Anna's reflection paper

Anna Chang's Reflection Paper
Subjects: 6th graders in elementary school
Teaching: Short short story, Tounge twister, Improvisational language games

Inspired in Dr. Phillips' wonderful oral communication class, I’d like to share some of my ideas of applying useful teaching techniques in my class.

Short short story
Motivation:
Storytelling is always full of surprises. I’m so facinated by stories, especially scinence fictions that I love to tell stories to students in class. In the wonderland of stories, imaginations can infinitely be extended and broadened. Imaginations sometimes withdraw us from the reality and help us relieve for a while from pressured life. Facinating stories not only delight but also teach. They teach us the way of seeing and doing things right or of being well with others in the society or the right way we should be….I still keep a deep memory of doing “The Paring Knife” activity back in ETMA class. Questioned by some tricky“True, False or Don’t Know" questions, I came to understand that I had so many presumptions when reading people. (And my presumptions sometimes cause mistakes or misunderstandings in my daily life.) Actually, those tricky questions do remind me of my poor logical sense towards people and furthermore teach me how to critically and logically differentiate what the truth is and what my presumption is when seeing things. Some of my presumptions may be correct due to logical inference, sometimes they are not. Therefore, I ‘d like my students not only learn English from such activity but also develop themselves a logical mind and sharpened eyes when dealing with daily life matters.

Application:
1. Read students stories by using big books, on-line storybooks, or pair-work short reading assignments.
(Selection of story levels is based on students’ ability)
2. Firstly, read the story with avarage speed and unique tone which the story is supposed to be presented. Get students fully involved with your personal storytelling charisma and have them enjoy imaging and soaring in the story. Though not every word you said would be understood, you should leave time for students to figure words out themselves and try to refrain yourself from explaining every new words.
3. Secondly, have students re-tell the story again and help students solve new word problems by guiding them to guess word meaning from former or latter texts.
4. After making sure students understand what the story is going on, designed questions could be elicited to train students’ comprehesive ability and logical sense.
5. Questions can be designed by grading them from basic to advanced level. If the story level is basic, have the whole class discuss questions together; if more advanced, pair students up or group students and do the “True, False, Don’t know” activity on paper. Then have a whole-class discussion again. Always leave the true answers until the end of the class.
6. In turn, let students come up with questions for the story they read. Creative, new ideas are welcomed.

Expected results:
By doing such kind of activity, I hope my students would not easily take everything they hear or see for granted. Students’ being exposed to large amount of English reading materials, not only their English proficiency would be improved but also their awareness of critical and logical thinking can be developed over discussions.


Tongue twister
Motivation:
It’s fun to move your tongue in your mouth to produce similar sound words or sentences in very fast speed in a time. Or it’s funnier to see someone get embarrassed when he is stuck by tongue twisters. Everyone loves tongue twisters. In class, it’s easy to draw students’ attention by practicing tongue twisters. Tongue twisters could turn students’ short attention span into much longer by involving them to focus on various, interesting tongue twisters and encouraging them to finish every tongue twister. Tongue twisters are also a very good means to facilitate phonics teaching and learning. Students’ would easily pick up the sound and letter of basic phonics by dynamic, changeable words in a time. Thus, I love to use tongue twisters for classroom activities.

Application:
Tongue twister is a very flexible classroom activity. It can be used to draw students’ attention at the beginning of each class. Or it can be practiced as an exercise when students have learnt enough phonics or new words. Even based on students’ knowledge of phonics, teachers can use tongue twisters as a means to teach students spelling new words or encourage students to create their own tongue twisters. Usually I like to hold a small-sized show near the end of each semester for students to have a chance to perform their self-created tongue twisters. With learning by doing, students’ learning motivation can be escalated, their creativity can be aroused, and the learning outcome would be greatly improved.

For example,
a e i o u phonics
A sad cat is in the bag.
A red net is on the bed.
A kid is by the pink pig.
The top is by the hot pot on the rock.
The duck is in the mud under the sun.

Expected results:
I hope students learn how to relax and enjoy each lesson. They not only passively learn English from teachers but also actively devote themselves to class by inputting their critical thoughts, questions, or queer ideas…. Their tongues can really be STIRRED UP and enjoy these twisters.


Improvisational language games
Motivation:
Good command of a language lies not in his well-prepared language performance but his authentic improvisational language skills and response. Students are more likely to do good preparation beforehand if they are to be given oral tasks. In my class, every year before students are going to graduate, I give them an improvisational language test whose purpose is to test if students really pick up the usage of the language they’ve learnt for the past elementary years.

Application:
I do appreciate Dr. Phillips’ showing us the TV program “Whose Line is it Anyway ? ” which exemplifies the true spirit of the usage of a language. In elementary level, it is not easy to do complicated topics in oral tasks. Thus, in year-end shows, I usually pair up students to finish interesting tasks in a total of 20 minutes for each group.
Task 1 Given a topic (which has been learnt) to start at least three-turn conversation.
Task 2 Given a picture to start at least three-turn conversation.
Task 3 Read a short story and work out the given questions together (in English).
Task 4 Watch a short video and proceed at least five-turn conversation to describe what is going on in the video.
Task 5 Improvisational play: Pick up the props (which the teacher has prepared) and do a play with your partner.

Expected results:
Language learning is not a monologue. Students can understand how a language is used with others in authentic contexts and what kind of language problems they would encounter when they really use the language OUTSIDE of classroom. Students are expected to fluently finish the given tasks and develop their own interests and language ability. In my opinion, such improvisational language activities should be constantly conducted and practiced so that students’ awareness of authentic language usage will be developed. Anyway, it should be fun to learn English.


Reference

Beaty, Janice J., College, Elmira（1994）. Picture Book Storytelling Literature Activities for Young Children. Harcourt Brace College Publishers: Florida.
Brown, H. Douglas (2001) Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy. New York: Pearson
Phillips, Brian David. Improvisational Language Structures: Improving Conversational Spontaneity through ILS Theatre Games in Proceedings of the sixteenth Conference on English Teaching and Learning the Republic of China. Taipei: Crane Publishing, 1999(p.551-565).

Wendy's Reaction Paper

Wendy’s Reaction Paper

As prompted by Dr. Phillips, I will apply three of the various in-class activities that we had had with the summer ETMA program to provoke verbal lively classroom interaction among and between my students, most of them are in their sixth grade in elementary school. The three activities that are applicable to my class are guided imagery, short short short stories and interactive drama.

Guided Imagery

To implement the activities, I will first introduce some interesting psychological guessing games with students so that they can get into the atmosphere to quiet down and get into the environment. The games that I will use are pendulum and body parts communication in semi-virtual language.

Once my students get into the mood of magic world, I will present several templates of guided imagery for them to try with themselves reading to a group of classmates. Then I will encourage students to modify the contents a little bit to create their own way of imagery guiding.

In this way, my students can get into a situation of language reading and listening in doing by learning without being aware of the strangeness in language using.

Short Short Short Stories

Stories are fascinating. Though my students’ attention spans are short but they love stories. With purposely selected short stories, I will give them a chance to act out the situation. When dramatize a situation, they put themselves in the stories lines and start to give out things on their mind based on their understanding of the situation. With a time limit, they tell the stories with themselves acting in plots. And after their plays, we will discuss some true and false and don’t know votes in class.

As my students are in their beginning stage of learning a language, I will be more selective when choosing the stories. Conversation among parities is much preferred as it reveals the storyline more directly and thus is more comprehensible to my students.

Through this acting of the stories, my students can be exposed to the stories with less affected tension. The low affective filter can help them learn more naturally. Interactive Drama

With the two captioned activities, I will then introduce interactive drama for them to work out the clues hidden in lines. I will suggest simplified theme and plot for workable levels of elementary students. A “lost and found”, “where is my cat?” or “who is the captain?” or thing to similar effects could be appropriate for them.

In the end, I have to thank Dr. Phillips for giving us many innovative tools that we can use to make a class more interesting for our student and more challenging for us.

Reference
Brown, H. Douglas (2001) Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy. New York: Pearson.

Wang, William (1991) The Emergence of Language Development and Evolution. New York: Scientific American.

Weiss, Lynn (1997) A.D.D. and Creativity: Tapping Your Inner Muse. Maryland: Taylor Trade Publishing.

Jenny's Reaction Paper
Subjects: 9th graders in jenior high school
Teaching: tongue twister, Interactive drama, Short short story

1. Tongue Twister
1.1 Motivation
According to the definition from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, a tongue twister is a phrase in any language that is designed to be difficult to articulate properly. Tongue-twisters rely on similar but distinct phonemes (e.g. s and sh) Many tongue twisters use a combination of alliteration and rhyme. They have two or three sequence of sounds, then the same sequences of sounds with some sounds exchange. In ESL or EFL, Ss have their own habit of pronouncing words or articulation, thus they may place their tongue in the wrong position of the mouth and then pronounce the sound not as clearly as the native speakers do. For our Ss, they often fail to pronounce the sound of vowels long enough and also lose or mispronounce the consonants at the end of a word. Tongue twisters are designed to deal the problem of pronunciation and at the same time create the fun of learning a language. On the other hand, in tongue twisters, many words serve as verbs and also nouns, such as in this one: A good cook could cook as much cookies as a good cook who could cook cookies.
1.2 Application
1) Explain the tongue twister first:
In the class, I collect the tongue twisters from the internet, for example, from the website: http://www.indianchild.com/tongue-twisters.htm and choose interesting and funny ones to be written on the blackboard. To induce Ss to know what are tongue twisters, I will compare it to 繞口令 in Chinese. Also, try to explain their shared function of adjusting our pronunciation in a language. Next, I will ask them to try to translate it into Chinese with me and guide them to see if the same word in a tongue twister has more than one meaning.
2) Let Ss repeat after you and have a game for it:
After teaching the whole tongue twister, I will ask them to repeat after me until they are ready to repeat the whole sentence by themselves. Then, I will divide the Ss into 5-6 groups and let them have a race or game to compete with each other, to see who is the champion that can say out the tongue twister fast and clearly.
1.3 Expected results
With the help of tongue twisters, students will gain more fun in learning English and are provided with the opportunity to review the vocabulary they've learned before, even to enlarge the meaning. Instead of studying and pronouncing word by word, tongue twisters make words meaningful in sentences and create multiple meaning in one word. Most important of all, it changes the fact that language drills are isolate and boring. Students will find it’s interesting to learn different dimensions of English and also its culture.
2. Interactive Drama
2.1 Motivation
The main challenge of interactive drama is to design a dynamic system that introduces meaningful events which allow each player to interact deeply with the event. During the process of carrying out the plots, which are open ending to each player, every player plots his or her own lines according to his or her own character and also personality. In this way, Interactive Drama is very different from the traditional drama that keeps down all the lines each character has to perform. The open ending and free lines make Interactive Drama more interesting and exciting to its performers and also the audience.
2.2 Application
Taking the limited English ability of junior high into consideration, first of all, I will edit my ID into an easier and simple one. List all the vocabulary and phrases needed in the ID in front and equip my students with related background knowledge and information. The steps I will take are as follows:
(1) Divide Ss into 5-6 groups and choose one leader in each one. (2) Compare ID with traditional drama. Explain the differences between them and what are the specials about ID. If there’s any available ID and traditional video tapes for them to watch, that will be an efficient way. (3) Give each group the ID script and ask them to assign each role. (4) The role of the teacher will be like a councilor or cooperator. Ss feel free to ask for help whenever it is needed. (5) After performing out, every student writes down his or her feedback about the role he or she plays. Also, encourage them to think about if there is any improvement can be made to make the drama better. (6) Encourage them to create a new ID in group and perform it out.
2.3 Expected results
Students will feel totally free to play their own role and be the characters during the process of playing. Just like the process of being an teenager, they are trying to figure out what the role should do and what are the required responsibilities in the drama world. Since they are not restricted from doing or saying anything they want to express, the sequencing of the dramatic actions bring out their hidden emotion and, in some way, reach a cognitive and psychological remedy.
3. Short short story
3.1 Motivation
Why do small children love stories so much? I guess it’s because stories create an imaginative world for them to enjoy. So does it have the same function for our students. Short stories not only provide them with abundant reading materials but also create an fictional world for them. Another reason I would like to apply it in my teaching is that short stories provide with cultural stuffs and useful phrases in English. The most useful I learned from the short story class is the detective questions- are a good way to train our curious Ss to find the clues in the story.
3.2 Application
I will use short short stories as a supplementary reading material to enhance their reading ability. I will divide Ss into 5-6 groups in class and give each the handout. Before starting the story, I will provide them with necessary knowledge about the story, especially anything related to culture. After that, let everyone read the story on their own first and then encourage them to discuss in group. If they have any question during the process, they feel free to ask any question. Then, I will ask each response of the question from each group and let them share their reasoning and thinking. At the end of the discussion, each group will be asked to revise the story (change some plots or characters) or create a similar one.
3.3 Expected results
Short short stories will prepare Ss with the abilities to do deeper reading or precise reading. With the accumulation of reading experiences, Ss will find it’s not difficult to read and it’s fun, too. Short stories also enlarge their vocabulary and their background knowledge. Students have more choices in learning English and are exposed to more and interesting activities in the class. Later on, I believe that reading English novels or fictions will not be a impossible mission for their learning. During this process, Ss’ reasoning ability will also be improved.
Reference:
1.Stanislavski. (1936). An Actor Prepares. New York: Theatre Arts Books
2.Stanislavski. (1949). Building a Character. New York: Theatre Arts Books
3.Styan, J. L. (1960). The Elements of Drama. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
4.Weyhranch, P. (1997). Guiding Interactive Drama. Unpublished PhD; Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh

