New Exciting Experience

Reflective Paper for School Experience 

After did school experience for four days I learned so much things in each day. In the first day I observed the class I found that my mentor teacher didn’t do the all the things which written in lesson plan. I think that because the students were really active they keep commenting on anything and make fun of each other. Based on my observation the teacher just ignored the “chaos sources”. If only I were him I would acknowledge them and give them more responsibility like appoint them to become the class assistants.

            In the second day observing, I noticed that the teacher using a power point to support his class but the content in his power point presentation was really similar with the one in the student handbook.

In the third day I observed my mentor teacher’s listening class. The thing I noted was he used a popular song for listening practice. I concerned if there were students who already memorized the lyric.

            Meanwhile in the fourth day I and my partner, Martan were given chance to teach. We have prepared the lesson plan, the teaching aids and practiced the day before. But too bad, because of the limited of time we couldn’t lead all the activity completely.

Last from this new experience I noted two things. First I should learn more about classroom management and second I shouldn’t use an up to date and popular song for listening session.

To See What is Real through Multiple View on Human

Human is the most complicated creature I ever know. That explain why sometimes people cannot understand someone else.  It is because there are varied identities in one person so it hard for other to know about someone else accurately. Because mostly we never seen someone as a whole person. We just know someone through one view based on one of his/her identity.

            Actually that is really normal because to know someone’s identities accurately we need to spend so much time with him/her. That why we only know a few of people very well. This nature sometimes could make problem like mistreat, misunderstanding even fight or war. Personally I think every hostility in this world occur because people cannot view others’ whole identities

            To be honest I have experienced mistreat because of this nature when someone said harsh thing to me because of my opinion. We were in the middle of debating on marriage’s problem.  Actually everything was fine until we end up debating about which is better between house’s wife and career woman. To response I said that even one day I become a married woman I will still work.  It turned out that he was against my opinion with saying that a woman should stay in house to take care of children. I keep rebating him until he said to me that I should never dream to lead my future children into successfulness because my life’s way is a career woman.

            I was so angry at him. He doesn’t know anything about me but he dared to say such things. He never knows that aside from a student and a woman who someday should take care of her family. I am the eldest in my family so I have moral responsibilities to fulfill even no one ever told me so. He also never knows that become a teacher is my idea since I was in my childhood so I will pursue it. It is not like I am trying to deny my nature as a woman. What happen is my multiple identities  create an invisible boundaries in area do’s and don’ts in my life so I have my own perspective on career woman Vs. house wife’s case.

            I have to admit that I never forget about what he had said to me. At that time I even felt a need to rebate him over and over again. But then I realize if I have my own reason based on my multiple identities behind every action and thought I have, then so does him. I am sure he dared to say such thing because of his own multiple identities.

            So to solve my problem I think all I need to do is to respect him. But still in the very first chance I get to meet him again I will talk to him about this matter.  But I will try my best not to judge him because I do not want to become a narrow minded person. I want to become a person who able to see others through multiple views based on their multiples identities.

Technology: New Medium in Learning Language Process

5^th Reflective Journal for Technology and Language Learning

            After last week I learned about principles in designing CALL, in these 8^th and 9^th sessions I learned about the ‘real’ example of CALL’s which has functions to teach listening and speaking skill.

 As for technology to teach listening skill I explored some websites which provide listening skill practice program like Randall’s ESL Cyber Listening Lab and British Council-Learn English: Song and Lyric. These two websites I mentioned is the implementation of natural approach which proposed by Krashen and Terrel in 1983. This approach believes at two main things, comprehensible input and optimum affective state. It believes that to produce a good output in language learning process, learner should get an understandable input and free from anxiety, has good self confident and has good intrinsic motivation.  

