English Teacher Training (No Longer Being Updated)

This blog was designed for my English Teaching Methodologies class in Japan. The course has ended but anyone who is interested about using blogs in teacher training ot education in general is encouraged to explore this site. We used the blog to exchange opinions about the course content, provide each other feedback on our practice teaching, and talk to current teachers. To see a blog that is currently active, please go to the English Teacher Discussion Forum.

Thursday, September 01, 2005

NO MORE SPAM PLEASE

My latest entry was inundated by 6 comments from spammers so I deleted it. Please do not leave spam on this blog. This blog is for people interested in teaching English and nothing else.

Status of this Blog: A Response to AJ/Skald

I received the following comment from AJ/Skald, an English teacher in Thailand:

"Great blog... are your students blogs the ones on the right sidebar? Ill try to encourage my students to investigate them and post comments. "

My Answer
The blogs for the students in my course, English Teaching Methodologies, are to the right. The students are currently on summer vacation and also doing their teaching practices so they are probably not checking their blogs right now. Furthermore, the course has ended. However, at least 4 of these students will continue their blogs in a seminar that they take with me this semester. In mid-September/ late September I will update the bloglist to the right and show the blogs of only those students who will continue to use them.

My Reflection on KMKM's Lesson

KMKM, You were all very charasmatic and the characters you made were hilarious! We all really enjoyed your lesson and I thought your interview activity and "Check Test" were very well done! Nevertheless, Naim seemed to struggle on both activities. Why did he struggle? I explained at length in my comment on Team Y's lesson that Naim did not understand the word "is". Also, I thought that when you practiced the numbers you were a little fast. Although a number of Japanese children can count to 10 before even starting Jr. High School English, Naim was learning 10 new words for the first time! I remember learning to count to 10 in Japanese and it took me 4 days of constant practice and drilling by a friend! Naim needed a little more time to practice saying the numbers. One idea is you can do choral practice (合唱練習) once or twice, then you can have the students practice saying the numbers in pairs for a few minutes, lastly you can call on individual students to say the numbers. I think we all learned a lot from watching your lesson. Not only did we get a lot of good ideas but I think that we all learned the importance of slowing down the pace in introducing new material. Thank you and have a nice weekend.