April's Reaction Paper

After studying in the Oral Communication course for two months, I have learned a lot from the ideas and activities employed by Dr. Phillips in class. The three concepts (techniques) I will adapt to my own classroom are: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, Stories for Discussion, and Tongue Twisters. The strengths and applications are presented as follows.

I. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
＊ Target students: freshman (7th-graders) in junior high
＊ Student Age: 13
A. Motivation
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs can explicitly describes many realities of personal experiences. The five levels of basic human needs include the physiological, security, social, self-esteem and self-actualization needs. Beyond these needs, higher levels of needs exist, including needs for understanding, esthetic appreciation and purely spiritual needs. In the levels of the five basic needs, the person does not feel the second need until the demands of the first have been satisfied, nor the third until the second has been satisfied, and so on. This theory reminds me of catering to students’ basic needs as I teach English in the classroom.
I am now teaching two classes of freshman English in junior high. Before the first meeting, I told myself to address their basic needs instead of attending the higher level of needs. Only when the physiological, security, and social needs are fulfilled can I expect my freshman students to pay attention to learning English and getting fun from it. Therefore, I will not only did a survey to understand students’ feeling about previous English learning experiences but also create some a reason or a set of reasons for my students to accept my messages. I believe the two-fold methods will lead my students learn English with higher motivation.
B. Adaptation
There are a few things I will do to adjust the theory into practical teaching. For one thing, I will remind my students to finish their breakfast before the class starts. I will also tell them the importance of taking a nap in the afternoon since some of the English classes are conducted in the afternoon. For example, some of them may feel hungry and eat snacks during the class, or few of them may feel drowsy due to the lack of enough sleep last night or in the afternoon. If students have their physiological needs satisfied, they will be more willing to pay attention in the class.
Besides, to help the freshmen gain security in the new environment and new education system, I will acquaint my students with the junior high school life. There are more school subjects to learn and different ways of learning are needed. For example, under the Nine-year Consecutive Curriculum Guidelines, the objectives of English learning in elementary level expect to develop learners’ speaking and listening abilities, while in the junior high level, learners are required to read and write well. Such differences have to be addressed to students. If not, some of the students may feel frustrated when they find their speaking and listening may not be scored in junior high schools. Moreover, I will also let my students know my grading system, so they may not fall into the fear of failing the subject. In addition, I will tell them to come to me when they have come up with any difficulties in learning English or adjusting to the new environment. Being amiable and professional as an English teacher, I will do my best to help students gain security in their fresh start.
Besides the above efforts to meet students’ basic needs, I will tell them the advantages of mastering English. For example, being able to speak English can ensure your basic needs when you travel to a foreign country, mostly English-speaking countries. After learning English for three years in junior high, students will be able to develop their communicative competence, which allow them to order meals (physiological needs), ask for directions (security needs), make foreign friends (social needs), read English web pages and so on. Informing these benefits to students will motivate them to learn English. Also, having a command of English will enable one to get foreign information more quickly if he/she loves to watch English films, know the American sport games, or read English-written novels like “Harry Potter” (self-esteem needs). Knowledge of these can satisfy both social and self-esteem needs, in which people feel good about themselves. English can also be seen as a tool in many aspects or fields. If one is good at English, he/she can realize his/her potential in more fields. For instance, a student who wishes to be a businessperson may have more advantages than others because he/she can communicate with people in English while others can’t. To be short, English can take you anywhere you wish. If students are informed the benefits of learning English, they will be more motivated when they are learning English, inside or outside the classroom.
C. Benefits to Gain
Since Maslow’s illustration of human needs is widely accepted and agreed, its application to English teaching is also workable. After the adaptation explained in the above section, I believe the students will be able to reach higher motivation as they approach English. With the knowledge that English is useful and helpful to their future career, studies, and possible travel plans, my students will have the desire to learn English well. They may thus be more attentive to class lectures, participate in class activities or games, and do the assignment more carefully. Besides, they will also know that I am a teacher they may go to once they face any learning difficulties. They will know that I see the individual differences upon them and am willing to lend a helping hand to their individual learning obstacles. Therefore, Maslow’s theory helps me to look into my students’ needs, which helps me to have empathy over them, and further reminds me to create the need of learning English for my students to motivate them in learning.

II. Short Story for Discussion
A. Motivation
The short story is a good source for EFL students to learn the language and know more about the target culture. Most people are brought up by stories, so the familiar form of narrative is easier for learners to approach than the textbooks. As a junior high school teacher, I have tried to have my students read a simplified novel “The Princess.” And some of the students showed high interest in the reading process, most of whom are girl students. I have also made copies of one of the Aesop’s fables to my students, and designed some activities following the reading. For example, after discussion the text of the story, I told my students to circle the verbs in the form of past tense, for the purpose of having them identify the past tenses. The students not only learned to read the short stories, but learned some grammatical features with the fun story. Besides, many of them told me that the text is so interesting that they would love to read some more. Therefore, according to my prior experiences, short stories not only motivate students to approach the authentic text in the target language, but also provide them with more comprehensible input and culture knowledge.
B. Application
Target Student: 8 graders in junior high
Class Size: 35~38 students
To conduct such activity in the junior high context, the selection of the text should be taken into careful consideration, by which I mean the vocabulary size, the grammatical structures and the content should be chosen appropriately according to the cognitive development of junior high learners. The subject has to be close to students’ daily life experiences or common interest that may engage the interest of the students. In order to make the activity go smoothly, I will divide my students into six groups, with 6 or 5 students in each one. The story will be short enough for students to finish in eight minutes. In each group, each member is assigned a different role. The roles assigned include: discussion director, vocabulary enricher, summarizer, connector, speaker, and note-taker. Each role should be decided before the class starts and takes the same share of responsibility.
Procedure:
1. Give the short story to each student.
2. There will be eight minutes for each student to finish reading a short story. For the two more minutes, each student has to prepare for the discussion according to his/her assigned roles.
3. There will be six- to seven-minute time for discussion. Each group member has to speak.
4. Ten Comprehension Questions will be distributed to each group and discuss. This activity will last five minutes.
5. After the discussion finishes, the Speaker in each group gives a talk on their thoughts about the short stories.
6. Then the teacher goes over the ten comprehension questions with the answers given from each group and give comments to the whole activity.

＊Task of each role:
(1) Discussion Director: Your job is to read the discussion questions out and help your group member talk over. You have to hold the flow of the discussion.
(2) Vocabulary Enricher: Your job is to mark some unfamiliar words or phrases and help your group member to recognize them. You may consult a dictionary or ask the teacher for help.
(3) Summarizer: Your job is to make a brief summary of today’s reading. You may do it in either Chinese or English.
(4) Connector: Your job is to find connections between the short story and the world outside. This means connecting the reading to your own life, to happenings at school or to similar events at other times and places.
(5) Speaker: Your job is to speak for your group in front of the class.
(6) Note-taker: Your job is to record the discussion details in the worksheet.

C. Benefits to Gain
At the beginning phase, the students may not be familiar with the task of roles and the procedures. Therefore, the teacher has to give a lead and provides more examples or make modifications if necessary. When the students know what I want them to do and what the benefits are, the expected results may include the following. First, the students can improve their reading skills from the selected short stories. Second, the students can learn to cooperate and share ideas with others. Meanwhile, their speaking and listening abilities are believed to be enhanced. The students can learn to practice expressing their ideas. Moreover, the students can learn how to get the gist of the reading in a short time and their train of thoughts can grow clearer. At the same time, it is also expected that the students can learn culture through the given reading. I believe that the students will reach higher motivation and will be more willing to approach English texts. It needs to be noted that each time every participant has different roles. So if the activity can be held more times, each group member has more opportunities to learn to play each different role well.

III. Articulation and Pronunciation: Tongue Twisters
A. Motivation
Most of my students have pronunciation problems, especially in low and short vowels and consonants like /p/, /b/, /m/, /n/, /f/, /v/, /Ө/, and /Ʒ/. The tongue twister is one of the interesting ways to help the students articulate the correct sounds. Many of the students have practiced saying Chinese tongue twisters, which brings a lot of fun in the process. Therefore, it is my belief that the practice of the English tongue twister can also make the English learning process more interesting.
B. Application
Target Students: 7th Graders
Student Age: 13

I will pick three to four tongue twisters which contain some confusing phonemes for students to practice. For example, to have the students tell the differences between /m/ and /n/, I will use the following sentences:
＊My mom meets the monkey in the morning.
＊Tom and Sam play the name game.
＊Kevin Brown has nine fine pines.
These sentences will be presented in a poster with the /m/ and /n/ sounds marked red. I will read the sentences as examples and ask the students to recite as well. After two-minute practices, I will have a game in which students from each group try to read the tongue twisters and the time spent is counted. The students are required to articulate as clearly as possible. People who finish the tongue twisters with the minimal time is the winner.
Another possible application is to have students finish a set of tongue twisters within a given time, 30 seconds, for example. The winner goes to the student who reads the most sentences.
C. Possible Gains
The practice of tongue twister is to have students identify the minimal pairs in sounds and pronounce as clearly as possible. It also provide phonics reinforcement through the repetition of some consonant clusters and vowels. It is also my wish that students can improve their speaking and listening abilities through the fun sentences and exciting competitions.