            Both of the websites I mentioned before designing their website along with the natural approach view. With give a comprehensible input like in British Council-Learn English which gives input for young learner through song and animation and Randall’s website which provide listening skill practice program with contextual topic like conversation in telephone for adult learner. Both of the websites also elicit an optimal stage learning with provide a game and immediate test to examine learner understanding. The best thing is the correction of error is really instant but it won’t make learner feel ashamed if they did wrong.

            Other technology to teach listening skill is based on TPR (Total Physical Response) which proposed by Asher. This technique has strong believes that learner shouldn’t be force to produce output if they are not ready yet. This faith seems obviously in the websites which use this technique like Live Action English Interactive and TPR games. For example in Live Action English Interactive website, it provides a lot of video which tell about a certain activity complete with the illustration.  All teacher need to do are download the video, show the video in front of class and ask student to do pantomiming based on the video. Learner shouldn’t  have to produce any outcome like utterances or writing.

            Meanwhile in the 9^th session I learned about technology to teach speaking, honestly I had high expectation to explore all the CALL’s to teach speaking skill. I was thinking I would find a high tech CALL which could recognize and assess people’s speaking skill in English accurately, fairly and immediately.

            But then my high expectations kind of broken when I figure out that most of websites only provide programs to teach learners about the right pronunciation and repeat it by themselves alone.  Some of websites provide facilitate to record someone’s voice but the there is no assessment or correction from the website. The only human and machine interaction exist is when the website record someone’s voice.  Another bad point is some websites are ‘so heavy’ so it is not easy to open the website completely especially in my place which doesn’t have good internet connection.

            Last I will end my reflection with say that actually I hope soon there is a CALL who can assess someone’s speaking skill accurately  and I also hope internet connection in my place will get better and better.

New Finding, New Understanding

Forth Reflective Journal for PETA Course

            11^th October 2011 was the forth times I attended PETA course. Today learning schedule was not really tight because all I had to do is observing all micro teaching performance my classmate did. Today there were seven groups doing micro teaching excluding my own group because my group already did it in PETA previous meeting.

            At first I thought I will get bored and would instantly fell sleepy because practically I had nothing to do. But then my assumption was wrong, I could pay my full attention at each group which did micro teaching. One of reason was because their micro teaching is really interesting and it seemed like they have prepared all the teaching aids well (It made me feel a bit jealous because my group performance was not so good). The other reason was because the rest of class was assigned to guess about which model of instruction was used by the group that did micro teaching and also assessed their performance.

            Through observing at all the micro teaching performances I could get clear picture about how to teach in front of class with use creative ways. I also learned about how to choose a model of instruction wisely so it will be appropriate with the leaning objective. More than that, I also could get a picture about real classroom climate.

            In the end of today session Ms Ine summed up everything and gave further explanation about four models of instruction we have learned before. Form this session I discovered answers  for some problems and I also met new understanding about four models of instruction. I’d like to list my new finding in learning four models of instruction:

1.      I got basic understanding on models of instruction’s nature that models of instruction is the same with learning methodologies, what makes it different is only the matter of term.

2.      I finally discovered that the main difference of Guide Discovery model and Group Interaction model is the purpose of each model. If Guide Discovery model’s purpose stress on how to make student become an individual learner, Group Interaction model stress on student ability in solving problem in group

3.      I got to know about type on question in Lecture Discussion model.  Because to be honest it was rather unclear for me whether the type of question used in Lecture Discussion model is remain on LOTS (Lower Order Thinking Skills) or it could be HOTS (High Oder Thinking Skills). Today I finally knew that the types of question are depended on the need and learning objective itself. Highlight in Lecture Discussion Model is how teacher link the recent lesson with the older one.

That is all of my reflection on PETA material so far. I will end it with a unique fact I found out today after I observing all micro teaching performance my classmate did. They had tendency to use lecture discussion model or combining between lecture discussion with group interaction model (So did my group).

I am wondering about was this happened coincidentally or maybe it was happened  because there is tendency for new faculty member or new teacher to use lecture discussion model because it easier to maintain the student. For me, personally I prefer to use lecture discussion model combining with group interaction in teaching. So I can let my students interact with each other but still I have control on them, because the idea  that my class gone ‘wild’ doesn’t sound good to me.

