Answer Questions for interesting tests

My questions for thought are as follows:
1. (1)Short sequence or whole film?
That is short sequence and there are several scenes to show. A scene is maybe about three to five minutes.

(2)Does watching short sequences help students get the general gist of what is said?
I think it can help because every short scene is an individual situation. If you can tell others what’s happening on this scene, that means you can get the general idea of what is said in the film.

2. (1)Captioned or non-captioned?
Maybe watching the short sequence non-captioned at the first time, and then showing the short sequence captioned at the second time for double-checking.

(2)Does reading captions help with listening comprehension?
Yes. Maybe for me, it really does help. And when I always cannot get it even though I listen to it many times, captions will give me a big hand right away!!

Something about building strategic techniques

In the discussion about “Ten Commandments”, I agree with the first one very much-lower inhibition because I believe that learning atmosphere is very crucial for students’ learning. So if I am a teacher, I will hope my students can both learn and play. The teacher can design many different kinds of activities to let students enjoy the class. As a result, students not only get knowledge but also have fun, don’t they? They will feel comfortable to go to your class, not always feeling nervous. Maybe that means you are successful for doing this strategy.

And once students all like to go to class, maybe you can also cultivate their internal motivation to learn English. As far as I am concerned, rising students’ motivation is a very important thing but not easy to achieve for teachers. But once students have their own longing to learn something, it will be good for learning a language because they will like to learn by themselves. Basically language learning is just your own business, and others just provide you some method and information. The key for how to keep learning and how to polish up your English is really yourself!!

How to write a better paper

Basically, I think peer-editing is very important. In the past, I was afraid of letting my classmates read my writing because I felt embarrassed. And in my opinion, my composition work was just given in teacher to have a correction. However, in the English composition class in college, the teacher usually requests us to share our papers with our classmates. At first, I always worry that my poor writing will let others have a reading difficulty. But I really like this way because we can not only share the different opinions with each other and produce more interesting idea, but also help each other to notice and correct some grammatical details. So through this way we can learn not only how to write but also how to read. How to make a useful comment is based on you have correct concepts about writing.

And I think a better writing should be revised many times. And to tell the truth, this part will become an annoying point finally particularly you have to rearrange your paper or think out more detail idea. But I think revision can make you notice and learn what you never know or pay much attention to. It is just like you check your test paper before you submit it during any examination, or you will discover some errors enough make you angry. So I think though nobody can read your writing before you give it in your teacher, you should read it carefully over and over again.

These two ways I seldom use in the past, but now I agree with their value. So now if my classmates or roommates are free, I will request them to read my writing no matter in Chinese or in English. And I also learn to accept others’ suggestion and comment

Interesting listening test

Because the teacher almost focused on teaching grammar and vocabulary in the past, so I got few chance to do listening and speaking practice. As a result, my poor speaking and listening cannot afford any more in college. Actually most of courses concerned about speaking are named oral training class in college; there is still few training especially for listening.

Maybe we can say listening and speaking can practice at the same time, or you usually take the whole –English courses, that the professors always teach in English. I agree that it also does help. But if it is in connection with junior or senior high students, we should consider designing interesting listening test to make them have fun in learning.

One way I have ever heard before is also similar to one top-down exercise- finding main ideas and supporting details in our textbook. That is the teacher show a short video without no caption that several actors have a situational conversation, and after playing, teacher will request students to do a discussion with their partners to get a main point about what’s happening on the situation. And then the teacher will ask some students to do a short report and other students or the teacher himself/herself can support the details which those students don’t mention about. At last, the teacher will show the video with the caption again, saying “Let’s double-check it! “. I think this way is good to make most students involved in the activity, and the visual video can raise their interest.

The Reflection on the methods

Mainly I want to talk about the grammar translation method.

As we all knew and experienced it, the grammar translation is the most tranditional method to be used in our junior and senior high school. Maybe someone will criticize that it is just a boring learning way to memorize endless lists of unusable grammar rules and vocabulary, and do those translation exercises all the time. It cannot be doubted that the grammar translation method has its problems. However, I think the more serious problem is not the one mentioned above, but the lack of training in speaking and listening and also little attention to clear pronunciation. That because I believe teaching grammatical structure has its importance; we should not deny this fundamental learning way. After all, sometime memorization can provide good mental exercise and we can use our successful reading skill to know many foreign famous literature and knowledge.

Therefore, I think the problem can be focused on the idea that the second language is taught not as a spoken language, but only a written language. So in my opinion, the teacher can not only use a single method to teach students. If I become an English teacher in the future, I will adopt at least two methods to let my student involved the language learning. Maybe the direct way is not bad one to add into my teaching methods, because I like some of its principle, such as “Both speech and listening comprehension were taught, and correct pronunciation and grammar were emphasized.”, “Oral communication skills were built up in a carefully graded progression organized around question-and-answer exchanges between teachers and students in small, intensive classes.”

Hello!!

Hello, everyone.
My name is Cherry Chen, now I am the senior student in English Department in NCU.
I think I am a girl who likes to laugh and has terrible strength, but don't be afraid!! Basically I think I am a friendly person.
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