References:
Reading 44, a core reading framework. (1999). North Vancouver School District.
Gleitman, H. (1997). Psychology. New York: W.W. Norton.
http://www.uebersetzung.at/twister/

Laura Liao's Reflection Paper

Laura Liao's Reaction Paper
Subjects: 11th graders in senior high school
Teaching: Improvisational games, Interactive drama, Short short story

1. Improvisational games
1.1 Motivation
In my past teaching, I'd always held that games should play a significant role in class. To my relief, that's what experts say about the games in teaching. W. R. Lee says that games should be treated as central not peripheral to the foreign language teaching programme. Without doubt, the moment I learned of some improvisational games from Dr. Phillips, I made extra effort to understand and practice a bit each game.
1.2 Application
1) SLAP, CLAP, SNAP:
In the very first class of a new semester, I use SLAP, CLAP, SNAP to attract students' attention to know each other better. Instead of me having a long self-introduction, I ask students to stand up and form a group of four. On the blackboard, I write down English/ Chinese name, star sign, and favorite country. I want them to have a memory challenge by saying out loud their own and others' name, star sign and favorite country by using SLAP, CLAP, SNAP.
2) A SENTENCE AT A TIME STORY:
After teaching the vocabulary in one unit from students' textbook, I ask students to stand up and form a group of four. They practice telling a story by taking turns to say out loud only a sentence at a time. After that, they will be handed two clips of paper. On the paper are written some phrases or idioms from the textbook. Students are required to tell a story and use the assigned phrases in their story.
1.3 Expected results
With the first ice-breaking activity, students are expected to know their neighbors or classmates better in their first English class. They can remember their partners' English/ Chinese name, star sign and favorite country in a very short period of time. Besides, they get the chance to review the 12 star signs and as many countries as possible.
In the second game, students are provided with the opportunity to review the vocabulary they' ve learned in a unit. Instead of giving them written quiz on vocabulary as soon as the vocabulary instruction is finished, this activity gives students some variety of learning as well as practicing in one group. Students can memorize vocabulary better and even put them into practice.
2. Interactive Drama
2.1 Motivation
Language should be used and practiced in terms of its functions, formality, registers, attitudes and features. (Livingstone, Carol) The best way to integrate all the above items in one activity is through interactive drama. When ID was introduced in Dr. Phillips' class, I felt exhilarated because I found it very practical and useful in my language class.
2.2 Application
Before I begin ID, I explain the importance of playing ID in the language class to let students identify with me over its significance in learning. Students are handed an information sheet about the whole ID first a day before the class. After questions and answers on the information sheet, students have a better picture about what this ID is about. The goal of the ID should be reminded and emphasized several times so that students know what they ought to do. Afterward, they have to form a group of a certain number according to the ID I use. For example, 40 students are in one class and it's preferable to divide them into 4 groups and 10 students are in one group. In this way, I can have 4 groups going on at the same time. After that they are handed character sheets to be sure who they are playing. Give students some time to read and play their part first, and then they are given thirty minutes to enjoy and complete their ID.
2.3 Expected results
Students are given every freedom to play their role and be themselves in this special period of time. They should be quite frustrated as well as satisfied in the activity for, one, they have a hard time expressing themselves due to the limited knowledge of language, and two, they get the sense of accomplishment from what they’ve done to solve the mystery or achieve the goal of the ID.
3. Short short story
3.1 Motivation
Everybody loves story regardless of his or her gender and sex. Stories can be quite inspirational and motivational as long as appropriate topics appeal to their readers. When I read one of Dr. Phillips' short short stories, I found it quite interesting and useful in my conversation class.
3.2 Application
I would use short short story as a kind of supplementary material to provide more variety for students apart from their normal textbook reading. For example, after reading materials whose topics are love or relationships in their textbook, I would give them short short story on topics of Date or Love. Students should take home to read and finish the comprehension questions, and after going back to the class, they can firs, check the answers, and then discuss questions related to the topic. I would love to provide as much usage of that topic on the story as possible so that they can articulate their ideas in the discussion. At the end, they can have fun doing guided imagery in groups.
3.3 Expected results
Instead of doing more silent readings at home, short short story gives students more varieties in learning by reading, speaking, listening and speaking. Students are exposed to more and interesting activities in the short short story. They will understand the related topic better and understand other areas of this topic better.

Reference:

Uberman, Agnieszka, The Use of Games for Vocabulary Presentation and Revision in English Teaching Forum, v.36, no.1, January-March, 1998 (pp. 20-36-27+).
Livingstone, Carol. What is Role Play? Role Play in Langauge Learning. Essex: Longman Press, 1983 (pp. 1-9)

Megan's reaction paper

The following are the techniques I would like to adopt in my senior high class consisting of 40 students.

I. Motivated sequence & Laws of persuasion
Personally, I find Monroe's motivated sequence and the nine laws of persuasion proposed by Hogan quite related to our daily life. As we know, we are now living in the age in which commercials are everywhere around us. Turning on the TV, we can find a bunch of commercials appealing to our consumption. Therefore, it is crucial for modern people to be equipped with the knowledge of the psychology of persuasion so that they can hold a critical attitude to judge the commercials or ads they see. For the teenagers, who are vulnerable to the impact of commercials, it is important that they learn the motivated sequence and the laws of persuasion so they will not be blinded by the commercials.In addition, in one of the textbooks in senior high, Far-East version, Book three, there is a lesson about advertising. So, in teaching this lesson, the motivated sequence and the nine laws of persuasion can be applied.Procedure:
1. Motivated sequence and the nine laws of persuasion are instructed in class.
2. Students are asked to get into groups of three.
3. Each group is required to decide on a product and create an ad or commercial utilizing the motivated sequence or the nine laws of persuasion.
4. Each group has to present their ad in class and explain the principles they use in the ad.
Through the activity, students will be familiarized with the motivated sequence and the nine laws of persuasion. Moreover, they know the operation of commercials better. Next time, when a new product is coming out, before they are prompted by the appealing commercials to buy it, they can“think twice before they act.”

II. ILS—memory games
Everyone loves games—children an adults alike. Games“motivate learners, promote communicative competence and generate fluency”(Uberman, 1998:21) They are not just time-filling activities; instead, they have great educational values. W.R.Lee holds that most language games make learners use the language instead of thinking about learning the correct forms (1979:2) The ILS games are very useful in eliciting language production naturally. I will adjust the memory games a little bit and apply it in teaching vocabulary in senior high.
Procedure:
1. Students have to familiarize themselves with the pronunciation as well as the meaning of the words from the vocabulary list after the instruction of the teacher.
2. Students are asked to get into groups of five.
3. Each group is required to choose from the vocabulary list 7 to 10 words they consider the most difficult for them and write them down by labeling them in numbers.
4. The teacher collects the difficult words from each group.
5. Each group has to challenge the difficult words chosen by other groups by playing the memory games
6. The group challenging the memory game is allowed to view the difficult words from other groups for twenty seconds. They have to memorize all the difficult words with their group members. So they may need to distribute two to three words to each member.
7. One student says one word he remembers from the difficult word list, and the next student has to repeat the word said by the first student while saying another word he remembers. The third student has to repeat the two words said by the previous two students and then say a word he remembers and so on.
8. The group that plays the game smoothly and gets the most correct words is the winner.The memory game provides students with a chance to review the words they have learned, especially the difficult ones considered by their classmates. Through the competition, they will find it both exciting and interesting to familiarize themselves with the difficult words.

III. Story for discussion
Stories are a good source of discussion for they provide materials related to our lives. Moreover, they inspire our imagination and creativity. The TRUE-FALSE-DON'T KNOW activity in story for discussion is a good way to provoke students' critical thinking and guide them to express their opinions in English. I will use it in the following procedure:
1. The teacher chooses stories suitable for students' language level. They should be interesting and easy-to-understand ones. Then, the teacher designs ten to fifteen TRUE-FALSE-DON'T KNOW questions.
2. Students are divided into groups of four to five.
3. Students do silent reading themselves; afterwards, they raise questions about the reading, if there is any.
4. Students discuss the answers to the questions in their groups. They are encouraged to express their ideas in English and try to give reasons to persuade others.
5. If there is enough time, the teacher can assign students to different groups so that they have a chance to listen to others' opinions and express their own.
6. After the discussion, the teacher may go through the questions and provide answers for their reference.

There is a story about forgiveness in the senior high textbook of Far-East version, Book three. I regard it as a good material for the application of this technique. And I will use it as a way to review the lesson. I believe students will benefit from exchanging their ideas with others as well as having more impression on this lesson after the discussion.

Reference:
Uberman, Agnieszka, The Use of Games for Vocabulary Presentation and Revision in English Teaching Forum, v.36, no.1, January-March, 1998 (pp. 20-36-27+).

(*Because there seems to be some technical problem, this article, actually written by Megan, has to be posted by Monica.)

Monica's Semi-formal Reaction Paper

[ 93951001 Monica Huang ]
Target Students: 8th- or 9th- graders in Junior High School
Three Chosen Methods:
1. Short Stories for Discussion
2. Guided Imagery
3. Improvisational Games

1. Short Stories for Discussion

1.1 Motivation
Reading must be seen as an acquired ability. But acquiring it implies a lot of practice and the knowledge of some techniques that can guarantee comprehension. Bearing this in mind, I think the best way to help my students improve their reading compression ability and enjoy what they read is through the introduction of various short, interesting, and educational stories for them to discuss. During the process of reading and discussing the main idea as well as some details, students feel surer about what they read and understand better whether they're on the right track set by the author. After all, I don't want my students to end up reading every word very well but in the long run the idea of what they have read is lost. Instead, I want them to be able to decide which terms are the most important and which part of the reading deserves more attention, and truly get into the reading to interpret the authors’ intentions and ideas.

1.2 Application
Regular study is important. While many teachers tend to cram their students' poor brains with more than one (and usually very long story) at a time, for example, two consecutive class hours once a week, I prefer to have my students try to form a reading habit by studying a little and often, like 30 minutes a day.
Besides, junior high school students' English is not that proficient, and their vocabulary bank isn’t large enough for them to understand certain short stories catering to native English students. Therefore, I suggest that junior high school teachers in Taiwan use Aesop's Fables for 8th-graders and Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul for 9th-graders.

1.3 Benefits to gain
The aforementioned suggestive application about short stories for discussion leads to students' gradual improvement of reading comprehension as well inferential abilities. Due to the fact that those chosen short stories are far more interesting and a lot easier than their textbooks, students read a lot and their English improves a lot. What's even better, their mass reading has enabled them to think critically when they have access to any reading materials, and to handle easily almost any reading comprehension questions they encounter while taking tests.

2. Guided Imagery

2.1 Motivation
What often happens in EFL classrooms in Taiwan is that many students are so used to being put down in English learning, especially during those early years as they start learning it. Worse still, many students believe that their classmates are better than they are. Therefore, as an EFL teacher, I do find it necessary to sometimes ask my students to“wipe their mental slates clean”and START AGAIN— believing in themselves that they're able to learn English well and that learning it can be an enjoyable experience.

2.2 Application
It's always my goal to really make my students enjoy learning English, even if they're asked to memorize a bunch of words and a truck loads of sentence patterns. However, exams are always the intruders that spoil the entire wonderful learning atmosphere. To solve it, I will incorporate guided imagery into my curriculum whenever there is a monthly exam. Hopefully, students can release some of their pressure or even gain some confidence if they can tap into the power of imagery.

2.3 Benefits to gain
When students tell themselves,“Yes, I CAN do this,”or“Yes, I can SUCCEED," then they are already half way up the mountain to success. Of course the summit is reached by efforts and determination, but knowing that it can be reached makes that journey easy and enjoyable. In addition to the increase of confidence or sense of security, guided imagery can be regarded as an interesting and useful way to improve students’ listening comprehension ability.