Technology: Let’s Refine the Word ‘Learning’

4^th Reflection Journal for Technology and Language Learning

With today technology’s development I think we should refine definition of word ‘learning’. If in past many people (including me) assumed that learning is a process to gain knowledge in the classroom and students need to enroll in a legal institute. In my opinion that definition should be refined because it is not contextual anymore. In fact learning today is more likely a process to get information, cultivate it and applies it in real world without time or place restrains.  It could happen because technology help and it kind of amazed me.

            With technology help, face to face interaction in learning process shouldn’t be intense anymore. You even can learn overseas without literally go to overseas, even through that sound impossible with technology it possible. Because we can use internet to access lecture materials form some big university all over the world which provide Open University program and learn that materials independently. It will cost less and it really suitable for busy student because they can manage themselves better. 

            In special case like in language learning there is CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning) to help language learner and like it doesn’t sophisticated enough after I attend 4^th course of TLL, I get to know about MALL (Mobile Assisted Language Learning) which utilize the usage of mobile phone, PDA and Ipods for language learning. That is really cool because with MALL, language learner could learn language anytime and anywhere because the needed device is portable.

Photo taken from

http://blog.lyle.web.id/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/mixstyle-2.jpg

            I heard that in South Korea the usage of mobile for learning is really popular. It is because with MALL students can access their class in anywhere even in the middle of traffic! In South Korean, MALL is connected with internet, is not a big surprise considering South Korean is country with the fastest internet connection in the world. So lecturers record their lecture and upload it in internet then students can download it and learn from it.

            But of course aside from it strength, MALL also has weakness. Because slightly different with CALL which can access high quality of video or audio-video, with MALL it is quite hard to access ‘heavy’ page or content because it is not suitable with the devices. Other than that device for MALL is limited, it is not provided in all regions. So for today CALL is better than MALL due to MALL’s weakness.

Not only get to know about CALL and MALL from TLL’S course I also learn about how to design CALL program.  There are some things we should consider in designing CALL program. The most important thing are understanding that pedagogy should comes first rather than technology and awareness that pedagogical interactivity is a priority and it is followed by computer interactivity.  More than that I also learn about do’s and dont’s in content, visual, navigation and multimedia design for designing a good CALL program.

Personally I cannot wait for MALL and CALL to be popular in language learning process in Indonesia.

Learn deeper about Simple Present Tense

Teach Simple Present for 7th Grade Student

Teaching about grammar is not an easy thing to do for ESL (English Second Language) teachers and it even worse for Indonesian English teacher because in Indonesia, English is categorized as foreign language. 

There are so many differences could be found in English and Indonesian language especially in the matter of grammar. One of hardest materials for Indonesian English teacher to deliver to student is tenses. It is because in Indonesia language the time setting of an event is always symbolized by time adverbial in the beginning or the ending of a sentence and it is not followed change of verb form. For example:

1.                          1.Adik  makan roti

2.                          2.Kemarin  adik makan rti 

3.                          3.Adik makan roti kemarin

For the examples above we could see that verb makan is not change although one of the events happened in past and another event happen in present.

That a quite different with English tense. It is because in English language the time sequence is really important, it determine the form of verb used. For example:

                1.  My sister eats bread

2.                            2. My sister ate bread yesterday

3.                            3.My sister ate bread

Sometimes in English we can omit the time adverbial because the form of the verb alone is enough to identify when the event happen. 

Those differences are challenge for Indonesian English teacher. Because based on this fact teachers should think a creative way to deliver tenses material to Indonesia students,   like including fun activities in teaching  for example with making some game.

