, integrating language skills. The name of the course book was ‘Skill Zone’ and my teacher was doing the best for us to use almost every skill during the lesson. For example; we made little act- outs, we read a lot of short enjoyable stories, and I also remember that we did some listening activities. I think most of the time the technique was useful but listening activities were deficient because of some technological inadequacies of the school. And I also had a lesson which was called ‘Video’, in this lesson we watched two movies during the year but it didn’t help us much. However; our teacher was giving some cultural facts about England or America, she was implementing ‘raise cultural awareness’ strategy. And it was very effective.
ReplyDeleteb)According to me; ‘Facilitate Negotiated Interaction’, ‘Raise Cultural Awareness’ and ‘Contextualize Linguistic Input’ are very important for a teacher, and as a prospective teacher I think I will give more importance to these 3 strategy. Facilitate negotiated interaction is important because, for learning to occur there should be meaningful interaction between students and teacher. Teacher should create an environment that the students can involve actively which requires student to produce something in the class. When we think that we are in Turkey and almost the only place for students to make practice is classroom. Therefore, if teacher gives this opportunity to the students, it will be very effective in learning. The second one is raise cultural awareness; I think a language teacher should pay a lot of attention to this because no one can separate language from culture. Learning a language requires learning of the target language’s culture. Students should get familiar with the culture and the lifestyles of the people who speak this language in order to understand their way of thinking and words’ exact meanings. If there is no equivalent of any vocabulary item in students’ own culture, the only way to teach it is to give the information about the target culture. Contextualize linguistic input is another essential strategy. If I think about my learning, I remember that, when I learn new information in a context, I hardly forget it. In my opinion it is the same for all of the students. So it is necessary to create a context in order our students to be able to learn better and also not to forget.
I spent my preparatory year in high school in different school. When I look at my fist semester in prep class, I realise that my teachers used many of these macro and microstrategies. I think one of the most important of them is "Integrating Language Skills". We were doing all these reading, writing, listening and speaking activities during the class. Firstly, we were doing reading activities and then learning the unknown vocabularies in the text, namely, by learning the words in the sentences and in a meaningful context, we were "Contextualizing linguistic input. This strategy was very useful for me to internalize many of the word's meaning. Besides, we were “Activating Intuitive Heuristics” by inferring some of the grammer rules in the text. After that, we saw those grammer rules in the sentence , then we were able to understand the rules, and it was easily memorable for us. In skills lesson, our teacher implemented “ Raise Cultural Consciousness”. She would give us some information about the culture of a country, such as their cuisine, lifestyle, special days, musics etc. It was very useful for us to learn about such things, because we were aware of what kind of country’s language we learning. Hence, we were more enthusiastic about to learn their language.Then she would give us a controversial topic and encourage us to speak about this issue. We were in interaction with our teacher always. In “Video” lesson, we were watching many of things like cartoons, films etc. As we did not give importance to listening in our previous years, it was very useful and a strange experience for us, even it could be very hard sometimes. Apart from these, we were given a writing homework, and we had regular feedback for this work. We prepared so many projects about any issues, such as food, famous people etc. This activity was both informative and entertaining for us.
ReplyDeleteb)As a prospective teacher, I don’t want to stick to one or two macrostrategies. It is important to integrate all these macro and microstrategies to be influential teacher. I want to use all the techniques I mentioned above, because of the reasons I cited. However when doing this, I will implement these techniques according to the level of students. For example, it is not much useful to want your students to speak or write about troublesome issues if they even don’t know many grammer rules and words. As to microstrategies, I will want them to do group working, role playing, preparing some projects etc.Apart from those, I want to promote learner autonomy to develop their own learning techniques, because every student’s learning style is different, so the teacher cannot accommodate oneself to each of the student’s learning.
a) My teacher used "Maximize Learning Opportunities" as macrostratedgy. When we didn't understand something, she began to explain it. She explained the confusing point even if one of my friends didn't understand the topic. She thought that there could be another students who didn't undertsand the same point, and actually there were. For example, I didn't like to say "I didn't understand this", or many of my friends didn't say anything until one of them asked the question. My teacher began to answer it instead of ignoring or explaining it privately. Then many of us say "Yes, there was something that I couldn't understand here." Thanks to her, I learned many things. Another strategy that my teacher used was "Contextualize Linguistic Input". While she was teaching, she didn't give the rules or vocabulary items seperately. She gave us stories, cartoons and such interesting things. We tried to infer the meanings from the text. Therefore, learning was permanent. We learned many things by this way, and it is hard to forget them.