3. Improvisational Games

3.1 Motivation
Most Chinese students lack creativity, and most English pedagogies lack originality. As a result, students' similar performances or reactions and teachers' dull curriculum both make the language classroom unattractive or unsuccessful. So, in order to help students think fast and come up with creative ideas, I'd like to make good use of improvisational games to teach them how to think quickly on their feet. And I believe that it is a great way not only for students to make friends and boost their confidence level but also for teachers like me to make language classrooms interesting.

3.2 Application
Whenever new sentence patterns are introduced or writing skills are taught, improvisational games such as A Sentence A Time Story can be used. Whenever vocabulary is reviewed, Word Map is a good choice. Abundant Internet resources are there for EFL teachers to make good use of, so, basically, teachers can simply choose what they want or what cater most to their students' English proficiency level or learning needs.

3.3 Benefits to gain
Learning English becomes fun and challenging. Students' roles are not only the receivers or copiers but also the creators or directors. EFL classrooms are no longer teacher-centered but student-centered. Opportunities for utterance increase and so does students' confidence in speaking. All in all, improvisational games help a lot in terms of the improvement of students' English proficiency.

References
Alderson, J.C. (1988, March). Testing reading comprehension skills. Paper presented at TESOL '88 Convention, Chicago.
Alderson, J.C., & Urquhart, A.H. (1984). Postscript on Hosenfeld. In J.C. Alderson & A.H.. Urquhart (Eds.), Reading in a Foreign Language (pp. 245-249). New York: Longman.
Gardner R. C. and Lambert W. E. (1972) Atttitudes and Motivation in Second Language Learning Newbury House:Rowley, Mass
Gumperz, J. (1982). Language and social identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Jerry's reaction paper

Jerry's Semi-formal reaction Paper

93951011 Jerry Yang
Target Students: Junior High School Students
Methods:
1. Tongue twisters
2. Short story for discussion
3. Guided imagery

1. Tongue twisters
1.1 Motivation
Many students in junior high school have encountered
difficulties in pronunciation. Some of them are even not
capable of articulating a single sound not to say the sound
sequence. They are seldom aware of the differences and
similarities between sounds and letters. This may cause
a serious problem- they just memorize their vocabulary
letter by letter instead of the connection between sounds
and meanings. This way, they will forget the words they
learn easily and confuse with similar words all the time.
The introducing of Tongue twisters into the class shoud
be helpful. Tongue twisters provide contrast and practice
for students to master the sounds that may cause them
a lot of trouble. With Tongue twisters, teachers can
diagnose the sounds needed more emphasis and students
can practice these sounds over and over again. Hopefully,
their competence of pronunciation and vocabulary will
improve.

1.2 Applications in class
First, different Tongue twisters with various difficulty
levels should be edited and arranged into beginning,
intermediate and advanced levels. Then for the beginning
level, the focus is on the contrast of sounds among isolated
words. Four or five very similar words are presented at
the same time to draw students' attention. For the
intermediate level, word chunks and phrases with meanings
are arranged to emphasize the connection between sounds
and their meanings. For advanced level, sentences that
contain Tongue twisters are practiced in class. Students
have to be familiar with the sound patterns and their
meanings to obtain better performance. Finally, students
are asked to create their own Tongue twisters and the top
five will get rewards.

1.3 Expected benefits
Students first come to junior high school with huge differences
among their proficiency levels. Some students pass the
elementary level of GEPT; some even don't know how to
pronounce the simplest words. In this case, the activities of
Tongue twisters may provide interesting and practicable
solutions for teachers to deal with this problem. So, the students
with higher proficiency levels won't feel bored when practice
their pronunciation, and at the same time other students who
may have problems in the beginning may improve their
pronunciation through these activities. Besides, teachers have
to be aware of the differences among their students and decide
the most suitable Tongue twisters in class. It's better to choose
the ones that have something to do with the lessons they have
already or just learned.

2. Short story for discussion
2.1 Motivation
When learning English, students tend to take everything
they learn for granted. They just accept what is told in their
textbook without their own judgement. If they are asked
about what they've got from the text, they will always have
the same opinions as the authors. In this process of learning
a language, there may be a very serious problem, students'
creativity is always damaged. They seldom develop their
own ways of thinking and eventually they become a learning
machine that can not think but follow the directions their
teachers give. That would be a diaster to our education.
The activities of Short story for discussion will be of course
a good solution to this problem. Teachers present suitable
short stories and their students not only read the message
inside but reflect further either themselves or with their
teammates and activate their brain for discussion. The
process of discussion is also the process of negotiating
the meanings. Students can have more chances to develop
their thinking device, which is also very important in learning
English.

2.2 Applications in class
Short story for discussion is a very useful tool that teachers
can adpot for their classes, either for their warm-up activities
to bring students background information or for their after-class
assignments to double-check whether students understand
some main ideas or not. Activities of Short story for discussion
can also be devided into different levels. For example, short
stories about jokes, fables or pictures are suitable for students
with lower proficiency levels. For students with higher proficiency
levels, stories related to value judgment, social problems or
even political issues can be arranged and discussed. It's really
important to build step by step their consciousness and ability
of discussion in class. In this situation, teachers are like the
directors who offer their students the script to play and give
the least instruction if needed, while students are the actors
who decide how to act it out and express what's in their minds
through discussion.

2.3 Expected benefits
We teachers never want our students to be testing or learning
machines, but sometimes we just unconsciously have this
happen. How can we avoid that? I think, the technique of Short
story for discussion is a good choice. If we aim to educate our
kids to have the ability of critical and independent thinking,
we are on the right track to adopt the activities of Short story
for discussion into our class. Moreover, students are humans
that were born with creative brains. Teachers have to help
develop their imagination and creative thinking. Again, the
activities of Short story for discussion will be a good method
for teachers to achieve this end. This way, students will not
learn English just like the machines but become active learners
who can decide what to learn and how to learn it. They know
how to express themselves freely in English and of course
respect opinions from others.

3. Guided imagery
3.1 Motivation
Students in junior high school are in the "embarrassing" or
transitional phrase. They are just going from the care free
elementary days into a more demanding and busy stage.
Many habits they had in the elementary school days have
to be adjusted and they have more homework to do, more
subject to learn, and even more tests to suffer. They have
encountered a great deal of pressure, especially when they
are in the third year of junior high, they still have to take
a very important exam, BC test, which will decide their
senior high or vocational high in the future. Placing into
this stressful situation, they need something that can
really release them from all the pressure. I think the
introducing of Guided imagery can really help. Teachers
can help them to relax and refresh through some particular
Guided imagery.

3.2 Applications in class
The steps about how to conduct a Guided imagery should
be explained and demonstrated in class first. Then, train
students to try to relax and concentrate on the process.
Help them to visualize the image and sharpen their
imagination. Next, let them discuss their own experience
and feelings throughout the whole process. Teachers at last
give thme an assignment to create their most relaxing
Guided imagery and present it in class. On the other hand,
teachers have to be aware of individual differences among
the students and try to understand students' minor culture
and ways of thinking.

3.3 Expected benefits
Primarily, inviting the activities of Guided imagery aims to
reduce students' pressure. During the process, students'
imagination and creativity are also expected to be enhanced.
With the discussion and sharing the experience, teachers and
students can can understand each other and problems that
are hidden deep inside their minds can often be solved.
Eventually, the pressure belongs to not only the students
but also the teachers can be released at the same time.
Therefore, the atmosphere and relationship between teachers
and students can be improved and enhanced.

Above are the three most preferable methods that I would
like to apply into my class in junior high. Of course, the list
here is not exhausted. There must be many other choices
that can be applied in the classroom. Because my teaching
career is still a long long way to go, I think I have enough
time and chances to adopt other possible methods into my
class in the future.

Reference

Cross, D. (1991). A Practical Handbook of Language Teaching.
London: Cassell Villiers House.
Hadfield, J. (1990). Intermediate Communication Games.
Edinburgh Gate: Longman.
Methold, K. & Jones, H. (1992). Short Stories for Comprehension.
Hong Kong: Cornwall House.
Rubin, J. & Thompson, I. (1982). How to Be A More Successful
Language Learner. Boston: Heinle & Heinle.

Joyce's Reaction Paper (93951015)

I.Tongue Twisters
I teach in a vocational high school in the countryside. Many students show little interest for English due to overwhelming difficulties they have encountered at their first contact with English. A sense of failure in the early period pulled them back from learning. Pronunciation is a main problem for many students. Since they cannot sound out the words, the letters become abstract in the spelling order. Without the aid of sound, students have to memorize the letters one by one. It is difficult for them to internalize the forms of vocabulary into their long-term memory. They learn new words and quickly forget.
In my school, the material for freshmen before the first midterm examination is KK phonetic symbols. By the introduction of KK phonetic symbols, students are expected to understand the individual sound in the language and how the sounds blend together in a syllable. When I teach low achievers, I would combine phonics instructions and KK phonetic symbols. Students will have a better picture of the relation of sounds and letters. Therefore, students’ awareness of phonemes and morphemes will be enhanced under these two methods.
Tongue twisters often combine words of minimal pairs. By giving examples of minimal pairs, I can give explicit explanation of letter-sound correspondence. Therefore, I would like to use them in my class to help students develop phonemic awareness easier and faster.
For example:
Dig the jig in the dim gym.
The cat in the hatch will match the hat on the patch by the mat.
Giggle gaggle google goggle.
After students master these basic sounds, I would add more interesting sentences that might twist their tongues in order to be more fun.

Procedure: A game of tongue twisters relay race.
1. 6 rows of students are in a competition.
2. The teacher tells the first student of each row a tongue twister outside of the classroom without being heard by other students. For example: He threw three balls.
3. Each of the first students goes back to his/her row and whispers the sentence to the second student, and on and on.
4. The last student in each row has to come up to the front and write the sentence on the black board he/she has heard during the game.
5. The group who has the correct sentence is the winner.

II. Interactive drama
Interactive drama is too difficult for my students. However, I like the idea of interactive drama that it elicits spontaneous language from students. The communicative competence is highly emphasized in the recent teaching trends. However, what we have in Taiwan is an ESL situation. Students have little contact with English environment in their daily life. Therefore, in the classroom teachers have to provide more opportunities for students to speak out and use the language. I will adopt ID in my classroom and make it much easier for students who are in beginning levels. Actually, I will change it to guided role play. Limited by students’ low English proficiency, the guided role play may not be as interactive and dynamic as ID. The purpose is to give students chances to apply what they have learned in order to accomplish a given task.
Procedure:
1. The teacher provides students with some useful structures and patterns. Students feel less anxious when they have basic skills to accomplish a task.
2. By drills and repetition, students need to remember these useful expressions. Examples of several conversations are given to students so that they can be more familiar with the use of patterns and the formulaic sentences.
3. Pair up the students and include a student of higher level in each group.
4. Give students a task. The task contains information gap between the two partners so there will be interaction in the conversation.
For example: You meet a new friend in the school. You want to make friends with him/her. You introduce your name and ask questions about him/her.

Student A: 1. You smile and say “hi” to the girl next to you.
2. Introduce your name to her and ask what her name is.
3. You exchange information with her.
Information:
Your name is Daniel.
You live in Touliu. You graduated from Touliu junior high school.
You go to school by bus every day.
You have one younger brother and two sisters.
Your hobby is playing computer games.
You like jazz.
Your favorite subject is PE because you like sports.

Student B: 1. The boy next to you says hi and asks your name.
2. In order to be friendly, you exchange information with him.
Information:
Your name is Jane.
You are from Huwei. You graduated from Huwei junior high school.
You walk to school every day.
You are an only child.
Your hobbies are watching movies and dancing.
You like popular music most.
You like English most because you think your English teacher is very pretty.