 Here I have a lesson plan for teaching simple present tense for VII grade student,   I chose simple present tense because it is usually introduced by teacher at the beginning of the course. More than that simple present tense also consider as basic in English grammar‘s world. Usually if students have strong understanding on simple present tenses it will help them for mastering next level of English grammar like simple past tenses, present perfect tense and so on.

This lesson plan is including some activities like watching video and online quiz for simple present tense. Aside from lesson plan, I also attach some needed materials for teaching simple present tenses like the rubric for assessment, reading materials, link to learning video for simple tense and link to some fun online quiz.

Here the link:

1.      Lesson Plan link:

             http://www.mediafire.com/?53yt318dqjml8o3

2.      Link for the Teaching Material, Video Link and Online Quiz Source:

             http://www.mediafire.com/?t42s0470heg3ts6

3.      Link for the The Problem Sheet for Pre-Test:

             http://www.mediafire.com/?5m80g9g0f0wpvd7

4.      Link for the Assessment Presentation:

            http://www.mediafire.com/?xb8aah5mszaejx2

5.      Link for the Rubric Presentation:

             http://www.mediafire.com/?abcksurcr5w162y

Hopefully all material above will help you to teach simple present tenses so you can deliver this material smoothly. Any comments or built critics are pleased.

Thank you very much,

Best regards,

Weni Mardi Waluyani

English Teacher Candidate

Ways to Convey Lecture

After attending the third session of PETA course in 4^th October 2011 I get new knowledge that actually there is a lot of way to convey lecture in classroom. It can be categorized into four models:

1.      Direct instruction

2.      Lecture- discussion

3.      Guide- discovery

4.      Group interaction

Each of those instruction models has its own strength and weakness, for the further information I will try to recall my knowledge about it and also give my opinion about each methods.

First is about Direct instruction model, this model has strong trait that is TCL or teacher centered learning. It means that in direct instruction teacher has an important role in learning process. Teacher becomes an information-provider in the classroom because teacher will give all information about the course as clear/direct as possible. I think I often find this model in the real world reflect on my own experience as a student for almost 13 years. Personally I think this method will be appropriate if it use for a low level of student which still need a lot of guide form teacher.

Second is Lecture discussion model. This model has trait has a strong interaction between teacher – student. It is because in this model interaction is mostly happened between teacher – student only, through teacher asking question to student for review the lesson, for checking student understanding and for creating a link between the previous lesson and newer lesson. I think this model are really popular for new teacher because it is easy to implement and with this model teacher still has a big part in learning process so teacher can control the classroom. However I think with this model student’s cognitive level is hardly development and will be remain at understanding level only.

Third model is Guide Discovery. This model is more ‘loose’ compare to the models before because this model allows student to explore and develop their own thinking in a group. Teacher role has been shifted from a provider to a facilitator. Teacher here has a role as person who elicit student’s thinking trough asking question. The trait for this model is teacher often asks open-ended question. Personally I think this model will be good if it use for teach Civic or History subject in school. So instead become a boring subject it could be turn out more fun.

Last is Group interaction model. This model allow student to become the center of learning process because student will often assign into a work to solve the problem or find an answer by themselves. Teacher here has a role as facilitator and just like it name in group interaction model student are expected to work well in a group. Although this model has strength because it could encourage student’s thinking to develop. I think this model has its own weaknesses because through this model which assigns students into group, it is not impossible that students will end up discussing about anything but the lesson.

In the end I have to say that between four models above there is no the best models. All models are good if it use wisely with considering the learning objective and student’s characters.

Name: The Hidden Power to Change Someone

            Some people say that there is nothing to do with name. But I am not one of those people because for me name is something important. I consider name as a pray. My name is Weni Mardi Waluyani. My father gives that name after I was born. Actually my father didn’t prepare name for a daughter he prepared a name for a son, because when my mother pregnant many people including my mother herself and my father believed that she pregnant for a boy. But then it is proved that they are wrong. My mother gave birth to me. Because of that my father changed the prepared name from Woro Mardi Waluyanto to Weni Mardi Waluyani. 