ReplyDeleteb)I think, it is indispensible to integrate the macrostrategies and the microstrategies. "Maximize Learning Opportunities", "Facilitate Negotiated Intecraction" and "Raise Cultural Conciousness" are most important strategies. I want to imply these strategies to my teaching classes. Maiximize learning opportunities is important because some of the students are shy, timid, and they can't ask questions when they don't understand something. Or many of them are afraid to ask such things because they think teacher may angry with them or their friends may make fun of them. I want to prevent such things, so I will imply this strategy and they will see it isn't a scary thing to ask questions. Another strategy is that facilitate negotiated interaction. In a class there should be proper student-student and student-teacher interaction. Students should be able to tell somethings abou themselves and their wishes. They shouldn't be afraid of teacher. So I want them to becaome friends with me not afraid of me. I can design groups to develop interaction between students and thus they can help each other when they don't understand something without making fun. Also I can ask open ended questions that students can answer them and I can learn more things about them. Also open ended questions push them to speak language. And they learn to not afraid of me and of friends. They will learn things with joy. And the last thing is raise cultural consciousness. I think a language and a culture can't be seperated each other. They must be teach at the same time. I will give information about how language is used, how English people live, what they eat... They will learn not only the language but also another culture. And they will understand English much more better. They will learn English people's daily language, traditions etc. They won't be foreign that culture.
Of course there will be some obstacles. For example, in a class every student has different characteristic and different bacgrounds. Their learning styles will be different. And also the number of students in class is important. But I will try to grab their attention by doing different exercises.
a) During my high school education, my teachers applied some of the macro strategies to some extent. These are facilitate negotiated interaction and contextualize linguistic input. At high school, we always learned new vocabulary in sentences in a meaningful text. Our teacher used to imply the other contexts the word can be used. We never learned the new vocabulary items as isolated. This method was effectively implemented because we learned the vocabulary items in a meaningful way. We did not only learn the Turkish translation of the words but we could also learn in what contexts the word is used to give what meaning. The other macro strategy our teacher implemented to some extent is facilitating negotiated interaction. Our teacher encouraged us to take part in the lessons actively. I can say that our lessons were interactive to some extent. We used to ask questions about the points we could not understand. We used to take turns to do exercises. Our teacher sometimes asked open ended questions during the class as a pre- reading activity such as “Should the dead penalty be allowed?”. Our teacher sometimes implemented promoting learner autonomy. He used to tell us how to study on our own. He told the points we should focus on while studying individually.
ReplyDeleteb) I will try to implement contextualize linguistic input, integrate language skills, promote learner autonomy, and facilitate negotiated interaction. I will implement contextualize linguistic input because teaching vocabulary as isolated is of no use. I will teach vocabulary in meaningful contexts in this way the students will learn more than the translated meaning of the word. I will also imply the other contexts the word can be used in. Integrating language skills is also important because language is not just writing, reading, listening or speaking. Four of them should be together in a lesson. The skills should not be used in isolation. In real life, four skills are interrelated so this must be case in the classroom. Facilitating negotiated interaction is also important in the classroom. The lessons should be interactive. All of the students should have the encouragement to ask questions, answer questions. Promote learner autonomy is also important because the teacher cannot do everything in the classroom. The learner should have the autonomy to control his or her learning outside the classroom and the teacher is responsible for preparing the learner both psychologically and strategically for directing his or her learning. .
a)In my class my English teacher mostly was applying Macrostrategy 2 where it is said that:
ReplyDeleteMacrostrategy 2: Facilitate Negotiated Interaction. This macro strategy refers to meaningful learner-learner, learner-teacher interaction in class. Negotiated interaction means that the learner should be actively involved in clarification, confirmation, comprehension checks, requests, repairing, reacting, and turn taking. It also means that the learner should be given the freedom and encouragement to initiate talk, not just react and respond to it. Although research has not yet conclusively demonstrated any causal relationship between negotiated interaction and language development, there is overwhelming evidence to suggest that L2 learners need to be provided with opportunities for negotiated interaction in order to accelerate their comprehension and production.