5. Teacher observes while the groups are performing and then gives some comments.


III. Stories for Discussion - true, false, don't know

I will adopt this activity when I help students review a lesson. There are only two hours of English classes in one week at my school. Activities should be well-prepared in terms of time controlling and classroom management. Stories for Discussion will help students to review the whole text and be more familiar with the content and expressions. The teacher prepares 10 to 15 comprehension questions and gives students before the discussion. Students can prepare answers in advance and use the vocabulary and phrases they have learned in this lesson. The reasons why students in my school can not learn English well are that they merely recite the vocabulary and test items for tests. In the activity, they have to “use” English to talk about the answers or persuade others to change their mind.
Procedure:
The class is divided into 5 groups with 6 persons in each one. The members of each group are heterogeneous. The student with better English proficiency is assigned as a leader who is in charge of keeping the discussion going on. Other members will need to do the note-taking, and be responsible of discipline problems in the process. Therefore, everyone in a group shares some responsibility. Students will go over all the comprehension questions and provide answer such as true, false or don’t know and give comments.

IV.Conclusion

Teaching is a combination of art and science. Teaching methods and materials should be changed when applying to different students. In Dr. Phillips' course in summer, he demonstrated a variety of activities and methods. I find many of them are valuable in applying to my students. I can't wait to apply them to my classes and hope to add some new and fresh elements in my teaching.

Josephine's Reflection Paper

Josephine’s Reflection Paper (93951010)
Introduction:
In this course, I‘ve learned a serious topics that can be truly applied to my senior I class to arouse students’ interests in English learning. Among these methods, I’m especially interested in tongue twister, interactive drama and group discussion, so I’d like to design well-organized teaching plans of the above topics to make the lessons go more smoothly.
Tongue Twister
1. How Tongue Twisters are usually taught in senior high school
Though tongue twisters are widely introduced in some text books, they are just taught so shallowly and randomly that students may fail to understand why they should learn tongue twister and they may have no ability to create other tongue twisters.
2. Teaching Procedures
Firstly, I’d like to either read some classic tongues to my students, such as “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. Did Peter Piper pick a peck of pickled peppers? If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?” by myself or broadcast them several times until they get familiar with the pronunciation, tones, and rhymes. Then, I‘ll have the students read some classic tongue twisters aloud all together. And then, five students will be in one group and each of them is encouraged to take turns reading the tongue twister in groups for about ten minutes. After that, each group will appoint one representative to perform one tongue twister in public.
3. Assignment
After class, the students will be assigned to find at least three more tongue twisters on the Internet individually and then they need to cooperate with other group members to create five tongue twisters and all these tongue twisters created by themselves will be corrected by the teacher and then compiled together.
Interactive Drama
1. How dramas are usually taught in senior high school
Since both listening and speaking competence are not tested in all entrance exams, Most English teachers are neither interested in dramas nor motivated to have any long-term teaching plans of teaching dramas inside or outside class. Take my school as an example,
2. Teaching Procedures
According to Alun LW. Rees, the teacher-author of the ID will of course adapt the language culture, and social setting of whodunit he selects to the sophistication and interests of the performers and their anticipated audience. Therefore, since how to prompt my shy, passive students to speak English more spontaneously in class has already become my problem for a long time, the first thing I need to do is to make some adjustments of the existing playwrights created by my classmates in ETMA this summer. Besides, although they may take highly interest about some controversial plots, I’ll try to avoid some too complicated ones related to sex and violence. And then, I’ll have each of the performers do some brain-storming and preparation beforehand so that the ID will get much more smoothly. Finally, all the performers will be encouraged to act out bravely on stage, just trying to present a different personality which has never found by others. One thing for sure is that nobody will get hurt or feel uncomfortable during the ID and each one is highly motivated to learn English well through the performance.
3. Assignment
The students need to create their own ID playwrights whose contents are not necessarily required to be too complicated so that the students can play them out and get involved in the plots without any difficulties. Every two weeks, as long as we have sufficient time in English class, they will be asked to perform one ID playwright so that they will not only dare to speak out in English but also sharpen their English communicative competence consequently.
Group Discussion
1. How Group Discussions are usually applied in senior high school
Although group discussions are often demonstrated in class, but, most of the time, they are just designed to answer a certain kind of questions, thought to be not too authentic or conflicting to arouse students’ interests.
2. Teaching Procedures
The activity I am going to conduct in class is more like decision-making techniques, but would be simpler to fit my EFL senior high school students in Taiwan. For example, students will be divided into several groups, and five students in group. They will get the profiles of six applicants of one vacancy beforehand to look up some new words in a dictionary in order to save class hours. Then, next day, each member will be asked to act as supervisors to decide who they would hire within an hour. Though this process, they need to use English to persuade other people to change their mind or just change their mind to reach common consensus. Finally, each group need to select one person to present their result and explain the reasons why they would choose the applicant.
3. Assignment
Have the students hand in one learning sheet which should contain the process of their discussion by answering the following questions: How and why did they make the agreement? Why were some of them willing to be persuaded? How did they feel about this result? Were they satisfied with it or just feeling offended and why?
Conclusion:
Conducting any one of the above of the group work may be both changeable and exhausting, because the class may be totally out of control or use the native language, etc. But if the teacher can make very well-prepared teaching plans of them beforehand and adopt others’ experiences, the situation will be totally different. The whole class will definitely become not only much more interested in English learning but also more willing to speak English in public after joining the activities and start to learn automatically.

Claire's Reaction Paper

Claire’s Reaction Paper (92951007)
After the fruitful summer programs, I have chosen three activities for the students in Chung-Ho Senior High School: tongue twisters, interactive drama and short story for discussion. The reasons and application are as follows.
I. Tongue Twisters—
1.1 Motivation:
As is known to everyone, listening and speaking in senior high school are often neglected because these two skills are not tested in the entrance exam. However, languages are means of communication and communication has been the core of language instruction these years. Therefore, teachers all recognize the importance of these two productive skills but they do not have ways to improve their listening and even speaking abilities. I believe the tongue twister is a good way to improve both their listening and speaking abilities. Because when the teacher takes the lead and read the tongue twister, students should recognize the minimal pairs and the minor differences in the sounds. Then, they should try to pronounce these similar sounds by themselves. This is a big challenge for them. If they can really say those tongue twisters correctly and quickly, I believe their recognition of sounds and pronunciation will improve without a doubt.
1.2 Subjects:
The students that I will teach are second-graders of senior high school. They have learned English for at least 4 years. Therefore, they have some basic proficiency in listening and speaking.
1.3 Teaching Procedures:
(1) First, I choose six tongue twisters for the second-graders.
(2) Starting with the easiest one, I will read the tongue twister first for them and they repeat after me.
(3) I will ask some volunteers to read the tongue twister for the rest of the class.
(4) In a group of 5, I will ask each group to read the tongue twister that is assigned to them for the rest of the class.
(5) At the end of the class, I will randomly choose six students to read those tongue twisters and check if they have no difficulty pronouncing those words.
II. Interactive Drama—
2.1 Motivation:
Due to the total ignorance of speaking in English instruction, I would like to let my students play the interactive drama at the end of this semester. Through the interactive drama, it is expected that students will realize English is just a means of communication and they can use it to elicit the information they want. I like the idea that only through the conversation with other people can one find who has done it. Therefore, students are forced to speak and ask question in English. I believe that will be a unique experience for all the students.
Also, I believe students will never feel the pressure of performance on the stage when playing the interactive dramas. They just try to talk to other characters and forget about the audience. In this case, they can concentrate on what they should say more. Besides, they can talk to one another at every corner of the classroom instead of limiting themselves to the stage. They sure will have more freedom that way.
In this activity, I would like to inform students of the importance of making themselves understood when speaking and the skills of talking because there are some important secrets in each character and they should try hard to dig them out. Hopefully, students will both have fun playing the interactive drama and learn English at the same time.
2.2 Teaching Procedures:
(1) I choose the interactive drama which we make in the summer vacation: Who set the fire? I modified some language and add more police officers to make the total characters to be 20. This way, I can have two different groups playing at the same time. Due to the space students need and the noise they might make, I will make them play the interactive drama in the biggest lab in our school.
(2) I will make the first 20 students as the first group and the rest as the second. They will compete which team finds the person who set the fire to the mayor Ma’s house.
(3) After playing the game for 35 minutes, I will welcome their opinions of this activity and what part they like most and dislike most.

III. Short Story for Discussion—
3.1 Motivation:
Reading always plays an important role in senior high school English instruction. What they need is also reading exercise because reading takes up the major part in entrance exam. Therefore, I am interested in finding different activities for my senior high school students.
Short story for discussion is great alternative to make reading more satisfactory and interesting. For one thing, it’s a short story so that students can finish reading the story easily. Originally, I will pick the simplified classical literature for them. Although those are simplified, students still have difficulty finishing reading the book. Therefore, I believe short stories are better ways for them to start with. For another, there are some questions for them to discuss. What’s more interesting is that they don’t have to come up with a single correct answer. This will make them relaxed and willing to say anything about the story.
As for the material of the short stories, the teacher can choose the first one and let the students recommend the stories they like to read. After the teacher’s screening, ten stories are collected. The students will read a short story every two weeks and after the semester, they should write a reflection on their favorite story.
3.2 Teaching Procedures:
(1) First, distribute the short story to each student and ask them to read the story and look up the difficult words in the dictionary at home.
(2) Divide the class into groups of four.
(3) Make each group discuss those comprehension questions for fifteen minutes and reach an agreement on the answer to each question.
(4) Every group shares their ideas of each question.
(5) The teacher makes a conclusion of the presentation of students and shares his/ her thoughts on those questions.

Selena's Semi-formal Reaction Paper

Selena's Semi-formal Reaction Paper
93951007 Selena Wu

1. Lie Detection
1.1 Methods and Techniques Which Appeal to Me
I teach the sixth graders in Ching-shi Elementary School in Tao Yuan. Just like what Lieberman suggests, we live in a world of deception. So do children. But it is not a game to win or to lose for them. It is just a game for fun. What attracts me the most in his theories are the descriptions of the signs of deception, especially the body language and emotional states. They are very concrete and easy to follow in detecting lies for young learners. When adapted, they can be used to engage children in oral activities. These signs will be transformed into a checking list in the following section.

1.2 Adaptations
Combined with a worksheet "Lying Snake" taken from Maggs and Hird's (2003) Speaking Activities (Intermediate) (p. 36), a checklist which is extracted from sections 1 and 2 of the signs of deception in Lieberman's "How To Get The Truth Out of Anyone!" can be used to involve children in a speaking activity.

1.2.1 Lying Snake
The scanned picture of the worksheet is too vague to be seen. So let me just type down the main point. Please refer to the picture at the same time.
Part I. Lying Snake
Play in teams. Player one must roll the dice and move his/her counter to the appropriate square. He/she should then shuffle the Tell the truth/Tell a lie cards, take one and do what the card says.
He/she has to talk about the subject in the box, either truthfully or by lying.
When Player one has finished speaking, the other players in the team have to decide if he/she was lying or telling the truth. Each player who guesses correctly gets one point.
If everyone is wrong, the speaker gets two points.
The game is over when the first person reaches the end.
The person with the most points at the end of the game is the winner.

Part II. Subjects in the Boxes within the snake
-My last holiday
-My last birthday
-My favorite sport
-My ambition
-My family
-My best friend…

Part III. Eight cards (Tell the truth/Tell a lie).

