Today, our class watched two
videos of English teaching in junior high schools.
The first one impressed me the
most, it was amazing how many activities she managed to do in one class, and
what's more is that it seems like a lesson that was taught by principles;
somehow the many features we learnt in the current communicative language
teaching approach seemed to be realized in it. This was the kind of teaching
I'd like to present to my future students.
After watching the video, our professor
reminded us of a very abstract view of the video. It is kind of hard to
explain, but I'll try my best. Our professor reminded us that she
presented the lesson in a small scale; all the activities seemed very fragment
but were stringed together to reinforce the learner's comprehension of the
text. There is, however another alternative she could've considered, which is
to introduce the lesson on a larger scale and comparing it with other relevant
fields of content. But both the small scale and big scale has its pros and
cons. In doing the big scale, because the content varies drastically, therefore
can easily grasp the learner's attention, however it's drawback is that
learners with more beginner's level will have a hard time learning anything at
all because the content focuses more on comparing and less on the textbook
lesson itself. Small scale would insure that beginners will learn more, and
other levels can review as well, however it may get a bit boring unless the
teacher thinks of different meaningful ways to emphasize the lesson text. I
think then, that a teacher can start with a small scale teaching, and then when
there is time, advance to the large scale teaching; however when there is no
time maybe it will be better to have a larger proportion on small scale ... for
all levels can learn something, I think the "boring" problem can be
reduced by adding more innovative ways to review within the small scale.