In our class the most important thing was an interaction. We had people from Angola, Azerbaijan and me from Turkmenistan. So all we needed to talk in English because none of us knew Turkish when we came to Turkey, and it was useful to for teacher to know whether or not we understood the given information and interaction was the best way to learn about it. Because not I and not the friend from Angola did not know Turkish all of the students were supposed to talk in English so not only their grammar was developing but also their spoken English was developing as well. This influenced not only spoken production of our English but also writing became more fluent, because students began to think in English.
b) I think that I also would use the second macro strategy in my teaching because if it was useful in my learning and in learning of many students in the Prep. School, I think that it would useful for my students as well. In my teaching philosophy it will be in the first place because an interaction is the main point in learning. In the second place I would place Macrostrategy 8: Promote Learner Autonomy because learner should have intrinsic motivation and should be independent in learning. And we as a teacher should guide, motivate and provide the students with appropriate materials and also give them chance to learn by themselves. Giving them problem solving material would most probably provide in them responsibility in their actions and we as a teacher should provide them an appropriate feedback so that not offend the students psychologically.
While reading and thinking about the Kumaravadivelu’s article I realized that my prep school teacher in high school tried to use most of these macro-strategies. When we learn a new topic, she would want us to do something which would help to internalize it. For example when we learned imperatives she wanted us to search the meals or desserts of America or England, choose one of them and write its recipe using imperatives. By doing this she was contextualizing the linguistic input while raising cultural consciousness, because while I was searching I learned lots of things about their food culture. We would tell our recipes in class and comment about them. By doing that she was facilitating negotiated interaction and integrating language skills, because while we are learning a grammar topic we were also writing, discussing, listening and we were doing it in an enjoyable way.
ReplyDeleteWhen I become a teacher I will try to implement all these strategies as far as I can, because they are all very important on their own. Of course I will consider my student’s environment, ethnicity, language level and students’ interests. Firstly I will try to teach in a meaningful and enjoyable way. If they understand why they are learning this L2, I am sure it will be more easy and enjoyable to learn a foreign language. Promoting language autonomy will be my second aim because teacher cannot teach everything to students. When the lesson ends it is student’s turn to take the responsibility of his/her learning. If I can show them some ways about how to learn, they can improve themselves outside the classroom.
There can be some obstacles in implementing those strategies in classroom like class size. Especially Interactive learning may be difficult in crowded classrooms, but as future teachers I am sure we will do our best to give a qualified language education to our students.
When I was in high school, I had difficulties with memorizing vocabularies, because only giving the words and then the Turkish meaning of them isn't useful for students. One of my English teachers used "contextualizing linguistic input" method to provide us more meaningful learning. We saw the words in a text,or even in a short paragraph, so that the words could make sense of something for us, they aren't just isolated elements.
ReplyDeleteAs far as I remember, another teacher of mine in high school used "integrating language skills" to provide us more comprehensible input. After each subject, we used to write a story or a short essay with using information that we just learned. This also helped our creativity. Besides, we used to do listening and reading activities much. However, speaking activity wasn't prefered very much by teachers. I don't know whether it is because of students' unwillingness or teachers' choice,but this part should be strenghten.
If I were a teacher, I would mix up all of these strategies as several of my friends said, but more important strategies for me are "facilitating negotiated interaction" and "promoting learner autonomy". Interaction in a class is useful for learners, because this provides them not just being a passive listeners, but active learners. They can produce something by themselves and this learning will be more permanent for them. Also, group activities will be helpful and enjoyable."promoting learner autonomy" is also vital one, because it is necessary that learners decide how to learn and gain consciousness about their own learning strategies. This strategy also helps learners to be active and take responsibility for their own learning.
I had a good english teacher and while he was giving us input ,what he was paying attention to, was making this input a meaningful one. I dont know whether he was aware of that, or not, "contextualize linguistic input" was what my teacher put into practice. This is important, especially very important for me. Because when ı am learning something, or when I am offered something to learn, I want to know that what kind of thing it is, if it is a word, how can i use it, ex.So contextualizing the input helps students to acquire better. What a teacher uses to contextualize an input is what a student uses as a tool to learn better. This is the case especially in vocabulary learning process. Giving a text maybe, sentences inculing the words will be very helpful to learn.