1.2.2The Checklist
1. You think he/she __ tell the truth __ tell a lie (go to 2).
2. According to your observation, he/she tells a lie because he/she:
__Avoids making eye contact.
__ Shifts eyes.
__ Blinks a lot.
__ Touches the face.
__ Touches the throat.
__ Touches the mouth.
__ Touches the nose.
__ Scratches behind the ear.
__ Shrugs.
__ Has mechanical head movements.
__ Has stiff hand movements.
__ Has limited expressions.
__ Others

1.3 Expected Benefits
Children learn through games and activities. We often have games for the whole class. It is easy and convenient for teachers to control and monitor games of this sort. However, the chances for children to practice English are limited in the way because only one to two students can play at the same time. Activities such as lie detection can get students to do pair or team work. Children love detective stories. Have them pretend that they are detectives or FBI agents. They will play with great interests and fun.

2. Ideomotor Effect Pendulum Response Activities
2.1 Methods and Techniques Which Appeal to Me
We always love mysteries. At the first sight, the ideomotor effect activities seem miraculous and supernatural. It is just like that you can read your own or somebody else's minds. it is even more fascinating once you get to know how it works. You know that your subconscious is really there and it works just as well as your consciousness. Activities concerning ideomotor effect are very useful for language learning, especially for young learners. They are so enchanted with activities of this sort according to my own experiment.

2.2 Adaptations
The ideomotor effect activities can be used to learn new words, sentence patterns, and for oral communication. The activity design has to be simplied. For example, if we want to teach colors, we can have one student hide a small object such as an eraser in one of the cups with different colors and make the other student guess by using a pendulum. I have already demonstrated this activity in our class this summer.
In addition, every time after we teach new words or new sentence patterns, we can use flash cards to play a pendulum game. For example, after teaching different shops such as a bookstore or a flower shop and street names, we can have one student cover one of the flash card on a street map. The other student can ask "Is there a market on the Maple street?" By oberving the directions of the pendulum, students can find out the correct answer.
Furthermore, we can also play games by feeling the movement of hands just like what Dr. Phillips demonstrated in our class. We first teach the names for different rooms in a house. Then we put a map on the table. One student from a pair imagines that there is a mouse in one of the rooms. The other student tries questions like "Is the mouse in the living room?" Students can figure out the answers by feeling the weight of their partner's hand.

2.3 Expected Benefits
Again, we can have pair and group activities. We can easily involve children in oral communications in a playful atmosphere. I like to tell my students mystic stories like the Bermuda Triangle series or the curse of Tutankhamen in English (accompanies by Chinese, of course). I am not trying to frighten my students. I just want them to know that there are always explanations behind some mysteries. And most important of all, I hope that they can enjoy my class. They really do because they just love stories. I can imagine that they will love activities of ideomotor effect because they explore themselves more through these activities.

3. Articulation and Pronunciation: Tongue Twisters
3.1 Methods and Techniques Which Appeal to Me
According to Oxford English Dictionary, a tongue twister is "A sequence of words, often alliterative, difficult to articulate quickly." Tongues twisters can be used as exercises for articulation and pronunciation. Tongue twisters are also given to people who are in speech therapy, and people who try to get rid of an accent. A study using fMRI to investigate the neural basis of tongue twisters discovered that areas in the brains related not only to the articulatory speech programming but also to the phonological processing and storage are involved (Keller, T. A., Carpenter, P. A., & Just, M. A., 2003). With tongue twisters, children can practice articulation and pronunciation as well as phonological awarenesss.

3.2 Adaptations
Phonics is often presented in the elementary school textbooks as words in isolation or "chants." For example, if we teach -at, -ed, or -et, we have chants as follows:
The fat cat sat on a mat.

It's a pet and a red jet.
It's Ted. He's a vet.
Ted's on the bed with a pet and a jet.

The language used in these "chants" is artificial and unnatural. It is often difficult to arouse children's interests. Tongue twisters, instead, are much more challenging.

Catch the cat, match the mat, batch the bat, pat the patch and mat the match.
Taken from Dr. Phillips' tongue twister list, this one obviously makes more fun and sense.

We can use tongue twisters to teach consonant clusters.
Bug's black blood.

We can use them to practice vowels.
Giggle gaggle google goggle.

Children can practice difficult sound combinations such as th-.
She thrust three thousand thistles through the thick of her thumb.

Two combinations of sounds can also be contrasted in a sentence.
Cheap ship trip.
Freshly fried fresh flesh.

Tongue twisters can even be used to present grammatical points.
Swan swam over the sea,
Swim, swan, swim!
Swan swam back again
Well swum, swan!

I can't wait to adopt tongue twisters in my own classes this semester.

3.3 Expected Benefits
We can find out which combinations of sounds might be difficult for children to pronounce when they are put together. Children can practice these combinations in a joyful and playful mood and make mistakes without fear since it is natural and fun to make slips. What is deficient in our EFL settings in Taiwan is the environment for children to hear and use English. We can have children practice sounds and sound combinations in meaning contexts with tongue twisters. Involve children in playing with words and exploring the language. They will learn a language with greater enthusiasm.

References
Keller, T. A., Carpenter, P. A., & Just, M. A. (2003). Brain imaging of tongue-twister sentence comprehension: twisting the tongue and the brain. Brain Language. 84(2), 189-203. [Online]. Available: http://www.accelerated-learning-online.com/.
Maggs, P., & Hird, J. (2003). Speaking activities (intermediate). Taipei: ET(師德).

Nick's Semi-formal Reaction Paper

Course: Oral Communication 92951006 Nick Tsou
Task: Semi-formal Reaction Paper

1. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

1.1 Why It appeals to Me
Face to face with three classes of students in the new semester, I need to bear in mind that before trying to help them fulfill their ‘higher’ needs, I should address their ‘lower’ and ‘middle’ needs first, such as physiological, security and social needs, rather than otherwise. Students are as much human as teachers are. If we as teachers can not go about our business without having our basic needs met first, then our students should not go differently, either. When the basic needs are not fulfilled, it makes little sense to address the other two higher needs, self-esteem and self-realization needs. It is part of our nature and going against nature would only create problems.

1.2 Adaptations
Many teachers often only address the highest order of needs to their students and avoid talking about the physiological, security and social needs of theirs by relating how they can develop their potentials to the full. This is not workable. Students might have problems concerning the basic needs not being able to be met. We as teachers should make sure that no big problems occur to the students’ basic needs, such as food, security and relationship. Only after that may we go on to raise their awareness of and help them fulfill the needs of self-esteem and self-realization.

1.3 Benefits to gain
In my experience, some high school students did not get along with their classmates and were often at odds with the rest of the class, which made them resent their class and even school, thus hampering their learning at school. If early in the semester we pay attention to our students’ reaction toward other classmates and counsel those who have problems or get them to seek help from other counselors, it is possible to prevent the problems from getting worse or even irreversible. In other words, the potential school-haters can be changed in time and develop better social skills in a socially friendlier atmosphere facilitated by the teacher, and hopefully learn better at school.

2. Rokeach's Beliefs, Attitudes, and Values

2.1 Why it Appeals to Me
The beliefs system described by Milton Rokeach takes me by storm because it gives me quite a few insights. First, if somebody’s type A beliefs are seriously challenged, he is in beliefs crisis for he is facing identity reconstruction. Second, when a person’s type B- beliefs are manipulated, he could be manipulated as well unless his type B+ beliefs, his positive self-conceptions, are very strong and type B- beliefs, his negative self-conceptions, don’t seem to exist or are weak compared to those. Third, as teachers, we could become part of our students’ type C & D beliefs, that is, authorities to trust. As to type E beliefs, they are at the superficial level of our thought and can be altered without jeopardizing our identity.

2.2 Adaptations
Many teenagers are very conscious of themselves. Due to their limited life experience, sometimes some of them even develop inferiority complex. What we can do is to diminish their type B- beliefs and augment their type B+ beliefs by convincing them of the fact that many of their type B- beliefs are groundless and that they are actually better than they thought. I believe it is significant for us to do this because it might just change a student’s view of him- or herself, which in turn can create a confident person out of the previous shy one.

2.3 Benefits to gain
On the one hand, we should not try to challenge students’ type A and B+ beliefs, for these are about who they know they are. On the other hand, students’ attitudes toward almost everything about school can be changed for the better as long as their type B-, C, D and E beliefs are reshaped to favor learning and enjoying school.

3. Interactive Drama

3.1 Why It Appeals to Me
“Interaction” has become the topic of much talk about language teaching these days. From a social constructivist’s perspective, language acquisition takes place not only because there is input but also because of interaction (Long as cited in Brown, 2000, p.287). Meaning, consequently, arises out of negotiation between one party and the other being interacted with (Larsen-Freeman, 2000, p.127). Therefore, communicative interaction plays a major role in producing meaning. There is research, in fact, which supports the hypothesis that interaction facilitates comprehension (Pica et al. 1987). It is argued that Interactive Drama (ID), being in nature a process of interaction among all its participants, is a genre conducive to negotiating meaning and language learning.

3.2 Adaptations
If we are dealing with senior high school students, the level of language structure and vocabulary need to be taken into account when writing scripts for them. When they can act out such drama once a month, it will increase their confidence and skills in speaking in English. We only have to divide a class of students into several groups of about a dozen people (because I suppose that is the most number of characters I can create in a play) and have the groups play the ID at the same time in the classroom. Other teachers who don’t teach English can also learn English speaking through the use of ID.

3.3 Benefits to gain
Students will feel the life of the English language by joining such an activity and will afterward motivate themselves to learn English more diligently as they now develop a sense of language use and possibly want to do better in the next ID that is coming up in the near future.


References
Brown, H. D. (2000). Principles of Language Learning and Teaching (4th ed.).
NY: Addison Wesley Longman, Inc.
Larsen-Freeman, D. (2000). Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching (2nd
ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pica, T., Young, R., & Doughty, C. (1987). The Impact of Interaction on
Comprehension. In Ronald M. Barasch & C. Vaughn James (Eds.). Beyond the
Monitor Model. (pp.97-119). MA: Heinle & Heinle Publishers.

ETMA Matters

The Implication of Tongue Twisters, Stories for Discussion, and Interactive Drama
by Pearl Yang
Target students: lower achievers in regular senior high and in vocational high school
Student age: 15~16

For the whole summer, this course gave me a very precious teaching idea: language learning should be “highly interaction between learners.”

Tongue Twisters
Most students in Taiwan who learn English have pronunciation problems, especially in short and long vowels. For the purpose of improving their accuracies of pronunciation and enhancing their interests, the application of tongue twisters is one of the easier practices. The use of tongue twisters can be student-initiated. They may surf the Net to get whatever they like. Each student gets around two tongue twisters and all collected are combined for classroom practice. It can be used as a kind of homework of finding tongue twisters and then the combined version can also be used as another homework for students to practice at home. For those words they don’t know how to pronounce, they can consult their dictionaries. This self-study can make students benefit from the self-learning process. Finally, students demonstrate in class what they have leaned. Those who do a good job will get more credits as classroom performance. In this kind of teaching, the teacher is a counselor, not a director, and students are interactors and negotiators.
The use of tongue twisters is easy for the teacher. Through collecting tongue twisters, students learn the skills of searching for useful materials for their studies and also their interests are involved. They can have free will to choose tongue twisters they like because the teacher may not know exactly what students like. In so doing, students are motivated to learn. If possible, they may have another interesting activity of choosing the most interesting tongue twisters based on the content. There are always ways to improve teaching and this interesting activity is one of them.
The following are two good website with tongue twisters for reference.
http://www.uebersetzung.at/twister/
http://www.indianchild.com/tongue_twisters.htm

Stories for Discussion
Stories for discussion are quite good for senior high school students to practice their speaking and reading skills. Grammar-oriented and Audiolingual Approaches can not satisfy students’ needs now. The communication between learners can enhance students’ interests and their will to participate in learning. For lower achievers, they don’t have the ability to choose stories and make some Yes-No questions by themselves. There are two ways to prepare stories for them. One is totally prepared by the teacher based on their English level. The other is to give students a chance to choose topics they like and then the teacher prepares stories based on their choices. When forming groups, the teacher needs to include both higher and lower achievers in the same group. For a little bit higher achievers may help the lower ones. At the very beginning stage, part of Chinese may be used in discussion. Later, the proportion of the Chinese used will be reduced gradually until students are comfortable in using only English. In language learning, reading plays a very important part here in Taiwan. The application of stories for discussion does benefit students a lot.
The use of stories for discussion is very basic for language training skill. This kind of learning includes speaking and reading. Mental activities are integrated, including logical reasoning, arguing, and persuasion. All these mental activities are what students need badly now in Taiwan. Through this kind of discussion, someday students know how to use their minds to read between the lines more often than just receive the passive input of the syntactic rules of the target language.