            I have already asked my parents about what the meaning of my name since long time ago. Because when I was a little girl I believed that my name doesn’t sound cool. I want to change my name into some names which sounded more modern and cool like Anita.  Then my father explained to me about meaning of my name.  He said that my name is derivates from Javanese language even though my name has same rhythm in each syllable like Sundanese name. Both of my parents are Javanese after all.  

Symbol for myself I have draw, Weni Mardi Waluyani

            Weni is adapted from Javanese word Diwenei which has meaning as ‘is given’. Mardi is also adapted from Javanese language Margi which means way, road or path. Last Waluyani is from Javanese word Waluyo which has meaning as safe, welfare, blessed or happiness. My father added suffix –ni in the end of Waluyo to refer that I am a girl. So in a whole Weni Mardi Waluyani has meaning as a girl who is given a welfare and safe way in her life.

            After I heard about meaning of my name I forget my intention to change my name. Because I realize that my name is not only a group of consonant and vocal letter. My name is something more than that.  It is a pray for me from people who love me and I believe that this name is appropriate for me. It is because I will be a person who leads my family into welfare path and I willing to work hard for it.

            I will never change my name even when I get married with someone I won’t use my husband name. I will keep my name even though with my name, people (especially in my hometown Sukabumi) are always wondering about my religion identity. It is because accidentally my name is similar with a Christian School called Mardi Waluya (At first it is Mardi Yuana but when I entered Junior High School it changes its name into Mardi Waluya).

            My reason why I won’t change my name is because I believe of power of words. I believe that words can influence someone greatly because people sub-conscious part always record what other people surrounding them said and turn it into suggestion for themselves.  So people will act similar with what their environment labeled them.  So whenever someone called my name I received it a as pray from them, so I can become stronger each minutes.

Technology: The Debatable Issue Which Creates a New Generation

3^rd Reflection Journal for Technology and Language Learning

            I have attended other sessions of Technology and Language Learning course. As the time pass by without me myself knowing I enjoy this course. That far different with my previous expectation about this course. Because although I always try to keep my positive thought  toward technology, I couldn’t help but feel rather shrink whenever I heard term “teaching with technology” and scared I can’t do my best in this course or get good score because I don’t really familiar with technology.

            But then I realize that technology is meant to help people life. It is supposed to help me for God’s sake not the opposite!! I get to know about it after I attended TLL meeting at 29^th September 2011. In that day my lecturer divided the class into two big groups and made us do some activities which include role play and debate. We are debating about whether a school better install new language lab or install internet connection to help language learning process. One group acted as school boards who agree to the first statement and another group acted as language teachers who propose the latter statement.  That was really a ‘hot’ and fun debate although in the end, the class debating each other without considering the debate’s parameter anymore.

            In the end of that session my lecturer sums up that technology is only a tool. So the good or bad result come from technology is all depend on the person who used it. He also says that in learning process, technology isn’t a methodology but a tool. So there is no guarantee that a teacher who uses a lot of technology can teach more effective than teacher who doesn’t because technology is not a replacement for teacher.

            Other than that, I also learn that technology has created a new generation. Because people who born after 1990 is called as digital native meanwhile people who born below those year are called as digital immigrant. Digital natives have different characteristics with digital immigrant because they are really “fluent” in use technology and fond with it since young age. Because the differences there even an assumption who says that digital native has different brain structure compare to digital immigrant!

            Well… whether that assumption is wrong or right the fact that digital natives have different characteristics with digital immigrant are noticeable. But actually I kind of confuse about myself, I was born in 1992 so I categorized as a digital native. But I am not quite “fluent” in use technology. Even my first time operating a computer was in my seventh grade and I just became fond to technology since my status change from a student to a scholar. Until now I am still not comfortable using a new technology nor up to date to it. Hehm… I am wondering whether I still can count as a digital native or digital immigrant. I will really appreciate it if there is someone who explains this matter to me.