Learning Circle Task: Read Maley (1986) carefully. Discuss the following question with your learning circle group. (Evison 2010)

Group members: Gemma, Irene, Laia, Monica, Sean, Sunny

1. This article was written 20 years ago. To what extent does it appear 'dated' or modern to you?
We think the whole concept of the article is quite modern because in the problem section he talked about how little is new about how language is learnt, and how difficult it is to carry out reliable research. It seems we are in a similar situation today.

2. Look carefully at the 'Implications for teaching' section on p. 89. Consider both your learning of English, and your teaching experience, and reflect on the extent to which Maley's predictions have ‘come true’ in your own learning/teaching context.
As the role of being a teacher, every prediction has come true; however, as a student, none of them have come true. We think the role of teachers and learners’ role will change simultaneously. Teachers have more freedom to choose the materials that they want to use and it reflected a various kinds of knowledge and evidently broaden the horizon of learners. The interaction among students is a common phenomenon that we could see in nowadays classroom.

3. To what extent do the advantages listed on page 90 outweigh the disadvantages? Choose one of the following and justify it in light of your own experience (1 – advantages completely outweigh disadvantages, 2 – advantages partly outweigh disadvantages, 3 – neither outweighs the other, 4 – disadvantages completely outweigh the advantages).
Most of us all think that advantages partly outweigh disadvantages: it’s good that students can actually have opportunities to use the language for purposes. If learners have their own purpose and strong motivation it would definitely help them to improve their learning, stimulate them to have the urge to learn and have passion to study further. Also, it would be more efficient not only for student but also for teacher to teach what is relevant and necessary. Besides, CLT requires much preparation for teachers, and it’s a little bit nervous that teachers have lack of security of the textbook.

4. Maley lists six problems (pages 91-2). In the light of your own teaching experience, can you rank these problems from 1 (most serious) to 6 (least serious).

Generally speaking, we group have two different ranking answers, one of our ranking answer is that No.5 (individual differences) is the most serious and No.2 (the difficulty of carrying out reliable research) is the least serious; the other ranking answer is No.1 (how languages are actually learnt) is the most serious and No.5 (individual differences) is the least serious one. Apart from that, in between the most and least, we have various orders but we all more or less agree the most and least rank as we mentioned above.

5. Look at Maley’s list of 14 'principled decisions' on pages 92-94. Choose the three which you think are the most important and rank them 1, 2 and 3 (1 being the most important).

Because there are 14 choices, so six members of us all have different ranking of this answer, but generally our group think that the No. 1, 8, and 11 are the most important decisions.

LC for 03/11/11

LC group members: Gemma, Irene, Laia, Monica, Sean, and Sunny

1. We think the Family Relationship activity is good, but probably cannot be used in the beginner level class and it is best used for intermediate students with some fundamental vocabulary knowledge. Also, it depends a lot on students who have been divided into adequate number of group such as the author mentioned around 8 to 10.

In addition, one of our group members mentioned about the activity that she used small cards to let students compare and teach them some set phrases as grammar activities. She also put some functioning formulaic patterns on board so that learners can practice more often. Another member also mentioned she may give students questionnaires as a warm-up activity and have students introduce themselves so that they can guess others’ names.

Furthermore, time management is important when holding a communicative snapshot activity.

2. The activities should be suitable for students from other countries. However, those activities should be considered for participants with different personalities. They can be adjusted a bit to make them fit for students in different countries.

3. The cultural background, class size, class atmosphere, students’ preferences, students’ levels, and diversity of age are vital factors for CLT content.

DEVELOPMENTS IN TESOL METHODOLOGY

LEARNING CIRCLE MEMBERS: Deman, Kate, Shaima, Noora, Yiota, Evelyn, Janet, Hara,Uzma

SUMMARY

The ‘Family Relationship’ communicative task is an activity, which if adjusted to the level and the age of the students, it will be really interesting and helpful for them as it will trigger their imagination, draw their attention and enable them to achieve fluency in speech as well as acquisition of the taught material. To be more specific, when this task is applied to learners of elementary level, it should focus on the teaching of easy topics, forms and structures of the language. Those could be the members of the family, the professions and their roles in society. Also, taking into consideration that the task addresses to young students, its aim should simply be the practice of the taught subject.

