Firstly, my apologies for the delay in getting this finished.
This is primarily aimed at high school, university students, and adults learners in EFL contexts, particularly Asia, where a lack of fluency is prevalent (mostly due to limited exposure or opportunities to use English and education systems that focus on rote memorisation, grammar translation, and written exams).
The lesson aims to (1) explore and understand fluency, and (2) understand and improve our fluency development practices.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NuFPx6oSvdy2G5V5YuJIgV4R4jtvb5a6/view?usp=sharing
(The materials will also be used in part of a teacher development workshop in August 2018 at the MELTA 2018 Conference, Malaysia.)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NuFPx6oSvdy2G5V5YuJIgV4R4jtvb5a6/view?usp=sharing
Hi Phil,
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing your materials with the rest of us. It’s really good to hear they’ll be used at the conference in Malaysia too – I’d love to hear more about that.
A few comments on the actual worksheet:
Very attractive materials – just the right amount of white space in my opinion.
Fonts are always a matter of personal preferences but I think it could be interetsing for you to create two versions of tehse materials – this one and one with fewer fonts/sizes/colours/italics etc. and then show A and B to a few different teachers and ask them which they prefer. I think I’d probably ditch the italics in the heading.
I can’t fault the actual activities – a good sequence, variety and staging.
A) 1 What do you mean by ‘them’? I think you mean the puictures but this is ambiguous so need clarifying a bit.
B) 2. I think I’d use ‘relate to’ rather than ‘connect with’. Something to think about.
I’d always use ‘photo’ or ‘image’ rather than ‘picture’. Again, this is what I’ve always seen and is something for you to think about.
Nte about photo credits. You could, if you wanted, have a list of the credits at the end – it might be better to remove these extra bits of text. Something else to think about.
C) 1 I’d align the italicised sentence with the question – look at the next question with the table – the table is aligned. A small thing but … I’m being ‘picky’ on purpose.
Great tasks! I especially like the reflective tasks – very useful.
D) Perfect!
Really great materials, Phil. Well done!
Great materials, Phil, on a topic that is rarely presented in such a reflective, student-centered way!
ReplyDeleteKatherine Bilsborough Thank you for the excellent feedback and sharing your insights as well as keen eye for detail - definitely what I need!
ReplyDeleteI'll work on the revisions and try to get them trialled before the conference.
MELTA
http://conference.melta.org.my/
Maria Theologidou Thank you for the support and thoughtful comment. I guess it's still true that reflection tasks in student materials are relatively rare. Since you pointed that out, I wonder why ...
ReplyDeleteIn my experience, with HS ages and above, I think it's good to start promoting self-reflection and autonomy in order to help them to become more effective learners - evaluating - for themselves
materials/resources they use, what they do and how they do it.
Phil Brown I think textbooks used to "lack" such tasks due to a more traditional perception of learning as being teacher driven or at least motivated. Apart from the benefits you pointed out, I feel reflective tasks allow students to become more actively engaged in learning and take ownership and responsibility of their learning by mapping out their own path.
ReplyDeleteMaria Theologidou - thanks for sharing. I think we very much see eye-to-eye on this :-)
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