Interactive Drama
To senior high lower achievers, interactive drama is quite hard for them. At least, they need to have basic speaking ability in order to interact with each other. Though it is not easy to use interactive drama in lower achiever class, there must be ways to integrate a little bit into class teaching because communication should be the goal of language learning. Finding a lost wallet in the classroom may be a good topic for them to practice. The use of interactive drama in a big class with 40 students needs the teacher’s talents. Luckily, there are only 22 students in my class this semester. A class with this size will be much easier to handle. Besides, there are 2 ABCs acting as helpers. Better yet, 3~5 exchange students from the US, France, and Brazil may come to join the class once in a while. The design of dramas will be 2 ABCs’ job or mine. The one who can find something like a wallet will get quite an expensive gift from the teacher at the very beginning to motivate students to think hard and talk more with their peers, especially learning from 2 ABCs and exchange students. Peer interaction can’t be neglected in this case.
The use of interactive drama in this semester will prove that “where there is a will, there is a way.” Some English teachers may think using interactive drama in vocational high school or lower achiever in regular senior high is a “mission impossible;” however, a simplified version will do the job as well. This mission should be achieved through careful planning.

Conclusion
Students’ speaking ability will be videotaped at the beginning, middle, and the end of this semester as a comparison for their improvement. Hopefully, this research with the implication of “tongue twisters,” “stories for discussion,” and “interactive drama” will be successful.

Pepa's reaction paper

There are three techniques that I would like to adapt to my own class in senior high school: tongue twisters, interactive drama, and stories for discussion. The following are my reasons for the choice.

In my opinion, a tongue twister does not necessarily help students to “improve” their pronunciation and articulation. Rather, it enables students to be aware of their strengths and weaknesses in pronunciation. Also, compared with all the other drills of pronunciation in the textbooks, it is far more interesting and not threatening at all, allowing students of various proficiency levels to have fun when they practice it. In my class, I would choose some challenging tongue twisters with different phonetic focuses for students to practice and then hold a competition, in which students vote for the speaker who can recite the tongue twisters clearly and smoothly. After the competition, I sure will hold a discussion on whether there is a standard and correct way of pronunciation. By doing so, I hope my students can realize that my purpose for practicing tongue twisters is not to train them to pronounce English words “accurately” but to help them find some possible weak points in their pronunciation which may cause difficulties for other people to understand them.

Another activity that I would like to make use of is the interactive drama because it is intriguing when well-designed. And once students get involved into the process of finding out “who done it,” they will be motivated to talk, regardless of their language skills, However, if I am to use it in my class, I will write my own drama with no more than six characters in it so that the class can play the interactive drama in small groups. By doing so, I hope, my students will not shrink from the complicated relationships written in English and individuals can have more opportunities to speak up. In addition, before their play, I will discuss with my students about what information to ask (relationship, motive, alibis, etc.) and how to ask, for I observed that even adult players like us sometimes got carried away and simply failed to check needed information.

The third activity that I like is short stories for discussion. For one thing, I believe that stories help broaden students’ mind and familiarize them with other people’s perspectives. That is because students can experience other people’s lives when reading a story per se. What’s more, students can learn to feel how the characters feel through the guided imagery as well as the discussion part of the activity. They can learn not to think form their own standpoints but think in other people’s shoes. For another, short stories for discussion can substitute for the countless reading comprehension practices students have to do in senior high school and provide students with a glimpse of the fun of critical reading. In the process, I believe students will acquire the ability to make inferences, identify the author’s tone and guess at the author’s purpose. To my joy, there are abundant resources on the Web for teachers like us to use. Because of limited time, I will write no more than 10 questions for each short story and during the whole class discussion, I will ask students to take turns giving reasons for their choices so as to ensure that everyone speaks up.

These are the activities that I would like to try. After reflecting on these activities, I got the feeling that t is really good to be a teacher with ongoing ideas and plans to carry out. What’s more, exploring proper ways to get my own students to embark on a pleasant process of learning a language is indeed a challenging and enjoyable task.

Podcasting . . . MP3 Audio Broadcasting

Yep, it's here . . . the real deal . . . Brian David Phillips Podcast . . . coming soon to an Ipod or MP3 player or other sound and/or video type device. Right now the podcast blog is pretty barren but expect it to get going soon.

If you don't know what podcasting is, it is a broadcast of MP3 or other audio/video files to the web so that I-pods or similar MP3 player or other audio-video devices can subscribe to them and download them automatically via programs like itunes or ipoddler. This has an advantage for working with students as one can setup a stream of audio lectures or files to be downloaded either automatically or manually by students. It is also possible to prepare materials early and then have them podcast automatically according to a futrecast date you set.

If you are a regular visitor to Life of Brian then you may have noticed some little bits and pieces behind the scenes and we're almost ready to go full force with some major developments . . . well, when I saw "we" I mean "me" as in the Brian behind Life of Brian.

I've been looking for ways to do this sort of thing for some time but Typepad just didn't have the support. There are solutions, like going with a feedburner thingie and then posting that feed as a link here but the overhaul was more of a pain in the ass for me than what I am willing to go into at the moment what with life, the universe, and everything else going on.

Well . . . I went ahead and jumped over to libsyn as they have most of the features I want.

In any case, we're getting good to go.

As my blog is eclectic, the podcasts will come in multiflavors as well . . . one, the most requested feature, is a series of Waking Dreams, guided imagery, focused trance, and hypnosis mp3s broadcast on a regular basis. Most of these will be stand-alone relaxation or other type trance files, full sessions. The other major type of podcast will be news, notes, interviews, lectures, and discussions on things, mostly related to hypnosis, neuorlinguistic programming, focused trance, meditation, guided imagery and more. Obviously, I will have streams for my classes as well.

For starters, the podcasts will be audio only (probably MP3 for the most part). However, this software also supports other forms of multimedia files so . . . who knows . . . we just may move in some video streams in the future as well, I would certainly enjoy doing a series of brief demonstration pieces, bite size chunks of video of a technique in use perhaps to accompany a informational audio discussion.

In any case, this is exciting news. Very exciting.

Expect initial podcast runs within the next week or so, testing the waters so to speak and the first actual regular podcasts to up and running within the next two weeks . . . since I will finish teaching the IAETS Experiential Hypnosis Course on Sept. 9, expect regular podcasting to be up and broadcasting by around the Sat. or Sun. after as a kind of graduation celebration of that.

Once we have our initial podcasts, then we'll have the kinks out and be good to roll on a regular basis. Expect a new podcast every other Sunday after that (the schedule might change to more frequent podcasts if response is positive enough or less frequently if life gets in the way or if reception is lukewarm or the like). If you want to make certain you are up and able to get the files when they come in, feel free to go ahead and subscribe to the feed now. Just drag and drop or copy and past the podcast subscription link into the appropriate spot in your podcast software (itunes or ipodler or whatever). You should also be able to download the files manually when they come in as well. The Podcasting Stuff category at my blog will continue to be for general podcasting notes as well as copies of the actual podcast announcements from my podcast blog which will only have actual podcast announcements as well ast the archive for the actual podcasts and videocasts so you can go into the archives and download missed episodes.

You can find my original announcement on all this here.

I hope you folks find this news as exciting as I do. A number of folks have asked me to do this sort of thing and I think it's a grand idea . . . both to supplement my occassional webinars and posts on the subjects but also because I really think it'll be a hoot and a half.!

Pods away!

All the best,
Brian

SIGN UP for the COMPREHENSIVE IAETS EXPERIENTIAL HYPNOSIS COURSE
Advanced Techniques Training and Mentorship
Aug. 29 to Sept. 9, 2005 . . . limited seating.
http://www.briandavidphillips.com/

Sonia's Practice and Application Of Stories for Discussion, Guided Imagery, and Interactive Drama


Ⅰ. Introduction
“The examination of one’s method of teaching English as a foreign language can be an intriguing and a profitable exercise,” Edward Murtagh said (1978). He also mentioned that our students deserve the quality of teaching and we, as language teachers, have to try out new pedagogical methods and choose the best one. Inspired by the remarks, this instructor is going to adapt three activities provided by Dr. Phillips to her classrooms.
In this semi-formal reaction paper, the researcher will explore Stories for Discussion-true, false, don’t know (teacher provided), Guided Imagery, and Interactive Drama (teacher directed). In discussing each method adapted to the researcher’s classrooms, the researcher will explore the strengths of each method and how each method is adapted to the classrooms. In addition, some expected benefits will be mentioned at the end of each adaptation.

II. Practice and Application

ONE. Practice and Application Of Stories for Discussion-true, false, don’t know
Short stories are one type of literature which is the work of human art, emotions, and intelligence. The authors communicate their thoughts in the written form of language. For the target language learners, short stories are a good way for the low intermediate EFL senior high school students to learn the language and know the target culture more. It is because in reality, they have few chances to enjoy the written works in their life, except English textbooks. For foreign language learners, short stories could be a facilitator rather than a burden if the English teacher can provide properly selected short stories to read and a short discussion following the reading.
1.1 Selection of Short Stories Materials and the spending time in the EFL classroom
The selection of short stories materials needs considering learners' cognitive development, their background knowledge, their interests, and their linguistic level. Select short stories which are able to engage the interest of the learners. As for the proportion of short stories activities in language classrooms, they depend on students' interests, learning purposes, and the design of the curriculum.
1.2 Small Group Discussion Activities
There are always inactive students in the language classroom. Some of them are too shy to speak in front of a whole class. In large “group activities the weaker students frequently take a back seat to their more active classmates” (Agelasto, 1991). Some are afraid that they will be laughed at by the classmates if they make grammatical mistakes or do not speak English fluently. However, in small group discussion, three or four students get together and have a discussion which is based on the previous reading. There are two main merits in this kind of short story discussion. First, the participants have concrete things to talk to or to debate. Second, they are more willing to express their ideas for there are just four students together. They will not “lose face” in public. Moreover, from time to time, they are free to choose their own partners.
1.3 Subjects
The students are the first graders in Hou-Zon Senior High School. They are all 15 to 16-year-old native Taiwanese students. They have five English classes a week. All of them have studied English for at least three years.
1.4 Teaching Approach and Teaching Materials
Communicative approach will dominate the activity and a small group which is no more than four persons is necessary. The instructor’s selection bases on her students' English language proficiency and interests.
1.5 Goals
The target students can be more familiar with literature pieces. The exposure of authentic materials enhances and motivates their language learning.
1.5.1 Students' vocabulary is enlarged and their reading strategy is polished during the process.
1.5.2 Students' critical thinking is developed since there are no completely right answers to the questions.
1.5.3 Students' listening comprehension and speaking ability are improved because the process demands constantly clarifying and communication.
1.5.4 Samll group discussion lowers the nervous atmosphere when they speak English and renders chances and duty to each member in the small group.
1.6 Teaching Procedures
1.6.1 The instructor greets the target students.
1.6.2 The instructor leads a five-minute warm-up activity which is related to the topic.
1.6.3 Ask students to form a small group which are less than four persons.
1.6.4 Distribute the sheets of Stories for Discussion-true, false, don’t know.
1.6.5 Ask them to do silent reading and then have a fifteen-minute discussion. Second, the instructor rearranges the groups and the students have to discuss the questions again with new members and explain to new members why his or her group chooses the original answers if their answers are different.
1.6.6 After a ten-minute discussion, they return to their original groups and share their new results with their group members.
1.7 Expected Benefits
The activity “Stories for Discussion-true, false, don’t know (teacher provided)" is an application of literature in English teaching in Hou-zong senior high school. The instructor selects short stories for the students to discuss because the target students are busy studying, so that they hardly have extra time to find the materials. The researcher hopes that through this activity the target students are much more willing to speak English, know how to discuss questions with others, and have more understanding about the target culture. The researcher hopes this application will arouse the students’ motivation and promote their discourse competence. Through the small group discussion, they can develop their English communicative ability and individual potentiality. English will be not only a tool but also a magic torch which might light up their life because they get to know more about the world.