On the other hand, when the task is performed by adult learners, it should be modified in order to be compatible with their age and interests. As a result it should include topics like sports and politics and focus on the acquisition of more complex forms of the language. In this way, during the interaction that takes place, the students will exchange ideas and their knowledge will be expanded.

As far as our snapshot activities are concerned, they were quite similar to the ‘Family Relationship’ communicative task as most of them included role playing and the question-answer pattern. Moreover, their purpose was to promote communication among the students, who trough their interaction they would be able to achieve speech fluency and thus automaticity.

However, some members of the group were not sure if they could set this activity to the students of their country, as the government policies that affect the educational sector are quite strict, imposing a teaching line which must be followed by the teachers without any radical modifications. Another suspending factor is the number of the students within a class. The task might not be successful in classes with a large number of students because it would be difficult for them to interact and at the same time be relevant to the topic. This could only be possible if they were given certain instructions before the introduction of the task and if they were constantly monitored by the teacher.

In conclusion, the ‘Family Relationship’ communicative task is an activity the application of which in the CLT classrooms will have the desired effects only if it is transformed according to the age, the level, the interests and the number of the learners as well as if its use is allowed by the government teaching line.

Group members: Ebi, David, Trang, Peach, Cindy, Anna
1. Describe a communicative activity you have done with your students
Ebi: first day to school game
- Ss brainstorm vocabulary and structures to talk about their first day going to school, to describe their experience, feelings
- T consolidate language
- Ss talk freely to their peers about their first day to school
David: lottery money discussion
- Ask Ss how they would feel if they won the lottery and what they would spend that lottery money on
- Discuss in groups to find if they want to spend money on any local facilities e.g. hospital, stadium etc. and their reasons
- Present their opinions to the class
- Class vote for the best argument
Peach: role-play: job interview

2. Could you use the “family relationship” task in your classroom with your students?
Yes, we think this task can be used with all levels but needs modification
e.g. For elementary level: teacher needs to do more scaffolding ,e.g. pre teach a number of words and sentence structures, combine phase 1 and phase 2 to have Ss practice the input.
For higher levels, the complexity of task can be increased.

3. In what ways is the “Family relationship” task similar or different to your snapshot communicative activity?
Ebi: They are similar, but the free communication phase is delayed till the next lesson so that Ss have time to reflect the structures and vocabulary for the topic
David: similar. But the language consolidation phase will be done again after all three phases to emphasize the structures.

4. What conclusions can you draw about the importance of context in CLT?
Very important. Each classroom is unique. There is no best method or textbook can suit every single class. Thus, T needs lots of effort to make adjustments to suit Ss’ context and needs.

Week 4 Learning Circle---Developments in TESOL Methodology
Group members: Aziz, Deman, Evelyn, Janet, Kate, Noora

1. This article was written 20 years ago. To what extent does it appear 'dated' or modern to you?

Most of us think that it’s still “fresh” and we haven’t experienced lots of changes during these 20 years actually which appears a huge difference compared to the the period of 1960s and 1980s with sprouted new teaching theories or ideas every minute.

2. Look carefully at the 'Implications for teaching' section on p. 89. Consider both your learning of English, and your teaching experience, and reflect on the extent to which Maley's predictions have ‘come true’ in your own learning/teaching context.

By using communicative teaching approaches, Mayley claimed that teachers have to shoulder the responsibility of creating a learner-centred learning environment; meanwhile, students have to participate the class correspondingly- with more freedom and more responsibility.

Reflecting to Maley’s prediction, Demon was a well example of being a student who attended the class correspondingly. The story happened when she was in high school, she refused to be a passive learner and was trying to provide a better lesson for her class. After the brilliant performance, her teacher not only praised her with her work, but also gave her a chance to be a teacher for that lesson and she still remember every single word in that book even after such a long time. Moreover, some teammates also mentioned that sometimes a lesson leaded by students was more fun and the contents and examples given by present students were easier for their classmates to understand.

