Blog #8 Professional Development #2

For my second professional development activity, I decided to take part in a #langchat conversation with other foreign language teachers on Twitter a few weeks ago. The conversation topic this time was “7 questions you should be asking about language speaking assessments.” The seven questions introduced prior to the chat were:

1.     What kinds of speaking assessments are there?

2.     How often should you have speaking assessment?

3.     How do we prepare students for speaking assessments?

4.     How do we keep them on task during speaking assessments?

5.     How do we provide them feedback?

6.     How do we have appropriate expectations about speaking assessments?

7.     What are some speaking assessment ideas that really work?

Of particular interest to me during this conversation were questions 3 and 7. I would have liked to try and keep track of all questions being discussed, but in the world of twitter it is often hard to track all tweets about a conversation without following all the right hashtags. When I was following question 3, two strategies stuck out to me: providing daily speaking warm-ups, and allowing practice with scripts. I believe warm-up speaking exercises are an important part of every lesson, which I pointed out in some of my tweets, and others pointed out that this is a good way to activate students’ prior knowledge to get them ready to use their speaking skills in the classroom. In addition this helps prepare them for a summative assessment that could be taking place. When teachers first mentioned that students using scripts was okay, I was a bit weary, but then it was made clear that this is really only for practice and formative assessments, this is okay and actually helped student learning. In regards to step 7, teachers tweeted a lot of activities that like students to complete for assessments. Some of my favorites were:

·            Speed Dating

·            Matching Games, a student has to get three of a kind by asking other students questions

·            Show and Tell presentations

·            Debates (the specific example was on school uniforms)

·            Giving students a scenario and asking them to record it using technology, then sending it to the teacher for assessment

This activity was a very enriching experience and I look forward to participating again in the future!

Blog #7 Grammar Instruction

Throughout the last two weeks, we have been focusing on grammar instruction in the foreign language classroom, and the different techniques used to teach grammar. Two methods have been presented to us both involve the art of story-telling: the PACE model (Presentation, Attention, Co-Construction, Extension Activities) and TPRS (Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling). The PACE model involves a great amount of higher level thinking on the student’s part. The instructor begins the lesson with a story, which contains the desired grammar structure. After the story has been presented, the students are asked for their observations about the language, and together with the instructor, they create and define their own rule for that grammatical structure. TPRS on the other hand does not require as much thinking from the students, as there is a lot of translation done for the students, and the grammar rules are often introduced in English (or native tongue). Within my own placement, my CT takes a different approach to teaching grammar. He does this in a very direct way. At the start of each chapter, packets are handed out to all of our students. In these packets are specific instructions in English how each grammar rules works, and this is often done in mostly English. When the rule has been explained to everyone, this is usually followed up by some drill exercises for students to complete for practice. This is very similar to my own experiences when learning grammar in high school, as all rules were often lectured to us, and we then were told to complete exercises in the book for more practice.

After having time to consider these different methods of teaching grammar, the one I could see myself using most in my classroom would be the PACE method. To me, this is the most engaging way to have students learn grammar, instead of only lecturing. In addition, I find that students will retain the information much more when they have the chance to construct their own rule. Furthermore, this would be a good place to introduce a bit of culture into the classroom, as the story chosen could come from a country which speaks the target language. Overall, while time-consuming, I find the PACE method the best way to instruct students on grammar.