TWO. Practice and Application Of Guided Imagery
2.1 Purpose
Most of the Taiwanese teenage students are not confident in their speaking ability and furthermore, they dare not speak with a foreigner. In addition, they have trouble dealing with their school life or with the relationship between their classmates, friends, teachers, and families. The instructor hopes that through this Guided Imagery, the students can be hinted and therefore, they are more cable of coping with their difficulties and weaknesses.
2.2 Subjects
The students are the first graders in Hou-Zon Senior High School. They are all 14 to 15-year-old native Taiwanese students. They have five English classes a week. All of them have studied English for at least three years.
2.3 Teaching Approach and Teaching Materials
As far as the tight teaching schedule is concerned, the instructor will use only fifteen minutes of one class time to do the Guided Imagery. This will be a teacher-dominated activity because the main purpose is to help students overcome some learning obstacles and some minor psychological problems. Teaching materials will be adapted from some of the Guided Imagery which Dr. Phillips provides or be written by the instructor according to the target students’ needs.
2.4 Teaching Procedures
2.4.1 Prepare period Know students’ problems and select or create a proper Guided Imagery.
2.4.2 Almost at the end of one English class, the instructor informs the target students to do the activity.
2.4.3 The instructor leads a standard induction, imagery, and emerging/return to awareness.
2.4.4 Ask students to form a small group which are less than four people and share their reflections related to the Guided Imagery with their group for five minutes.
2.4.5 The instructor asks them to go back to their seats and leads a class discussion. Through the whole class discussion and interaction, the students probably will find out they are not alone for there are others having the same trouble, too.
2.5 Expected Benefits
The activity “Guided Imagery (teacher guided)" is an application from Dr. Phillips’ class, Oral Communication. The instructor hopes that through this activity, some students’ problems will be lessened and even solved. Besides, they can strengthen their listening and speaking abilities spontaneously. If the students are highly interested in this activity, they will be asked to write their own Guided Imagery and this activity is transformed into student-guided Imagery.

THREE. Practice and Application Of Interactive Drama
3.1 Purpose
As a language teacher, how to promote students’ motivation to learn English is very important. If we can provoke students’ intrinsic motivation, students will learn English more eagerly and joyfully. Brown (2001, 59) stated that “the most powerful rewards are those that are intrinsically motivated within the learner. Because the behavior stems from needs, wants, or desires within oneself, the behavior itself is self-rewarding.” Most of the foreign language learners have a language ego which prevents them form learning the target language faster and better. The instructor hopes the students will play the new roles whole heartedly and enjoy the process of speaking English.
3.2 Subjects
The students are the third graders in Hou-Zon Senior High School. They are all 16 to 17-year-old native Taiwanese students. They have five English classes a week. All of them have studied English for at least five years.
3.3 Teaching Approach and Teaching Materials
Since all the third graders are going to have two entrance exams in January and in July, they are highly stressed. The instructor wishes that they can relax for a while by acting a role in an Interactive Drama. The instructor will provide them scripts of an Interactive Drama which is adapted from the work written by the students in ETMA program.
3.4 Teaching Procedures
3.4.1 The instructor will explain the simple rules to the students. The rules will be made by the instructor according to the students’ need, language proficiency level, and so on.
3.4.2 In general, a class consists of forty-two to fifty students, and during the activity, a lot of noise will be made as a result of the students’ enthusiastic participation. So before the activity, the instructor will find a proper classroom or an open space. Then the students will be divided into five groups. Ideally, each group consists of less than 12 persons. The instructor distributes the scripts randomly to the target students. It means there are five groups performing the Interactive Drama at the same time, but kept apart in proper space.
3.4.3 The instructor will supervise the progression of each group and evaluate them. The grades will be recorded.
3.4.4 The time limit is forty minutes. When time is up, the instructor will comment on their performances and the whole class have a short discussion.
3.5 Expected Benefits
The target students will benefit from the activity by relieving their study stress and love to speak English in a group. They have to listen to and respond to others. This is like a real conversation although they are acting.

Ⅲ. Conclusion
The reason for the instructor to choose Stories for Discussion-true, false, don’t know (teacher provided), Guided Imagery, and Interactive Drama (teacher directed)is that they can promote students’ learning interest, develop critical thinking, relieve pressure. In addition, they are easily to be adapted. The instructor sincerely hopes that students will improve a lot both in English learning and in cognitive and emotional development. In fact, constantly examining one’s ways of teaching English can be fascinating and advantageous. Both the teacher and students benefit from the process.


Reference
1.Brown, H. Douglas. Teaching by Principle, 2003.
2.Murtagh, Edward. Developing a Method in English Teaching Forum, v.16, no.2, April. 1978 (p.16).
3.Phillips, Brian David. Guided Imagery.

Vera's Reaction Paper ** ^0^**

According to my student' characteristics, I will discuss the following three techniques by discussing their strengths and what adaption I will make in my classroom. These methods include improvisational games, tongue twister, and story telling.

A -- Improvisational Games

(1) Student level:5-6 graders graders
(2) class size: 35 students
(3) Reflection:
As a teacher in elementary school, I am impressed by the improvisational games very much. Even we, adults, got excited with the games as well. Not to mention kids! Improvisational Activities like alphabetic scene, memorizing games, and charades are very fun, creative, and heuristic. When teaching young learners, the proportion of fun elements must be higher enough to attract them to get involved. That is why I think it is a great idea to incorporate ILS game in my teaching. The strengths of ILS games lie in promoting facility, fluency, and spontaneity of the language (Phillips, 1999). Language is a tool to communicate in our daily life. Although we, no matter low or high level learners have learned vocabulary, syntax ability, we still have some spontaneous problems. That is to say, our language knowledge is passive, not active. ILS games provide us with great practice which constructs a meaningful context where participants have to figure out words to make sense. Thus, learners can make use of their language in a natural way and activate their language. In addition, ILS games, like brainstorming activities, full of challenges motivate high achievers a lot. Just as Stephen Krashen argued the 'i+1' theory, learners need to challenges to proceed.

According to my students' age, level, background, and interest, I would like to adapt ILS in the following steps. First, give a vocabulary instruction and the numbers of new words should no more than ten for the great gap among students' ability. Teachers have to make sure that learners acquire the ability to recognize, read and speak words. It would be great to review previous vocabulary at the same time. Then, the teacher demonstrates how to play the game step by step with clear explanation, and set up rules for classroom management in advance (elementary students are often out of control if given no regulation). Next, set the classes in heterogeneous groups first. Let high achievers guide low achievers first and encourages their interaction. In course of playing, the teacher supervises each groups and doing classroom management. After that, teachers assign students in pairs in which students with similar abilities get together. In this way, opportunities and challenges of practice will be elevated. Finally, to wrap up the activities, teachers encourages each group to play the game in public and give some grammatical corrections according to teachers' observation.

B-- Tongue Twisters

(1) Student level:3-6 graders graders
(2) class size: 35 students
(3) Reflection:

As far as beginning language development are concerned, articulation and pronunciation is quite critical. Tongue twister is one of the alternatives to promote articulation, accuracy and fluency of oral ability with fun and effectiveness. In the pronunciation learning process of EFL context, it is necessary for learners to develop phonics ability and raise phonological awareness at the very beginning.“Phonemic awareness is awareness of sounds in spoken word; phonics is the relation between letters and sounds in written words” (Stahl, 1992) For example, in the tongue twister Peter Piper, students can get the awareness of the phoneme [p] and concept of onset for [p] occur in the initial syllables. With phonological awareness, it would facilitate their spelling ability and literacy as well. On the other side, the entertainment of tongue twister stimulates learners' interests greatly. Take my own teaching experience for example, I've ever taught tongue twister and it really impress students and brought lots of fun.

Making use of tongue twister in elementary level should take the following aspects into considerations. First, construct an easy atmosphere. Some students feel afraid of making mistakes in public. Second, teachers demonstrate reading the tongue twister from low speed to high speed. To encourage students, it would be great to start reading at the low speed. Students will get sense of confidence when they improve. Besides, systematic and long-term learning is much more effective. Teachers can adopt it as classroom management or class routine. For instance, to use it as a way to ask students to keep quite, i.e. whenever students are too noisy, they begin to read tongue twister together and the last one to be quiet have to read tongue twister in public. Last but not the least, teachers observe what sounds are difficult to students, then do more activities with those sounds.


C-- Story For Discussion

(1) Student level:3-6 graders
(2) class size: 35 students
(3) Reflection:
Story discussion is a very common way to teach in elementary schools. Through stories, children grow the abilities of perceptiveness, imagination, creativity, concept of structure, ethical values, culture learning, critical thinking and language including oral, reading, listening, and speaking simultaneously. All in all, stories benefit students in a variety ways and full of educational values.

In adopting story discussion to teach elementary school students, I will employ it as follows: In the first place, choose appropriate materials. Interesting stories cooperating with educational values and big beautiful pictures are favorable. Secondly, teachers read the stories full of variety of facial expression and body language. If possible, using puppets to read stories will attract students more. Third, it is very important to familiarize students with the vocabulary in advance. Fourth, in order to increase the participation of learners, teachers arrange students into groups. Give them questions before they answer and ask them to discuss in a group later. After that, teachers can ask every group to answer one by one. Moreover, teachers may ask students to do role play after telling the story. Meanwile, teachers may encourage students to change the content and use more creativity. Last, teachers may play music while storytelling or discussion. Choose the music matching to the story content may help students imagine the story context and increase the sense of novelty.


Welcome to my bolg Vera's Green Garden.
Free free to give me any opinions~~~ ^_^

Reference
1.Phillips, Brian David. Improvisational Language Structures: Improving Conversational Spontaneity through ILS Theatre Games in Proceedings of the sixteenth Conference on English Teaching and Learning the Republic of China. Taipei: Crane Publishing, 1999(p.551-565).
2.Stahl, S. A.(1992). Saying the “p” word: Nice guidelines for exemplary phonics instruction. The Reading Teacher, 45(8), 618-625.
3.Beaty, Janice J., College, Elmira（1994）. Picture Book Storytelling Literature Activities for Young Children. Harcourt Brace College Publishers: Florida.