Speaking
From the theory of the traffic light, I learn it’s not proper to correct students’ speaking errors whenever they make mistakes because it may reduce their confidence and make them afraid of speaking. If I were a teacher for beginners and intermediates, I would correct my students in logical errors which would confuse or mislead people instead of correcting their local errors which are small errors and couldn’t confuse people. In case I am going to do so, I will say “Maybe it’s better to say this…..this way.” or “ It’s not quite proper to say......” What’s more, I can also correct those errors by writing down on the blackboard in the end of the class rather than correct students immediately and interrupt their speeches. Nevertheless, it depends on what students’ personalities are. If he is outgoing, bold and not afraid of disgrace, I will correct him immediately. Therefore, I had better have good knowledge of students’ personalities. On the other hand, for advanced learners, I think it is appropriate to correct their diction and grammar and so on for great promotion.
Reading
I am going to teach my students strategies about reading. If they are 8-12 years old, I prefer to have them read orally because it helps them concentrate more on the class and I can also check their pronunciation. For junior high students, I will ask him to read silently because reading orally would easily disturb their attention as well as comprehension. What’s more, it takes much more time. Some skills I will teach are as following:
1. Skim the text for main ideas. They can get the main idea quicker.
2. Scan the text for specific information. If they are doing reading texts, I will ask them to read questions first and then get back to the text to read quickly and find answers.
3. Guess when you aren’t certain. It is better to guess the meaning when you encounter vocabularies or messages you don’t know. You can guess meaning according to front and rear text or other clues in the text. You shouldn’t perplex and trouble yourself with those uncertain vocabularies during reading. It takes you much more time to something unworthy. It would be a torture to skip or guess meaning at first but after you cultivate the habit, you would make unexpected progress in your reading. Because I had been also this kind of student who feel unbearable to guess or skip vocabularies I don’t know.
4. Analyze vocabulary. Look for prefixes, suffixes and roots to analyze words.
5. Distinguish between literal and implied meaning. Implied meaning is often derived from pragmatic meaning and thus they should have good knowledge of the context. It means they must get the general idea about the text.
6. Discourse markers. From those markers sometimes you can find out relationships between causes and effects or other related context.
Besides those reading strategies, I think the best way to promote their reading abilities is to read as many as possible by using those strategies. Therefore, I am going to ask my student to do more reading no matter in outside reading or reading test exercises. If it's outside reading I would give them some schemata to have ideas about the text.
Writing
If I have chance to teach writing, I wouldn’t correct students all kinds of errors they make especially in first draft. First, I will check whether the student express his idea clearly. As correcting speaking, I will correct some errors which confuse and mislead people and then give him some ideas about presentation that how he can present ideas or make details more convincing and also correct vague words. I will correct errors by underline those errors to remind them instead of correcting directly and giving answers. What’s more, I would like to give some feedback about the context and share some related experiences with him.
2 則留言:
Have you ever corrected your students' errors?
Yes, I have. Before learned the context of how to teach speaking, I have corrected my student's errors ,even local errors, all the time. But now I try not to correct their local errors and just tell them the correct pronouncing of some words. It's indeed more efficient to make students speak with less fear and they are more willing to speak even though they are not sure some words.
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