Those case and examples given shows that teachers and students could lead the class in a different and more efficient way by using communicative approaches which give students more motivation, freedom and space to practice and extend their abilities inside and outside of the classroom.

(achieving better learning and teaching results)

3. To what extent do the advantages listed on page 90 outweigh the disadvantages? Choose one of the following and justify it in light of your own experience (1 – advantages completely outweigh disadvantages, 2 – advantages partly outweigh disadvantages, 3 – neither outweighs the other, 4 – disadvantages completely outweigh the advantages).

We thought that the advantage of using the communicative approaches partly outweigh disadvantages because even if there are some drawbacks of it, but those ones are all changeable or can be modified and adjusted by authorities or teachers. For instance, the main problems will be the quality of teachers which obviously can be solved by providing more teacher training, workshops or seminars.

In contrast, the benefits maintained are essential and irreplaceable owing to the communicative competence is necessarily cultivated because we situate in the global village and the motivation generated during the process of using this approach is crucial for learners to become self-directed and gaining more interests to achieve higher proficiency in English. Furthermore, students can learn English relatively efficiently and happily which generally is hard to achieve by using the dated grammatical focused method.

4. Maley lists six problems (pages 91-2). In the light of you experience, can you rank these problems from 1 (most serious) to 6 (least serious).
   
   We decided to have 4 5 6 as our first 3, input and intake problem ranked first and individual difference and government influence placed at the second and the third one. 1,2,3 all ranked at the forth place.
   



5. Look at Maley’s list of 14 'principled decisions' on pages 92-94. Choose the three which you think are the most important and rank them 1, 2 and 3 (1 being the most important).

6 placed the first one cause most of us think that providing authentic samples is really important and left ones are hard to put a rank on because they are all important in some extent in different aspects.

Week 4 -- Developments in TESOL Methodology

Learning circle task (week4)
Developments in TESOL Methodology

Member: Almazidi Abdulaziz; Shimokawara Hiroki; Dede Magdalini; Lin Pei-Ru

1-The article was written 20
years ago. To what extent does it appear "dated" or modern to you ?
After reading the article we all found that it seems
really modern. We can see some of its principles applied in our schools today.
However, in Taiwan and Kuwait the teacher is still the center of the class.

2-Look carefully at the "Implications for
teaching" section on P.89. Consider both your learning and teaching of
English and your experience, and reflect on the extent to which Maley's
predictions have 'come true' in your own learning/ teaching context
1-The teacher's role has changed and teachers have to
provide more activities. Those activities should reflect teaching not learning.
2-The students like doing activities and love doing pair
and group work but in some countries students don't want to change and become
the center of the class, they always want the answers from their teacher and in
Japan students don't want to learn using a CLT approach because they feel it
won't help them pass their exams.
3-Teachers should use a wide range of authentic materials
and grade the task as appropriate.
4-The activities that the teacher gives to the students
should be a mix between task-oriented and exercises.
5-The layout of the students in the classroom has
generally been changed from rows to a way to help communication between
students, group work and exchanging information.
3-To what extent do the advantages listed on P.90
outweigh the disadvantages ? Choose one of the following and justify it in
light of your own experience. 1- Advantages completely outweigh disadvantages
2- Advantages partly outweigh disadvantages 3-Neither outweigh the other 4- Disadvantages
completely outweigh advantages.
We all agreed that the advantages partly outweigh the
disadvantages, though James felt that they could possibly completely outweigh
the disadvantages . In our discussion, we found that a teacher should accept
that he/she must know when and how to intervene. Also the teacher should be
familiar with the background of the students. On the other hand, the teacher
will have a lot of responsibility and
have to be in full control of the students. Therefore, the teacher should be trained
to a high level. What could help to make the teacher’s job easier is that they
should try to explain the method that they are going to use. This will help to
give the students an idea of what to expect from their teachers.
4-Maley list six problems P.91-92 in the light of your teaching
experience, can you rank these problems from 1(most serious) to 6(least
serious).
After our discussion we found that we couldn’t really
rank the problems because they appear to overlap each other quite a lot.
5-Look at Maley's list of 14 'Principled Decisions' on
P.92-94 choose three which you think are the most important and rank them 1,2
and 3
1-Peggy: We should really use the language in the
classroom and emphasise the structure and function. 11,6,3
2-James: We should try to mirror authentic language
communication as much as possible and expose students to this ‘real’ language
use whenever feasible. 6.8.13
3-Hiroki: Japanese students need more critical thinking
because they think that they only need to receive information.
4-Aziz: We should motivate our students and let them look
at language learning from top down and look at it as a complete unit not as a
sentence level structure.