ReplyDeleteIntegration of strategies makes stratedies more feasible and effective. but this should be a logical integration. As a prospective teacher, I will make use of "contextualize linguistic input", "integrate language skills" integrated. these both are more effective used together also makes each other easy and effective to apply. I think I can easily make an input a contextualized one making use of writing, listening activities and doing that, these kind of language skills will reach their targets.
Everything is for students, for them to learn more. How good we are.
education is a must.
a)my teacher in prep class in high school used mostly contextualize linguistic input, and integrate language skills. when we were learning a grammar rule, we always read a passage or dialogues that contained this rule or she would do lots of excercises on the topic unless we learned it.Also, during the class she would always have a room for every skills; we would read, we would speak, we would try to produce something. I think that really helped me, because most of the things that I've learned is thanks to her. Besides, she would always encourage group works and us to participate and contribute.
ReplyDeleteb) as a prospective teacher I think all of the macro strategies are very important and they should be implemented in the classroom. We should maximize learning opportunities, because we are sort of a source to teach and we should use every chance to teach and we should create the environment for the learners to be actively involved and be willing to learn. we sholud encourage them to learn. "contextualize linguistic input" is I think the most important one, for it helps them to acquire things and makes it permanent."promote learner autonomy" is the second important one; we should learn them how to learn, because we will have a limited time to teach. If we teach them how to learn and direct them, they will learn outside of the class also. and I think, if you learn someting just by yourself, it will be more permenant and useful and it improves problem solving skills.
shortly, I will try to use all of them because each of them will help me improve my teaching skills.
ı think "integratwe language skills" is the best macrostrategy because by integrating all skills we can make students good at all arias. for example no matter how much you good at grammar if you don't know enough vocabolary it is not posibble to speak. a bird can not fly with one wing. in highscholl my teachers focused only on grammar and vocabolary but not at speaking and listening skills so ı still suffer at listening classes.
ReplyDeleteI don't know what my english teachers used as teaching strategies but I know that they didn't use 'facilitating negotiated interaction'or 'integrating language skills','contextualizing linguistic input', which are very crucial to promote the learning. They just taught us vocabulary and reading skills from a few definite sources whether they were appropriate for the context of the day or not. However one of our teacher gave much importance to critical thinking and tried to develop it in us by making us read and discuss some selected novels.And one another teacher of mine tried to develop 'promoting the learner autonomy';she gave us some useful tips how to study or improve our language skills by ourselves.
ReplyDeleteAs a prospective teacher I would like to use integrating language skills and contextualizing input because learning is facilitated when students can imagine the circumstances and when they are exposed to several language skills at the same time."Maximize Learning Opportunities" is one another macrostrategy that I feel the necessity of its use as a future teacher.“Activating Intuitive Heuristics” is also really a useful strategy of which I make use many times during exams or while guessing vocabulary therefore I also want to promote my students intuitive heuristics which I belive help them much in their language learning process. All in all, it is the best way to integrate all those macro and micro strategies in a lesson to accelerate their learning capabilities.
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ReplyDeleteA)One of my EFL teachers in high school was very good at using strategies or it is only my opinion. He wouldn't say the answers for our question immediately. He wanted us to make search about that question and to find the answer ourselves. The question was sometimes about grammar and sometimes about an unknown word. When he wanted us to find the answer, we would work on it and try to find the answer. Generally we could find the answer even if we wanted help from some others, when we told the answer our teacher, he would want us to explain the meaning of that word or the subject to him and so we could learn it easily, because to think that you teach something to a teacher is really a great sense:)Then, if we are not wrong, we could share it with our friends so our teacher created learning opportunities for us and also he would want us to for a sentence in that grammatical structure or by using that word, so we could contextualize what we learned.Sometimes he divided the classroom into groups and gave us some topics and vocabulary items and we tried to form some meaningful sentences and I think it could be a microstrategy.
ReplyDeleteB)When it comes to me, if I have to think myself as a teacher, of course I will use macro and micro strategies while teaching English but how?