Week 4 Learning Circle----Developments in TESOL Methodology
Group members: Ebi, Trang, Peach, Cindy, David, Anna, Zoe

1. This article was written 20 years ago. To what extent does it appear 'dated' or modern to you?
The majority of us think the article is modern to us. The CLT approaches mentioned in the article are still quite popular in our countries and the implications for teaching make a lot of sense to the teachers. However, a few of members find some views of the author’s are dated. For example, the author says that carrying out reliable research into learners is difficult in the process of learning. Besides, we want to emphasize that though the theory of CLT is popular and accepted by most of the English teachers, the practice of CLT is quite difficult in the real situation, especially in some secondary schools and the schools which are exam-oriented.
2. Look carefully at the 'Implications for teaching' section on p. 89. Consider both your learning of English, and your teaching experience, and reflect on the extent to which Maley's predictions have ‘come true’ in your own learning/teaching context.
We have almost the same learning experience. When we were in the secondary school, our learning focused on grammar and forms. The teaching methods which our teachers used were something like Audiolingual and Grammar-Translation method. However, we benefited a lot from the communicative language learning in the universities and Maley’s predictions have come true in our learning process. As to the teaching experience, the predictions also have come true in Ebi’s class. He organized many task-based and learner-centered activities which were warmly welcomed by his students. Peach used to teach students in a communicative way, but it didn’t work because the final exam focused on the reading and writing skills and the CLT didn’t match the students’ needs. Trang and Zoe tried to make a balance between the CLT and the teacher-centered class in order to meet the students ’needs who wanted to gain high marks in the national exam and also to enjoy the language learning.

3. To what extent do the advantages listed on page 90 outweigh the disadvantages? Choose one of the following and justify it in light of your own experience (1 – advantages completely outweigh disadvantages, 2 – advantages partly outweigh disadvantages, 3 – neither outweighs the other, 4 – disadvantages completely outweigh the advantages).
Five of our members agree that advantages partly outweigh disadvantages because we are worried about the difficulty of implementing the CLT in the real class. It has some obvious limitations to implement, for example, we cannot apply CLT in a big class (more than 50 students with different levels). However, one of us thinks advantages completely overweigh disadvantages because she finds that the disadvantage (1) and (2) should not be the disadvantages. It is good to promote the profession training and the competence of the teachers and it is helpful and challengeable if the teachers do not just follow the prescription offered by the textbook.

4. Maley lists six problems (pages 91-2). In the light of your own teaching experience, can you rank these problems from 1 (most serious) to 6 (least serious).

We reached a consensus on this question. All of us think that No.6 is most serious and No.1 is the least serious. As to the former, we teachers are confined to do something that we are not willing to do, for instance, we have to focus on grammar and forms because the College
Entrance Examination is focus to examine the students’ mastery of them. As to the latter, we think it is common that we don’t know much about how languages are actually learnt because of the individual differences.

5. Look at Maley’s list of 14 'principled decisions' on pages 92-94. Choose the three which you think are the most important and rank them 1, 2 and 3 (1 being the most important).

Four members of our group think the NO.2 is the most important decision because a combination of the accuracy-focused and the fluency-focused is more practical in the real situation. Two of us think the NO.9 is the most important one because they find the students in their counties are passive who need the responsibility to engage themselves to the activities. Cindy regards the NO.10 as the most important one because she thinks we teachers should pay much attention to the students’ motivation and try our best to cultivate the students’ interests towards language learning.