Firstly, I'll certainly use contextualizing linguistic inputs, creating learning opportunity and facilitating negotiated
interaction between participants. Because if they cannot use what they learnd, then all teaching process is futile so these strategies provide them to learn by themselves and use them in a meaningful way. If I want to give them everything myself then the won't feel that this learning process have finished and they have learned because it is not the result of their work, so I should create learning opportunities and in order to use these strategies, I can make some role playing activities or discussion activities or I can ask them some questions.
In high school, my teacher used mostly 'contextualize linguistic input and integrate language skills'. We read many books. While we read books, we were learning many vocabularies. While reading,we had a chance to speak. Because our teacher asked questions.And we made reading competitions. They were very useful for us. We had a video lesson also. We watched movies. It was very useful for improving listening skills. All of this are very important. When I become a teacher, I will give importance these strategies. Only teaching grammer or vocabulary is not enough. We should give importance to listening and speaking also.I think another very importent strategy is raise culturel consciousness. To learn a language and understand these people correctly, we should know about their culture. I will try to give importance these strategies in my classes.
ReplyDeleteWhen ı learn more about language teaching, I have realized that my prep school teacher in high school was so successful and he took most of these macro and micro strategies into considiration."Contextualize linguistic input" and "integrating language skills" were what he generally used and I think they are most important ones. For example when he taught a vocabulary item he wanted us to look up dictionary and write the sample sentences about the word. We had a note book in which the sentences of new learned words were written and in the exam he gave a contxet in which target words were removed and he wanted us to fill the blanks. He integrated language skills, also. For example when he taught a grammar rule, he sometimes wanted us to write a pharagraph using the new learned rule and sometimes wanted us to speak about some events using the target rule. He also gived importance to pronunciation of new learned word, but I think "Raise cultural conscious" is also very impotant. He was not so successful in terms of this. When ı become a teacher I will give importance to teach the culture besides contextualizing linguistic input and integrating language skills.
ReplyDeleteOne of my previous English teachers never wanted us to try learning vocabulary items randomly. She created a session for this. We learned all the items in that class by means of the reading and listening we have done in that session, which helped us greatly to grasp the meaning from the context and this saved us from a lot of effort.Now I see that "contextualizing linguistic input" must be the strategy of my teacher.
ReplyDeleteIn my view, "integrating language skills" is very important and ignored in our country. The biggest problem we have suffered after coming to METU was about speaking. All of us was trained for YDS which is lacking certain abilities of a language such as listening and speaking. Because of this reason they were ignored mostly. Grammar rules and vocabulary items were given the students directly to save time without any effort to make them permanent by giving no other support of the other abilities. If they were given in right manner, together with other skills, we wouldn't suffer in the university that much.
Nearly all of the teachers know that each student has his/her own learning style but very few of them can apply a specific strategy while teaching because of this diversity. However my previous teacher was aware of this fact that every student learns in a different way. Therefore he mostly used "promote learner's autonomy". in this way stundents can discover their own leraning style and thanks to this they can learn more effectively.
ReplyDeleteAs a prospective teacher, I am thinking of using "contextualizing linguistic input" and "integrate language skills". In our country most of the students cannot learn for instance vocabulary efficiently because of the differences between Turkish and English culture. So an English teacher not should but have to give such things under the target language's cultural context to teach completely. otherwise students are only memorizing for their benefits such as for passing the exam. Moreover integrating language skills is also important because we use language not only for speaking or writing. Language is an integrated thing on its own so the students should listen, write in English, speak for fluent speech and know necessary vocabulary. With this strategies students' learnings become permanent.
ı think the most important macrostrategies in second language learning is raising cultural consciousness and contextualizing linguistic input. cultural consciousness is very important for the learners because language and its culture are integrated things for learning, because they cannot be seperated. if language is learned without its culture, it doesn't make any sense. life style, colloquial language is different in every culture, so teaching the culture with the language is crucial in language acquisition. also contextualizing linguistic input is significant in class environment. when the teacher gives information to the students, it must be meaningfully contextualized because teaching in a context provides a more comprehensible understanding for the learners. we learned lots of things as both right and wrong from our previous teachers, we as prospective teachers will integrate the strategies that we learned in class environment. providing group activities and sometimes individual work are very important for the students in terms of improving the iterpersonal and intrapersonal intelligences of the learners. also, giving these works providing a negotiated environment and integrating language skills for the learners significant parts of the second language acquisition.
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